A Distant Dream

by Pamela Evans

  ‘We are engaged, Mrs Stubbs,’ announced Doug with a broad smile, adding quickly, ‘though I know I have to get Mr Stubbs’ official permission first, of course.’

  ‘Oh that’s wonderful news,’ said Flo, thoroughly approving. ‘And as you’re going to be one of the family, Doug, can you please drop the Mrs Stubbs and just call me Flo.’

  ‘I’d be honoured.’ He smiled.

  One good thing about his brief brush with the war, and the death he had seen in the waters around Dunkirk, was that it had made him realise just how short life could be, and that time wasn’t to be wasted in hesitation.

  Chapter Nine

  As the summer of 1940 progressed, hostilities became increasingly menacing on the home front, with the siren sounding day and night though a bomb had yet to fall in west London. The gloriously blue skies were alive with activity, as Allied and enemy aircraft battled it out overhead, leaving a maze of vapour trails. Warnings of imminent invasion were so frequent now, people were half expecting the German army to march up the street at any moment.

  But for the most part, the general public still went determinedly about its business as normal, albeit interspersed with periods in the nearest shelter. Determined to carry on regardless, May caught up with an old friend from Ashburn. They met one Saturday afternoon in a Lyons tea shop near Marble Arch, which was a central point for them both.

  ‘You and Doug Sands, eh?’ remarked Connie, having been brought up to date and shown the diamond ring on May’s finger. ‘I always thought he had his eye on you.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember you used to tease me about it,’ said May. ‘I didn’t give it a thought at the time and could hardly believe my eyes when he turned up out of the blue one day at the Pavilion.’

  ‘He was a real dish as I remember him,’ said Connie.

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘He seemed to be out of the ordinary in a suave sort of way, which made him attractive,’ recalled Connie. ‘What’s he like when you get to know him?’

  ‘He’s a lovely man . . .’

  ‘But?’ queried Connie, detecting a note of uncertainty in May’s tone.

  ‘He tends to be moody,’ she replied. ‘He was devastated when they turned him down for the services because he’s had TB. He took it personally.’

  ‘Male pride, I suppose.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Mind you, I know how he feels to a certain extent,’ Connie mentioned. ‘I volunteered for the Land Army but was turned down for the same reason and I was very disappointed. The idea of working in the outdoors really appealed to me.’

  ‘That’s probably a legacy from Ashburn,’ said May. ‘Both Doug and I are fresh-air fiends.’

  Connie sipped her tea. ‘I think you’d either come away from there wanting to avoid fresh air forever or not be able to get enough of it,’ she suggested.

  ‘We are so lucky to be alive, the three of us,’ said May in a more serious tone. ‘Not all that many people live to tell the tale after having that disease.’

  Connie shook her head. ‘I still get nervous when I go for my check-up in case it’s come back,’ she said.

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘So when’s the wedding?’

  ‘We haven’t actually got around to setting the date just yet,’ May told her.

  ‘You’d better get a move on, girl, before we’re taken over by the Germans. Lord only know what will happen to us then.’

  ‘It might not come to that, but anyway, Doug and I will take our chances.’

  ‘Apart from anything else, I fancy a bit of a knees-up,’ confessed Connie. ‘A wedding would be just the thing.’

  ‘You’ll get a wedding, don’t worry,’ May assured her. ‘We won’t be leaving it long.’

  ‘Will you live on his boat after you’re married?’ Connie enquired.

  ‘I suppose we could, though we haven’t really discussed that side of it yet,’ said May thoughtfully. ‘It would be one way of having our own place and it might be fun.’

  ‘So this moodiness of his, is it much of a problem?’ asked Connie. ‘I can imagine it might put a damper on things.’

  ‘It isn’t much fun.’ May leaned towards her friend and spoke in a confidential manner. ‘But as it happens, he’s been quite a lot better just lately.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘And I think I know the reason for it,’ said May, speaking in a low voice so that she was only just audible above the babble of noise in the crowded tea rooms. ‘He disappeared a while ago, his boat as well, and he wouldn’t tell me where he’d been, but he proposed to me as soon as he saw me after he got back.’

  ‘So what’s the significance?’

  ‘I suspect that he was involved in the Dunkirk evacuation and that’s made him feel better about himself,’ she said. ‘They say there were lots of civilian boats taking part. It would all be top secret, which is why he wasn’t able to tell me where he’d been.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ said Connie thoughtfully.

  ‘Anyway, since then he’s been much less moody and easier to get on with altogether.’

  ‘So you think that taking part in the war changed his personality,’ said Connie.

  ‘I know it seems a bit unrealistic,’ she said ‘And if a person is moody by nature they probably will be for life, but something happened while he was away, wherever he was.’

  ‘I should just enjoy it while it lasts.’

  ‘I will,’ agreed May.

  ‘What happened to the boy who broke your heart when we were at Ashburn?’ asked Connie. ‘The one who married your best friend.’

  ‘He’s away in the army, the Middle East somewhere, though we don’t know where exactly because they are not allowed to give any clue as to their location in their letters.’

  ‘He doesn’t write to you, does he?’

  ‘Of course not, but his wife keeps me up to date with news of him,’ she explained.

  ‘So you’ve got over him then?’

  May made a face. ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘He’ll always be very special to me, but I’ve accepted that he’ll never be mine.’

  ‘And you have the gorgeous Mr Sands to console you,’ smiled Connie.

  ‘Exactly. But that’s enough about me,’ said May. ‘Let’s have your news now. Is there a man in your life?’

  Before Connie had a chance to reply, the wail of the air-raid siren filled the tea shop and everyone headed for the doors. May and Connie hurried towards Marble Arch tube station and joined the orderly queue to go down to the platform to take shelter, their conversation forgotten.

  Corporal George Bailey was stationed near the Suez Canal. Their job here was to guard this vital stretch of water, but the men had recently been told that Italy was now at war with the Allies so they could expect to be in combat with the Italian troops sometime soon.

  Their fiercest adversary at the moment was the stifling heat, which didn’t seem to abate much even at night. George longed for one of those grey, chilly English days when everyone grumbled about the weather.

  His thoughts never strayed far from home and he was thinking about it now, as he and his mates took a break from duty, wondering how they were all getting along without him. He’d learned in a letter from Betty that his sister had joined the services, which had probably been a blow for their mother. On the other hand, if Sheila wasn’t around she couldn’t be hateful to their mother at the slightest opportunity. Poor old Mum, she used to be such a lively soul when Dad had been alive. His heart twisted at the thought of her managing without him. He doubted if Betty would offer her much comfort, because his wife had less patience than Sheila if that was possible.

  His thoughts turned to Joe and he welled up. Every day away from him felt like a physical wound. May would be the saving grace at home; she would call in and keep the peace. Dear May, she also brought a tear to his eye.

  Although he didn’t enjoy being away from home, George had adapted well to army life from the start and had
been honoured when he was made up to corporal. He liked the physicality of the life and the camaraderie. He was one of the few men who had actually enjoyed the punishing basic training and thought it was probably the would-be boxer in him, a love of physical fitness that he had inherited from his father.

  Even here in the suffocating heat he still found the energy to be sad about his dad’s death and angry with the killer who had ruined his mother’s life and health.

  ‘Fancy a game of cards, Corp?’ said one of his pals.

  ‘Yeah, all right, mate,’ he said amiably and turned his mind to the game as the desert sun burned down.

  Soon after the German incendiary attack on the London docks in September, which devastated the East End, turned miles of dockside warehouses into an inferno and lit the sky so brightly the orange glow could be seen even from Ealing, bombs began to fall in other parts of London, including the west.

  Every night the siren sounded and evenings spent in the shelter became the norm for May and her parents. Sometimes Doug joined them and used their spare room for a few hours’ sleep after the all-clear before cycling to work the next morning. No one got much rest but almost everyone carried on as normal. People were absolutely determined not to let Hitler disrupt their way of life any more than was absolutely unavoidable.

  In the mornings, after she had done her paper round, May cycled to the Baileys’ house to see if they were all right, the air always heavily spiced with smoke and the smell of cordite. Sometimes she would pass the sad sight of a pile of smoking debris where a house had been the day before.

  ‘You’re all still here then?’ she said cheerfully one morning, standing at the Baileys’ front door.

  ‘Just about,’ said Betty, in pyjamas and with curlers in her hair. ‘Though the explosions were so loud last night I really thought we’d had it. The ground shook so violently it felt as though the shelter was going to cave in.’

  ‘I’ve heard that the Germans are after Northolt airfield,’ said May. ‘That’s why the bombing is so close.’

  ‘There are a lot of factories around and about as well,’ said Dot. ‘They’ll be wanting to wipe those out.’

  ‘How are you coping with it all, Mrs Bailey?’ asked May in a kindly manner.

  ‘Not so bad. We just have to get on with it, don’t we, dear,’ she replied.

  Oddly enough, George’s mother had been better than expected since the start of the bombing. May had thought she would have a nervous breakdown at the first wail of the siren. Naturally she was very frightened of the bombs, as they all were, but Betty said she was quite calm in the shelter. May wondered if that might be because there was nothing anyone could do about this kind of danger. Dot’s nervousness in the past had always been about a lack of confidence in her own ability; looking after Joe and running the house and so on. The air raids just had to be endured, and whether you lived or died was out of your hands.

  May herself felt a kind of resignation about the situation. Having survived the first week or so of the air raids, she had begun to think that perhaps it was possible to live through this. Though when an air raid was actually in progress she didn’t feel so brave.

  ‘Are you staying for a cuppa?’ asked Dot.

  ‘And have you use your tea ration on me? Not likely,’ said May, doing the decent thing and knowing that they wouldn’t insist that she stayed. Of all the shortages, the introduction of tea rationing was the hardest to bear for many people.

  A small figure appeared, rubbing his eyes, his hair tousled from bed. As soon as Joe clapped eyes on May, his face lit up and he ran to her.

  ‘Hello, big boy,’ she said, picking him up and plonking a kiss on his brow. ‘Are you still sleepy?’

  ‘He shouldn’t be,’ said his mother. ‘He slept through the whole thing last night. He didn’t even stir when I carried him up from the shelter and put him into bed.’

  ‘It’s just as well he can sleep through all the noise,’ said May. ‘I wish I could.’

  ‘Kids can only stay awake for so long when they are little, can’t they?’ said Betty. ‘And yes, it is a blessing.’

  ‘Anyway, so long as you’re all right, I must be on my way,’ said May, putting Joe down. ‘Be seeing you.’

  ‘Ta-ta,’ said Betty.

  As May cycled home, she was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration that she had noticed before in the mornings since the bombing had started. The air felt sharper and everything seemed to register with more clarity, the little houses and the trees shedding their leaves for winter. Things were shabbier but brighter somehow. She supposed it might be because death was such a definite possibility now and everything seemed more precious.

  Let’s hope that cat has come home, she thought. Tiddles always disappeared as soon as the siren sounded and didn’t reappear until all was quiet, which she guessed must be in a cat’s self-sufficient nature.

  Oh well, another day and work to be done, she told herself as she passed the Pavilion, flowerless at this time of year but still managing to exude a welcome, the lightness of the colour standing out among the brick-built houses around.

  May’s buoyant mood was enhanced by the appearance of Tiddles when she got home, but dispelled later that morning when sad news reached the Pavilion. One of their regular customers had been killed last night on his way to work on the night shift in a factory. A man in his forties with a family. The war really hit home for May now that someone she knew had been killed. She felt as vulnerable as she had during the very first air raid.

  People were less chatty while they did their shopping today. Voices in the café were lowered. Everybody was aware of how close the war had suddenly come.

  ‘Could I have a cup of tea please?’ said the elderly man who came regularly for his newspaper; it was a lot thinner than pre-war editions because of the paper shortage.

  ‘Course you can,’ said May, glad that they had been able to keep the café open thanks to a special ration allowance for businesses catering for the public. ‘I’ll bring it over to you.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ he said. ‘Thank God for this place. You need company at a time like this.’

  ‘That’s why the pubs are packed of an evening I suppose,’ she said. ‘Despite the raids.’

  ‘Definitely,’ he agreed wholeheartedly. ‘People get fed up with being in the shelter every night, so some of them take a chance and go out for a pint.’

  ‘One of the pubs over Greenford way was demolished by a bomb the other night and people were killed,’ May mentioned.

  ‘Mm, I heard about that and I was shocked to the core,’ he said, shaking his head and pursing his lips as he breathed in. ‘But I take the view that if your name is on it, the bomb will get you wherever you are, so you might as well get some pleasure while you still can. I can’t abide the shelter. It just ain’t natural being six foot under when you’re not dead.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ agreed May, pouring his tea while he went to find a table.

  May remembered his words that night in the Anderson with her parents and Doug, sitting there in the cold, sour air waiting for the all-clear and hoping they would make it through until then. In one way the war offered advantages for courting couples in that there was plenty of scope for canoodling in the blackout, but there was less privacy if you couldn’t go out so were holed up with the older generation for hours on end.

  May and her mother were both knitting pullovers for the troops, her father was reading the paper by candlelight and Doug was sitting next to May under a blanket doing nothing until a spider crawling up the corrugated iron made her squeal. He picked it up and put it outside through the hole at the end.

  ‘Funny how a harmless spider can still make you scream when there are bombs around,’ he remarked. ‘I would have thought one would have cancelled out the other.’

  ‘I would have thought so too, but it hasn’t worked for me,’ May told him.

  ‘We’re missing ITMA,’ complained Dick. ‘The highlight of the flippin’ week.�
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  ‘Oh that’s a shame,’ said Flo. ‘I think I’ll chance it and go up to the house and make a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ offered Doug, keen to escape from the claustrophobic atmosphere and mundane conversation. ‘May will come and give me a hand, won’t you?’

  ‘Course I will,’ she agreed.

  ‘Make sure you come back down as soon as you hear the first rumble of an enemy plane,’ warned Flo.

  ‘Will do, Mum,’ said May, making her way over to the opening at the back of the shelter to climb out.

  As soon as they were in the garden and out of earshot, Doug took May in his arms and kissed her passionately.

  ‘Hey, steady on, Doug,’ she said. ‘We need to get that tea made before another Jerry plane comes over.’

  ‘Bugger the Jerry plane,’ he said. ‘I need a break, time alone with you. All this staying in with the family is driving me nuts. As much as I love them, we need to be on our own sometimes.’

  ‘What else can we do but stay home? The air raids seem to be on every night.’

  ‘We’ll go to the West End on Sunday before the blackout and see if we can get in to see Gone With the Wind.’ He knew how much she wanted to see that film. ‘It will be a break for us and take our minds of the bombing for a little while.’

  ‘Especially if we can get some seats in the back row,’ she said laughing.

  ‘May Stubbs, I do think you are trying to lead me astray,’ he said jokingly.

  ‘Back row or not, it will be lovely, Doug,’ she approved heartily. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

  ‘Good, let’s get that tea made then.’

  But May could hear the hated drone of an enemy plane, which started as not much more than a distant murmur and grew to a terrifying crescendo overhead. This was the worst part of the air raids, the first throb of an engine, then the horrifying increase in sound as the plane came nearer, turning her insides to water and sucking the air from her chest. ‘There’s a flaming plane coming,’ she said, hiding her terror.

  ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘I’ve got extra-sensitive hearing when it comes to bomber planes. Trust me, there is one on the way,’ she said.