The FitzOsbornes at War

by Michelle Cooper

  Henry was blinking rapidly at her plate. Aunt Charlotte cleared her throat, carefully repositioned her cutlery and then glanced around, as though worried someone might overhear. Simon had closed his eyes. Only Veronica gazed steadily at Toby.

  ‘It sounds like Hell,’ she said. ‘But you’re stopping the bombers from getting through. You’re putting your life at risk to save others. That is heroic.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Toby said, his voice rising. ‘No one does! You think I give a damn about being heroic? I don’t even know good from evil any more . . . Oh, what’s the point?’ He’d lurched to his feet and was groping for his cap. ‘I have to go, I need to get back.’

  ‘You’re not fit to drive anywhere,’ said Simon. ‘Sit down, for God’s sake, I’ll take you back after we’ve all –’

  But Toby was already stalking towards the door.

  ‘Oh, go after him,’ cried Aunt Charlotte. ‘Please.’ Simon shoved back his chair and followed without another word.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ choked out Henry. ‘I’m really, really sorry, I didn’t mean to upset him!’

  Aunt Charlotte, unexpectedly, reached over to pat her hand.

  ‘Poor child,’ she said. ‘Poor, dear child.’ But she was looking towards the doorway, so she could just as well have meant Toby.

  5th September, 1940

  Dear Soph,

  SORRY I was so utterly bloody on Saturday. I’d had a rotten week and then I had a row with Simon on the way over, but I had no right to take it out on you. I’ll make it up to Henry, promise. Forgive me?

  It’s just that I was so tired, but I’m absolutely fine now. The doctor gave me a couple of sleeping pills when I got back, and I had ten hours’ solid sleep, and that’s made the world of difference.

  Anyway, I feel terrible that I didn’t even talk to you much. Hope your job is becoming more interesting and your boss slightly less stupid. Could you pass on my apologies to V? Although I am not so worried about her, as she already knows I’m a complete idiot.

  Lots of love,

  Toby

  11th September, 1940

  WE OUGHT TO BE FEELING more at home in our little cellar now. We’ve brought down books and writing paper and pencils, a tin of biscuits, water bottles, a rug, a folding tray that we use as a desk, and a box of candles in case the electricity goes out. Trust the Germans to wait till tea leaves were being rationed to two ounces a week before they started their bombardment – life underground would be far easier to bear with an unlimited supply of nice hot tea. It’s also a nuisance having to lug our bedding up and down the stairs, but it’s too damp to keep a set of blankets and pillows down here permanently. I dread to think what it will be like in the middle of winter – but surely these raids won’t still be going on then. Will they?

  Saturday was when it started in earnest. The weather had been glorious, and Veronica and I spent most of the afternoon working in the garden. When the siren went off around tea-time, we barely paused to look up into the sky.

  ‘Oh, honestly,’ said Veronica, brushing the dirt off her hands. ‘Can’t they give it a rest on a Saturday? I’m going to have a bath.’

  ‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘Listen.’

  I thought I heard a very faint, dull rumbling. We peered up at the sky, but our patch of it was a brilliant blue, interrupted only by a few strands of cotton-wool cloud.

  ‘Actually, I can hear something, too,’ said Veronica, after a moment. Then a fire engine started up nearby and rushed along our side road, bells ringing madly.

  ‘Let’s go up and have a look,’ I said.

  We let ourselves into Montmaray House through a side door, groped our way through the dark, silent rooms to the servants’ stairs, then climbed up and up, all the way to the roof, which provided a majestic view of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, and beyond that, Westminster and the City. But it wasn’t lush greenery or historic architecture that caught our attention; it was the sky. It looked as though someone had flicked a giant brush, dripping with black paint, at London’s clean blue ceiling. As we stared, each black speck grew bigger and bigger, then transformed itself into a tiny glinting aeroplane. There were hundreds of them, and they were all converging on the same spot.

  ‘The East End,’ said Veronica. ‘They’re aiming for the docks.’ And as she spoke, a cloud of white smoke appeared on the horizon. The aeroplanes had arranged themselves in neat lines above this, and were taking it in turns to spiral down and drop their bombs and fly off. The cloud rose higher, and darkened, and then expanded to take over the entire sky. From halfway across the city, we could see the red and gold flames leaping from the ground to claw at the black air. It wasn’t until the next day that we heard about the gasworks and the arsenal that received direct hits; the piles of freshly delivered timber that turned the docks into a towering inferno; the streets flowing with molten rubber and soap and paint from burning factories; the barges that caught alight and drifted off down the Thames like floating lanterns. At the time, we only knew it was the most monstrous fire we’d ever seen. It would have been more sensible to take cover, but we just stood there, gaping, awestruck at the scale of the destruction. I remember thinking, Oh God, Julia’s on ambulance duty tonight and Thank Heavens that Daniel doesn’t live in Whitechapel any more. It was as though I could only comprehend what was going on by focusing on a couple of people I knew who might be affected. Of course, I realised even then that hundreds of people must be dying as I watched, but that was just too much to take in.

  Then the All Clear sounded, jolting us out of our daze, and we whirled round and ran back down to the flat. I tried to telephone Milford, to let them know we were all right, but I couldn’t get through.

  ‘Those bombers will be back after dark,’ Veronica predicted. ‘The blackout’s useless if there’s an enormous fire lighting up the whole of London.’

  And, of course, she was right. They returned a couple of hours later, and it went on all night, and it wasn’t just the East End they were aiming at this time. Down in our cellar, I could hear the bombs whining closer and closer, feel the crump and the shudder as each one landed. The electric light flickered and died. The air filtering through the vents tasted of burning. I was amazed, when we staggered out of our shelter the next morning, to find the house and grounds still there. It had seemed as though the whole world was being pounded into oblivion, but our street was untouched, except for a fine layer of ash and powdered brick that had settled on everything.

  The next night, they hit the City, and knocked out the southbound railway lines. On Monday night, another couple of hundred people died, including dozens of poor homeless East Enders who’d been evacuated to Canning Town. And on and on and on it goes. It isn’t only after dark that we have to worry about, either. Every single day this week, we’ve had our work interrupted by raids. Once, after I’d dashed across to John Lewis in my luncheon break to buy some elastic, the Warning siren went off and I had to spend an hour and a half in their basement. It was much nicer than our office shelter, though. They had a gramophone playing soothing music, and the shop girls came round selling books and packets of biscuits, and handing out khaki wool so we could knit scarves for the army as we waited for the All Clear.

  And at least now our own anti-aircraft guns seem to be firing back – I didn’t hear them at all the first few nights. I don’t know if they actually manage to hit any planes, but the noise of the guns makes me feel slightly less vulnerable. And I suppose things might be even worse if we didn’t have those barrage balloons floating overhead. It’s hard to believe that big silver balloons might be any deterrent to German bombers, but I think they force the planes to fly higher, so their bombs are aimed less accurately . . . not that that is particularly reassuring.

  These are the sorts of things one thinks (and writes) about when stuck in a tiny cellar during a bombing raid.

  23rd September, 1940

  SIMON MET ME FOR LUNCHEON at a little café near my office today – he had to drive
some very important Air Marshal to Whitehall and had a couple of hours free. He tried to talk me into resigning from my job and going back to Milford, at least until the air raids stop, and I must admit I was tempted. I am so exhausted, and so sickened by the destruction. Each day on my way to work, I find more and more of the city has been reduced to cinders and crumbled brick and fragments of charred, twisted metal. Oxford Street got the worst of it last week – John Lewis is now a blackened skeleton. Even Buckingham Palace had its windows blown out when half a dozen bombs landed in its grounds.

  But I would never leave Veronica here by herself, and she would never give up her job, and even I feel a tug of loyalty towards the Ministry of Food (office morale has improved markedly since Lord Woolton took over).

  ‘I suppose you think it’s going to get even worse,’ I said to Simon.

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t say so in public,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that illegal now, spreading gloom and despondency?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I said, but very quietly (and I did glance about to see if anyone could possibly be listening, although no one was). ‘Just because the newspapers keep going on about how cheerful and defiant Londoners are, doesn’t mean anyone believes it. I know they’re not telling us what’s really happening. They don’t even read out the number of casualties on the news any more.’

  ‘Well, how would that help anyone? What does it matter whether they say it was a hundred killed last night, or a thousand? I doubt the authorities have the exact figures, anyway. They’re usually still digging bodies out of the rubble days later.’

  ‘It’s barbaric,’ I said fervently. ‘Don’t those German pilots understand what they’re doing? They aren’t hitting military targets. They’re destroying rows and rows of ordinary houses, shops, schools . . . even hospitals, and they’ve got big red crosses painted on their roofs.’

  ‘Pretty hard to know what one’s going to hit, when one lets a bomb drop from four thousand feet up. And we’re doing the same back to them.’

  I wanted to say, ‘Good! They deserve it! They started it!’ But I knew how childish that would sound, and I didn’t actually feel that way (well, not really). Instead, I changed the subject.

  ‘Have you spoken to Toby recently?’ I asked. ‘I had another letter from him, after that big battle last week. It sounded as though every plane in Fighter Command was called in for that one. Not that he said very much about himself. He did mention he’d probably be getting some leave soon.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you he’s been promoted?’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘No!’

  ‘Flight Lieutenant.’ Simon hesitated, then added, ‘He’s been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, too. But they certainly won’t be presenting it to him at any official Buckingham Palace medal ceremony.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why do you think? Because he’s always in trouble! He never writes up his combat reports properly, he wore pyjamas under his flying kit one morning because he slept in and couldn’t be bothered getting dressed – he even invites the sergeants to play cards with him and the other officers.’ Simon saw my confusion. ‘That’s a court martial offence, officers socialising with other ranks on the base. Even when they’re all pilots, it’s against the rules.’

  ‘Well, that sounds like a stupid rule!’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps, but that’s the way it is, and the air force is still a lot better than the other services. I doubt I’d have had any chance of becoming an officer if I’d joined the army, and I probably wouldn’t even have been accepted into the navy. Anyway, Toby’s had so many official warnings that if he weren’t so good at shooting down planes and so bloody charming, they’d have got rid of him ages ago.’

  I took a moment to try to assimilate these various images of Toby: ruthless fighter pilot and convivial colleague and decorated serviceman and irreverent rule-breaker (the last, at least, was familiar). But if it was difficult for me to merge all these Tobys into one whole, functioning person, how much harder must it be for him?

  ‘Simon, what were you two arguing about?’ I asked. ‘You know, that day we all had luncheon at Claridge’s.’

  ‘What? Oh, I don’t remember.’ He glanced about for the waitress. ‘Do you want tea? If one can call it tea these days, it always looks and tastes more like dishwater –’

  ‘Simon,’ I insisted. ‘Toby was really upset. I was so worried about him! I still am, actually, even though he’s trying to convince us all that he’s absolutely fine now.’

  ‘It was nothing. We were both tired and on edge, that’s all.’

  I kept gazing at Simon, and he kept avoiding my gaze.

  ‘Anyway, it’s not . . . it isn’t a problem any more,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘God!’ he hissed. He looked about, then lowered his voice. ‘If you must know, it was about a new pilot posted to his squadron, some boy barely out of school. He was mooning about after Toby, completely besotted.’

  ‘Oh. But . . . that’s not Toby’s fault, is it?’

  ‘Toby could have brought the whole thing to an abrupt halt right at the start with a couple of well-placed insults – God knows he’s had plenty of practice fending off admirers – but no, he thought that would be “cruel”. I told him it would be a damn sight more cruel if anyone found out. They’d both have been kicked out of the air force.’

  ‘Why? They weren’t . . . doing anything, were they?’

  ‘Sophie, they wouldn’t have to do anything! The very idea of it is against regulations, against the law, against . . . against common decency!’

  ‘I know you don’t believe that,’ I said levelly.

  ‘I just thought Toby should have done something to stop it, that’s all. For the sake of that boy, if nothing else, to help him realise how futile it all was. But it doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why . . . Oh.’

  ‘A third of Toby’s squadron’s gone now,’ said Simon quietly. ‘In just six weeks. The RAF’s running out of men to replace them. They’ve cut training from six months to two weeks, and some of those new pilots don’t even last a day in combat.’ Simon fiddled with his knife. ‘Toby was right, it would’ve been needlessly cruel to say anything to that boy.’

  The waitress came over to see if we wanted anything else. We didn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, after she’d gone. ‘About all those poor pilots. And . . . well, for making you talk about it when you didn’t want to.’

  ‘You didn’t make me,’ he said. ‘Anyway, you know what they say – a trouble shared is a trouble halved.’ He looked almost as exhausted as the last time I’d had luncheon with him – not at all as though his burden had been lessened by our conversation. I felt even worse.

  ‘And I’m sorry that – I mean, your job must be pretty awful, if you have to keep track of how many men need to be replaced,’ I said. ‘And you’re probably getting bombed just as much as the rest of us.’

  ‘It’s not too bad where I am,’ he said. ‘It’s not as though we’re in the middle of the East End.’

  ‘The raids have changed everything, haven’t they?’ I said, looking through the window, criss-crossed with gummed paper, past the mound of leaking sandbags, across the cratered road to a shop that was missing its awnings and half its roof. ‘You know, when I’m saying goodbye to Veronica each morning, I sometimes wonder if . . . well, if we’re both going to come home again that evening. It makes me feel I can’t ever make plans, not even for the next day, because who knows what might have happened by then –’

  ‘Stop it, Sophie,’ Simon said roughly. ‘You’re being morbid! I mean it, you ought to go back to Milford.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, that’s just what Hitler wants. He hopes we’ll all flee to the countryside, and then he can invade London – so that’s why I’m determined to stay.’ Simon opened his mouth to argue some more, so I rushed on. ‘Anyway, I can’t resign from my job now. One of the girls in the office has just left to get marri
ed, and Miss Thynne’s on sick leave. She burnt her arm putting out an incendiary on her roof. So, Mr Bowker really needs me there in the office.’

  Simon sighed heavily. ‘Well, be careful, won’t you? And tell Veronica . . . no, actually, don’t tell her I said anything, because she’ll just do the exact opposite.’

  ‘You be careful, too, Simon,’ I said, when we were saying goodbye, and he said, rather gloomily, that he was always careful.

  Which is quite true, he is. The problem is that being careful isn’t enough any more.

  16th October, 1940

  WRITTEN AT JULIA’S, BECAUSE THE firemen found an unexploded bomb in front of Montmaray House today and everyone in our street has been evacuated. I suspect the Germans do it deliberately – send down bombs with a delay mechanism – because they realise it causes even more anxiety and disruption to normal life than an immediate explosion.

  I’m a bomb expert by now. I can tell the difference between a high explosive and an incendiary, just from the sound. I know that the Germans have started attaching cardboard pipes to the sides of their bomb cylinders, so that the last thing the victims hear is a terrifying whistle announcing their oncoming death. I know that incendiary bombs burst into flames on impact, and shoot out shards of red-hot metal at anyone trying to put out the fire. I know there are bombs attached to parachutes, designed to drift down and explode in mid-air, flattening anything underneath.

  Veronica threw out my Evening Standard Guide to Air Raid Sounds last week, because she said I was becoming obsessed. But the more information one has, the more one feels in control of the situation. That’s simply common sense. One would really think Veronica would understand that!