It had, however, the one merit of being portable. That was why he had had it with him when the ship went down. He had been practising on it in the galley between the skipper’s strident demands for tea and snacks, just before the first explosion had hurled him against the bulkhead. The harmonica was then in his hip pocket, and had thus taken the greater part of the impact on its stout, nickel-plated sheathing.
When he remembered it, and fished it out, he was distressed to find that it had a long, shallow dent along its centre. He could extract music from either end but not from the middle. No matter how hard he sucked, the only sound that emerged from the centre notes was a thin, despairing wail, like the protest of a maltreated cat. Lofty had listened to him trying it out, hopefully at first, but impatiently later on, for finally he said:
“Pack it in Ted, for Chrissake! It sounds like a camel’s fart, straight it do!”
Now that Lofty had gone overboard to look for his mermaid, and all the other survivors were sunk in silent despondency, Ted tried again. He thought that if he could unscrew the outer casing and prise from the inside, he could soon straighten the dent and restore the damaged notes to something approximating to their original key.
He borrowed the surly donkeyman’s penknife and worked away at the tiny brass screws, hour after hour, ultimately getting them out and placing them carefully in his trouser pocket. Then he used a bent nail to bring gentle pressure to bear from the inside of the frame and when the dint was as smooth as he could get it, he screwed the fastenings back again, using the edge of his identity disc as a screwdriver.
Gunter, who had been watching him for the last hour said:
“Okay! Give it a go, Steward! We could do with a tune, I reckon.”
Ted played a few bars of his favourite melody, ‘Charmaine’, and the Second Mate’s lips cracked in a grin.
“Say, that’s swell! I remember that tune! Play it right through, Steward!”
Ted played it through, softly and melodiously. The repairs had been adequate and the key was as near perfect as mattered. As he played, it was easy to forget heat, sunblisters, boredom, and raging thirst. The dip of the stern, where Gunter sat, became the dip and sway of his customers, in the ‘twenties’. He saw, without conscious effort, the tide of bobbed heads and the steady circular sweeps of a hundred closely interlocked couples, the girl’s eager faces looking up at him as they passed the dais, the men dancing with confidence, for it was always easy to waltz to ‘Charmaine’.
A middle-aged seaman amidships shifted his position, and smiled across at Ted.
“Play some more, Bud! I kinda like that! Play us a carol.”
Ted played ‘While Shepherds Watched’, and the remaining men began to lose some of their apathy and regain something of the chirpiness they had shown before Chips had died and Lofty had dived overboard.
“Aw, to hell with that,” said The Kid, a freckled boy, barely eighteen, whose face was now burned the colour of a fresh lobster. “There’s no bleedin’ shepherds watching us, is there? Play something more up to date, play ‘Scatterbrain’.
Ted played ‘Scatterbrain’, and the tune seemed suited to the harmonica. Halfway through The Kid began to croak the lyric.
‘…pretty as a picture
As refreshing as the rain
Isn’t it a pity that you’re
Such a Scatterbrain…’
When the song finished he got a hoarse bravo from the other seven. Ted tapped the harmonica, and moistened his lips with sea-water.
“What now?” he asked, as Gunter nodded encouragingly across the men sprawled between them.
There was a clamour from them all. It was strange, Ted thought, how each generation clung to its own numbers, ‘Dad’ Mckintyre the cook, wanted ‘Dolly Grey’, and ‘Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey’, tunes he had learned at the music-halls in his mashing days. The men in their early forties wanted World War One tunes, ‘Tipperary’, ‘Hold Your Hand Out, Naughty Boy’, and ‘Long, Long Trail’. The storeman, who was about Ted’s age, preferred the hits of the ‘twenties’, silly, sentimental numbers, like ‘Babette’, and ‘Carolina Moon’.
“I’ve always liked ‘Babette’,” he told everybody, “I met my missus when they were playing ‘Babette’, on the old pier, at Eastbourne. I always called her ‘Babs’ after that! Kind o’ joke between us.”
Ted played ‘Babette’ and ‘Carolina Moon’ and all the other moons, over all the other States, until the heat went out of the sun and the flat sea around them turned mouse-grey, and Gunter shouted: “Tea up!”
Then they forgot Ted and his harmonica for a few moments, watching with unwavering eyes, whilst Gunter measured the few thimbles of water into the enamel cup, and saw it was passed from hand to hand with the reverence of communicants.
When Gunter had recorked the bottle, and they were sucking their malted milk tablets, Ted began again, playing until the gross, copper moon rose over the water and the sea danced with phosphorescent light, as one by one the men dozed off, lulled into a fitful oblivion by the steady slop-slop of the water against the gunwale.
Ted slept too, dreaming of Margy, his wife, and seeing her, big with child, plugging a number at the song-counter at Woolworth’s, in the Old Orchard Road. He woke up with a start, remembering the dream, or enough of it to reflect on its absurdity, for their child had been still-born but a few months ago, and Margy had not been a song-plugger at Woolworth’s since the early ‘thirties’, when they met.
Day succeeded day. The cook died, but the remaining eight hung on, even Gunter losing count of time, as the boat idled between sea and sky and the empty water bottles rolled to and fro, to and fro, in the triangle formed by The Kid’s legs.
Sometimes an hour would go by without any one of them moving, or speaking. They had abandoned their routine of taking turns under the awning. The two who were there, Hoskins, and Paddy O’Sullivan, lay half in and half out, their bare feet thrust across Ted’s legs.
Each time a silence seemed unusually long Ted would lift his harmonica. At first he played a few odd chords for his own amusement, but as time dragged by his tunes became the main factor in their survival. Ted did not understand how this came about, but on the third day following his repair of the instrument he realised that it was so, for Gunter, who was still rigid at the tiller, within reach of the last remaining water bottle, and the tin of malted milk tablets, began to make signs at him whenever he stopped playing. They were not clear, unmistakable signs, like a smile, or a nod, but long, steady glances, or a sudden twitch of his lips, that Ted interpreted as a plea to begin playing again.
It was not easy now to coax music from the harmonica. The instrument was in good enough shape, but Ted’s lips were not, they were raw and puffed, and every suck of breath required an effort. He kept at it, however, laving his mouth with sea-water between spells of playing and sometimes gargling a little, or trying to gargle.
When there were no longer any request numbers he racked his brain for one or other of the hardier tunes, out of the past. He played ‘Red, Red Robin’, the refrain that had once cost him his job as a stonemason, when the rhythm had magnetised the end of his chisel, and caused him to multiply the inverted commas on the headstone of one, Thomas Hitchcock.
He played all the hit tunes of the vo-deo-do era, ‘Crazy Words, Crazy Tunes’, that had been so popular in the Charleston days, ‘Bye, Bye, Blackbird’, ‘Sonny Boy’, the hit of the first feature talkie, and many, many others. Then, when he began finding the breaks, or what The Kid called ‘the twiddly-bits’, too difficult and painful, he played slower measures, ‘Blue Danube’, ‘Tales from Vienna Woods’, and sleepy-time tunes of the Deep South.
He was playing ‘Poor Old Joe’ when Gunter suddenly let out a hoarse squawk and tried to inch himself upright in the stern. Ted stopped playing and followed the direction of the Second Officer’s half-raised hand. Gunter was pointing into the south-west, where the sun hung low in the sky, a huge sizzling disc, poised on the very edge o
f the horizon.
Ted put the harmonica aside, and dashed salt water into his eyes, rubbing away the brine that had gummed up his sore lids. He could hardly believe what he saw, for steaming slowly across the face of the sun, was a ship, a big ship, and not far away, for he could see the dark cloud of smoke mushrooming from its single, squat funnel.
The men lying between Ted and Gunter began to stir. Ted tried to shout, but no sound emerged from his lips. Gunter also was trying to say something, and was finding speech equally difficult. He kept making stiff, jerky movements with his right arm, and Ted knew what he wanted—someone must open the small box, amidships and fire the Verey pistol.
Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of Gunter, they were all looking in the direction of the ship, heaving and slithering, opening and closing their mouths, like a catch of newly-landed fish. At last Ted pushed himself free of the thwart, and fell forward on his knees, knocking open the box with the butt of his hand and groping for the heavy pistol. He found it, and tried to crawl astern to Gunter, but the Second Officer shook his head, and mouthed the words: “Fire it…fire it!”
Ted held the pistol in both hands, the butt hard against his breastbone, and pressed the trigger. It moved at last, and the flash of the cartridge almost blinded him. He dropped the pistol as the signal hissed up in a wide arc and burst over their port bow.
After that everything was muddled and confused. It was as if he had dozed off in a railway station buffet, and heard sounds and voices on every side, without being conscious of them as distinct noises, each with an independent origin.
This state of confusion seemed to last a long time, but at length his brain cleared, and he saw that they were swarming up and down ropes and cradles. He heard The Kid croak: “It’s Christmas Day! God Almighty, it’s Christmas Day!”
Then many hands lifted him from the bottom of the boat and, as they did so, his own hand reached out and up for the harmonica, which he remembered having dropped in the thwarts the moment he saw the ship.
A sailor, who seemed to speak in a strong level voice, said: “Lumme! We mustn’t forget that, must we chum?”
Then Ted’s senses slipped away from him once more, and he remembered nothing until he awoke in a white cot and saw Gunter grinning at him from a range of a few inches.
“Feel like a tune, Steward?” said Gunter, and held up the harmonica.
He must have noted Ted’s bewilderment, for he added: “It was a British ship, the Hyacinth, on the way to the States. They left it a bit late, didn’t they? One more day and we’d have been done to a turn! Go to sleep again, I’ll look after this! By God, it was a damned good job for us you had it with you, chum!”
Ted went back to sleep, alternately dozing, and dreaming, until they dropped anchor in Charleston, the vessel’s first port of call.
It was here that Second Officer Gunter made out his first report and handed it to the British Consul. The final paragraph of the report read:
“In my opinion most of the men in the boat owe their lives to Steward Edward Hartnell, and his harmonica. Although himself in the last stages of exhaustion, the Steward continued to cheer his comrades with a variation of tunes, sometimes playing for hours at a stretch. I consider his example worthy of recognition, showing, as it did, remarkable qualities of courage and devotion to others.”
The paragraph ultimately crossed the Atlantic, where it earned Ted Hartnell, ex-stonemason, ex-jazz orchestra leader, and war times sea steward, the George Medal.
It was the first decoration to be won in the Avenue.
CHAPTER VI
Archie In The Doldrums
ELAINE FRASER, NÉE Frith, formerly of Number Seventeen, now of Number Forty-Three, won no medals during the war, but some would have said she earned one, if only for achieving the distinction of being the one person in the Avenue, who never once allowed the exigencies of war to limit her dreams.
Elaine had come to terms with life long, long ago, when she had first dreamed her dream, in the limited privacy of the little porch-room she had occupied, in her mother’s household.
Today, at twenty-nine, she saw no reason why the crazy antics of an Austrian house-painter should induce her to vary her plans in the smallest particular. She remained aloof from the war, and when the waging of the war by the people all about her caused an occasional obstacle to be raised in her path, she went over, or under it, with the adroitness of a professional athlete.
Good food was scarce, but she got all she needed from Archie. Smart clothes were in short supply, but she had plenty of money put by and more flowing in all the time, so that she came to a certain arrangement with the manager of the fashion house that she had patronised before the war, and was now the best dressed woman in the Avenue. The blitz did not worry her, for she was a fatalist, without even being aware of it, and having converted the dining-room at the back into a bedroom, and called in a carpenter to strengthen the walls and the ceiling with some beams salvaged from a less fortunate local householder, she slept soundly through all but the noisiest raids. Even the blackout did not worry her. She was the kind of person who could see all she cared to see, with or without a light.
Sometimes, when she was curled up on her settee, reading a novel, sipping a gin and tonic, and dipping steadily into one of Archie’s boxes of chocolates at her elbow, she looked rather like a large, comfortable Persian cat taking its ease on the hearthrug. The war news never caused her a moment’s concern, for she neither listened to it, nor read about it. She used the chic, portable radio that Esme had given her for programmes of light orchestral music, and although she bought all the glossy magazines that she could lay hands on, she found nothing to interest her in the newspapers, and had long since ordered her newsagent to stop delivering them.
In a way she too performed war work and had done from the outset. From time to time she had made a number of fighting men very happy indeed and what more could a woman do, when happiness was so hard to come by nowadays?
There had been Stepan, the Polish airman, whose corpse was now washing about in the Channel somewhere. She had made Stepan happy for weeks, for since his flight from Warsaw he had found Englishwomen excessively cold and unresponsive, until he ran into Elaine at an Allied Relief Fund Dance. After Stepan there had been the Dutchman, who also left the house sweating and beaming, and whenever her husband Esme came home on leave, she made him happy too, giving him no opportunity to voice the doubts and dreads he had experienced during the night watches in the Midland orderly room that he inhabited.
In addition to all these endeavours she made Archie Carver happy every Saturday night, sirens notwithstanding, and Archie was a much-harassed man these days, greatly in need of a little relaxation. The blitz was becoming an obsession with him, not because he feared that it might cut short his life, but because the Luftwaffe crews had taken to using incendiaries and oil-bombs and at any moment one might fall on his store at the back of the corner shop, destroying goods that could not be replaced, not even by a man as enterprising as Archie.
Elaine knew nothing whatever about Archie’s private strong-100m and its oil-drums, now almost full, but she knew that a stock of rationed goods was more valuable than money and that the careful deployment of Archie’s stocks (the product of inspired buying during the busy year spent under Mr. Chamberlain’s umbrella) was no guarantee at all against the greater part of these goods going up in smoke. Bombs were falling everywhere nowadays and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that a heavy raid on South London would account for half a dozen of his rented storehouses, scattered though they were over a wide area, between Catford and Wickham.
She noticed how jittery he was getting when he made his weekly call on her one night early in the New Year. She was already in bed, reading, when she heard him dump the heavy cardboard box containing her rations on the scullery table, just inside the back door.
She called, cheerily: “Hullo there? I’m not asleep,” and he slouched in, looking drawn and haggard, not at
all like the old, purposeful Archie, who had knocked her down with his sports car at the bottom of Shirley Rise on that awful day that the doctor told her she could expect Esme’s child in August.
His movements were heavy and resigned, as he sat on the foot of the bed and dragged off his brogues. His broad face seemed a little thinner and he blinked and blinked in the soft light, as though his eyes pricked, and smarted.
“You look all in, dearest,” she said, sympathetically. She called all her men friends, ‘dearest’. ‘Darling’ had ceased to mean anything, and she disliked the American terms ‘cutie, ‘sugar’, and ‘honey’. Neither was the word even used by her hypocritically, for the man who happened to be sitting on the end of the bed, at any particular time, really was her dearest, and remained so until he had gone, and another had taken his place.
“It’s these bloody incendiaries,” he told her, glumly, “I don’t mind H.E., you could salvage most of the stuff after an H.E., but once the place is alight, what chance has anybody got? You’d simply have to stand by and watch a fortune blaze up under the blasted hoses! It’s not just that either! Sometimes I wonder what the hell it’s all in aid of!”
“You mean the war?”
“War? War, no—everything—life!”
Most women, most wives indeed, would have tried to reason with him, to point out that he was overtired, and out of sorts, that London was a big place, that there were millions of square yards to receive a limited number of incendiary bombs, and that the chances of one of his stores being demolished was therefore remote, if one weighed the risks objectively. He would then have begun to argue about it, getting more and more irritable in the process, and clinging more and more obstinately to his own gloomy points of view, so that in the end they would have bickered and sulked, and the entire evening would have been spoiled.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 7