“Hello,” he murmured. “We’re in luck again.”
Of all the agents of destruction dropped from the skies during the Blitz, perhaps the most devastating were the landmines. Drifting quietly down attached to a parachute, the landmine would strike the ground without burrowing into it and then detonate. One of them could easily wipe out half a street of small houses. The casualties they caused were terrible. Yet as these angels of death drifted down people were frequently seen running not away, but towards them.
The reason was the parachute. It was made of silk. If you could keep far enough away from the mine to avoid the blast, but then rush in quickly before anyone else, you could cut yourself a good piece of the silk parachute. They made up very nicely into shirts and dresses.
Luck was indeed on Charlie’s side that night. While they took cover, the landmine obligingly landed in the open space of Smithfield where it made a large hole in the ground, but did no other serious damage. Within three minutes the parachute had disappeared into the back of the converted taxi, and Charlie and his men went off to risk their lives again.
Maisie could never sleep until the All Clear was sounded at dawn. And though she did not like to admit it, she wished now that she had stayed the night at Jenny’s.
Just after one in the morning she slipped out of her house and began to walk up to the crest of the ridge. Even if Jenny were asleep, she knew that the front door would not be locked. As she reached the top, where the road led down towards Gipsy Hill, she paused.
Below her London was pulsating with molten red light, as if some vast geological change had taken place and the whole shallow bowl had transformed itself into the mouth of a volcano.
Just then, a wave of enemy planes started to drone over high above her. She was not worried, however: they were undoubtedly bound for the centre. An anti-aircraft gun spluttered into life too late and she was just about to turn down towards Jenny’s when she became aware of a buzzing, whining sound.
Fighters. At first, she could hardly see the profile of the half-dozen planes as they swooped in the black night sky, but she could see the tiny flashes from their guns. The Messerschmitts swarmed up like angry hornets from the enemy convoy. Over Dulwich, on towards Clapham and the river, the planes looped, wheeled and spat death at each other in the darkness. It was, in its way, rather thrilling.
She watched them fly over towards Vauxhall; then it seemed to her that two planes – or perhaps there were more – had detached themselves from the rest, and were heading back over Crystal Palace. They wheeled directly over her only a few hundred feet up, fragmentary shapes against the reddened sky, soaring high into the night, rushing down again, flattening off just above her and then wheeling eastwards.
Where were they now? She gazed up, fascinated, her small red mouth forming into a little circle as she stared into the sky where men were battling for their lives. Without even realizing what she was doing, she waved her arms and cried out: “Come on! Get him! You can do it.”
But now another wave of bombers was coming over the high ridge. The anti-aircraft guns erupted into a frenzy. She craned her neck and spun round to look for the fighters. Would they return? The whole sky was flashing. She never saw or felt the sudden hail of shrapnel that crashed into the back of her head and caused it to explode like a little cherry.
When it got as hot as this, Charlie knew you had to keep your face down in front of the fire. The heat all around was so great that he had reluctantly taken the bottles of spirits out of his boots and dumped them in a pot-hole for fear they might burst and catch fire.
The main danger, apart from falling masonry, was the cinders. The burning dust could get into your eyes all too easily and cause painful burns. He’d already been treated for this twice. Charlie Dogget might not be averse to a bit of harmless looting, but once he was on the job there wasn’t a braver firefighter in London. Only after he had been going non-stop, high up a ladder, right at the face of the fire for half an hour did the fire officer in charge order him to take a break.
There were hoses running down the lane from St Mary-le-Bow. Charlie followed them and then turned left, towards the corner of Cheapside, opposite the end of St Paul’s. He was grateful to feel a little cool breeze on his face. Though he was not supposed to, he took his helmet off to cool his head. At the corner, a large crater was all that was left of two buildings that had been destroyed the night before. It was nearly twenty feet deep. Settling himself on some rubble that remained by the rim, he took a few deep breaths and sat quietly, gazing westward at St Paul’s.
It was an awesome sight. Somehow, Wren’s mighty, leaden dome remained intact. All around, the burning roofs created a surrounding lake of red, from which the massive temple of London arose dark, immovable, silent, with a rock-like indifference. It was as if, Charlie thought, the old cathedral was declaring that even Hitler’s Blitz could never touch the City’s ancient heart and soul.
After a few minutes, Charlie glanced down into the crater beside him. It seemed like any other, bigger and deeper than most, perhaps, but nothing very special about it. It was clear that the bomb had gone clean through the foundations of the houses that had been standing there. He could discern lines of earlier foundations of stone, too. In the flickering light from the surrounding fires, he thought he could make out a piece of tiled floor of some kind. From a nearby building, a little explosion caused a flash of reddish light to illuminate the pit further for a moment, and as it did so Charlie noticed a faint glint from something down at the bottom. Curious, he glanced about to check that no one was looking, and clambered over the edge. A second or two later he was feeling about in the dark. The faint glint seemed to have come from under a lid of some kind, covered over with rubble. He must have been looking from the top of the crater at just the right angle. He felt inside, frowned, whistled softly, and then drew his hand out carefully. The coins were heavy. He guessed they might be gold, but he hadn’t enough light to see.
Then, all of a sudden, a powerful torch cut down from the rim of the crater and in an instant he saw that he indeed had a fistful of solid gold coins. The metal lid belonged to some sort of box and in the beam of light he saw that it contained a quantity of similar coins, and saw, too, that there were other containers like it nearby. Charlie Dogget, though he could not possibly have known it, had found the stolen bullion left by Roman soldiers one sunny afternoon nearly seventeen hundred years before.
“What are you doing?”
The owner of the torch was a tall man wearing an ARP warden’s tin hat. By the light from the fires, Charlie could see that he had a large nose.
“You’re looting! It’s against the law,” said Neville Silversleeves.
“No, I’m not. This is buried treasure, this is,” Charlie riposted. “I’m entitled.”
“The building, as it happens,” Silversleeves said officiously, “is Church property. You are entitled to nothing. Now get out of there at once!”
“If you ask me,” said Charlie firmly, “another bleeding raid’s starting and it’s you who’d better move!”
For the air suddenly erupted with the sound of anti-aircraft fire from every side, while overhead a fresh, droning roar of approaching bombers was heard.
Charlie had no intention of being shifted from his gold, and it seemed that Silversleeves was equally determined to stay at his post to make sure that the fireman didn’t sneak off with any of it. The crash and thud of approaching bombs was heard, but neither man moved. The bangs grew louder.
“I shall report you,” called Silversleeves.
“Suit yourself,” muttered Charlie.
Then the bomb fell. It must have fallen, Charlie supposed, a hundred yards or so behind Silversleeves. The flash and roar were so great that for about twenty seconds he could not even make out what had happened. Then he realized that the unconscious body of Silversleeves was lying half-way down the opposite side of the crater from where he had been standing.
“And I hope you broke your
bleeding neck,” he murmured. Reaching in again to the coins, Charlie quickly began to stuff them into his boots. Ten, twenty, thirty. He had just got to his fourth handful when he realised that he was going to die.
The sound made by a high-explosive bomb just before it lands is a whistling scream. Charlie had heard plenty of those in the last two weeks. He had become quite an expert at sensing where they were about to fall. As he heard the pitch of the bomb’s scream above him he knew at once that it was subtly different from any he had heard before. It was coming directly for him.
He dived frantically for the side of the crater. Hampered by his boots weighted down with gold, he started manically scrambling upwards, the rubble crumbling under his hands. As the bomb crashed on to the exact spot where he had been standing just two seconds before, he was still, ludicrously, scrambling. He continued to scramble until he reached the top. The bomb had not yet exploded.
Charlie Dogget sat shaking on the edge of the crater looking in. The bomb, all eight hundred pounds of it, was half-buried in the centre where the gold had been. Silversleeves was still lying unconscious where he had landed in the blast. Charlie stared at the bomb, half expecting it to explode. But nothing happened. Unexploded bombs – UXBs – were not uncommon, but they could go off at any time. Charlie got up slowly and wondered what to do. He supposed he ought to summon help and get Silversleeves out, but there was, of course, the matter of the gold. Was it all buried under the bomb now, or was it possible he could still get some more out? “If I’m lucky enough not to be killed by the Messerschmitt last night or this bomb now,” he thought, “I should think my luck will hold good.” Slithering down into the crater again, he started towards the bomb.
There was more light now. Some other building must have been set ablaze nearby because a wall of flame suddenly leaped into the sky behind him. By its light he saw one gold coin lying near the bomb, but nothing else. “I know what it is. It’s God up there, sparing my life but keeping me from temptation,” he thought. “Just when I think I’ve struck it rich, He goes and buries all the money under eight hundred pounds of high explosive.” He reached down slowly for the gold coin only to be interrupted, from behind, by a roar that made him jump half out of his skin. He whirled round, looked up, and beheld a most awesome sight.
Standing on the edge of the crater, his huge form seeming even larger against the wall of flame filling the sky behind him, his great red beard appearing almost to be on fire itself, the mighty person of Admiral Sir William Barnikel was staring down into the pit. His arm, like that of some avenging Viking god, was raised and pointing at him.
“My God,” thought poor Charlie. “He’s caught me at it.”
But Admiral Barnikel knew nothing of Charlie and his Roman gold. As his car came by St Paul’s, all he had seen was the figure of Silversleeves being tossed by the blast into the crater, and now this gallant little fireman with his shock of white hair going down beside an unexploded bomb to get the warden out.
“Well done that man!” he thundered. “By God, you deserve a medal! Hold fast there. I’m coming!” Striding down into the crater himself, Admiral Barnikel cried: “You’ll never haul him out alone, man! Here we go.” Charlie took Silversleeves’s long legs and Barnikel his arms, and they hauled the unconscious warden up to the roadway where the admiral flagged down a passing ambulance and told the two women in charge to take the ARP warden straight to St Bartholomew’s. A moment later Helen was on her way with Silversleeves, still out cold, in the back of her van.
“Now then,” cried the admiral cheerfully, “I want you to come with me. I need your name and station.” He took Charlie over to his car. “I think,” he said in a low voice, “we might also get out of here. You never know when one of these unexploded buggers is going to go off.” Thirty seconds later, it did.
When an exhausted Percy got home from the big brewery fire at nine o’clock the following morning, Jenny did not tell him about Maisie.
“He’s been out all night and he’ll feel he’s got to do something. Let him sleep,” Herbert had insisted. So the brothers did not share their grief until the evening.
When Helen Meredith arrived home, however, she received a severe shock. The house in Eaton Terrace had been completely destroyed by a high-explosive bomb. One glance at it told her that no one could possibly have survived in there. She was still standing in the ruins unable to take in what had happened when her mother Violet walked round the corner.
“It’s the strangest thing, my dear,” Violet explained. “I had this extraordinary feeling I was in danger, so I went round to the shelter in Sloane Square Underground. I must say,” she added confidentially, “it’s what you might call rather close down there. But,” she beamed at the charred remains of her house, “wasn’t I lucky?”
Until recently, though acts of conspicuous gallantry in the military could be rewarded by the famous Victoria Cross, there had been no equivalent honour for civilian gallantry. This had now been remedied by the institution of the George Cross and the George Medal.
If there had ever been any doubt about the gallantry of the members of the Auxiliary Fire Service during the Blitz, that doubt was utterly vanquished when a number of fire-fighters won the George Cross. One of them, on the personal recommendation of Admiral Barnikel himself, was Charlie Dogget.
For Charlie it was rather an embarrassment. Though, as any of his colleagues could have attested, he’d earned a medal many times, he knew he hadn’t deserved this one. But what could he say? Even Silversleeves, who remembered nothing at all of the moments before the explosion, had insisted upon visiting him and thanking him personally. He also had a letter from his Auntie Jenny when she saw it in the papers.
He had visited the place once, out of curiosity, but there was no sign of any gold. He kept the Roman coins he had, though, in a little box, and later gave them to his son.
THE RIVER
1997
Sir Eugene Penny, chairman of the mighty Penny Insurance Company, member of a dozen boards and alderman of London, was feeling rather virtuous. Few possessions had been more treasured in his family than the collection of river landscapes, a number by Monet, that his father had bought just after the Second World War from the estate of the last Lord St James. And today he had just given the whole lot away.
The trouble with going on to the boards of charities and good causes, he thought wryly, was that sooner or later you always started putting your own money into them. As a trustee of the Tate Gallery it was impossible not to be excited by its plans, both for the original museum of modern art in its lovely classical building by the river and for the vast new gallery they planned to open in the old Bankside Power Station on the south side of the river, just near the reconstructed Globe Theatre. When a fellow trustee had hinted that really, those Monets of his ought to be seen by a wider audience he had felt bound to agree. After signing them over that morning, he had paid a visit to the nearby Chelsea Flower Show, followed by lunch at his club and a visit to Tom Brown, his tailor. He was in an excellent mood, therefore, when he turned up for his visit to the site by the river this afternoon.
In recent years he had become interested in the Museum of London. His interest had first been sparked by an exhibition the museum had mounted on the Huguenots. As a Huguenot himself, Penny had always known a fair amount about the French community, which still had its own association and charities. He had even known that three out of four Britons had some Huguenot ancestry. But the exhibition had been a revelation. Silk-weavers and generals, artists, clock-makers, famous jewellers like the Agnews, firms like his own – the exhibits, as well as showing off some wonderful arts and crafts, had revealed the Huguenot origins of any number of concerns that one thought of as quintessentially British. The thing had been so well done that he had begun to take more notice of the museum, and a little later, secretly hoping to find more evidence of Huguenot genius, he had gone to another show they had put on.
“The Peopling of London” had been ver
y well done; but it had also been a surprise.
“I thought I knew something about my British heritage,” he remarked to his wife. “It turns out I didn’t at all.” In his schooldays the history of England at least – if not of the whole of Britain – had been about the Anglo-Saxon race. “We knew about the Celts, of course. And then there were the Danes and a few Norman knights.” But the exhibits on the peopling of London told a completely different story. Angles, Saxons, Danes, Celtic folk: they had all been found in London. But even back in the days when the Tower of London was built, Penny learned, there had been Norman and Italian merchants, then Flemish and Germans. “The Flemish people kept coming all the time, and they settled all over the island too, right out into Scotland and Wales.” In more recent times, the big Jewish community, the Irish, and still later, the people from the former empire – the Indian sub-continent, the Caribbean, Asia. “But what is really so striking,” he concluded, “is that even from the Middle Ages there is no question – London was always a city of large numbers of aliens who quickly assimilated. In historical terms, London has been just as much a melting pot as, say, New York.” He had grinned. “I knew I was of immigrant stock, but it turns out that everyone else is too!”
“So the much vaunted Anglo-Saxon race . . .?”
“Is a myth. The northern half of Britain is more Danish and Celtic; and even in the south,” he shrugged, “I doubt very much whether our Anglo-Saxon ancestry would make up one part in four. We are, quite simply, a nation of European immigrants with new graftings being added all the time. A genetic river, if you like, fed by any number of streams.” The museum had produced a book on the subject. He kept it in the drawing room for guests to see.
“So how would you define a Londoner, then?” Lady Penny asked curiously.
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