by Andy Conway
“As if the Germans don’t know,” Mary huffed. “There’s plenty of spies on the ground here. Anyone in this room could be a spy.”
“Quite,” said Charlie. “And if any of this information gets out, we’ll know for sure. Moving on. A number of factories were hit. Lucas Industries, GEC works, and the BSA among them.”
“Again,” said Percy. “That’s twice now it’s been hit.”
“Worse than the August bombing. Hundreds of workers have been trapped in the wreckage. An electrician and a Home Guard member spent the night digging them out. We know there are over fifty fatalities. Rifle production is halted.”
“What? All of it?” said Jimmy.
“Completely. The factory’s a right off.”
“But that’s the only factory in Britain producing bloody rifles!” Jimmy glanced around the room at Mary and Rachel. “Excuse my French, ladies.”
“What a state we’re in,” said Mary Lewis. “No arms, no transport, no equipment.”
“We don’t know that, Mary,” said Clifford.
“Everyone knows it.”
“Let’s not try to fool ourselves,” said Percy Shurmer. “This government has led us into a war we’re ill equipped for. The Germans have been arming themselves for a decade and we’ve been appeasing them and hoping they’ll go away.”
“This isn’t time for one of your stump speeches, Percy.”
“No, Chief Inspector Lees,” Percy smiled. “But I was about to say that, despite the criminal actions of this government putting us in this state, it’s probably best not to have tittle tattle and idle gossip sap our morale. It’s that kind of mob mentality that done for that poor parachutist that came down in Wapping.”
“That’s a lot of poppycock,” said Clifford, smiling. “Silly fairytales like that are spreading all over and they’re damaging the war effort.”
Rachel spoke up. “I don’t know this story. What is it?”
“And you from London?” said Percy.
“There you have it,” said Mary Lewis. “It’s more common in Birmingham than London. It was probably made up in a Highgate pub.”
“We all know it’s true,” said Percy. “A parachutist came down in Wapping and the locals kicked him to death because he was talking foreign. Then they found out he was a Polish Spitfire pilot – one of ours, if you please.”
“You’re not addressing the riff-raff in Highgate now, Mr Shurmer,” said Mary.
Percy thumped the table. “That riff-raff, as you call them, are fighting this war for us. That riff-raff are correcting the mistakes of your toffs who appeased Hitler, who’s now dropping bombs on our city. That riff-raff aren’t going to stand for you lot running the country into the ground. They’re going to win this war and vote your Tories out, you wait and see.”
“Could we not have this turn into a hustings?” said Charlie. “Despite our quite clear political differences, we are here to serve one purpose, and that is to strike at the heart of a German invasion.”
“Hear hear,” said Clifford, stroking ash from his trouser leg. “With that in mind, what is this rumour I’ve heard of an air raid warden spotting a spy out last night?”
“That isn’t confirmed,” said Charlie.
“But one of your men did encounter a suspicious figure out signalling in the local churchyard last night?”
“He did not mention anything about signalling. But he did say he spotted a man who fled when challenged.”
“This is highly alarming,” said Clifford. “Could it be that the local devastation was signalled? Moreover, the fire kit was sabotaged. It looks very much like we have an enemy spy in our midst.”
“But why in Moseley?” said Jimmy Connor. “Why attract the bombers to here when there’s nothing but a church and residential housing? Small Heath is a mile down the road.”
“Which is why I don’t believe this was an enemy spy. Possibly a burglar, working under cover of the air raid.”
“Scandalous,” said Mary Lewis. “Should be shot on sight.”
“But we do know,” said Clifford, “that there are enemy spies in our midst. Parachute drops all over the Midlands last month.”
“Electro-magnetic death rays,” said Mary Lewis. “Everyone knows it.”
“Total nonsense,” said Charlie. “Jerry dropped empty parachutes all over and announced on the radio they’d dropped agents. We know the drops were a decoy because there were no human tracks at any of the sites, so no one could have met any enemy agents. It’s just a black propaganda trick to sow doubt in our minds.”
“Just the kind of trick these fascists would pull and all,” said Percy.
“Damned clever,” said Clifford.
“Unfortunately, a story like that, it takes root,” said Charlie. “They’d rather believe any old nonsense from the enemy than what their government tells them. People are stupid like that.”
“But the government does lie to them,” said Mary. “It lies all the time.”
“Yes, I suppose it does,” said Clifford. “It’s no wonder the public don’t believe them.”
“It’s just annoying,” said Rachel, “they believe everything the Nazis say instead.”
They all looked to her and considered it. A few nodded sadly. Charlie closed his folder and rapped the table.
“This concludes our meeting. If we have a similar night of bombing, I shall call another tomorrow.”
“Earlier, please,” said Jimmy. “I need to be out there.”
“We all have work to do out there,” said Charlie. “But I felt it important to brief you all and put some facts on the table. Await instructions. And remember, unless you don’t hear Cromwell from me, assume it’s not happening.”
“And what if you’re dead?” said Clifford. “What if a bomb hits you right here?”
“Don’t worry,” Charlie smiled. “Our latest intel says it won’t.”
He stood and the others did the same. Jimmy was first out of the door, plonking his tin helmet on his head and running down the stairs. Percy Shurmer followed, putting on his trilby hat and overcoat and departing with a clenched fist salute.
Mary snorted her disgust when he was gone. “What on earth is Percy Shurmer doing on an invasion committee? He’s nothing but a common tailor’s son.”
“Like he said, Mary,” said Charlie. “We’re all fighting this war together. Even the tailors’ sons.”
“He was sacked by the Royal Mail for agitating during the General Strike. He’s nothing but a communist sympathizer, and they’re worse than the Nazis.”
“How can they be worse than the Nazis,” said Rachel, “when they’re our allies?”
Mary Lewis turned on her and looked her up and down again. That sweeping disdain that itemized the cost of her wardrobe. It used to be fellow students who did it because they thought her clothes were cheap. But now, she realized, it was exactly the opposite. For the first time in her life, she was being judged on looking too rich.
“Well, to my mind,” said Mary, “we’ve made a terrible mistake going to war with Germany. We should have united with Germany against the Russians.”
She pulled her scarf around her neck more tightly and flounced out.
Rachel glared after her, aghast. “How can anyone think that? With what the Nazis are doing. Doesn’t she know how evil they are?”
“A lot of people are saying it,” said Clifford, reaching for his cap and coat. “Hitler and Stalin. There’s very little between them in people’s minds.”
“Stalin isn’t rounding Jews up and putting them in gas chambers,” said Rachel.
“Oh, more poppycock stories, surely?” said Clifford.
“I’m afraid not,” said Rachel.
Clifford stared for a moment, sizing her up.
How could they know? They still lived in a world where the word Auschwitz meant nothing.
He held out his hand. She gave him hers but he swept it to his mouth and kissed it.
“How exciting to have someone from Control here,” h
e purred. “London’s been taking quite a hit lately. It must be hell there.”
“We’re coping,” she said, pulling her hand back and resisting the urge to wipe it clean.
“I feel we can look you in the face now that we’re being bombed so badly. Whereabouts in London are you from?”
She thought of her dad’s aunt, a distant relative he’d mentioned often but never visited.
“Muswell Hill,” she said.
Charlie hovered nearby, a knot of concern on his face.
“Ah yes,” said Clifford. “I was there a few years ago. Such a charming zoo.”
Rachel frowned. “I don’t think there’s ever been a zoo in Muswell Hill.”
Clifford smiled. “Ah. My mistake. Good night.”
He saluted Charlie and strode out, tramping down the stairs to the street.
“I don’t think he believes my cover story,” said Rachel.
Charlie patted her arm. “You did brilliantly.” He reached for his trench coat and cap.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I have to go out and organize the bombing relief,” he said. “You’ll be safe here.”
“Oh no you don’t,” she said. “I’m coming too.”
“Don’t be silly. You can’t possibly–”
“I’m not hiding here like a child while everyone else is doing their bit,” she said. “I can help.”
“I won’t let you.”
“If you don’t let me come with you, I’ll just go out on my own after you’ve gone. I’m not going to spend the Blitz making cups of tea and arguing about an invasion I know isn’t going to happen.”
He flapped his arms against his trench coat.
She grinned. “Do you have a uniform, or something? I can’t go dressed like this.”
— 17 —
CHARLIE DIDN’T HAVE a uniform, just a pair of heavy brown dungarees. For painting. He gave her thick woollen socks and a jumper, and she rushed to her wardrobe, unrolled her maxi skirt and took out her DMs. They wouldn’t be invented for another few years – and by a German – and wouldn’t be manufactured till after the war, but no one would notice them under the overalls. And if they did, she could just say they were new military issue.
She emerged, ready for action, to find him digging in a kit bag.
“You might need this, too.”
He pulled out a tin helmet. It was a bit big on her but the strap under her chin kept it tight.
She followed him down the stairs and out into the back yard. Cold, crisp night air, sharp with the scent of fire, like bonfire nights when she was a child. Dad taking her out to a fireworks display somewhere. The smell of November.
They tramped blindly through the ginnel and came out to the dark village square, lit only by the haunting white paint on the kerbs and lampposts. But the sky was bright too with a strange orange glow.
“This is bloody ridiculous,” Charlie said. “You should be in the shelter.”
“Not likely, it’s full of moaning old buggers. I want to make a difference.”
“But if something happens to you...”
“Nothing will happen to me. You know that. Because I come to you in my future, seven years ago.”
“But time can change. What we do here tonight can change that. Danny proved that.”
He was right. It was a cat’s cradle of cobwebs she was trying to pick apart. It could disintegrate with the wrong touch.
“I’ll take that risk. I can’t be here and do nothing, Charlie.”
A fire engine roared into the village from the north and took the slip road. Charlie ran across to the green to meet it, waving an arm, shouting to a fireman clutching onto the side. Rachel couldn’t hear their words over the insane clanging of the bell. The fire engine roared past and headed up St Mary’s Row. She ran across to the green to join Charlie.
“There’s an incident up the Wake Green Road,” he shouted. “Come on!”
He ran up St Mary’s Row, past the church and the lychgate, and she wondered if they were going to run all the way, but he cut across at the zebra crossing at the top, as if to go up Oxford Road, the tower of the Baptist Church looming above them, a dagger pointed at the livid red sky.
The drone of the bombers up above, Ack-Ack fire from somewhere north tracing bolts of light through the sky, the distant crump of explosions.
Charlie stopped at a black car, an Austin Norfolk Saloon, the duckboard painted white, and fiddled with keys. She rattled the handle on the passenger side but Charlie had to reach over and unlock it. No central locking. She jumped inside and they roared off, skidding into the top of St Mary’s Row and up to where it turned into Wake Green Road.
A few jinks and turns down dark streets and she gasped as they pulled into bright daylight.
A row of terraced houses with a bonfire in the middle, blazing fury.
He pulled to the side and they jumped out to find cold night air had become as warm as a spring day.
She followed Charlie as he ran to the fire engine and the cluster of men. The fire team were unrolling a hose and connecting it up. Within a minute they were spraying a jet of water at the flames.
The bomb had taken out two houses, sides exposed, patches of wallpaper and pictures still hanging, like an angry dragon had ripped the front right off, leaving a pile of blazing rubble.
A policeman was arguing with an air raid warden. It was Jimmy Connor.
“Jimmy!” Charlie called. “What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to tell this plod who’s got the authority over this site.”
“I’m in charge here as authorising officer,” the policeman shouted. He was young but wore a moustache to hide it, bristling with self-importance.
“Constable Davies, is this necessary?”
“I’m a police officer and I have authority here,” Davies shouted. “He’s just a civilian with a silly helmet.”
“Bugger off!” Jimmy shouted. “You don’t know nothing about Civil Defence!”
“I know if you don’t back down, I have the authority to lock you up for the night.”
“Jimmy,” said Charlie. “Let him take charge.”
“But he doesn’t...”
“Just do it so we can save some lives.”
Jimmy shook his head and spat on the ground. Constable Davies smirked.
“This is madness,” Rachel said, but no one heard.
“So what’s the situation here?” Charlie looked to Davies, but he quailed. He didn’t know. Charlie looked to Jimmy.
“We got here ten minutes ago. Rescued a mother. She was in the bath. Blown right out of the house and landed naked on the street, sitting right there in the bath.”
He pointed to the middle of the street. The bath had been dragged away to the opposite side.
“She’s in that house over there. They’re giving her a cup of tea. Her baby’s inside. That’s all she keeps screaming about.”
“The baby’s still in the house?”
They turned to look at the collapsed house, an avalanche slide of rubble. The fire hissed under the jet of water, clouds of steam rising. There couldn’t be anything alive in there.
“Jesus,” said Rachel.
“What about next door?”
“Neighbours say there’s a woman in there. We don’t know who the man is.”
Jimmy pointed to a body lying on the kerb twenty feet away. They craned their necks, trying to work it out, and realized it was a man in a suit, with no head.
“For God’s sake get that covered up.”
Rachel felt her stomach lurch. She bent over and heaved, expecting undigested corned beef sandwiches to spray the street. But nothing came.
Constable Davies had gone white. All he could do was stammer.
“Davies,” Charlie barked. “Get a bloody blanket from somewhere and cover that mess up. Jimmy, get to work.”
“Yes, sir.” Jimmy gave a sharp salute and ran off to give out orders.
Within minutes, other cre
ws arrived and Jimmy stationed them along the street: a rescue team pulled up and began to assess the possibility of pulling bodies from the rubble. A stretcher team stood by, waiting for the wounded. Once the flames were dead, they all scrambled up onto the hillside of rubble. Rachel climbed up with them, the bricks hot under her feet. She wondered if her rubber soles might melt.
Jimmy spread them out and shouted, “Silence!”
They froze and listened for a moan, a cry, anything that might hint at life to be saved. A hope.
Nothing.
They swarmed over the rubble, calling down into the chasms of blackness, desperately hoping to hear a baby cry.
Masonry crackled above. A patch of wall ripped off and toppled onto the rubble with a crash, sending up a cloud of dust. She ran back and jumped to the safety of the street, looking around embarrassed, to find that everyone else had done the same.
“That whole bloody thing could come down any second,” said Charlie.
“We can risk it,” said Jimmy. “If it comes down, there’s no chance for any poor bleeder under there.”
A grey auxiliary ambulance arrived. It was just an old van repainted. A woman driver, a cigarette hanging from her lips.
“Rachel,” said Charlie. “Go and help the ambulance driver. Tell her what’s happening.”
“But, I want to help here.”
“That mother is going to have to be taken away. I imagine that might be difficult. She’ll need help.”
Rachel fought the swell of anger inside her. But she knew she wasn’t being pushed aside so the men could do the dangerous work. They were giving her the dangerous job: a mother screaming with pain for her dead baby. A mother who had to be extricated from the scene. Compared to that, looking in the rubble for bodies was the easy job.
She walked down the street, her boots slapping through a slick of water. The auxiliary ambulance driver hopped out of her van and tossed her cigarette aside.
“Oh, hello,” she said.
It was Amy Parker. She had no uniform, dressed in slacks, the shoes she’d worn earlier, a cable knit sweater with the obligatory tin helmet. Rachel realized why she was so tired in the day.
“Where’s your daughter?”
“I leave her with the neighbour. They take her to a shelter.” She passed Rachel to gaze in wonder at the scene. “If Jerry takes out many more buildings I’m never going to find the hospital again.”