by Betty Burton
The basement was vast and divided into rooms, holding the coke-boiler, utilities meters, a wash-house, dry-store, wine-cellar, games-room and indoor drying-and ironing-room. Since the blitz on the South began, these subterranean rooms contained bed-rolls and hospital cots, and on many nights Eve, Nanny Bryce and the help slept down here.
Now there was an ack-ack gun dug into the hillside not more than a couple of miles along the road: it was not easy to get to sleep once it started firing. Connie Hardy had lain awake for ages. The drone of hundreds of incoming German bombers seemed to drill down through the walls. The dry-store, being set apart by a passageway from the rest of the basement, was where she and Freddy sheltered at night.
The bulb in Connie’s reading lamp had gone, and the ceiling-light was too dim to read by. It was so boring just sitting and sitting for hours. She had given herself a complete manicure and pedicure, brushed every speck from her uniform and even stitched the band back inside her cap. She had finished her G and T ages ago.
Where the hell was Freddy? As if she needed to ask. Sorry, Con, got talking in the mess with that Warrant Officer, and Jerry came over just as I was ready to leave. Couldn’t chance it then, it was raining shrapnel.
Freddy Hardy was the world’s most inveterate liar. An absolute damned shit because there was always sufficient truth in his stories to hold up to scrutiny. An absolute shit!
Connie knew where he was. Who he was with. What he was doing.
What he was doing was what he had been doing for years: wenching, whoring, seducing – how many words are there for it? –committing adultery, being unfaithful, womanizing. And what is he, as well as Company Chairman and Mayor? A lecher, libertine –probably a cuckolder. A shit! An absolute shit! A deceiver. Most of all he was that. He simply had to deceive anybody and everybody. If he was not involved in something just the right side of shady, then he wasn’t happy. He seemed to need to take a crooked path, even when it was as easy to stay on the straight and narrow.
The guns opened up again, followed by a crump-crump as bombs fell quite close, then the whine of a crippled plane which sounded as though it would crash, but kept going in spite of a great barrage of anti-aircraft guns.
Connie’s hands were trembling. She wanted company. More than anything, she wanted to obliterate the vision of Freddy in the arms of his latest. She was Eve’s age. She wore khaki and was something to do with entertainments. Entertainments! Over the past months, since Freddy had become deeply involved with the girl and, separately, in some very shady deals, Connie had, almost objectively, watched their marriage coming apart at the joints. Connie wanted a drink and company.
Nanny Bryce, sheltering in the warm ironing-room, would be dead to the world. If only Eve were here. If only I had some idea of where Eve goes with her little weekend bag. Although they had always got on well together, they had never been close. Had never learned to be mother and daughter, any more than Connie and her own beautiful, remote mother had learned. Connie wouldn’t have known where to start to enquire into Eve’s personal affairs, which was quite funny when one thought of the very personal information she was expected to gather about other women in the course of her duties at various clinics.
Connie wondered whether Nanny Bryce knew who it was Eve went away to sleep with. But one could not ask.
Quite by accident, when searching for a lost ear-ring in Eve’s room, Connie had come upon a box which had rolled under the bed. Connie was quite familiar with that type of round box. To the uninitiated, it might appear to be Max Factor face-powder, but at once Connie recognized the style as that of Marie Stopes from a private clinic. Thank God for small mercies, at least Eve knew what was what in that direction.
There seemed to be a lull in the air-raid, and Connie contemplated going upstairs to fetch the gin and some fresh tonic. Then she remembered that Freddy had a stock of it somewhere. Somewhere down here, he had been putting by a few boxes of things he said they might be glad of if it was a long war. She had little to do with it: it was he who unlocked the store to fetch a bottle or took stuff up to the kitchen when it was needed.
She had not been in the wine-cellar for ages. When she unlocked the door, she was astonished.
Perhaps it was not a miniature Fortnum’s, but it was easily a well-stocked Home & Colonial Stores. She read the labels and stencilled boxes and crates. Golden Syrup, toilet rolls, tea, cocoa, light bulbs, condensed milk, tins of ham, Canadian salmon, fruit, chicken, American butter. All foods that had virtually disappeared from shops. Seeing it all together like that, the meanings of Racketeer and Spiv were brought home to her. Black Market of this kind was held in contempt by the people with whom she daily came into contact, for it was their men who ran the gauntlet of U-boats to bring it in.
Even so, she collected a bottle of the black market gin and poured a heavy measure. The familiar, comforting aroma, the sting at the back of the tongue, the awareness of its slide down the throat, the numb warmth in the stomach. Thus coated against anger and anguish, Connie Hardy began to think and allow herself to admit that things were coming to a head. For years there had been women… the loyal secretary then, but this was only suspicion, the typists staying behind to type up reports, and badminton partners to whom he gave lifts home. But since the outbreak of war, Connie was sure there had been numerous others who had succumbed to his charm and practised seduction. Shit or no, he was always so bloody good at it. And now there were ATS and WAAF girls around by the dozen.
The warm gin in her stomach turned to acid and she felt like retching. But why do I care? It all went long ago.
It was two o’clock in the morning. There was a lull in the air-raid, Connie sat on the terrace chain-smoking and looking out across the valley at the terrible red glow that stretched along the horizon. Had it been a couple of hours later, one might have thought, ‘Red sky in the morning’, but dawn was still making its way over Europe towards Dover in the east: it would not reach Hampshire yet. And that red sky was in the south, and not far away.
She still sipped her gin. Life with Freddy Hardy consisted of nothing but pettiness. A few drinks, official functions, the round of cocktail and dinner dates, dress fittings, trips to London, to the theatre and to Paris… all to boost his ego, to be seen in the right places amongst the right people – people who could do him a bit of good.
A useless, foolish life. I eat dinner and scarcely think where it has come from. I put on my uniform and tell mothers how much orange juice to give their babies, and give them advice I only know from Government publications. A basement full of luxuries whilst half the south coast is going up in flames. The only thing that she could think of was to run away from it all and… what? I can’t even type.
* * *
The Landlord and Mont too had come up from the pub cellar to make tea and saw the shocking red glow in the south.
‘That’s the Docks.’
It was not necessary for these two elderly men to say more to one another. Each thought they knew what it must be like, although they could not in their worst nightmares have conjured up the reality of that night of fire-bombing.
Incendiary bombs had fallen like rain upon the warren of grotty shops, lodging-houses and pubs where there were prostitutes as young as ten, sailors of every age, and merchantmen of every race.
And where there were rows and rows and rows of terraced houses in which generations of dockers’ families had lived. What had yesterday been bonded warehouses, grain-stores, coal-yards, timber-yards, rats, fleas, cockroaches, men, women and babies, had this morning become fuel to the vast conflagration that lighted up the midsummer night sky.
The two elderly men were stricken and silent.
* * *
Georgia Kennedy and Gertie Wiltshire took turns to stand guard whilst they each ran to the lavatory in the yard. The air seemed very still and warm. Quiet except for the occasional brief exchange between neighbours emerging after hours sheltering underground.
Grandma Gertie fished out a pa
cket with two last cigarettes and offered one to Georgia, who hesitated because of their scarcity, though longing for one. ‘Go on,’ Gertie said. ‘If they ain’t got none in the shops tomorrow, then I’ll give the blooming things up. My chest ain’t never liked me smoking, anyhow.’
They smoked in silence, drawing deeply with relief. From where they stood, the surrounding garden walls and the houses in the next street prevented them from much of a view beyond the garden.
‘Gone quiet.’
‘They’ll be back soon.’
She was right: soon the lum-lum-lum of returning aircraft could be heard over the south coast counties for the second time that night.
The two women stubbed out their cigarettes. Before returning to the shelter, Georgia glanced up at her own house. The little dormer-window of the attic glowing dull red. ‘Oh God, look! Our attic’s on fire.’ She rushed indoors, followed by the slower woman. Even before war had been declared, Hugh had prepared for such an eventuality, so that there was always a bucket of water ready in the spare room and a bucket of sand on the landing. Her arms finding great strength in her panic, she grabbed both and rushed up the last few stairs.
The room was well blacked out with shutters and was dark. No sign of fire. Feeling her way across the room, she opened both the window and the shutters. From high up under the roof as she was, she saw across the roof-tops of Markham towards the south-east and could scarcely believe the brightness of the red glow in the sky.
Nick! That was where the docks lay, where Nick was on duty.
It was also the direction in which Badger Island lay, but it was only much later that it occurred to her that Hugh might be in danger.
* * *
The last wave of bombers had gone over half an hour ago. There had not been many of the crump-crump sounds of the high-explosive bombs that people were used to hearing in the nightly raids, yet there must have been thousands of bombers passing over Markham on that warm, June night.
All over Markham, people roused from the strange half-doze that passed for sleep during the nightly raids and rushed back indoors or came up from cellars. ‘Never miss a chance to make tea or make water in an air-raid: you never know when you’ll get the next one.’
* * *
At last the night was over. Dawn came at three o’clock.
In Markham’s meaner streets, people exchanged cigarettes with their neighbours and stood talking in low, relieved tones. Their children – fresh from sleep and enjoying the novelty of being on the pavements at three o’clock in the morning – played hopscotch on yesterday’s rinks.
On the hill, Connie Hardy flicked another cork-tip stub into the lily-pond and considered the plans she had made for herself.
Georgia, looking dark-eyed and pale, said, ‘I’ll make us some tea if you like.’
‘We could have it in the garden – it’s warm enough,’ said Gertie Wiltshire.
‘I must just pop indoors with Little-Lena first.’
‘Let the kids have a bit of a run-around first – it’ll do them good.’
Mary Wiltshire said, ‘Roy can. You keep your eye on him for ten minutes.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I’ll have to take Little-Lena indoors. You should see the back of her nightie. She’s started.’
Grandma Gertie raised her eyebrows.
‘The school doctor said she wouldn’t be long.’ Mrs Wiltshire nodded in the direction of Little-Lena who stood on this warm morning with her mother’s dressing-gown hastily thrown around her shoulders. Heaving a weary sigh, Mary Wiltshire continued, ‘I’ll have to go and tell her about it. I’ve been dreading this. After we’ve been up all night too. It never rains but what it pours.’
Gertie Wiltshire said, ‘Tell her it happens to Shirley Temple and the Queen, and give her a day off school.’
Georgia, unable to avoid hearing what was said, thought, It’s a pity you didn’t tell the kid before.
Little-Lena intuited that she had not cut her leg – as she had told her mother because she didn’t know what else to say – but that this was to do with the starting that she had been anticipating. She could tell by the way her mother had tied the dressing-gown round her and said, ‘Stand there and don’t move, I’m just coming.’ Surreptitiously she felt her poached-eggs chest. Now she would get a brassiere, and be called by her proper name from now on.
Leonora.
Leonora felt serene.
* * *
Mont Iremonger arrived home at half-past three in broad daylight. His next-door neighbours were watering their geraniums, keeping tabs on Mont as they did everyone in the street. ‘We knocked to see if you was all right, but you wasn’t there.’
‘Went for a quick half at ten o’clock last night… longest quick half I’ve ever had.’
‘And it was 21 June, did you realize that? – the longest day.’
‘Aah… and the longest bloody night!’
1989
The plane was held up in Rome. She used the waiting time to read through some notes from a TV company. They had suggested doing some publicity shots of her in some of the locations she had used in the novel. They had particularly wanted to do something with the burning of the dockland areas of Portsmouth and Southampton. What on earth good to go there now; they were cities exactly similar to every other in England? It would need a film set and special effects to get anywhere close.
There was an announcement apologizing for a further delay. Georgia Giacopazzi felt irritated. This journey had been endless. Suddenly she was plunged into the need for some reality. She got some coins for the phone and dialled.
‘It’s me.
‘Yes, of course I’m fine, have you ever known me to be anything else? It’s just that I wanted to hear you.
‘No, nothing that won’t keep.
‘Oh, it went off all right. He doesn’t know anything, but she seemed quite pleased, didn’t ask for anything to be taken out. I’m glad I went to see them.
‘Of course I was curious. At our age one needs to compare oneself with one’s peers from time to time. They look old. It’s living all those years basking in the sun that does it.
‘No, never! Two days was too long—Johannesburg is the pits! I can’t wait to get back, it seems as though I’ve been away for ever. Did we get some good hay?
‘Oh lovely. I thought about you. I was green with envy at the thought of it going on without me.
‘Of course I rang to ask about the hay, why else would I ring from Rome?
‘Yes, yes. Don’t fuss.
‘Yes, of course I am, how about you?
‘Goodness, is that a promise?
‘Bye. I’ll be home in two days. Kiss Prince for me.’
She laughs. ‘Well, pat him then. Bye. Love you too.’
1941
In the kitchens of the Town Restaurant, Mrs Farr stared down at the great slab of dark red meat laid out on the cutting board and could have wept for the slaughter.
She hoped that Niall would be down at the weekend. She would have to tell him about the piece of whale that had been delivered to the Dinner Kitchens. It was devastating, Niall, twenty pounds of flesh, I could hardly bear to touch it. Nonsensical isn’t it? I can gut a rabbit in thirty seconds. He would understand.
He would remember 1930. Over ten years ago, when they already both had fine streaks of grey in their hair, they had at last gone on their ‘honeymoon’. Twenty years late, but such a honeymoon. Sailing the warm seas for weeks on end – Niall doing a bit of writing, Ursula photographing dolphins, throwing back the flying-fishes that flopped on to the deck and, best by far, standing together watching the whales.
How much the whales enjoyed life. Niall had said, ‘Whales have the kind of society humans should try to achieve. Caring, responsible and yet wholly joyful. One feels that they must experience love and enjoy their sex.’
As the school followed the boat, she and Niall had spent hours and hours just watching the huge, graceful shapes – skimming in just below the surface, coming clo
se to the vessel, opening blowholes, then sounding with a show of those elegantly-shaped flukes. Niall had put their own passion and that voyage with the whales into his next novel, Love-song of The Whale. ‘Beautifully written and deeply moving – Niall O’Neill at his very best.’ Not a single reviewer, not even the usual right-wing snipers, had had a bad word to say for Niall O’Neill that year and it was now being referred to as ‘a modern classic English novel’.
Ursula Farr covered the distressing sight with an enamel tray. It was as though the Ministry had taken to distributing carcases of people. Worse perhaps. For all they knew the great dark, limp slab that she was supposed to make edible might well be a species superior to humans. Those pacific creatures. No National Socialist whales. No Fascisti.
‘Don’t tell me it’s got you beat too.’ Dolly Partridge’s voice broke into her reverie.
‘Oh Dorothy, I was miles away.’
‘You might as well make up your mind to it, whatever you do there’s going to be a lot of complaining. And you can’t blame people, nobody likes whale meat. Sam won’t touch it.’
‘And I don’t like having it in my kitchens. Have you ever seen a live whale, Dorothy? Swimming free, cavorting and blowing.’
‘Me? See a whale. I haven’t seen any sort of fish swimming in the sea. I haven’t never been to the seaside as much as twice in my life.’
Of course she hasn’t, Ursula Farr, insensitive fool – the families of legless heroes don’t.
Dolly, who would never stand and chat without occupying her hands, began peeling onions which Mrs Farr chopped.
‘That’s a shame, Dorothy. The sea’s wonderful. I say! Perhaps we might all go together sometime. Would the girls like that?’
‘I’m sure they would – just ourselves.’