by Betty Burton
Those same sounds could be going on down there. Again she was deaf because of her remoteness.
She had given up God years ago, and wondered again why people still clung to the belief that they were being ‘watched over’ by a supreme being. How many times had she seen a man put a ribbon around his neck whilst he anointed another human being in dying agony? It had always made her anger rise, yet the person dying still hoped for the best. Recently she had become more accepting of such irrationality. Let people do what they liked if it helped them.
The train jerked forward a few feet and stopped again – a ‘better’ view. Firemen and street wardens were risking their necks clambering over the wreckage of streets that only yesterday had been terraces of homes. There was an amazing mantelpiece clinging to an exposed wall with an elaborate wedding-present clock balanced upon it; there was roses wallpaper, bright pink distemper showing dark patches of damp mould.
These were Eve’s own streets. Mile after mile of them had been thrown up quickly to house workers. One bomb on Lampeter Street, and the entire jerry-built lot would come down, just like these. Best thing that could happen so long as nobody was hurt. People in Lampeter Street grumbled to one another when yet longer cracks appeared in the brickwork, and the mortar turned to sand, and the bricks themselves became eroded, and frames rotted. ‘Best thing they can do with this place is put a bomb under it,’ they said. But in wishing for a bomb to be put under Lampeter Street, nobody ever thought of bombs raining down.
Again the train jerked forward, this time inching its way into the terminus. Turning away from the destruction, Eve looked to her left, anticipating the sight that thrilled her anew every time she came into Waterloo station – the Houses of Parliament: Victorian gothic, substantial, sure of itself, looking older than its few years, reflecting its image in the brown water of the River Thames.
Her mind jumped the points from Paul, the Blitz, Lampeter Street and her future self inside the Houses of Parliament.
Stepping out into the gloom of the blacked-out roof through which not even afternoon sun could penetrate, she deposited Paul in her own Pandora’s box.
* * *
‘I heard about the crash. It must have been pretty dreadful for you.’
Even though the train was an hour late, David Hatton was there to meet her.
‘For me! For Electra Sanderson and her baby – yes. Not for me, David. I was the one that got away.’
Without rising to her retort, he guided her to a London bus.
‘I’m glad that you agreed to visit these people. You’ll like them. He’s really hungry for news from Spain.’
The bus should have taken them to Soho, but the stumbling journey was so tortuous that, having been constantly rerouted, they eventually decided it would be easier to walk.
Eve was pleased with how she looked wearing her sub-lieutenant’s uniform. Tailored on masculine lines, it suited her slim erect figure. All she carried was a black shoulder-bag and a canvas grip. David was in civvies. They were both subdued. They had walked less than a mile before her navy serge and his dark trilby were powdered with grey ash and rubble dust.
It was late afternoon by the time they reached Soho.
When, before the blackout, the neon sign ‘Archie’s’ had flared, it must have appeared incongruous against the old brickwork and timbering of the Carvery and Grill. Only a few square feet of striped awning remained but that might not have been due to war damage. Pasted to the entrance was the ubiquitous notice ‘Business as usual’.
‘Is this it?’
‘It’s better than it looks.’
A big man with greying hair came out from behind the bar and clapped both hands on David’s shoulders.
‘Davey, Davey, how’re ya, kid? You look pret-ty good to me.’
David returned the greeting. ‘I am pretty good. Tim, salud! Eve, meet Tim Redding. Tim, this is the friend, Eve Anders.’
Tim stretched out his left hand, and caught hers in a firm grip, his right remaining heavily in his jacket pocket, ‘So you’re the one? Truly glad to meet you. OK, I call you Eve? Good. Should call you ‘comrade’ according to Davey, right?’
This wasn’t the first time Eve had seen a pocket weighed down like Tim’s. Maybe the fingers were missing, or even the entire hand, resting the arm in the pocket a way of appearing almost normal.
‘Actually, I was never that,’ she replied. ‘I was a kind of ad hoc volunteer.’
‘Same difference, Eve. We were all on the right side. C’mon through, I’ll get Nancy to mash us some tea.’
He called to an older man with the physique of a wrestler gone soft, ‘Scottie, take over the bar for an hour. Put up the blackout. Don’t forget.
‘Hey, Nan, meet my old buddy Davey and his girl, Eve.’
Nan was probably fifty. She had a sharp profile of long nose and high cheekbones, and an amazingly beautiful head with long, long hair, more grey than black, hanging free down her back.
‘Davey. Eve. Welcome to Archie’s. Not that there’s much left to welcome. Will I do as himself says and mash you a pot of tea?’ She fisted Tim gently in the ribs, and he curled up as though she had floored him. The warmth of their feelings for one another exuded from their every expression.
The four of them sat at a kitchen table covered with patterned oilcloth as was used by respectable poor people in Eve’s old neighbourhood. Potato scones and strong tea were passed around.
Tim asked, ‘How’d you manage with the buses – getting here, I mean?’
‘We didn’t,’ David said. ‘We abandoned it and came on foot.’
Nan said, ‘All Hell broke loose last night.’
Tim leaned over and took her hand. ‘And when she arrived home, she looked as though she’d been in Hell.’
‘Did you get caught in it?’ Eve wanted to know.
‘Not caught,’ Tim said. ‘She goes out in it.’
‘Not a deal of good ambulance drivers sitting at home when there’s a raid on, is there, you damned Yankee?’ She gave him a tight smile. ‘Not much good if we wasn’t there with our vans.’ Explaining, ‘That’s all they are, grocery vans with the insides taken out and a few stretchers on rails. Last night there was a chap went four times into a blazing building – a council home for old people – he wasn’t much of a physical specimen, but by God, he’d got some guts. Each time, he brought out one of the old folks. Then he went in a fifth time and the whole place collapsed on him. One of our girls got her leg broke by a flying drainpipe.’
Eve easily visualised this grey-haired woman doing the same kind of runs to and from hospitals or dressing stations as she herself had done. The difference was that Eve had been twenty, but Nan Redding was old enough to be a grandmother.
‘Have another scone, Eve. You’ve not got a deal of flesh on you seeing as you’re in the forces.’ She dabbed an extra bit of butter on one for Eve and winked. ‘Being a publican has its advantages. It’s all, “I’ll scratch your back – you scratch mine.” Not that we go a lot on the spivs and black market, but our currency now is things.’
‘It’s how it used to be Out There, isn’t it, Eve? You’d know,’ Tim said. ‘It wasn’t too bad for me – Nan used to send me bits and pieces. Trouble was, I never wanted to part with any of it for barter.’
Eve really didn’t want to talk about that war – or any war. She just wanted to see Colonel Linder and be allowed to get on with her Special Ops work. But this man needed to speak about his experiences.
‘When I was coming in to Waterloo today, I saw all those houses on the south side of the Thames… just piles of rubble – Spain all over again. But things are already looking different in Madrid.’
‘The people will still see what was there.’
‘I’m not sure that you’re right. Human beings are very resilient. We have to be.’
‘Even under Franco, that S.O.B. fascist?’
‘Especially under a dictator.’
‘Then it was all for nothing?’
David asked, ‘What about this area, Tim? I see a lot of broken windows and your “Business as usual” notice.’
Tim heaved his shoulders and breathed out heavily. ‘You want to come and get a gander at the back? C’mon, I’ll show you.’
As Tim Redding opened double doors, a beautiful setting sun shone directly into the house. ‘On Monday there was a whole street there, on Tuesday only the hole.’ An inadequate word, ‘hole’, for an enormous area laid waste.
After a period of shocked silence, David said, ‘It’s a miracle that this place is still standing.’
‘If Archie’s was some kinda church or chapel, it’d be a miracle, but it’s probably science. Archie’s and the rest of this side of the street were the only good buildings in this whole part of Soho – the rest were trash without a foundation to their name. Add to that the scientific fact that blast has its limitations – it’s got to stop somewhere, and Archie’s and our street was its limits. Next time, it will have a clear run. But we came through, didn’t we?’
‘What was there before?’
‘Some street-girls and their kids, some of them with their mas too; skid-row apartments for throwaway guys and girls. Eel and pie shops, newsagents, a lot of little pubs and bars. OK, the bars were dives, girls would fuck in doorways and the guys would pee in the streets… so what do you say? Hitler’s done what the borough shoulda done years ago. Betcha that’s just what people will say.’
‘That’s what they’ll say about the place where I was born and grew up.’ Eve stared ahead but was aware of the men turning to look at her. ‘It was the rough end in a rough town. Nobody asked to be born in those streets – nobody should have been born in those streets. Little girls don’t want to grow up to fuck in doorways. Boys don’t ask to be half-starved street urchins. I got away by the skin of my teeth. It wasn’t easy, and I’ve lost touch with my own kind because of it.’ She turned and gave David Hatton a wry smile.
Tim went back into the bar, and David offered his and Eve’s help.
Nan said, ‘I get to bed early on good nights for bombing. You can pretty well guarantee that with skies like this there’ll be a big raid. I’ll get my head down by nine o’clock and have about four hours. Take the front room upstairs if you like, but I’m going into the cellar. Archie’s is lucky: the cellar here can take practically everyone in the entire street.’
Tim said, ‘Raises the temperature of the beer, but who complains? At least we got beer.’
‘Come upstairs, I’ll show you your room.’ Eve’s and David’s bags were standing side by side where Tim had placed them. Eve was nonplussed and looked from the bags to Nan. Nan gave Eve a sheet to cover her uniform and a pair of dungarees and a top. ‘If you have to move fast, just grab these and you’re dressed in thirty seconds. I sleep in mine.’ Then she read the uneasiness on Eve’s face. ‘Tim thought that you and David… You’re not, are you?’
Eve shook her head. ‘He’s my superior officer. But we have known each other for a long time. I thought he had arranged bed and breakfast.’
‘I’m sorry, Eve. You don’t think… ?’ Nan stopped and helped Eve hang her jacket.
‘What, Nan? That David thought he might get me into bed?’
‘I’m sure not.’
‘So where was he expecting to sleep?’
‘I’m sorry, Eve. Tim must have assumed…’
‘That I was yet another of the Hatton girls? Don’t worry, Nan, I know all about his reputation.’
‘Tim got the impression that you were the one.’
‘I am.’ She smiled delightedly at Nan Redding. ‘But not the one for Lieutenant Hatton.’
‘OK, I’m glad we sorted that out before Tim put his foot in it.’
When Eve had stowed her bag and changed, she and Nan sat at the table, ripping some beautiful damask banqueting-size tablecloths into strips and squares, and rolling them into bandages and slings. A clock somewhere chimed the half-hour.
‘Half-past nine,’ Nan said. ‘Time I got my head down. You could come down in the cellar with me, if you like.’
‘I would.’
‘Did you hear that?’
Eve listened.
‘Big guns, a long way off.’
Tim came in with David. ‘I’ve called time. Not that there’s anybody drinking. Scottie’s collecting up. Did you hear the guns?’
‘Yes, I was just saying to Eve…’
‘Dover guns. You can always tell. That means we’re for it again. Put the light out, Davey.’ Tim opened up the door to the big space. The sky was as clear as could be, with no lights showing in the whole of the great city, stars were shining brightly. A good bombing night. ‘There! You heard that.’
As he said it the warning siren began to wail.
Eve was glad that she had changed into briefs, shirt and dungarees. Now she slipped on her rubber-soled navy-issue brogues. Nan, in the back room, wearing a tin hat marked ‘Ambulance’, was thrusting a flask into a khaki shoulder-bag.
‘Can you do with another pair of hands, Nan? I’ve done it before.’
‘You’re on. There’s a tin hat in the bar… somebody left it. Take that, and here…’ She handed Eve a generous-sized jacket. ‘It gets cold around dawn.’
‘How about me, Nan?’ David asked.
‘Thanks, love, but you’d only be in the way. Eve knows what has to be done. See you when we see you, Tim.’
Eve grabbed her gas-mask case and gave David a sloppy salute. ‘I’ll see you when I see you… sir.’
Nan was off almost before Eve had slammed the door of the converted van. ‘I have to check in at the emergency station and say who you are. You’ll get a tag to wear.’
It had been nine-thirty when the siren had sounded. By eleven o’clock, Nan and Eve were collecting injured people on the canvas stretchers and taking them for minor emergency treatment at Red Cross stations, or to hospital for the more serious injuries.
No time for the dead now; they were left for later.
The two women scarcely had time to speak except about what they were doing.
At some point in the night, the van’s engine went dead. Before Nan could finish ‘Oh shi—’, Eve was under the bonnet.
‘Spark plugs oiled up. Got any spares? OK. In my gas-mask case – spare knickers and a bottle of perfume.’ The only light was from a torch held close by an ARP warden. ‘Try her now, Nan.’ The engine sparked into exquisitely perfumed life, Eve thrust the black-oiled knickers into her pocket and they were off again. Into the intense flare of incendiary bombs, and the endless thump and crump of high explosives, and the hiss of water gouting from hoses, and the balls of orange flame that burst through tinder-dry timbers of old roofs.
* * *
Dawn came so clear and beautiful that it was almost impossible to believe that the sun would be rising on the city that had just been through a night of such black and red terror. Yet it was not the same city. With every night of the blitz, London was changed for ever. Acrid fumes from steaming old bricks and mortar, escaped gas, burst sewers, a terrible stench of burned fur from a furrier’s still smouldering – when the all clear sounded after a raid that had lasted nine hours, Hell had come to London.
* * *
Nan and Eve passed a trail of Archie’s neighbours who had been sheltering in the cellar. Nan wiped a hand across her tired and blackened face and kissed Eve roundly.
‘You’re the best mate anybody could wish for, Eve, and don’t let anybody tell you different. This place is yours any time you want to stay – always supposing it’s still standing. Just remember to keep some satin knicks and a bottle of French perfume in your bag.’
Nan’s neighbours must have wondered about her and the grimy woman grinning at one another in the cold dawn light.
Tim had sandwiches ready, and a pot mashed as Nan liked it. The two women plunged into the thick bread.
‘Davey went off with his came
ra just after you left,’ Tim told Eve.
She nodded. ‘I guessed he might. He’s good at that. One picture and the whole world understands.’
Tm going to get my head down for a few hours,’ Nan said. ‘If Tim’s done the boiler, there should be enough hot water for a bit of a bath. Take no notice of the four-and-a-half-inch mark Tim painted on. That’s for high-class folks who bathes every day.’
Eve half filled the Victorian bath and slid under until only her face was above. She imagined that she could still hear the jangle of bells that had gone on all night – ambulances, police, fire brigade; the sharp crack when a wall split from its support; the rumble and crash as roofs fell in; shovels scraping rubble; ARP and first-aid volunteers calling for quiet, then listening for response from someone buried beneath the rubble.
After fifteen minutes of relaxing, she shook out her uniform, put on a clean white shirt, and went down to say thanks to Tim Redding. He looked up expectantly as she stood her things by the door and put her hat on. ‘Far to go?’
‘North side of the Thames, by Waterloo Bridge. My meeting isn’t until later this morning, but I want to drop off my stuff at left luggage.’
‘You’d best go by the underground. Buses will be all to hell. Want me to tell Davey a message?’
She grinned. ‘He knows where to find me – he probably knows my movements better than I do.’
‘He’s a hundred-per-cent good guy.’
‘He’s my boss, so who am I to argue with that?’
* * *
The city tube stations were used as deep air-raid shelters where every night Londoners went down to get a night’s sleep. Some went down early – families with blankets and bags of food and drink, others came in from nightclubs and theatres, still in their glad rags, some in uniform. Early morning saw a double flow of people – those going up to see if their houses or rooms were still standing; those going down to get the tube to work and see whether their office or shop was still standing.