by Mary Gibson
She took the print, pleased, not so much by the compliment as that he had noticed the colour of her eyes.
‘Do you think they’ll come back?’
Bill looked skyward. ‘I think this is just the beginning. They’ll be back tonight.’
‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘I don’t think you should come out to the pub tonight, May. It’s too dangerous.’
He registered her disappointment and added with a laugh, ‘The entertainment won’t be there anyway. I’ll be on fire-watching duty, up on Garner’s roof all night. Come on, I’ll see you home.’
She shook her head at his offer. ‘I’ll be fine now, Bill. They look like they need your help more than me,’ she said, looking towards a group of ARPs who’d begun searching through the rubble for survivors. His gaze followed hers.
‘You’re probably right, if you’re sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll be fine.’
She turned away and when she was sure she was out of Bill’s sight broke into a sprint. Passing more damaged shops, she found herself praying all the way that she still had a home to return to.
As she approached her house, her breath coming in short gasps, she saw a few fires still burning, then rounding a bend she came to a halt, gasping with relief to see her home standing undamaged. But it was a short-lived relief, for as Bill Gilbie had predicted, later that night the bombers came again. May and her family crammed into the little Anderson shelter, this time with no complaints about its dampness or the water pooling on the floor around them. All night they were battered and pummelled by ceaseless explosions in an endless rain of sound and fury. But in the early hours exhaustion claimed her and she slept until her mother shook her awake into a silent dawn. Her first thought was of Bill Gilbie, standing on Garner’s rooftop through it all.
That bombing raid had been her first taste of real fear, and from then on she looked back, almost with nostalgia, to those early months of the war when she’d viewed air raids as entertainments to break up a deadly dull day at Garner’s. All her days now promised to be deadly, and never dull. Her mother had called her ‘brave Jack Lairy’ during that first false alarm, almost a year ago, but now she knew it hadn’t been bravery at all, just fearlessness, born of ignorance.
***
For weeks and months on end, day and night, her home was pounded out of all recognition. Life became something that happened between air raids, and then it became something that happened during them as well. For now, at work, when the threat was all too real and the sirens sounded, they did not rush down to the basement. If they had done, the factory would have come to a halt. Instead, they waited for Bill Gilbie and the other spotters on the roof to give them the signal, and only when the planes were almost overhead did they retreat to the basement.
Autumn of 1940 announced itself with its first golds, but the seasons seemed irrelevant, the only measure of time being the number of nights that the bombers had come. One morning, after a sleepless night in the Anderson shelter, she emerged into a muted world of pale ashes and russet brick-dust. It was as if the surrounding buildings had been ground down by a giant millstone. The covering on the pavement was like snow and sand mixed together. Deeper at the kerbsides, it rose in puffs as she walked to the leather factory in The Grange. The air in the bombed streets hung thick with a sickening smell, which she didn’t want to put a name to, though its putrid signature was familiar to her from the tannery. Hides steeping in the vile-smelling mixture of faeces and urine were bad enough, but nothing could prepare her for this stench, wafting up from the crushed shells of neighbours’ houses, from the pubs, shops and factories that formed her daily landscape. The odour had all the intimacy of death, and she knew its cause as surely as she knew the friendly face of Flo next door, who waved to her through her broken window, or Johnny Capp, who stood outside the ruined front of his grocery shop. He beckoned to her as she passed.
‘Here, what do you think of this, May?’ He held a dripping paintbrush over a can and she noticed a faint trembling in his hand, almost as if the brush were too heavy for him. May read the freshly painted sign he had propped in front of the gaping hole: MORE OPEN THAN USUAL!
She laughed. ‘How are the family, all right?’
‘Yes, love, and yours?’
She nodded.
‘Thank gawd. We’re the lucky ones, eh?’
But after last night’s raid, many of her friends and neighbours were not, as they lay still undiscovered beneath pyramids of brick and stone punctuating the streets.
Business as Usual? It wasn’t the first such sign May saw on her walk to work. She pulled her coat closely around her and shivered. How could death and destruction ever result in ‘business as usual’? But here she was, going to work – as usual. The consistency of the dust changed beneath her feet; now she was crunching broken glass. There were hundreds of dagger-like shards, crushed to crystals under the booted feet of firemen and ARPs, rushing in concentrated groups to put out fires still blazing. She dodged out of the drifting spray from one of their hoses, and stepping over a rivulet running in the gutter, she rounded the corner into The Grange, where she stopped short.
A whole corner of the leather factory was open to the sky, part of a side wall completely blown off. Benches hung in mid-air; dressed hides flapped from shattered wooden bins, some torn into ragged strips. And floating on the air were the wind-blown dye samples; small scraps of dark green morocco, burgundy kid and old-gold calf, fluttering around her, like leather leaves in a hellish burning autumn. The dye room, by the looks of things, was still on fire, and a group of firemen aimed bucking water jets into multicoloured flames leaping from its windows. Each flame took on the hue of one of the carefully cooked leather dyes. All the secret formulas! May knew they had been closely guarded for hundreds of years by succeeding foremen. What if they had all gone up in smoke? She stood open-mouthed as vats of dyes ignited, sending flames of petrol blue and vermillion shooting into the air. Saffron yellow and violet joined the mix, painting the grey, dust-smudged world with a rainbow of fire.
The flames burst up with renewed incandescence, and in spite of the heat coming off the blaze, she stood mesmerized, unable to move either forward or back. This was her workplace, the site of her daily grind, hated and yet secure, reviled and yet familiar. Now it was being transformed into all its chemical elements before her eyes. It felt as if her world was disintegrating. She thought she heard an impossible cry, coming from beyond the flames, and took one step forward, when a shout alerted her and a strong pair of hands tugged her back.
‘Watch out! It’s going!’
A tumbling, charred and smoking beam bounced inches from where she’d been standing and now she whirled round to see that Bill Gilbie was once again her rescuer.
‘May?’ he said. ‘Come on, there’s nothing for us to do here.’
He took her arm, leading her back across the street where groups of other workers had gathered, out of the way of the firemen, the flames and the falling timber.
Emmy sought her out through the crowd of onlookers, and she stood with her workmates, but no one spoke. A shocked numbness seemed to have infected them all. Though there was no work to go to, and nothing any of them could do to help, they stood in indecisive little groups, huddled together as if for comfort. They watched till the shooting flames lost their stained-glass brilliance and the sky faded first to smudged watercolours and then to a grey blanket, covering the sopping mass of ashes, dull molten glass and charred animal hides.
May jumped as she felt a hand rest gently on her arm.
‘Don’t think we’ll be doing any work today, do you?’
She turned round to find Bill at her side.
‘No, don’t suppose we will.’
Suddenly he reached up to rub away a streak of soot from her cheek with his thumb. Realizing what he’d done, he blushed and she felt embarrassed. The normal social barriers seemed to have tumbled down along with the buildings around them.
‘So
rry, you’ve got soot all over your face,’ he apologized.
‘I must look a state. Is it gone?’ she asked.
He nodded and went on. ‘I was helping the fire wardens earlier – we got a few people out.’
‘Were there many inside?’ She tried to calculate how many would have been at work, during the night shift.
‘Fair few, mostly in the shelter, but that took a hit. I was up on the roof, fire-watching, when they came.’
‘Did everyone get out?’
‘They’re still looking,’ he said, glancing anxiously towards the dust-shrouded debris, where volunteers combed the ruins and firemen were still putting out scattered embers.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked, feeling as if she needed permission to leave.
‘Come for a walk?’ He turned to her with a weary smile. ‘If we’ve got a day off, we might as well make the most of it.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather go home and get some kip? You’ve been up half the night!’
She felt a sharp nudge in her back, and looked round quickly to see Emmy, mouthing, ‘Go on!’
She turned back to Bill, blushing, and he shrugged. ‘I don’t think I could sleep a wink, not after the night I’ve had.’
More to avoid the dumb shows from Emmy, May agreed, and they set off together, wandering the streets of Bermondsey, surveying the bomb damage as they went. Their route took them from the factory towards Grange Walk, where, as they passed an ancient narrow house, Bill pointed to some metal protrusions high up on the front wall.
‘See those? They’re the hinges from the old Bermondsey Abbey gate.’
May looked up. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Something as small as a hinge, all that’s left of it… there won’t be much more left of our Bermondsey after all this is over.’
It was a melancholy thought, and they tramped on in silence. After a while, Bill said, ‘It reminds me of that rhyme “London Bridge is falling down”. Perhaps it’s never been any different – it’s always falling down, and we’ll always have to build it up again.’
‘Well, the bombs made a good job of the first bit last night,’ May said with a wry smile.
For as they headed towards Tower Bridge Road, there was virtually no street left undamaged. They passed bombed-out families straggling in anxious little bands towards the rest shelters, others sifting through the rubble of their homes, rescuing precious family belongings. There were entire streets of houses with front walls ripped off, sometimes with the interiors still intact, wallpaper and furniture exposed to view. In one house, a bed hung precariously from a ruined top floor, ready to topple. As they stopped to put a name to an unrecognizable street or a missing building, she discovered that Bill Gilbie was easy to talk to: he seemed genuinely interested in her. Before long he had found out her unremarkable life history. It was more than any other boy had, and her usual shyness retreated enough for her to ask him about himself.
‘Where were you working before Garner’s?’ she asked.
‘I was at the Blue Anchor works.’
She wrinkled her nose. The Blue Anchor was notorious as one of the smelliest of the local tanneries, with its exotic mix of sealskins, snakeskins and alligators.
‘When you first came to Garner’s, I thought you worked in the office.’
He chuckled. ‘What made you think that?’
‘I thought you looked a bit like a college boy, that’s all.’
She’d noticed that he always came to work in a smart jacket and tie, even though they were replaced by rolled-up shirtsleeves and a leather apron once he was there. Hard physical labour had given him a strong frame, but for May it was his intelligent eyes and broad forehead, with the habitual strand falling across it, that made her think of him that way.
‘College boy, eh? Till you saw me lugging hides about! No, I’ve always been in factories, ever since I left school.’
He gave her the rather wry smile she’d noticed once before when she thought he might have been disappointed in love.
‘I did get a scholarship, wanted to go, but Mum and Dad couldn’t afford the tram fare to Goldsmiths,’ he said, and she realized she was right about the smile. It was just his way of masking disappointment.
‘Oh, Bill, that’s such a shame.’
‘That’s life,’ he said, pushing back his hair.
May hesitated. ‘Well, I didn’t even bother to take the exam. Mum and Dad didn’t see the point for a girl. And they needed my wages coming in. But Garner’s is not so bad. At least I’ve got my own money. It gives you a bit of independence.’
It was her stock response on the subject, even though it was untrue. The majority of her wages went to her mother and May got to keep three shillings, more than some of her friends were allowed, but still never enough for independence. Any lingering sadness that the family’s need of her wage had curtailed her future she kept securely shut away. She tried never to let her parents get a hint of her true feelings. Why burden them with guilt, when there was nothing they could do about it?
‘But sometimes I think it would’ve been nice to have the choice,’ she added in a rush of honesty.
‘Me too!’ he said. ‘But I don’t blame Mum and Dad.’ He was obviously as eager as she to protect his parents from the judgement of strangers.
Nearing Tower Bridge, they turned right, into the maze of riverside streets around Shad Thames. Smoke rising from Butler’s Wharf and the warehouses fronting the Thames evidenced that they had been targeted, and the acrid smell of charred timber caught in May’s throat. Here and there, they could glimpse the river, where once a slab-sided warehouse had obscured the view. And in one street, some very old houses that had begun to crumble a century earlier had finally met their nemesis. Though still standing, they seemed to be disintegrating from the bottom up. One in particular caught May’s attention, as a curiously shaped shaft of sunlight cut through the dust-filled air above it, to illuminate the tall, thin frontage with two distinct wings of light. Squashed between a pub and a warehouse, the house was leaning forward at an acute angle. But as she stared at the odd wings of light, glinting off the surviving windows, a small avalanche of bricks added to the mound at the bottom of the house. May jumped.
‘Looks like the roof’s about to fall off now!’ Bill said as a handful of old slate tiles slid with a crash to the pavement, sending up a fresh cloud of rubble dust to veil the shaft of light.
‘Best get back to the main road.’ He took her elbow, but as they turned to go she heard a high-pitched sound, coming from the old house. They looked at each other.
‘Cat?’ Bill put his head to one side and they both listened. Again came the high wail.
‘Oh, it’s pitiful,’ she said
He seemed to hesitate, then shook his head, without her having to voice her thought. ‘It’s too dangerous, May. It’d be stupid to go in there for a cat!’
Again, an almost accusing cry rose from the ruined building, this time ending in a choking sound. May put her finger to her lips. ‘Shhh… listen! That doesn’t sound like a cat!’
‘You stay here.’
‘No. I’m coming too.’
‘OK, but tread where I tread.’
She followed in his footsteps as he picked his way carefully over the pile of tumbled bricks, which had fallen from the front wall, leaving an opening into the ground floor of the house. They peered over the rubble and a cry forced itself from May’s lips. Bill reached back to steady her, clutching her hand as they inched forward. But May’s foot slipped and they froze as the whole rubble pile shifted. They gripped each other’s hands till it had settled, and they were able to look again through the opening.
It was a scene of domestic serenity. A woman sat in a rocking chair, holding an infant in her arms. Her face was full of a calm contentment but she was obviously dead. Yet with all the determined strength of a baby’s will, the screaming child was demonstrating that it was still very much alive.
For an instant May stiffened, an irrational sense
of the woman’s privacy holding her back. This was her home – how could they just walk into her home, uninvited. Maybe it was because the mother looked as if she were sleeping, had just nodded off by the fire after nursing her baby, perhaps waiting for her husband to come home. But the bombs had already invaded her home and there was no privacy in death.
‘We’ll have to go in… for the baby, Bill.’ Her voice shook and Bill squeezed her hand more tightly. Then, letting go, he inched carefully down the rubble mound and into the woman’s front room. May followed cautiously, but stumbled to her knees, setting the whole scree moving, tumbling her into the front room of the house.
Bill froze. ‘Careful, May! Are you all right?’
‘Yes, don’t worry about me!’ She gingerly got to her feet and stood watching as he gently prised the woman’s arms away. She heard him say ‘Sorry’ softly as he lifted her baby and handed the child to May. A current of trembling life shot through her as soon as the child was in her arms. Its cries sent a shudder through her own body, its insistent blue lips parting to let out screams of rage and fear.
‘Quick, Bill, we need to get it warm. It could’ve been there all night. Poor little thing.’
But as they began the precarious climb back out of the ruined house an agonized groaning came from the old timbers holding up the roof. She scrabbled for a foothold and, with the baby held in the crook of one arm, scrambled to the top of the pile of rubble. Bill clambered up behind her and grabbing her round the waist shouted, ‘Jump!’
3
John Bull Arch
September–December 1940
They launched themselves from the top of the mound. Staggering forward with the momentum of their leap, it was a minute before she looked back, to see the old house, which had resisted centuries of neglect and decay, now succumb. It met its end with a slow crash and a long sigh, almost like the exhalation of a last breath. All May could think of was the poor young mother, whose home had become her tomb.
She held the child as tightly as she dared, trying to give it her own warmth, but the baby, sensing she was not its mother, could not be comforted. She looked around for help. There was no one in sight. They stood listening to shouts and bells clanging further down Shad Thames.