“Does that seem well…does it seem pompous to you, Carver?” asked Harold, after a pause.
“No,” said Jim slowly, “it’s what we’re all fighting for, after all.”
“But I can’t stick it any longer alone,” said Harold suddenly, “It isn’t fear of being killed, or smashed up, it’s…it’s the loneliness, it’s not being able to talk to anyone, when things start to happen.”
He looked Jim full in the eyes, for the first time since they had sat down. “Would you think it infernal impudence on my part if I…if I asked you to…to take up quarters in here?”
He went on, before Jim could exclaim: “We’d muck along together…you could have the back bedroom, where Esme used to sleep, and I could do things for you…make tea, etc., and clean up and…well, all sorts of things, that you haven’t time to do. After all, your daughter must have her hands full. She’s a husband, and the twins to look after, as well as doing for young Judy, and the two boys, when they come on leave.”
And why not, thought Jim, still struggling to conceal his surprise. There was more room in here, and obviously the poor chap was near the end of his tether. He thought back to the summer, to the night the twins got home from France, when he had almost despaired, and this little man, sucking his pipe at the front gate, had pumped new courage into him, simply by voicing his confidence in the country’s ability to stand up to Hitler, and defy an invasion. Well, Godbeer had been right on that occasion, and now that the Germans were trying to blast the country into submission, Godbeer himself stood in need of a little encouragement, encouragement that would spring from living cheek by jowl with someone physically engaged in the struggle.
He smiled, and held out his hand.
“Why not, Godbeer? I’ll move in with you! It’s a deal!”
Harold gulped, beamed, and then wrung his neighbour’s hand.
“I’ll start getting the room ready now,” he babbled. “My word, but this’ll make all the difference, all the difference in the world! I’ll leave the key with you when I go to work today, and I’ll…I’ll ’phone Eunice, the minute I get to the office! She’ll be tickled to death, Carver, and so will Esme…I’ll drop Esme a line tonight!”
He darted about the kitchen like an excited child, and Jim leaned back in his chair, and stretched. As he brought his big hands forward again he noticed that they were grey with dirt, and that there was dried blood on his forearm, where the head of one of the children had rested as he handed the body out to poor old Hopner.
“I think I’ll start by having a wash-and-brush in your bathroom, Godbeer,” he said.
“Yes, yes, by all means,” said Harold, “soap…towel…you’ll find everything there, but here, let me pull off those boots…you must be all in!”
Before Jim could protest he had knelt and lifted Jim’s right foot, tugging at the boot, and covering his hands with mud and damp plaster.
“No, no,” protested Jim, “dammit, you’re the landlord, not the bootboy!”
But Harold would not be denied and drew off both boots. Then Jim laughed outright, and Harold laughed too, and nothing for either of them seemed so sad, or so hopeless, as the first light of dawn crept through the shattered kitchen window, and the whiff of charred homes drifted over from the smoldering rubble in Delhi Road.
CHAPTER III
Exercise ‘Make-A-Way’
BERNI AND BOXER, the Carver twins, were enjoying life in the Commandos, more than they had enjoyed their schooldays, or their Speedway days, or even their provincial tour as The Suicide Twins, with the Wall of Death outfit.
Stimulating as these experiences had proved, their capacity to enjoy them had been limited by rules and regulations, devised for the comfort of ordinary citizens. No matter how exciting, or how provocative the opportunities that presented themselves in schoolroom, team-race, or fairground, star-turns were still expected to behave more or less like normal people; even their overseas campaign, with the B.E.F., had been soured by workaday obligations, like equipment cleaning and road safety precautions.
Being a Commando was different, so different that even now they experienced some difficulty in adjusting themselves to the role of outlaws who were encouraged by the newspapers, and even by their own officers, to cut clean through rules and regulations and concentrate solely on the business of learning to kill Germans.
They were proving ideal material for a Commando unit. All their lives they had craved speed, noise, excitement, and modest acclaim. All their lives, in one way or another, they had been waging jolly, uninhibited warfare on the long-suffering British public, knocking at doors and running away, smashing windows with catapults, practising the string-and-parcel game on unsuspecting pedestrians, clambering about on schoolhouse roofs, thinking up new and explosive jokes to test the disciplinary powers of their schoolmasters, or devising new thrills to test the nerves of fans.
Later, when they had left school and became Speedway aces at Crystal Palace, they were often in trouble with the Police during off-duty periods, never for anything amounting to a felony, but simply because of their unspeakable contempt for the rules laid down for ordinary road-users. Later still they had made quite a name for themselves as riders on the Wall of Death, until Boxer, the more slow-witted of the two, had lost them their jobs, by getting drunk, and involving himself with Jackie Gulliver, madcap daughter of the industrialist, whose machines they rode.
They operated, as always, in a team—just the two of them, with Boxer as the more forward in action, and Bernard, the smaller, fair-haired one, as brain and seconder. They had always operated in this way, ever since, at the age of eight, Boxer had fallen through the ice of the frozen pond in the Lane, near the Avenue, and had been saved, miraculously, by Bernard. From that day forward they were not to be parted and Bernard had accepted responsibility for everything his brother said or did.
Whenever there was a decision to be made it was Bernard who made it; Boxer never made up his mind on any issue, without first appealing for Bernard’s sanction.
“Whadysay Berni, whadysay?” he would ask, his bullet head cocked, like that of an eager mastiff. Bernard would suck his lips, and pretend to ponder a moment, while Boxer hovered, awaiting his brother’s curt nod, or shake of the head, that signified approval or otherwise. When Bernard had pronounced Boxer never questioned his decisions. They were infallible as far as Boxer was concerned.
In action they were superb. Boxer had slow, ponderous strength, his brother an ape-like agility, and the speed of a striking cobra. They were popular with the unit, but they were seldom seen in their comrades’ company off duty. Just as, in their schooldays, they had found all the comradeship they needed in each other, so, as men, they preferred to seek their relaxation unhindered by a third, or fourth party. It was probably their preference for one another’s company that had kept them unmarried throughout their early manhood, for women found them attractive and either could have married a dozen times during their motor-cycling heyday.
They were much admired by their officers, who considered that their genial aggressiveness, and reliance one upon the other, exemplified the Commando team-spirit. They were always the first to arrive at the cliff top, or aboard the moored pontoon. They were always first in and first out of a position, marked down to be stormed, or demolished. They loved knocking things down and blowing things up. They won the unarmed combat contests outright and amused the adjudicating officer by flatly refusing to fight one another.
They were wonderfully skilful providers during the unit’s outdoor bivouac spells, helping themselves to game and farmhouse food, with the stealth of country-bred poachers and the skill of trained housebreakers, and when the unit was briefed on ‘Exercise Make-a-Way’ they made no attempt to conceal their elation, for this, they felt, promised to prove the supreme lark of the course.
Under ‘Exercise Make-a-Way’ the men were ordered to leave the base near Killiecrankie and make their way to the unit’s London depot. They had to accomplish the journey in
twenty-four hours, without spending a penny on food, drink or transport. The police, and local Home Guard units were to be alerted, and had promised to do their utmost to arrest any man wearing the distinctive flash in his beret.
The pairs set off a few minutes before dawn, carrying their weapons and a ground-sheet. Most of the men made for the main road, hoping to thumb lifts as far as Edinburgh, or Glasgow, and thus accomplish the first leg of the journey as the daylight traffic began to flow south.
Bernard, however, had a much better idea. He was hungry, and was not disposed to begin a four-hundred-mile hitch-hike on an empty stomach.
Boxer hoisted him through a skylight in the shop-door of a local bakery and here they stuffed themselves with pies, and pastries, taking care to carry away a surplus for the journey south. Boxer wanted to stay and make tea, in the scullery adjoining, but Bernard forbade this on the grounds that they might have to manhandle the baker, whose pasties had been tasty and satisfying. So they broke into another shop, lower down the street, and there helped themselves to a few bottles of mineral waters and fifty cigarettes apiece. After all, Bernard argued, the police had been alerted and two robberies would probably detain half the local constabulary in the area all morning, giving the unit time to clear the area.
A mile or two along the road to Perth they stopped a motorist, who was travelling in the opposite direction. Bernard would have preferred to have obtained a lift on a south-bound car, but the commercial traveller they encountered was the first motorist they met and so they made the best of him. He was abandoned by the roadside, speechless with indignation, while they reversed his Austin and drove off at high speed towards Perth.
They did not enter the city for Bernard remembered that there had been a ’phone box near the point where they hijacked the car and he reasoned that the motorist would be certain to make for it and report the number and description of the car. Accordingly, they ditched the Austin in a builder’s yard and borrowed the builder’s lorry, which had been immobilised in accordance with national instructions, but not sufficiently so to defeat a pair of trained mechanics like Boxer and Bernard.
They drove over the Ochil Hills to within a few miles of Stirling, where they ran out of petrol, and parked the lorry at a crossroads. They left it on the crown of the road, confident that its presence there would soon be the means of providing them with fresh transport.
They were not disappointed. In less than five minutes a roving section of the local Home Guard came bowling along, in a jeep. Perched on the vehicle were three Home Guardsmen, heavy, middle-aged Scots, who at once recognised the flashes of the two Commandos and leaped from the jeep with Gaelic whoops of triumph.
In ninety-four seconds two of them were lying trussed in the back of the lorry, and the third, whom Boxer had been obliged to rabbit-punch, was on hands and knees, being sick in the ditch. The twins took the jeep, drove it round the parked lorry and set off, munching pasties, in the general direction of Glasgow.
By mid-day they had crossed the Border at Carlisle, leaving behind them a trail of abandoned vehicles, pilfered shops, groggy Home Guardsmen, and two footsore policemen, whose bicycles they had borrowed whilst the owners were signing on duty.
Telephone wires began to buzz and the adjutant in the orderly room of the Killiecrankie base was kept busy all morning, dealing with a spate of testy enquiries. Meanwhile, the twins pursued their way blithely across the fells in an ironmonger’s van, singing their twenty-year-old signature tune, ‘Everybody’s Doing It’, at the top of untuneful voices.
At Skipton they ran into a road-block, and had to jump for it. Their pursuers harried them out of the town, and up on to the open moor, towards Earby, but they shook them off easily enough and lay up in the gorse near the main road, munching the last of their stolen provisions and taking their ease, until a likely-looking car presented itself.
They let several cars pass and then Bernard walked into the road and flagged a plump police inspector, who drove up in a new Morris. He was alone, and incredibly naïve.
The Inspector, one of their Skipton pursuers, stepped from the car with a broad smile.
“That’s the spirit, sonny! You’ve had a good run for your money, haven’t you?” and he jerked his thumb genially towards the rear seat of the car.
Bernard got in without a word and the Inspector climbed in after him, pressing the self-starter, and letting in the clutch.
The engine started but the car did not move, so the policeman revved up and strained forward, throwing a puzzled glance over his shoulder at the solemn-faced young man who was sitting meekly behind him.
When Bernard looked meek his expression was not far off that of an idiot’s, so that even then the policeman did not suspect a trap.
“That’s very odd,” he grunted, slipping into neutral again and opening the door.
It was not in the least odd, as Bernard could have told him, for while they had been setting themselves in the car Boxer had emerged from the bushes a few yards down the hill and slipped a large, squarish block of limestone against the forward tread of the offside rear tyre. By the time the Inspector had climbed out and opened the bonnet, Boxer was in the driver’s seat. He reversed a yard, swerved left, struck the Inspector in the chest with the offside front wing and roared off down the road. Bernard blew a kiss to him out of the rear window.
It had all happened so quickly, and so expertly that the Inspector had not even time to note Boxer’s features and had seen him only as a blur of khaki, before falling on his back in the gorse.
“Silly old sod,” said Boxer, “didn’t he remember there were two of us?”
That was the point, both then and later. People never remembered that there were two of them. As long as Bernard stood before them, looking solemn, and slightly pained, they were wide open for attack from behind by the lumbering Boxer, and in this way the twins idled south, in vans, in cars and, on the final stage of the journey, in a single-decker ’bus, from which six bewildered passengers had been ejected.
They drove the ’bus right up to the depot gates, and the sergeant of the guard, who had been warned of their almost certain arrival, regarded them with awe, as he marched them into the duty officer, and clocked up their time-of-arrival in the guardroom.
It was not long after dusk and they had accomplished the exercise in a shade over half the allotted time, arriving four hours ahead of the next pair, and in much better condition.
Over a drink in the ante-room the following night the section-commander discussed the exercise with the C.O.
“Off the record, would you call it a success, sir?”
The Colonel thought of all the new files that had been opened since lunch, files already bulging with complaints, scattered throughout a dozen counties.
“Well, yes,” he said, “I suppose we could, but off the record the sooner we get boys like those Carvers into action the better chance we have of getting the civilian population acclimatised to the waging of total war! Do you follow me?”
“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant, dutifully, “I think I do, sir!”
CHAPTER IV
For Them That Trespass
NOBODY IN THE Avenue recalled a Christmas as drab and cheerless, as this one of 1940.
The four Christmases of the First World War had been shorn of many of the customary festivities and towards the end, after the shattering casualty lists of 1917, few civilians had felt like celebrating. They had, however, made some kind of effort in those half-forgotten days. There had still been trees in the windows and plenty of children in the suburb to sing carols. They had still had Christmas displays in the big shops of Croydon and Fairyland basements for children to visit in order to meet Santa Claus.
This year, however, the second Christmas of World War II, nobody seemed to remember that it was Christmas. There were so many more immediate matters to occupy their minds, for the Avenue was now undergoing a siege and hardly a night went by when the siren was not heard at dusk, or the ‘All Clear’ s
ounded before it was time to wash, shave, prepare a makeshift breakfast, and hurry into Shirley Rise for a train that, as likely as not, was over an hour late, on account of incidents higher up the line.
It was cold too, no sort of weather for hanging about the draughty station platforms at Addiscombe and Woodside and the news was as depressing as ever, not as terrifying as it had been earlier in the year, but still without a gleam of hope anywhere, and reminiscent, the older folk felt, of the stalemate period of 1916 and 1917, when the old war had looked as if it was going on forever.
As yet the Avenue was untouched, though Jim Carver had already dug families out of shattered houses in Delhi Road, Cawnpore Road, Lucknow Crescent, Outram Crescent, and at several points on the Lower Road. Perhaps the open spaces, at each end of the Avenue, or the presence of the Manor Woods, just across the meadow, had saved the crescent, or perhaps it was just a matter of luck. Blitzed or not, the families who remained in the Avenue had to endure the same rigours as their neighbours sleeping crowded together in inadequate shelters, wedged under their staircases, waking from fitful dozes, with dry and bitter tastes in their mouths, feeling jumpy, irritable, and uncomfortably clammy in siren suits and thick, woollen sweaters.
Apart from the bombs there were other gross inconveniences. Everyone along the Avenue was already sick and tired of exchanging little bits of paper for rations, and waiting for news of the lucky ones in the Forces, who were surely unable to realise what it was like to go for weeks at a stretch without a real night’s rest?
Edith Clegg, at Number Four, was one of the few who made an effort to celebrate Christmas. Each December since she and her sister Becky had lived in the Avenue Edith had bought a Christmas tree at the seedsman’s, in the Lower Road and had planted it in a huge, green fern-pot, in the front window, decking it out in fairy lights, and crowning it with a four-inch fairy doll, waving a tinsel wand.
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