A Ration Book Christmas

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘Bloody Jerry bastards,’ a second voice shouted.

  A frantic fire-engine bell cut through the droning engines and an explosion shook the ground. A flume of black smoke shot up and then another.

  Other fire bells started sounding and grew louder.

  Mattie turned and went back in the house, emerging a few minutes later with her tin helmet with a white letter W painted at the front and her kitbag over her shoulder. She was wearing her warden’s jacket too, unbuttoned to accommodate her swelling stomach.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Ida.

  ‘Back to the Post,’ Mattie replied.

  ‘But you’ve finished your shift,’ her mother protested.

  ‘I know, but they’ve dropped incendiary bombs on the docks so it’ll be all hands to the pump.’ Mattie gave them all a weary smile. ‘Hopefully, I’ll be back once the all-clear sounds.’

  She turned and, setting her bag more securely on her shoulder, headed off down the street.

  A pang of something unsettling fluttered in Jo’s chest as she watched her pregnant sister walk towards the blanket of black smoke hovering over the London Docks.

  ‘Quick, Tommy,’ Alf Smith shouted across from the other side of the roof. ‘There’s another one fizzing over here.’

  Grasping the sand bucket in one hand and a shovel in the other, Tommy dashed between Shapiro’s Fashion’s glass skylights towards his fire-watch partner who was crouched behind a chimney with their stirrup pump.

  Alf Smith was a veteran of the previous war and was now the nightwatchman at the Sugar Islands Distillery Warehouse in Limehouse. Reggie hadn’t been pleased when Tommy made it clear he wasn’t going to try to coerce the veteran of the Somme and Ypres into letting his brother and his light-fingered crew swift a couple of dozen crates of Jamaican navy rum out of the back door.

  It was probably somewhere close to eight o’clock and, although the all-clear had sounded some time ago, Tommy and the other fire-watch personnel from around the Shadwell Basin were still up on the factory and warehouse roofs searching out and extinguishing incendiary bombs.

  The Moaning Minnie on the top of Union Wharf had gone off just before five, heralding the first squadrons of enemy planes droning their way up the Thames. In the following two hours, wave after wave of bombers had rained down thousands of cylindrical incendiary bombs over the docks and surrounding streets, setting both sides of the river ablaze. From his vantage point high above the cluster of terraced streets, Tommy could see a cloud of thick black smoke hanging in the soft autumn breeze above North Woolwich, while to the south the timber wharfs of Surrey Docks looked like nothing short of Hell’s inferno with flames leaping high into the sky.

  Although the fire-watchers were instructed to stay with their allocated buildings, within half an hour of the first shower of two-foot-long magnesium-filled cylinders landing it was clear that the fire brigade was becoming overwhelmed. Tommy’s crew, like all the others, lugging their equipment with them, had moved from building to building to deal with small blazes.

  They’d also been called to houses to help because although instructed repeatedly in all the Civil Defence leaflets and films shown at the cinemas not to spray water on the bombs, many householders did just that, and almost sent their houses up in smoke as a consequence.

  Skidding to a stop, Tommy set the sand bucket down then went and joined Alf behind the brickwork.

  ‘Over there,’ said Alf, pointing towards the small parapet wall.

  Tommy followed his mate’s gaze to where a cracked incendiary with its contents leaking out was trying to ignite.

  ‘Right,’ said Tommy. ‘You pump and I’ll spray around.’

  ‘All right, boy,’ said Alf, putting his hand in the small of his back and easing himself into an upright position. ‘But you mind yourself. You won’t look as pretty with no eyebrows.’

  Although he was pretty sure as he towered over the elderly fire-watcher he no longer qualified as a ‘boy’, Tommy nodded.

  Pulling his gas mask back over his face, he took the nozzle.

  Once Alf had fixed the pump and hosepipe to the side of the bucket, Tommy crouched low and, on all fours, inched across the slate tiles towards the frothing bomb.

  Even through the gagging odour of rubber Tommy could smell the acrid chemical reaction. He gave Alf the thumbs-up and felt the surge of water as he held the pipe. Setting it to spray, Tommy flipped the valve open with his thumb and then doused the dried leaves in the gutter and then the lead casing on the roof beams until the water pooled around the device.

  He signalled to Alf who, breaking cover, slid the shovel across the damp surface towards him. Tommy caught it and, without taking his attention from the blistering canister, stood up.

  Bracing his legs ready to throw himself flat should the bomb go off, Tommy crept forward until he was within a foot of the device. Through the insect-like glass eyeholes of the gas mask, Tommy cast his gaze over it again and, satisfied that the effervescing contents hadn’t spread, he gently slipped the edge of the spade under it.

  He waited for a second or two to be sure then, flexing his shoulders and biceps, Tommy took the strain and lifted it free from the detritus around it.

  Sweat, and not just from the strain of holding a two-pound bomb at arm’s length, trickled down his forehead as he trod slowly across an uneven rooftop. At last, after what seemed like an eternity, he reached the sand bucket. Resting the spade on the rim, he eased the metal tube of the device in, nose first.

  A sliver of the internal compound trickled down and started to fizzle, indicating the bomb was about to shower the roof and him with white-hot magnesium.

  Fighting the urge to dive for cover, Tommy carefully pressed the edge of the spade into the sand and flicked it over the escaping chemical. Stepping sideways, he did the same again and then repeated the action a third time. The body of the bomb was more or less covered but when he dug the edge of the shovel into the sand again a small fountain, not unlike a Guy Fawkes’ Night sparkler, sprang out of the jagged crack in the casing.

  Tommy dug deep and dragging up a full shovel of sand dumped it on top of the bomb. Then he scraped the spade across the rooftop, collecting accumulated dirt, which he also deposited in the bucket. Grabbing the hose again, Tommy sprayed it over the debris. A single curl of smoke drifted up for a couple of seconds then vanished.

  Tommy held his breath for several heartbeats then ripped off his mask and dragged in a lungful of air.

  ‘Well,’ he said, running his fingers through his hair, ‘that was a close—’

  The air raid siren on Shadwell Police station started again and stole his voice as an explosion a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the river shook his eardrums.

  Dropping the shovel, Tommy curled forward as a blast of wind sprayed him with shards of glass from the roof skylights.

  Opening his eyes, Tommy stared down at the loop of the Thames that formed the Isle of Dogs but instead of seeing the shimmering river meandering round on its way to Barking Creek, both sides of the river from the Royal Dock to St Katharine’s were ablaze. Moving across the cloudless night sky above him, dark against the red glow from the burning warehouses, wharfs and houses, were hundreds of enemy aircraft, flying in such tight formation that there was hardly a gap between them as they droned overhead in the second wave that night. In their wake, a line of bombs exploded in neat succession amongst the tightly packed houses in Silvertown.

  All around sirens wailed and ambulance and fire-engine bells ran out. A blinding flash tore through the sky followed by an ear-shattering explosion as the gas works by the canal received a direct hit. Tommy took an involuntary step back as the force of the blast hit him.

  Grinding slivers of broken glass beneath his size-ten boots, he stumbled across the warehouse roof to join Alf.

  ‘Do you think this is it?’ the old man asked. ‘The invasion, I mean?’

  Tommy nodded. ‘They’ll try bombing us into submission like they d
id with Franco in Spain then they’ll land on the south coast.’

  ‘They can try if they like,’ shouted Alf, shaking a gnarled fist at the hundreds of aircraft high above his head. ‘But we beat the bloody Hun last time and we’ll bloody well do it again.’

  Tommy smiled and punched his old companion lightly on the shoulder. ‘Well, we’d better bloody well get on with it then, hadn’t we?’

  Picking up their fire-fighting equipment, Tommy turned and as he did a handful of bombs exploded somewhere in the Watney Street direction.

  Thank God, he thought, as another blast went off behind him. Even if she had forgotten about him and found a new love, he was thankful at least that Jo was safe in the country.

  Chapter Five

  JO WAS IN the meadow behind St Audrey’s Church and running barefoot across the fresh grass towards Tommy who was standing at the kissing gate by the stream. Just as she was about to run into his arms, Mrs Garfield sprang out from behind the drystone wall. Stepping in front of Tommy, the shopkeeper opened her mouth and let out a long, toneless wail.

  ‘Praise Mary for that,’ said her mother, as the all-clear siren dispelled the last threads of sleep from Jo’s mind.

  She rolled her shoulders to relieve the stiffness. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just after five, I think,’ her mother replied.

  It had been a long night. After the first all-clear they’d gathered up their things to go home but her mother had stopped several times on the way to chat to a couple of her cronies, so they had only just got back to Mafeking Terrace when the second alarm went off. This, however, gave them a head start, which meant they were some of the first to reach the shelter again, thereby being able to bag the driest and cleanest spot on which to unroll their blankets.

  Jo, her mother and Billy had been there all night but with the ground shaking as bombs landed, children crying and people sobbing with every explosion, Jo had barely slept. Like everyone else her heart had hammered in her chest and had jumped out of her skin at every blast, and she wasn’t ashamed to say that on more than one occasion she truly believed she was just seconds away from meeting her maker.

  The same couldn’t be said for Billy who was still in the land of Nod, tucked up in a blanket next to their mother.

  People around them were now gathering themselves together and packing away their bedding ready for the trek home.

  ‘Ah, look at him,’ said Ida, smoothing a lock of red-blond hair off her son’s unruffled forehead. ‘Such an angel.’

  Studying her brother’s cherubic face with the scattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks, Jo didn’t comment.

  According to her mother, Billy was supposedly the ‘face of’ Ida’s brother who had died after the sulphur used for fumigating bugs had leaked through from the house next door. However, Jo never ceased to wonder why none of the eagle-eyed gossips in the market had noticed that Billy looked nothing at all like anyone else in the family. Of course, he probably looked like his father, but as Aunt Pearl didn’t know which one of her man-friends had fathered him they would never know.

  He was luckier than most kids born without a father to claim them because although Aunt Pearl had left him in the workhouse without a second thought, Jo’s mother’s heart overflowed with motherly instincts. On hearing her sister had abandoned her new-born to the council institution and still wild with grief having just buried her own three-weekold son, James, Ida had stormed in to the foundling infant ward at the Bancroft Hospital and demanded they give her three-day-old Billy. No doubt thankful for having one less hungry baby to feed, the matron had handed him over without a quibble and, despite Pearl spasmodically pitching up to lavish presents on him, he had always called Ida ‘Mum’.

  ‘He can be when he wants something,’ Jo said.

  Easing her son’s head off her lap, Ida scrambled to her feet and yawned. ‘Well, we’d better get our bits together and head off home.’

  Standing up, Jo and her mother packed away their bedding and what was left of their overnight picnic then they woke Billy.

  Ida directed him outside to relieve himself and she and Jo loaded up the old pram again.

  Picking their way through those still sleeping on the floor, they made their way to the entrance. As they emerged into the chilly morning, the light from the sun rising in the east was all but obliterated by the choking pall of pulverised brick dust hanging in the air. Around them people coughed and spluttered as they breathed in the acrid fumes. Jo’s eyes started to stream, so taking her handkerchief from her pocket she placed it over her mouth and nose to ease her breathing.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ whispered Ida, crossing herself repeatedly as she surveyed the destruction in front of them. ‘It’s like the end of the world.’

  Her mother was right.

  The scene that greeted them was one of utter destruction. Across from the shelter’s entrance, the five-storey warehouse had not a window left intact while the tarmac on the road itself had bubbled into uneven lumps from the fire still raging in the gutted office block further along the street.

  ‘I hope everyone’s all right,’ said Jo, wondering truthfully how anyone could have survived such devastation, as an ambulance swerved up Leman Street avoiding newly formed craters.

  ‘I can’t answer for your gran,’ her mother replied, ‘but I expect Dad’s been in the thick of it all night. Cathy’ll be out of harm’s way in the Anderson shelter with little Peter but it’s Mattie I’m worried about!’

  An image of her pregnant sister heading off the night before flashed through Jo’s mind.

  ‘She shouldn’t be running around the streets in her condition,’ she said, without thinking.

  ‘I told her that but will she listen? Will she heck?’ Ida said. ‘Stubborn, that’s what, she is like your blooming father. Still, there’s no point standing here all morning, let’s get home and have a cuppa. Where’s Billy?’

  As if he’d heard his name, Jo’s brother came tearing over holding what looked like a shiny cauliflower in both arms.

  ‘What on earth have you got there?’ asked his mother.

  ‘The tail of a bomb,’ he replied, holding it aloft. ‘Can I keep it, Mum?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Ida. ‘Now let’s get home.’

  Grasping the pram’s handle, Ida set off with Billy skipping beside her, swinging his trophy.

  Yawning, Jo followed them.

  As they wearily retraced their steps home along Cable Street they passed the long queue of people waiting for a cuppa and a sandwich at the Women’s Voluntary Service mobile canteen outside the Town Hall. The red-brick block of Victorian flats they’d walked past on their way to the shelter eight hours before now looked as though some giant hand had reached down and scooped out the middle.

  Staring at the private rooms of the residents, with carpets dangling from damaged floorboards and the contents of wardrobes fluttering from shattered brickwork and splintered rafters, Jo wondered if their owners were lying in a hospital bed or the cold slab in its mortuary.

  The whole country had been making ready for over a year for the horror of blanket bombing. The papers were full of the destruction wrought in Spain by the Luftwaffe’s Blitzkrieg way of cowering the civilian population, but all the Ministry of Information’s pamphlets and films in the world couldn’t prepare you for the reality of being huddled underground while the world you knew and your loved one were being destroyed.

  And it was oddly impersonal. The German pilots flying hundreds of feet above weren’t trying to kill you or your family for some wrong they’d done them. No, they weren’t out to kill you in particular; they were out to kill anyone.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they were home. They trudged down the narrow side alley to the back door into the yard. Her mother opened the latch and they went in.

  ‘What the bloody hell’s all this doing here?’ asked Ida, standing stock still with her fists on her hips as she surveyed the scene.

  Forcing t
he fog in her brain aside, Jo cast her gaze around their small back yard.

  Although the back windows were still intact, oddly, there seemed to be a great deal of rubble strewn across the worn flagstones.

  ‘And what’s that doing here?’ asked her mother, spotting a metal sheet advertising Bluebell Metal Polish lying at an angle across a clump of bricks.

  ‘Must have been blasted off a building,’ said Jo.

  ‘Can I keep it?’ said Billy.

  ‘No, it’ll have to go to Dad’s yard for salvage,’ Jo replied.

  ‘Please let me have it, Mum,’ pleaded Billy, grabbing his mother’s hand and shaking it. ‘As a trophy.’

  ‘Jo’s right, and if the council find out we’re hoarding stuff that could go to the war effort your dad could lose his scrap metal licence,’ Ida replied. ‘Besides, you’ve already got that tail whatsit.’

  ‘But I want it,’ he shouted.

  Throwing aside his mother’s hand, he dashed over to the sheet of tin and grasped the edge.

  He yanked it upright.

  An old bedspring jumped into the air and something whizzed between Jo and Ida and thumped into the shed wall.

  Jo turned to see a carving knife embedded in the wood.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said Ida, staring at the blade quivering in one of the wooden end posts.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ laughed Queenie, dancing out from behind their brick-built outhouse. ‘I haven’t lost me old touch, that I haven’t.’

  Jo stared in disbelief at her gran who, while dressed in her usual wrap-around apron and old slippers, was also wearing a balaclava that Mattie had knitted for Charlie last Christmas.

  ‘What in the fecking name of all that is holy are you doing?’ Ida screamed at her mother-in-law.

  ‘Getting ready for those Hun devils if they come,’ laughed Queenie.

  ‘But you could have killed us,’ said Ida.

  Queenie rolled her eyes. ‘For sure, Ida, it’s clear you know nothing about the matter as it would take more than that to kill a man.’

  ‘But—’