A Place to Call Home

by Tania Crosse

  ‘Nothing,’ Cyril corrected him absently.

  A frown twitched on Leslie’s forehead, but he ignored his brother’s comment. ‘They ain’t written ter us or answered our letters for months, so I wanna know what’s going on.’

  ‘Oh, no, I can’t possibly let you go off on your own,’ Clarrie protested. ‘I’m responsible for you, remember?’

  ‘But we’re fourteen, Clarrie,’ Leslie argued. ‘We know the area like the back of our hands. Far better than you. Yer far more likely ter get lost than we are. We’re not stupid, yer know.’

  ‘We won’t take any chances, I promise,’ Cyril, the steadier of the two, insisted. ‘If we run inter any problems, we’ll find a phone box and ring back here, so yer’ll know we’re OK.’

  ‘Well, I suppose if Meg came with you—’

  ‘Nah. Meg’ll be no good. She don’t know London. She’d be more of a hindrance. And Doris needs her at the funeral. We’ll be OK on our own, honest we will.’

  Clarrie chewed on her lip. Everything the twins had said was true. They were young men nearly, born Londoners and far more street-savvy than she was herself. So most reluctantly, she gave in. But she’d be glad when the day was over and they were all safely back home.

  When the train pulled into London Bridge among a cloud of hissing steam at noon on the day of the funeral, miraculously without any hold-ups en route, they went some way before parting company with the boys, but arranged to meet back up for the return journey at the same spot at six o’clock sharp. No matter what, Clarrie warned then sternly.

  As they made their way through the streets, the horror of what the capital had suffered ripped silently into their hearts. They’d seen plenty of photographs of the destruction in the newspapers, which was bad enough, but to see it in reality struck deep. Huge gaps where mountains of rubble and charred remains made it impossible to guess what sort of building had stood there before it had been blasted to smithereens.

  Meg shuddered, for perhaps bodies still lay trapped and rotting beneath. Some bombsites had been cleared, leaving an eerie nothingness where people had once lived and played and worked. Other damaged ruins, a tottering facade on the brink of collapse with perhaps a staircase or a suspended floor hanging as if in mid-air, had been hastily shorn up with props and heavy beams whilst they awaited demolition. A twisted bedstead open to view where a wall had collapsed, a bathroom, intimate snatches of someone’s broken life, tattered curtains waving macabrely through frames whose glass was shattered. Windows that looked through to emptiness, heavy wooden joists and rafters splintered like matchwood and lying in chaotic piles.

  It was all so horribly real and hostile, and yet it almost seemed unreal. Alien. People were carrying on as normal, walking through the streets as if nothing had happened and stepping over debris that had yet to be cleared. Women with scarves on their heads and baskets on their arms on their way to queue for hours to glean whatever they could in the half-empty shops. People greeting each other cheerfully. Becoming immune.

  With Doris between them, Clarrie and Meg glanced at each other over her head. Meg for one felt sickened at the wanton devastation. So this was what Hitler was doing. No wonder they needed to retaliate. She understood now what Wig had said to her all that time ago. You got sucked into war and there was nothing you could do about it.

  They didn’t exchange a word, except to find the bus Doris knew they needed to catch from her outings to the seaside in happier times. Its route was diverted because of repairs to a gas main fractured by a bomb. The last part they had to walk as the bus couldn’t get through there, either. They followed Doris, whose step became more certain as she reached familiar territory.

  It was fortunate that they’d allowed plenty of time. They called in at a tea room they passed for a quick cuppa – none of them felt like eating anything – before setting off for the funeral which was due to start at two o’clock. They went straight to the church. Except that it had been flattened the same night as Doris’s house, but had been quickly replaced by a Nissan hut with a makeshift altar. An auburn-haired woman stepped forward and at once encircled Doris in her arms.

  ‘Oh, Auntie,’ the girl mumbled, the first time she’d spoken except to give directions.

  ‘Thank you for bringing her,’ the aunt greeted Clarrie and Meg solemnly.

  ‘You must be Doris,’ a compassionate voice belonging to a man in long robes and a dog collar said softly as he came up to join them. ‘I’m so very sorry, my child. Would you like a few moments with the coffin before the service? It’ll be arriving very soon.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Doris answered in a tiny voice, since she’d already been told she wouldn’t be able to see her mum, and that it wouldn’t be wise, anyway. Young as she was, she could imagine what that meant.

  The vicar took Doris and her aunt aside, and Clarrie and Meg knew they weren’t needed for a while. So they took their places among the congregation seated on a hotchpotch of chairs gathered from who knew where. About twenty people had come to mourn Mrs Sergeant, mainly women – some neighbours and others fellow nippies from the Lyons Corner House where she’d worked – and a few older men. There were no other children.

  If Doris wept during the service, she did so silently. Meg’s own throat ached, and she bit hard on the inside of her bottom lip to stop herself crying. For Doris. For Mrs Sergeant. For her own mother and father killed some years before, and for everyone who’d died because of Hitler. When she looked at Clarrie, she saw unshed tears glistening in her eyes as if she, too, was remembering someone she’d lost. Her own parents, perhaps.

  ‘I’ve arranged a little tea at my house,’ Aunt Mildred invited them when it was all over. ‘You will come back?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Clarrie accepted. ‘We’ll need to leave by five at the latest, though. Two of my other evacuees, twin boys of fourteen, wanted to check on their own family,’ she explained. ‘We’re meeting up later to get the train back together.’ At least, she prayed they would. She wouldn’t be happy until she had the twins safely back under her wing.

  Aunt Mildred nodded. ‘I understand. Now, I must ask you, Doris dear. D’you want to see the house? Or what’s left of it? The site hasn’t been cleared yet. Some people find it helpful. Some don’t. Constable Ainsworth – you remember him? – he helped me salvage one or two things that I’ve kept for you. It was too dangerous to get much, I’m afraid.’

  Meg’s stomach tightened. Poor Doris. She knew exactly how that felt. The few items she’d been able to bring with her from the farmhouse had helped her cling onto the memories. It had been painful at the time, but now when she used her mum’s best tea service and tablecloth in the little cottage that was her and Ralph’s home, it brought her comfort. As if it was keeping her parents near.

  ‘No, I’d rather not see the house.’ Doris’s words had begun calmly but ended in a squeak as she fought back tears. ‘But thank you for rescuing the things.’

  ‘That’s all right, my love.’ Aunt Mildred’s face was taut with compassion. ‘You can take back whatever you can now, and I’ll keep the rest until, well, until this business is all over. And I’ll make sure I’m there when they clear the site in case anything else comes to light.’

  The good woman had used her own rations to produce jam tarts with bread and butter or margarine, and Clarrie was glad she’d thought to bring a couple of jars of Ada’s jam and a bag of carefully stored apples, for which Mildred was most appreciative. Clarrie noticed, though, that Doris didn’t touch a morsel of the food.

  ‘Time to go now, I’m afraid, Doris,’ she said gently. But she had the feeling the child was glad to get away, as if leaving her memories and her pain behind.

  The house hadn’t caught fire, so when it was destroyed, Aunt Mildred had succeeded in rescuing a couple of photographs from their smashed frames. Mrs Sergeant’s locked jewellery box had somehow survived, too, only cheap costume pieces, but they meant a lot to Doris. A soft toy rabbit from her own childhood – to go with th
e one Cyril had won for her on the coconut shy, she smiled with a tear. Clarrie carried them for her in the bag in which she’d brought the provisions. A few larger items Aunt Mildred was storing for her.

  A biting, icy wind licked cruelly about them as they waited for the bus. It blew its freezing breath up Meg’s skirt, attacking the gap between the tops of her stockings – her very last pair – and her knickers. How much warmer she always was in trousers or dungarees as she worked outside in all weathers, but you couldn’t go to a funeral in slacks. She felt so sorry for Doris in her long, buff socks and bare knees. The poor child looked more miserable now than she had all day.

  ‘Where’s a taxi when you want one?’ Clarrie complained under her breath. She’d had enough of the city that she used to love, especially with its gashes and scars, and the heart ripped out of it. She just wanted to be back home in the peaceful Kent countryside.

  At last the bus trundled towards them. It was getting quite dark, and it felt so strange in the blackout with no streetlights, and yet with so many people around them, making their way by dimmed torchlight and sometimes bumping into each other as a result. Even the bus was barely visible, driving just on its sidelights and with the inside unlit. Meg couldn’t help thinking of Sally working as a clippie. She’d have liked to take the opportunity to meet up with her, but Sally was on shift, and besides, there wouldn’t really have been time.

  They eventually got back to the appointed meeting place five minutes early. Doris had barely uttered a word, though she smiled and nodded whenever Clarrie or Meg spoke to her. As they waited in virtually pitch darkness, an almost palpable tension tightened its hold on them. To top it all, the people about them were hurrying as best they could, glancing up into the black dome of the sky.

  ‘Oh, where are those boys?’ Clarrie cried almost hysterically when they’d been waiting for half an hour.

  Meg, too, was starting to feel nervous, her stomach fluttering. Had they been right to trust the twins on their own? They seemed street-savvy, but what if something had happened to them? Should they abandon them? Go to their aid? Clarrie had their home address, but would they still be there? Or maybe they should try to find a phone box and ring Robin Hill House to find out if the boys had left a message there as they’d said they would if they’d run into difficulty.

  Meg was still pondering, about to ask Clarrie what she thought, when an unearthly whine stabbed into her hearing, growing in strength until it blared out in a deafening wail, dropping and then howling again, over and over. Oh, good God. The air-raid siren.

  A darkness as black as the sky above opened inside her. This was so different from what they’d experienced at home. You could almost taste the panic in the air, feel people brush past them as they hurried instinctively in the blackout along familiar paths to safety.

  A light way above her head caught Meg’s eye and she glanced upwards. Brilliant shafts of gleaming silver sliced through the blackness as searchlights scanned the now indigo sky, and then the looming shadow of a nearby barrage balloon floated skywards like a great, grey whale. Within seconds, she saw that others were joining it, a shoal of giant, fat fish in the sky.

  Meg’s heart was smashing so hard and fast against her ribs that there was scarcely a break between each beat. Both Clarrie and Doris seemed rooted to the spot with terror. It was going to be up to her to get them to safety.

  She was about to grab them and pull them in the same direction as everyone else was moving, when a familiar voice swamped her with relief.

  ‘Here, mate, where’s the nearest shelter?’ Leslie called out.

  And then Cyril explained briefly, ‘Sorry we’re late. The blooming bus never came so we had ter leg it instead. Come on!’

  In an instant, Meg saw that one of the twins – in the dark, she couldn’t tell which – had taken hold of Clarrie’s arm and was dragging her along behind the footfall of the strangers all around them – which was about all they had to go by in the pitch black. And then the other twin was doing the same with Doris. Meg snapped herself out of her shock and scurried along behind, hearing the distant thrum of aircraft getting louder as they drew nearer. Theirs? Or ours going to intercept them? At least Ralph wouldn’t be among them. But what irony if she was to die here, and he was the one who survived? Oh, dear God, please keep him safe if I am to perish.

  They found themselves going down steps, lots of them, the crowd around them silent as they concentrated on where they were putting their feet. If one fell, it would bring others down, too. They seemed to be going down for ages before reaching a flat surface that opened into a dimly lit tunnel, and Meg realised it was an underground station. She’d never been to London before, let alone on the tube, as she’d heard people call it. A strange smell she couldn’t identify filled her nostrils as they came out through a labyrinth of passageways to what appeared to be a platform.

  There were people strewn everywhere, some appearing to make themselves comfortable, sitting on cushions they’d brought with them. The lucky ones had got places by the wall so they had it to lean against. Some were even producing provisions from their gas-mask boxes or hastily packed baskets.

  Meg gazed about her in bewilderment, pulse drumming in her ears. Then she realised that Leslie was shouldering his way through to a gap he’d spotted, pulling Clarrie along with him, Cyril in his wake with Doris, so Meg forced herself along behind them.

  ‘Plonk yerselves down there,’ Leslie ordered. ‘Sorry ter be so rough, Clarrie, but best ter be as far away from the entrance as possible in case there’s any blast waves. Blow you down or suck you out, they can.’

  Meg blinked at him as she joined them on the hard and none-too-clean platform floor. How did Leslie know what to do? But then she remembered how he seemed to have devoured newspaper reports of the bombings, waiting for the paperboy to cycle up the drive every day. Leslie’s interest might have seemed a bit morbid previously, but now she thanked God for his knowledge.

  ‘So, did you find your parents?’ Clarrie asked once they were settled. It was something to keep their minds occupied, at least.

  ‘Nah.’ Leslie’s tone was scornful. ‘Our tenement block was damaged back in November, and they scarpered. No one’s seen hide nor hair of ’em since.’

  Clarrie shifted uncomfortably. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Cyril shrugged. ‘Never cared for us much, so why should we worry? Wouldn’t surprise me if our dad thinks he’ll get out of being called up by disappearing. Anyway, how was things for you, Doris?’ he asked softly.

  The girl didn’t get a chance to reply. From so deep underground, they could no longer hear the thrum of aircraft engines, but just then, the ground shook as there was a sound like the crack of lightning and an explosion roared and echoed down the platform, making the lights sway and blink on their wires.

  ‘Blimey, that was close,’ someone said, just before another tremendous, thundering crash reverberated about them even more powerful than the one before. And then the faint, distinctive rattle of the ack-ack guns pounding skywards.

  People tried not to, but at each earth-shattering blast, eyes swivelled to the roof of the tunnel. The noise bombarded Meg’s ears again and again, and she shuddered and ducked each time it came. She glanced across at Clarrie whose face was so pale, her skin was like a bleached sheet, despite Leslie’s attempts to give her a lively account of their day. Meg knew she’d be worried sick about Wig as well as her own safety and that of her charges. And poor Doris was visibly shaking, her eyes wide and staring in fear. Cyril had his arm protectively around her, and Meg saw with a little smile that their fingers were tightly interlaced.

  ‘We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried line,’ someone started to sing, and almost immediately a chorus of voices joined in, getting louder as almost everyone was soon belting out the words. Someone handed Doris a piece of chocolate. A woman sitting next to Meg passed them round a cup of tea from a flask. They each took a grateful sip. It tasted foul,
but it was something, and above all, it was generous.

  ‘Not come prepared?’ the woman asked in a kindly voice.

  ‘No. We’d only come up from the country for the day,’ Meg explained. ‘Expected to be on our way back home on the train by now, but we got delayed.’

  ‘Bad luck, then.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so. Is it always like this?’

  ‘Yes. But Hitler’s got to run out of bombs some time at this rate, hasn’t he, ducks?’ the woman smiled.

  Meg was quivering inside, and it was as if she could feel the blood trundling through her veins. After all, bombs had been known to penetrate as far down as the underground. She’d seen photos of a bus that had collapsed down into a tube station where people had been sheltering. Balham, wasn’t it? She tried to drive all such thoughts from her brain and concentrate instead on the atmosphere around her. Every now and then, the singing would start up again, and Meg couldn’t help admire the courage of those around her, especially knowing that when they finally emerged – and they would emerge, she was determined – they could find their houses, their lives, obliterated from the face of the earth. The Blitz spirit, they were calling it. Meg found the strength of these people, these strangers who shared one common cause, truly inspiring.

  ‘Oh, this is all my fault,’ Doris suddenly started sobbing when another particularly loud explosion became too much for her. ‘If I hadn’t insisted—’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Cyril interrupted. ‘Me and Leslie should’ve set out sooner ter come back, instead of wasting time trying ter find them no-good parents of ours. If you want ter blame anyone, blame us.’

  Meg put her arm around Doris from the other side. ‘There’s only one person to blame here and that’s Hitler,’ she told the girl firmly. ‘Isn’t that right, Clarrie?’

  She could tell that Clarrie was blaming herself, while Meg felt guilt pressing down on her own shoulders. But they would get out of this, she knew. They had to. And there was certainly no room for recriminations.