by Annie Groves
The clear brilliance of the evening sky, with the moon already on the rise suggested that it wasn’t going to be the kind of night when you needed a torch, Charlie decided, as he stepped off the ferry along with the other passengers, and then headed down towards the tangle of narrow streets that led deeper and deeper into the slums.
On one street corner a fire was still burning sullenly from the previous night’s bombing, despite the fire service’s attempts to put it out. Thin, grubby-looking gangs of boys in patched hand-me-down clothes were going purposefully through the wreckage whilst one of their number stood on guard.
‘’Ere, soldier,’ one of them called out to Charlie in a nasal whine. ‘Give us a fag, will yer?’
Charlie was tempted to ignore him. He hadn’t wanted to come down here wearing his uniform, but seeing as he was supposed to be on a semiofficial visit to the home of a fellow soldier, he had felt he hadn’t had any choice. If he ignored the kids there was no saying that they might not take revenge by throwing a few bricks at him, but if he did he could end up like the Pied Piper, with them seeing him as an easy touch and pestering him for more.
In the end he decided to play safe, taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, opening it to remove the cigarettes and then throwing them towards the boys, telling them with a grin, ‘Here, help yourselves.’
It had been a pack of twenty, and by the time they had picked them all up, with any luck he’d be in the pub.
What he hadn’t reckoned on was how full the pub would be, with it being a Friday night. The place was packed with dock workers relaxing after a hard week’s work unloading freight from the convoys, and getting the ships ready to turn round as quickly as possible.
The sight of an unfamiliar face produced a sudden silence in the tap room, and as Charlie made his way to the bar he was conscious of an atmosphere that, if not entirely hostile, was certainly wary.
Telling the barman that he’d come to see Dougie, he ordered himself a pint of shandy and gave a friendly nod to the other men standing at the bar.
None of them responded but the barman was already jerking his head in the direction of the door to one side of the bar, telling Charlie curtly, ‘In there.’
Dougie wasn’t on his own in the small snug, and neither was he smiling. He took out a packet of cigarettes as Charlie walked in, putting one to his mouth, his gaze never leaving Charlie’s face as he snapped his fingers and one of the silent men standing with him leaped forward to light the cigarette for him.
He drew on it and then exhaled and then drew on it again, this time blowing a ring of smoke, which he watched ascend to the grimy ceiling before saying softly to Charlie, ‘I’m not very pleased with you, Charlie boy. Thought it was clever, did you, passing off them dud rings on me?’
He jerked his head and two of the men standing with him moved towards Charlie to stand either side of him and grab hold of his arms.
‘Answer the boss when he speaks to you, Charlie,’ one of the men told Charlie, jerking his arm up his back.
Pain ripped through Charlie’s muscles, fear beading his forehead with sweat.
‘It was a mistake,’ Charlie protested, gasping in agony as the pressure on his arm was increased.
‘It certainly was,’ Dougie agreed. ‘A big mistake – for you.’
‘Look, Dougie … Aaaagghhh …’
Charlie would have collapsed in agony if they hadn’t been holding him when one of the men doubled up his fist and thumped him in the stomach, warning him, ‘It’s Mr Richards to you, garbage.’
Charlie retched painfully, trying to drag air into his lungs.
‘I’ve brought the rest of the money,’ he managed to gasp out, desperate now to bring an end to what was happening and escape.
Another nod of Dougie’s head had one of Charlie’s captors going through the pockets of Charlie’s khaki battledress jacket to remove his wallet, which he handed to Dougie, who went through it and, to Charlie’s dismay, removed all the money from it, swiftly counting it.
‘OK. Give him his wallet back,’ Dougie instructed his heavies.
‘There’s damn-near a hundred and fifty quid there. I only owe you— Aaggghhhh.’
Before Charlie could finish his protest a fist smashed into him making him double up in agony again.
‘Sorry, Charlie boy. Didn’t I explain? There’s the small matter of interest, and compensation now for all the trouble you’ve caused me, as well as the original debt.’
‘But you can’t—’
Too late to wish he hadn’t said anything, Charlie recognised as he received another blow, this time to the side of his face, followed by another that had blood spurting from his nose and dropped him to the floor, fighting for breath and retching in agony.
The sound of the air-raid siren going off might have belonged to another world, for all that it meant to Charlie, but it certainly meant something to the other occupants of the room.
They looked towards Dougie in tense silence.
Lena winced and tried not to feel scared when she heard the air-raid siren sounding. She should have been in the shelter like everyone else in the street, but she was in disgrace, and so she had stayed behind when her aunt and uncle and her cousin had left earlier, her aunt ignoring her uncle’s protests that there might not be any bombing, insisting that she wouldn’t feel safe unless she was there and that she wanted to go early because she wasn’t going to be beaten to the best places again by ‘her from three down’.
All she’d done was try on her cousin’s new skirt and top, bought for her by her merchant seaman boyfriend, Lena reflected miserably. To hear Doris shrieking you’d have thought she’d have stolen her boyfriend. ‘Parading around in them like a trollop’ had been Doris’s exact words, when she had accused her, and then when Lena had pointed out spiritedly to her, ‘Well, they’re your clothes,’ she had got a slapped face from her cousin, followed by the threat of her uncle’s belt if she caused any more trouble.
She was supposed to have put up the blackout fabric on her bedroom window but she hadn’t done and now she was so scared with being in the house on her own that she didn’t want to.
* * *
Charlie had virtually been beaten unconscious when the air-raid siren went off.
Dougie, who had been watching the punishment being handed out, put out his cigarette and told his men, ‘Time to get down to the cellar, lads.’
The cellars beneath the pub had turned out handy during air-raid alarms, since they saved the pub occupants from having to go into the shelter.
‘What about him?’ one of the men who had been hitting Charlie asked.
‘Chuck him out in the street,’ Dougie told him. ‘With any luck Hitler will finish the job off for us.’
Lena didn’t pay much attention at first when two men came out of the pub, dragging a third man between them. Everyone local knew all about Dougie and his gang, but then the whoosh of another explosion and the fire from it lit up the darkness and she saw the hurt man’s face. It was him. Her hero. Not that he looked much like a hero now, Lena recognised.
The men had disappeared back into the pub, leaving him lying face down in the street. As Lena watched he tried to get up and then collapsed.
Lena ran downstairs and opened the front door. He was still there, trying to crawl now, and getting nowhere fast. She hurried over to him, coughing as she breathed in the acrid smoke billowing from a burning building in the next street, dodging the sudden hail of rubble as another bomb exploded close at hand.
At first when Charlie felt her hand on his arm he thought it was one of Dougie’s men, come back to finish him off, and he tried to push her away, but Lena refused to let go.
‘Come on, you’ve got to get up, otherwise we’ll both be blown to bits,’ she said fiercely.
A woman. Charlie turned his head to look at her – a moment of clarity amongst all the confusion and pain told him that her face was familiar, and very pretty.
‘Hello again, beautifu
l.’
Lena beamed. It was just like in the love stories she read. ‘Come on,’ she urged him again.
Somehow or other Charlie managed to stagger to his feet. All he wanted to do was go to sleep, but the pretty girl was pestering him to walk, and it was easier to give in than to argue. He leaned against her, almost knocking her over with his weight, but Lena had seen her aunt help her uncle when he was drunk, and she knew what to do. Draping Charlie’s arm around her shoulders she half coaxed and half dragged him down the street back to the house.
Another air raid, and she still hadn’t had the courage to say anything to Jean yet about her leaving, Katie thought miserably as she listened to the drone of the incoming aircraft, surely far more than there had been the previous night.
The moonlight had been so bright when they had hurried down the street to the shelter that no one had needed a torch. A bomber’s moon, people called such bright moonlight, meaning that the bombers would be able to find their targets far more easily – targets like the docks, and other places where they could do the most damage to the country’s resources and its pride. Places such as the army camp at Seacombe? Katie shivered even though it was a mild night.
Was Carole right? Should she have tried harder to make Luke listen to her?
‘You’re too soft,’ Carole had scoffed, ‘waiting for him to “understand”. Men aren’t like that, and if you was to ask me I’d say that him being a bit jealous shows how much he cares about you. You should have sat him down and made him listen, instead of letting him go off. You love him, after all – anyone can see that. And if you want my opinion, sometimes a girl has to work that bit harder to make things right between them than a chap does. See, a chap’s got his pride, hasn’t he, and it’s natural that he kicks up a bit when he thinks that a girl’s making a fool of him, ’cos he’s got to think of what his friends will think, whilst a girl knows that her friends will sympathise with her if a chap lets her down.’
Did Carole have a point? Carole was certainly far more pragmatic than she was herself, Katie admitted, and talking with her had certainly made Katie begin to question whether or not she was being silly to feel so hurt because Luke had been so quick to misjudge her and too angry to let her try to explain.
A volley of explosions so loud that they drowned out the sound of the incoming planes and the valiant retaliatory thud of the ack-ack gunfire shook the earth floor of the shelter, causing several indrawn breaths.
‘No need to worry,’ someone called out. ‘They say you never hear the one that gets you.’
‘Hitler’s got it in for us with a vengeance tonight,’ another voice chipped in.
‘Come on, let’s have a bit of a singsong, Dan,’ Jean suggested, hiding her own fear beneath a cheery manner. ‘You’ve got your accordion, haven’t you?’
Very soon they were all singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’, and pretending that they couldn’t hear the terror being rained down on the city.
Once she’d got him inside, Lena could see that he’d had a real old pasting, but she’d seen worse, living where she did. Her uncle liked a drink and had come back from a drinking session many a time bruised and battered after a falling-out with a mate.
As her auntie always said, with regard to Lena’s uncle, a bit of blood went a long way and a bruise was better out than in, for all that it made him look like someone had knocked seven bells out of him.
Charlie, half concussed from the blows he’d received, not really aware of where he was or who he was with, bellowed loudly when Lena applied the cloth she’d soaked in cold water to his bloody face and nose, trying to push her away.
‘The ruddy Luftwaffe won’t have no problem finding this place if you keep carrying on like that,’ Lena told him crossly. ‘They’ll be able to hear you in ruddy Hamburg.’
A woman’s voice. Charlie tried to clear his head, and then ducked automatically as he heard the whine and then the ear-splitting explosion as a bomb went off close at hand, quickly followed by another.
It crossed his mind that they should be in an air-raid shelter, but somehow he couldn’t organise his thoughts properly. His head ached like the devil. He slumped forward in the chair that Lena had managed to push him into.
‘You’ve got to keep your head back,’ she told him sharply, ‘so as I can clean you up a bit, and it will stop your nose bleeding as well. Made a right mess of your uniform, it has.’
Charlie put his hand up to his jacket and then stared as it came away red.
‘Let’s get it off you and I’ll see if I can sponge it up a bit for you.’
It was easier to give in than object. The pain in his head was so intense that all he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep.
Somehow Lena managed to drag the battledress jacket off Charlie’s limp body. He hadn’t moved or spoken since he’d yelled out when she’d started to clean him up. He was going to look a real mess when the bruising came out properly, she reckoned. His eye was already turning purple and there was a gash along his hairline, which luckily wasn’t bleeding like his nose had.
Bombs were going off all around them but Lena didn’t have time to worry about that. She was too busy trying to get her handsome soldier cleaned up and back on his feet. He wasn’t being very helpful, but eventually she’d managed to get all the blood off him, and his nose stopped bleeding.
‘Now I suppose you’re going to want something to eat,’ Lena told him, copying her auntie’s favourite comment to her uncle.
But Charlie simply shook his head slowly and told her in a slurred voice, ‘Bed. Tired. Want to lie down.’
He was getting up as he spoke, staggering around the kitchen even worse than her uncle did when he was drunk, and lurching into the wall, almost sending the table crashing over.
‘Come on,’ Lena told him briskly. ‘Let’s get you upstairs then.’
It took her five attempts, two of which ended up with them both lying in a tangle at the bottom of the stairs when Charlie had collapsed onto her, but eventually, scolding him and urging him whilst supporting him, Lena managed to get him onto the landing, and from there into her aunt and uncle’s bedroom, where he clutched the iron bedstead, swaying.
‘Bathroom. I need a pee.’
‘Then you’ll have to use this,’ Lena told him exasperatedly, searching under the bed for the chamber pot, ‘’cos I ain’t spending another hour taking you back down them stairs. The lavvy’s outside,’ she explained when he stared at her.
She’d never heard so many bombers coming over before, Lena admitted nervously, flinching at yet another explosion as she sat crosslegged on the bed where Charlie lay sprawled on his back, snoring loudly.
It was a pity about his face being knocked about, but he was still handsome, especially with that lovely hair, Lena thought tenderly, leaning over to smooth her fingers through Charlie’s thick fair hair. It was a good two hours now since she had brought him up here, his body doubling up with pain with every step.
Ooooh, it gave her ever such a funny feeling to touch him, sort of an excitement that she could feel right down inside her, but more than an excitement really, because it made her want to go on touching him. Of course, that was what happened when you fell in love with someone.
Lena’s eyes widened as suddenly Charlie muttered something and then reached out and pulled her down towards him. He wasn’t asleep any more; his eyes were open. He grunted and said something that again was a mutter she couldn’t understand.
Charlie felt really odd. His head was aching fit to burst. The pain that had made it so hard for him to climb the stairs had thankfully eased. He wanted desperately to go back to sleep, but some instinct for survival was urging him not to, that and the sudden fierce surge of lust the sight of the girl on the bed with him had provoked, driving everything else out of his head.
He had a vague memory of being set upon and then struggling up the stairs, but right now he had more important things to think about.
‘There’s bombs,’ Lena whispered,
conscious of the fact that by rights they should be in an air-raid shelter, but he obviously wasn’t that interested in the bombs because he was kissing her instead. Kissing her and touching her, and what with the excitement inside her and the knowledge that she had fallen in love, the bombs just didn’t seem to matter any more.
She did try to pull back when he started to take off her clothes – she wasn’t that daft that she didn’t know what that meant – but when she told him worriedly, ‘We can’t,’ he laughed and told her fiercely, ‘Yes, we can. You want to, don’t you, and so do I.’
‘Do you love me?’ she demanded.
‘Of course I do.’ Charlie would have told her anything to get what he wanted. He was on fire for her, burning up for her, his head filled with the sound of his own blood pumping through his veins.
‘And if anything happens you’ll make sure it’s all right?’
‘Something is definitely going to happen,’ Charlie assured her, misunderstanding. ‘And I’m certainly going to make sure it’s all right.’
He had no idea where he was or how he had got here – some whorehouse, he supposed, although it was odd that she should speak English when they were in France. Odd but not important enough to come between him and the now urgent drive of his need.
Lena managed to hold him off for long enough to ask him the most important question.
‘And you’ll marry me?’
Charlie laughed at the thought.
‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ he agreed. ‘Now come here.’
* * *
Emily noticed that the front door was open but she was so tired, what with it being the second night they’d had to get out of their beds and trudge off to the shelter, and tonight with the all clear not going off until gone three in the morning she’d had a job keeping her eyes open at all.
‘Come on,’ she told Tommy, leading the way to the kitchen. ‘Let’s get you a nice hot cup of cocoa and then back to your own bed.’