Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys

by Mary Gibson

  ‘At least I was there, to hear him say he was proud of me.’

  ***

  In the coming months, as the V-bombs continued to roar over the south-east, those that got through the coastal barrage, through their fighter planes and through the barrage balloons had only one last hurdle between them and the civilian population: the heavy artillery batteries, like May’s, that formed a ring round London. May’s team, with Mac as their new Number One, would go to bed at seven in the evening, wake at one-thirty a.m. and be on post in minutes. The routine was punishing, but at least they were getting results and they had almost begun to feel hopeful that they had the doodlebugs beaten when a new threat filtered through. Some people were calling them flying gas mains because of the rash of supposed exploding gas mains all over London. The battery was told to prepare for a threat that no predictor could track and few guns could reach, weapons that travelled at the speed of sound and only announced their coming after they had arrived, so that at least you never heard the one that killed you.

  Through all this, May had little news of Bill. She had not received a letter from him in months. Though she hated such long silences, she had grown used to them. Learning to love him at a distance was nothing new to her – it seemed to have been their way from the moment they met, and sometimes she wondered, if the day ever came when they could live together, would they even get along? But in the meantime she sent off her own letters, written sometimes in the early mornings, straight from the gun park, or in the evenings with a torch under the blankets, eating into her precious sleeping times. She tried to pour out all the forestalled emotion that their separation had forced upon them, wanting him to know how, if he were there, she would hold him, kiss him. Yet all she could really do was match the number of X’s on the bottom of the letters to his own. Knowing Bill as she did, he would die of embarrassment to think the censor might ever read her most private thoughts about him. The delays in the mail were always explained eventually, usually caused by a move from one camp to another, or sometimes to a completely different country. The hiatus would be followed by a flurry of letters. But this had been the longest silence since he left and, because she was on constant duty except when asleep, it came as a surprise when she actually had time to count the weeks since his last letter and began to worry even more than she usually did.

  Then one day in October she received a huge bundle. Seventy-six letters! They were jumbled up and she had to force herself to hold back from plunging midway into the treasure chest, so that she could arrange them in date order. Then she spent every spare minute reading them, quickly at first, then slowly, twice and three times. She never tired of reading them, embellishing each small detail in her imagination. The mention of prickly heat and the discomfort of sleeping beneath a mosquito net had her looking up remedies and issuing warnings about malaria in her next letter, which no doubt he was already only too aware of. Out of one letter slipped a small, fuzzy snapshot and at first she didn’t recognize him. Although he’d told her to stop imagining him in RAF blues long ago, still the predominant image in her mind was always the dark wavy hair beneath his blue cap and belted air-force blue tunic, with its gunner armourer insignia. The young man in the photograph was so thin he hardly looked like Bill. Stripped to the waist in just a pair of khaki shorts, she could see that his skin had darkened in the baking sun. In front of a long, open-sided, palm-covered building, foot resting on an ammunition case and elbow on knee, he was leaning forward, looking intently into the camera. May knew that sometimes the fighter boys would use old film from the gun turrets in their cameras, and the resulting snaps were always grainy. Although half his face was shadowed by a tilted bush hat, he looked out at her with an expression designed, she knew, to show how much he loved her, but which revealed only a deep sadness. The face told her, more than all his words, how much he missed her.

  It was still almost impossible to work out exactly where he was in the world, though there’d been long stationary periods where she could fix him. She knew that after the troopship, he’d arrived in India, with mention of rupees, annas, women in saris and char wallahs making that much obvious. He’d told her the story of the poor boy who sat on the ground outside their billet from seven in the morning till eleven at night, serving them tea and biscuits and how, one day, he’d asked the young chap what he felt about his job. Imagine my surprise, May, when he answered me in perfect public-schoolboy English, ‘Well, sir, I’m pretty browned off about it!’ So I gave him a couple of rupees, poor little tyke. I tell you, May, some of the working conditions out here make Garner’s seem like a picnic!

  At the Indian airfield, his daily routine seemed very like Morecombe, with long hours of boredom, waiting for orders, interspersed with trips to the nearby big town, eating in local cafés and going to the flicks, compared to which, he said, the Star in Abbey Street was a palace. Then followed a gap of many weeks, after which he wrote of a trip further into the jungle, and his most frightening experience to date. Stirrings and rustlings in the jungle had announced the appearance of a huge, dragon-like lizard, walking slowly towards him as he sat on the pole latrine. I wasn’t at my best, as you can imagine, and I couldn’t have been more scared than if the enemy had come running out of the jungle at me, bayonets fixed!

  So he was near an enemy. And then she’d had to stop reading for a while, until she could trace on a map the most likely place near India he might be. With the information that there were Japs around every jungle path, and the help of another clue, the name of the local horse-drawn transport, which he’d said were gharries, she concluded that it must be on the border with Burma. The reports that had come back from there made her blood run so cold, she wished she’d never checked.

  It was easier to think of the small events of his life. And she had helped herself in this at least by memorizing all his small, habitual mannerisms before he left. When he wrote his letters, he might be in a jungle hut, using an ammo box for a desk, but she knew he would be biting the end of his pen while he searched for a word, and though his tea might be served to him out of a bucket by a char wallah, he would still be blowing the surface absent-mindedly to cool it, whatever its temperature.

  One of the hardest things was not having him there to talk to about her father. Of course she’d written and told him, but she would have given anything for one strong hug from Bill, to lay her head against his chest and cry for her poor brave father. But only an echo of her grief would ever reach Bill; it was just another of the precious times together that war had stolen from them.

  But by now she had surfeited herself on his seventy-six letters and though the last of them had been dated three months earlier, she was content in the knowledge that at least then he’d been alive and well. So when she received more mail at the end of the week she was surprised. But the letter wasn’t from Bill. It was from his father and he was sorry to tell her they’d been informed that Bill had been listed as missing.

  30

  Wings To Fly

  October 1944–March 1945

  When Peggy had finally left St Olave’s Hospital she’d felt reborn. There was nothing to harm her. She’d seen death and it had Harry’s face; what was there left to fear? Though her mother begged her to go back to Moreton-in-Marsh, at least until her injuries healed, she refused to be chased out by the doodlebugs. But the truth was, she now had nowhere to live in Bermondsey. Dix’s Place was barely big enough for her grandparents and Southwark Park Road had been left nothing but a roof on a shell. Nell Gilbie came to her rescue. Peggy and Pearl could take over her front room, she said, at least until somewhere more permanent could be found. Together, she and Mrs Gilbie had strained to move the woman’s heavy oak table. Fashionable in the previous decade and her pride and joy, it must have contained more wood in its bulbous legs than an entire utility table. Peggy would sleep on the overstuffed sofa and Pearl had a cot bed from the Sally Army.

  She was grateful for the temporary refuge, for it gave her the confidence to refuse Geor
ge when he made another offer to take her back. She was walking the pram along the Blue, when he dodged out from behind the eel seller’s stall. She took in a breath, shocked not only by his presence but also by his appearance. He stood in front of the eel sink, with its grey, wriggling tangle of bodies, and he seemed to be squirming himself.

  ‘Hello, Peg.’ His pallid face had a sheen of sweat on it, though it was a cold day.

  ‘Hello, George.’

  She tried to push the pram round him, but the crowd on the pavement prevented her. He stepped aside to let her through and began walking beside her. Wondering what he was up to, she was shocked when he blurted out, ‘I’m sorry about your dad and the house… and, well, I think you should come back to me…’ Peggy stopped the pram and looked at him. He licked his lips and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked worse than she’d ever seen him.

  ‘Is this Grandad’s idea?’

  ‘No!’ He smiled nervously and dug his hands deep into his overcoat, which she noticed was greasy around the collar. ‘Why would it be his idea?’

  She wasn’t fooled. She’d found out what her grandfather had over him. Somehow he’d acquired George’s book, the one listing dates, names and payments received from all those healthy young men who hadn’t fancied fighting for King and country, the ones that George had stood in for at the draft office. It seemed the prospect of having Peggy back under his roof was far more appealing to George than a charge of treason.

  ‘I just think we should put the past behind us,’ he went on, ‘and let’s face it, Peg, you ain’t got much going for you, not since that feller of your’n died, have you?’

  ‘You don’t look well, George,’ she said, quickening her steps. He couldn’t keep up with her. His breath came in painful gasps and she couldn’t help herself; she looked back. He was leaning against a wall, taking in a long whistling breath. He’d been cashing in on his own ill health for so long, doing his deal with the devil, that now it seemed punishment was being exacted. His breath was shorter than ever, but the yellow pallor and trembling hands spoke of more than just lung disease and she remembered what May had said about the empty bottles in his flat.

  ‘George, you need to take better care of yourself – look at you!’

  ‘Well, I ain’t got you to look after me any more, have I, princess?’

  ‘I wasn’t happy, George. I didn’t want to be a princess. I just wanted to be me.’

  ‘I did love you, princ… Peg, it’s just I was too old for you. Probably come down too hard on you. I’ll do it different.’

  She shook her head and began walking back towards St James’s Road. ‘You can’t be any different. I know you, George. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve already got somewhere to live.’ She pointed vaguely towards the Gilbie house.

  ‘I’ll be straight, Peggy. Your granddad did suggest it, but it’s not the reason I’m asking you to come back.’

  George wasn’t giving up and a familiar panic began to take hold of her. She felt her heart beating, like a butterfly in a web. She was after all virtually homeless, with no income and a child to bring up on her own. But at that moment Pearl woke up and looked at Peggy with Harry’s eyes. It was as if Peggy had woken up herself.

  ‘Thanks for the offer, George, but it wouldn’t be the best for me or Pearl. But I wish you well, I really do.’

  She walked away, feeling the tight band around her heart release. She filled her lungs and took in a deep breath, then leaned forward to tuck Pearl in. ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, darling?’ she said as her daughter smiled at her, revealing tiny pearls of teeth. She had almost reached the Gilbie house when the klaxon sounded. The spotters on Pearce Duff’s roof had obviously seen a doodlebug. She looked up. Not fifty feet above her and losing height was the terrifying finned shape, shooting flame and roaring. She stopped dead and watched as it passed over, fearing nothing.

  *

  When the doodlebugs were joined by rockets later that year, Peggy’s fatalism seemed to become universal. People took again to the shelters at night, but during the day the V-2s could not be evaded. There was no prayer or charm that could protect you. Everyone said it either had your name on or it didn’t. Even her sister May admitted that there was no warning system against them, unless the ATS spotters along the coast happened to catch the puff of smoke when they were launched from the French sites. Once the rockets were on their way, heading towards Tower Bridge at thousands of miles per hour, there was not much anybody could do.

  After two explosions ripped apart the ill-fated John Bull Arch within a matter of days, everyone agreed it was too much of a coincidence to be put down to gas mains. One after another the two V-2s had ploughed down through the railway line, crushing the old John Bull pub and flattening buildings all along the Blue, and now the government was forced to admit that they were under attack from a new and terrible Vengeance weapon.

  The day after the second V-2 destroyed the John Bull Arch, Peggy and Mrs Gilbie stood on the corner of Blue Anchor Lane, looking down the rain-slick street towards the collapsed railway line. The temporary bridge that had been hastily erected after the first attack ten days earlier had been blown clean away.

  ‘The train tracks look a bit like the roller coaster at Margate, don’t they?’ Peggy said. The whole centre section of the arch had fallen in upon itself, leaving the rails unsupported. They were bent down into a massive twisted loop, almost touching the road. The usual cranes and rescue vehicles were packed into the street, and though men in white tin hats still swarmed over a mound of bricks and timber, the clean-up operation was well under way.

  Peggy shivered, thinking of those who’d lost their lives or their homes, and remembered the first bombing of the arch in those early days of the Blitz.

  ‘That was where your brother Jack died, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Gilbie asked, while she gently jogged four-year-old Jack as he slumbered in the pushchair.

  ‘He wasn’t sheltering under it. They found him not far away. He used to ignore the warnings all the time. We think it was shrapnel or debris got him. The worst thing was that we didn’t find him for days…’

  ‘Makes you wonder why some places get hit over and over,’ the woman said.

  ‘My Granny Byron would tell you it’s fate.’

  ‘Well, she might be right, love, but it’s my opinion if we’d had a few more proper shelters ready in nineteen-forty, we wouldn’t have been under the arches in the first place, would we? Sometimes you can help out fate a bit, you know.’

  ‘I’d like to put you and Granny Byron in a room one day, see who comes out on top!’ Peggy smiled, leaning over the big pram to pull up the hood against the rain. Peggy loved Nell Gilbie for her practicality. And she’d had reason to be grateful for it in the past couple of months, during which the Gilbies had made her and Pearl part of their family.

  Since these latest attacks, Peggy really could count herself without a home, for their old shell of a house in Southwark Park Road had finally resolved itself into nothing but dust and ashes. The blast from the V-2s that had smashed into the John Bull Arch had brought every unstable building in the area crashing down, and their home had finally succumbed. She doubted that she could even find its position now, not that she wanted to see the sad remains. But she knew she couldn’t impose on the Gilbies’ generosity forever. She would have to find a place, and an income, of her own.

  In the end, it was Harry who’d given her the way. One morning, during the same week they’d learned Bill was missing, the Gilbies received another letter. Nell came into the kitchen, holding it almost at arm’s length. Peggy took one glance at the official-looking document and knew what Mrs Gilbie was thinking. It could only be more bad news. Peggy was holding Pearl, and with a tacit understanding the two women had exchanged their burdens. Nell took Pearl into her arms and Peggy took the letter. She’d had enough experience of receiving bad news, but she hadn’t learned how to give it, and her fingers had fumbled opening the envelope. When a cry escaped her lips, Mr
s Gilbie had lowered her head, drawing Pearl more tightly into her arms.

  ‘Our Bill?’ she’d asked in a small voice.

  ‘No.’ Peggy had shaken her head. ‘It’s about Harry.’

  The letter was from a solicitor’s in the City. And Mrs Gilbie had made her read it aloud twice. Did they know the whereabouts of a Mrs Margaret Flint, last known address the Purbrook Estate? They were trying to settle the estate of a Mr Harry Steadman. Letters addressed to Mrs Flint had been returned, not known at this address. But Mr Steadman had made provision for his son, John, known as Jack, and for the Gilbies and Mrs Flint. This was a shock, for Peggy had always assumed Harry wasn’t a wealthy man. Army uniform could be a great leveller. And in fact, it turned out she’d been right, for Harry had very little to leave them – when he’d died. But after death, it seemed, he had saved one final gift for her.

  Harry might not have been prosperous, but apparently his family was, and had owned property all over South London. Now, with the death of his remaining uncle, the estate had passed to Harry’s children and to Peggy. She found herself the owner of properties in Dulwich and Camberwell, as well as in Bermondsey.

  Over the past weeks the solicitor had helped her sell some, and others she planned to rent out. But on this particular morning she and Mrs Gilbie were going to see the house in Fort Road. It looked the best prospect for what she had in mind but she needed Mrs Gilbie with her, for the plan would involve both of them.

  Turning away from the remains of the John Bull Arch, they made their way towards Thorburn Square, cutting through it as the rain came on again, slanting across the churchyard, which looked bare and exposed without its palisade of iron railings. But the lofty old London plane trees still stood like temple columns round its four sides, shielding the church in the centre. Broad red and gold leaves fell wetly about them, sticking to the pram wheels as they approached Fort Road. This part of the street had largely escaped bomb damage and soon they came to the empty terraced house that the solicitor had described. She fished out the key. It seemed strange to be a woman of property and, though undeserved, she intended to make the most of it.