Finally Naomi said, ‘Dan, I been thinking...’
‘Yeah? What about?’
‘About me and the baby.’
‘So’ve I,’ said Dan, and it was he who took the plunge. ‘I think you should be getting out of London and quick. This bombing ain’t going to stop and you need to be out of it, you and the baby.’
Naomi could have cried with relief. She didn’t want to go, but if they both agreed she ought to, it would be a great weight off her mind.
‘I don’t want to go,’ she said, ‘but...’
‘You’re going,’ Dan told her. ‘I been thinking about it ever since... the bombing started.’
‘But what about you?’ Naomi asked. ‘Will you come with me? The baby wants a father, too, you know.’
‘Naomi, love, you know I can’t. I have to do my bit here in London.’
‘You did “your bit”, as you call it, in the last war,’ Naomi said bitterly. ‘Ain’t that enough?’
‘No, girl, it ain’t, and you know it ain’t.’
It was as Naomi had feared. Dan wouldn’t leave London with her, but difficult as she would find it and much as she would hate it without him, she wasn’t going to change her mind.
‘I knew you’d say that really,’ she admitted, ‘so I’ve got a plan.’
Dan, who’d only considered the first hurdle, that of getting Naomi to agree to go, hadn’t thought of how it would all be achieved, but Naomi was more than a step ahead.
‘Shirley’s got a cousin, Maud. She lives up in Suffolk in a little village. Shirley’s going to stay with her and she says I can go too. There’s room for both of us.’
Dan stared at her. ‘I see you got it all sorted,’ he grunted.
‘No,’ Naomi snapped, ‘I ain’t said I’m going yet, but Shirley can’t wait to go. Her house here has gone, she’s nothing to keep her and her cousin has offered her a home.’
‘And you?’
‘Shirley told her cousin that we’d given her a place to stay when she had nowhere else, and she wants to do the same for me and the baby.’
‘It’s all very quick,’ Dan said a little sulkily.
‘It might be the difference between being the quick or the dead!’ retorted Naomi, suddenly cross. She had plucked up the courage to broach the subject and though Dan had got in first, and agreed, he didn’t seem keen on the plans she had made. Having decided to go, she wanted to leave quickly, before the Luftwaffe intervened and made it too late.
‘Of course,’ Dan said sheepishly, ‘you’re right. I’m just being stupid. It’s just, well... I’m being stupid.’
Naomi went over to him and enveloped him in a hug. ‘No, darling Dan, you could never be that. I don’t want to leave you, you know that, but my first thought has to be for the baby. If something happens to me it won’t ever be born. I can feel it moving inside now and I know he, or she, is a real person. I have to protect them.’
‘It’s not just the baby,’ Dan reminded her as he returned her hug. ‘I want you to be safe, too. When will you go?’
‘Shirley’s going tomorrow,’ Naomi said.
Dan felt as if something had hit him in the chest. Tomorrow! So soon! But he forced a smile to his lips and said, ‘Then I think you should go with her. I could come and see you in a week or so, just to see you settled in.’
It was decided. They both hated the idea, but they agreed it was the right thing to do. Shirley came back in and as they ate their tea together, Dan asked where her cousin Maud lived.
‘Just over the Suffolk border,’ she replied. ‘A place called Feneton. Train direct from Liverpool Street. Don’t take long to get there.’
By the time the sirens were howling it was decided. The two women would leave for Feneton tomorrow.
‘I’ll try and ring my cousin tomorrow and tell her we’re both coming,’ Shirley said.
‘She’s on the telephone?’ Dan sounded surprised.
‘Yes. Don’t worry, I’ll give you the number and you’ll be able to talk to Naomi and hear how she’s getting on.’
Dan was on the doorstep, but there was no sign of Harry, despite his promise to come firefighting again.
‘Perhaps he’ll be there already,’ suggested Naomi as she hugged Dan tight and kissed him goodbye.
‘Doubt it,’ said Dan. ‘He’d’ve been here by now if he was coming. Bit of a fly-by-night, if you ask me.’ He turned back before he doused the hall light so he could open the front door. ‘Down to the cellar with you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
It was another broken night with two alerts. The drone of the bombers overhead forced Naomi and Shirley back down into the cellar.
‘If I hadn’t decided to come with you already,’ Naomi said, ‘I certainly would’ve after tonight.’
‘An’ I’d’ve gone without you if you hadn’t,’ Shirley replied, as she instinctively ducked at the crump of a distant bomb. ‘I’ve had enough of this!’
‘All I want is unbroken sleep,’ cried Naomi. ‘I’m so tired!’
Once she’d made her decision to go earlier that day, she’d been to the factory and seen the boss.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told him. ‘I’m being evacuated.’
He’d looked her up and down as if assessing the truth of the statement, but the sight of her expanded waistline convinced him and all he said was, ‘Oh well, we need more babies now, I suppose.’
When she got home again she went into Lisa’s bedroom and closed the door. It was cold and miserable. Suddenly she pulled Lisa’s case out from under her bed and opening the drawers packed everything into it. The last thing she put in was the letter. This time she realised that the photo of Lisa’s family wasn’t there. She must have had it with her when she died, thought Naomi. So in a funny way they were all together at the end. She closed the case and carried it down to the cellar.
Shirley saw her coming down the stairs and said, ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s Lisa’s things,’ replied Naomi. ‘I’m going to put them in the cellar. They’ll be safer there if... they’ll be safer there.’
‘What you keeping them for?’ Shirley asked.
‘This war has to end some day and when it does, who knows, Lisa’s family might come looking for her.’
‘I thought you said they was dead.’
‘We don’t know where they are, but I know there’s a cousin in Switzerland and if they don’t come to find her, well, I’ll send it all back to him.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Shirley said, her tone making it clear that she thought it all a waste of time. ‘I’d have thought some kiddie round here could have made use of them clothes.’
Naomi didn’t answer. She knew Shirley was probably right, but even so she went down the steps and put Lisa’s case at the far end of the cellar, against the outside wall. She stood for a moment looking at it and then abruptly turned on her heel and went back up to the kitchen.
When Dan got home, once again in the early hours, he found Naomi sitting up in bed waiting for him. Though he was dog-tired, they didn’t sleep, but lay in each other’s arms savouring every moment together, each realising that they didn’t know when they’d be together like this again.
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ Naomi begged him. ‘I know you think you have to go out every night, that London needs you and perhaps it does, but you won’t forget that I need you too, will you, Danny?’
Dan drew her even closer, burying his face in her hair. ‘You’re everything to me, girl,’ he murmured. ‘It’s only because I love you so much that I can bear to let you go.’
The morning dawned, dull and grey. A cold wind had sprung up, driving away the lingering smoke of night-time fires. Naomi put the last of her things in a suitcase, together with the few tiny baby clothes she’d managed to buy in the market, all carefully folded. Dan went and fetched the taxi and the two women climbed into the back of it.
‘Have you really got enough petrol to spare?’ worried Naomi.
‘Enough to tak
e my wife and her friend to Liverpool Street station,’ Dan replied. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘I can probably pick up a fare from there.’ He had been thinking of the last time they had been to Liverpool Street to collect Lisa and was determined that Naomi wasn’t going to face that recollection alone.
As they drove through the streets Naomi was horrified at the devastation. She knew, of course, who didn’t, that the Blitz had been battering London relentlessly for weeks, but she hadn’t ventured out of her own area and the reality and extent of the destruction was brought home to her for the first time. Buildings blown apart, their contents still clinging to sloping floors, craters in the road causing traffic to divert round them, one street closed where an unexploded bomb lay, threatening, lethal; another where a fire, reignited by the freshening wind, swept through the ruins of somebody’s home.
‘How will we ever survive all this?’ she cried out in dismay. ‘How can we bear it?’
‘We can, because we must,’ Dan answered firmly. ‘Just keep on saying “We ain’t going to let the buggers win!”’
They reached the station and Naomi and Shirley clambered out of the cab. Dan put their luggage on the pavement. Shirley had little more than a capacious handbag in which she had stowed the few clothes she had managed to buy since the fire. Almost everything else she’d owned had gone up in flames with her house. She and Dan had crept into the burned-out shell of her home and she had managed to retrieve a few precious items the fire had not consumed, but as she left for Feneton her world was packed into a bag she could carry over her shoulder.
Dan walked with them, carrying Naomi’s case as they went to the ticket office and then to the platform. There wasn’t a train for Feneton for another half-hour. Naomi turned to him and said, ‘Go now, Dan. I ain’t any good at goodbyes.’
He put down her case and gathered her into his arms. ‘Look after yourself, girlie,’ he said gruffly. ‘Look after yourself and the little ’un.’
‘I will,’ promised Naomi, her voice breaking on a sob. ‘And you, Danny. We need you safe.’ And for a long moment they clung together.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ Dan said as he let her go. ‘I’ll be up to see you, soon as I can.’ He laid a hand on Shirley’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for taking her with you,’ he said. ‘Good luck!’ and then without a backward glance he strode away.
The two women sat down on a bench and waited for their train. Naomi dashed away her tears, determined to be brave. All around her the world was falling apart, people were being killed, losing their loved ones, losing their homes. Why should she be any different? She was travelling to a place of safety, she was carrying a much-wanted baby within her, she was luckier than many who had lost everything.
As she looked round the station Lisa’s face floated into her mind and she forced it down again. She couldn’t cope with Lisa’s death, not yet, and until she could she wouldn’t allow it to confront her.
15
The raids continued night after night. There wasn’t a single night that the children at St Michael’s spent entirely in their beds. Each morning the new day would have to be faced and they would set off for school, often tired and bleary-eyed.
Charlotte had settled fairly well into the home. In a strange way she found the regular routine of the home comforting. She lived within its framework and had the security of knowing exactly what she was supposed to be doing and when. School was the same; the day was organised and broken into manageable sections by bells and break times. She was happy enough living with children who were also lost in some way. Molly, she learned, had been bombed out of her home in August when a bomber, driven back by the fighters, emptied its bomb bay over New Cross. None of her family had been killed but their home had become uninhabitable and the family dispersed among friends and relations. Molly, as the eldest child, was the one who had been placed at St Michael’s. Clare had been living with her grandmother. She didn’t remember her mother who had died when she was two and her father, in the navy, had been lost at sea. When her grandmother had been knocked down by a car in the blackout and killed, Clare, left alone in war-torn London, had been taken into St Michael’s. Every child had a story to tell and Charlotte began to realise that she wasn’t the only one living with loss.
‘At least you know who you are,’ she said despondently to Clare one evening as they sat together in the common room doing their homework. ‘I can’t remember anything before I woke up in hospital. Not my name. Not my home. Not my family.’
‘I know, but at least you’ve got a photo of them,’ Clare reminded her.
‘I’ve got a photo of... people. I don’t know them.’
‘Surely they must be your parents and your brother.’
‘Maybe,’ sighed Charlotte. ‘I hope I remember soon. It’s so stupid I can remember my tables but not my name!’
‘Come on,’ Clare said, anxious to change to a happier subject. ‘I think I’ve learned the poem now. Will you hear me?’ And for the next twenty minutes they recited the poem they been set to learn for homework.
Miss Morrison saw the budding friendship and was pleased. She still hoped that as she relaxed into her new surroundings, Charlotte would gradually recover her memory. Perhaps friendship with Clare, another courageous child, would aid that recovery.
It was one night in early November that everything was to change. The siren started its dismal wail and the children, practised into normality now, filed down the stairs and out to the shelter in the back garden. As had been established over the nightly exodus, Clare took Charlotte’s hand as they approached the shelter and gently led her inside. Miss Morrison allowed herself a weary smile as she saw the two girls sit down together on one of the mattresses. As the raid gathered force outside, she encouraged them all to lie down and try to go back to sleep. Obediently they curled up on the mattresses, but then came a tremendous crash somewhere close, shaking the shelter to its foundations. Everyone was jolted awake and little Polly Elliott, one of the younger girls, began to cry. Matron reached over and pulled her on to her lap, cuddling her against her shoulder and murmuring soothingly into her hair. Since there was little chance of anyone going back to sleep now, Miss Morrison started singing. One or two of the children joined in and before long they were all singing ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’ and ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’. The noise of the raid filled the world outside, but within the shelter they continued to sing. When at last they seemed to have run out of songs, a quiet voice began to sing a new song. No one joined in; the words were unintelligible. Charlotte was singing, and she was singing in German. Grün, grün, grün sind alle meine Kleider. They all turned to stare at her, but no one interrupted. Miss Morrison listened, fascinated. Clearly this song was coming from the recesses of Charlotte’s closed mind and Miss Morrison wondered if this was the breakthrough they’d been waiting for. When at last the song died away, she said, ‘That was lovely, Charlotte. Thank you.’
When the all-clear finally sounded and they emerged from the shelter, they found a world utterly changed. St Michael’s itself was still standing, but several houses in the street were on fire and two of them had been partially destroyed, leaving leaning walls, gaping windows and dangerously lop-sided roofs.
Miss Morrison hurried the children inside and sent them back to bed for a couple of hours’ sleep before they had to get up to face the new day, but she called the two other live-in staff to her sitting room for a meeting. She had been thinking hard as she been sitting with her fifteen children in the brick shelter, listening to the destruction of the world above, and she had made some decisions.
‘We’re in the front line here,’ she began without preamble. ‘We’re within a few miles of Croydon airport and that’s a definite target for the bombers. We have to move the children somewhere safer. Any of those bombs could have hit us and we’d all have been killed.’
‘You say move the children,’ said Matron, ‘but where? If they had anywhere else to go they wouldn’t be here.’
‘I realise that,’ Miss Morrison said, ‘but they’re in particular danger here and we have to get them moved somewhere. Now, I’ve had an idea which I hope will work. The best thing for them all would be to be evacuated to the country.’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Mrs Downs, ‘but where? The government-sponsored evacuation seems to have finished. People are leaving of their own accord, of course, going to stay with people they know outside the towns, but who do we know who’d accept fifteen children all of a sudden?’
‘My sister, Avril,’ replied Miss Morrison.
‘Your sister?’ Matron echoed. ‘Where does she live? Has she got room for fifteen evacuees?’
‘She lives in Wynsdown, a village in Somerset, where her husband is the vicar. I’m sure if I ask her she’ll be able to find families prepared to take children who’ve been made homeless by the Blitz.’
‘It’s a big thing to ask,’ remarked Mrs Downs doubtfully.
‘I know,’ agreed Miss Morrison, ‘but I’m going to phone her this morning and ask if she can. I don’t think she’ll turn me down.’
When the children had left for school, Miss Morrison got on to trunks and managed to put a call through to her sister in Wynsdown. Avril Swanson answered.
‘St Mark’s Vicarage. Good morning.’
‘Av? It’s Caro.’
‘Caro?’ The delight at hearing her sister’s voice sounded in Avril’s. ‘Where are you? Are you coming down to see us? Do say you are!’
‘No, afraid not,’ answered Caro. ‘Look, I’ve only got three minutes. Can I send you the children from St Michael’s?’
‘What? Can you what?’
‘We were nearly bombed out last night, Av. Houses all round us have been damaged and I need to get the children out of London, away from the Blitz. It’s been every night since September.’
‘Yes, we’ve heard how bad it is,’ Avril said.
‘I’m sure you have,’ replied her sister, ‘but until you’ve actually lived through these raids, you can have no idea of just how bad. Half the street was destroyed last night. It’s a miracle St Michael’s is still standing. I have to get these children away, Avril, and I thought you might be able to help. There are only fifteen of them.’
The Girl With No Name Page 17