A fireball roared down the narrow street. It lit the escaping gas from the fractured main. The last thing Ernie knew, as a searing wind lifted him off his feet, was a sudden bright light and a wall of flame.
Chapter Seventeen
For two nights and three days Tommy remained trapped in the dark basement. The work of rescuers at ground level was hampered by temperatures well below zero and frequent showers of snow. It settled on the blackened skeleton of his shop, falling from a grey sky, a pall provided by nature for all who had lost their lives.
Over two hundred people had been killed in Southwark alone. Thirty-six along Union Street, fifteen in the Cathedral Close, five on Duke Street and the neighbouring courts. Many more were reported missing.
Annie went with Rob to identify Ernie in his makeshift coffin.
‘Let me go,’ he begged. ‘No need for you to come too.’
‘I must.’ The heart was knocked out of her when they told her the news, but she knew her duty still.
‘Let her,’ Frances said quietly. She held on to Annie’s hand and led her out to Rob’s waiting taxi. Hettie stood weeping on the doorstep, Sadie at her side. Jess was coming on the train from Manchester in spite of the danger, for no one was in any doubt that the body in the mortuary at St Guy’s was Ernie.
‘How can she bear it?’ Sadie sobbed.
‘Because she must.’ Frances let Sadie bury her face against her shoulder. Their youngest sister had felt the blame fall squarely on her for their loss.
‘I wish I’d never let him out of my sight!’ she cried. ‘I wish I’d kept them all at home, then this would never have happened.’ She went over in her own mind the sequence of events: Bertie and Geoff’s excitement as they heard about the train smash, Ernie’s promise that he would keep an eye on them when he took them to see it. ‘I should’ve looked after him better, poor Ern.’
He’d been discovered in the court after the flames had died down. A great force had lifted him clean off the ground and thrown him sideways. They found his body inside a burnt-out house, trapped against some cellar stairs where he had been smothered by smoke and failing stone. He had escaped the flames and was still recognizable, not even much marked, they said.
At the mortuary Annie gazed at the corpse. ‘I want to bring him home,’ she said.
Rob turned to the attendant, who said arrangements could be made. Then they left her alone for a few minutes, at her request.
It was hard to believe, looking at his peaceful face under the cold white mortuary lights, that they wouldn’t soon have Ernie back amongst them. Shrouded to the neck, the face was still him, and in death very like Duke’s, with its broad forehead, long nose, strong jaw. She stooped to draw her fingers down his cold cheek. She must touch him and say goodbye.
‘It ain’t too late, son. I know you can hear me, so you just listen to me. You died a brave man, thinking of others as usual. That was your way and we loved you for it, Ernie. I only hope you never suffered. Bertie and Geoff are both fine, so no need to worry there. Sadie’s heartbroken. We all are.’
She sighed and stood in silence for a while. ‘Why won’t you wake up and come on home with us, son?’ Tears fell, she bowed her head.
‘He won’t, Annie.’ Rob had come in, and he took her arm. ‘But we’ll bring him back for the funeral.’
She gave Ernie one last look. ‘You tell that pa of yours that we miss him too, and God bless both of you.’
Rob took her home, hollowed out by misery, feeling how small and frail she was as she sat in the passenger seat staring straight ahead. They drove slowly through the burned and ruined streets.
‘How did he look?’ Frances asked him. Hettie took Annie upstairs to rest.
‘Like himself.’
She nodded.
‘I wish I’d looked after him, Frances.’
‘You’ve enough to look after.’
‘I should’ve made sure he knew what to do.’ Rob refused to be comforted, slamming a table with his fist. Walter brought a stiff drink, sat him down, told Frances that he and Rob would talk while she did what she could upstairs.
Tommy knew that he might freeze to death. As the temperature dropped and still he remained sealed in the basement, he began to care less and less about surviving a first, and then a second night without food or warmth. He soon left off his early efforts to lever his way out, and after one or two failed attempts to raise help by yelling up the ventilation shaft, he came to see this as futile too. There was nothing for it but to sit it out.
Meanwhile, after the news had sunk in that the shop was razed to the ground and Tommy missing, presumed dead, Edie came with Lorna to see what was left. Nothing remained of the building; what the explosion had left standing, the fire had soon destroyed. Oddly, in the days since the disaster, as the demolition services worked doggedly to clear the street and dismantle unsafe buildings, a milkman had been along and left his daily deliveries on whatever doorsteps he could still find.
‘I’ve tried the shelters, I’ve been to the hospital and the Enquiry Bureau; no one’s got any news.’ Edie refused to hear what Lorna was telling her. In her own mind she still believed that Tommy could have got out before the bomb had dropped. After all, the demolition men hadn’t discovered a body, he hadn’t turned up on any official record. That meant there was still a chance.
‘Edie?’ Lorna thought she was morbid, poking at the piles of rubbish. She’d unearthed part of the sign that ran along the shop front. ‘Ideal’. The rest was splintered and unreadable. ‘Come and have a drink.’
Edie sat heavily on a stone ledge, part of the coping from the top storey. ‘We can’t. Annie’s shut the Duke until after the funeral.’ The day, which had hardly grown light, already began to fade. Three days since the bomb.
Lorna turned up her fur coat collar. ‘When is it?’
‘Tomorrow. Hettie says they’re to have the coffin there overnight. They set off for the church first thing tomorrow.’
‘They’ll have to work hard to clear the street for the hearse to get through.’ The gloom and the talk depressed Lorna. She was one of those who had to get on and live life as normal, otherwise things would get her down. Tonight, for instance, she would head up the West End and forget her troubles. She invited Edie along. ‘Come on, Edie, life goes on.’
‘You go. I want to stay here a bit longer.’
She didn’t linger. ‘You’ll meet up with us later if you change your mind?’
‘Yes, righto.’ She promised not to stay out and freeze to death.
‘Sitting there won’t do any good . . .’ But Lorna knew that Edie wasn’t listening to a word she said. She made her way up the street alone.
Caught in a tangle of despairing thoughts, Edie didn’t pay much attention to the arrival of a gang of boys who came picking through the rubble soon after Lorna had gone. They were perhaps eleven or twelve years old, five of them in boys’ clothes with old men’s faces; thin, shadowed and scrawny, with brutal haircuts. Scavenging their way along the burnt-out streets, they knew the value of every item they came across.
‘Fire-grate!’ One spotted a good find. Two others helped to pull the mangled piece of iron free. The price for scrap was good. Another of the boys found a poker. They climbed up the heap where Edie sat and turfed aside some charred, crushed tins of paint. But the site was evidently worth staying oh. They ran up and down like steeplejacks.
‘Stone me!’ Another good find.
‘Stuff it!’ This time, a disappointment.
‘Over here!’ They ducked out of sight as she sat on in the gathering dusk.
‘Blimey, missus!’ After a few seconds, one of the boys shot back over the mound. ‘There’s a geezer down there!’
She jumped to her feet. ‘Where?’ He was pointing wildly the way he’d just come. ‘Tell me!’ But the boy made his getaway and now she could see the others haring off in all directions. She scrambled up the heap of bricks and peered down a dark slope, where she could just make out a metal
grille which they’d prised from an air vent, then abandoned in their fright. Edie slid down the slope of loose nibble and charred wood, loosening the debris underfoot. There was no light. She had to feel her way towards the vent.
‘Tommy!’ She knelt and put her mouth to the opening. ‘Answer me if you’re there!’ It must be him. It wasn’t a ghost, though the boy looked as though he’d seen one.
‘Here!’ The answer came faintly at last.
‘Oh, thank God!’ She worked furiously at the rubble around the hole. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m bleeding freezing.’ Waking out of a torpor as a smattering of small stones trickled down the narrow shaft, he’d heard what sounded like boys’ voices. He’d called hoarsely for help, but the sounds stopped and though he’d called again, no one answered. Then, a few minutes later, he picked up a woman’s voice. Edie. He recognized it at once. ‘You’ll have to go and get help. Get me out of here!’
‘I will.’ Overjoyed, she lay full length and stretched her arm down the shaft. It was only a few inches wide, too narrow to crawl down. ‘They said you’d copped it!’
He allowed himself a brief grin. ‘Well, I haven’t. But I soon will if you don’t get someone quick. I can’t take another night down here.’
‘Just reach up for a sec, Tommy, see if you can grab my hand.’ She kept hers deep in the shaft, stretching her fingertips. ‘Then I’ll believe it’s really you.’
Tommy climbed on the safe and reached out. Their hands touched. ‘See.’
‘I love you, Tommy, whatever happens. I want you to know.’
‘Tell me when I get out.’
‘I don’t blame you if you hate me, only it wasn’t my fault, not all of it.’
‘Slow down, Edie, I hear you.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, it was me. I went mad when I saw you with him. I never gave you a chance.’ Her hand, small and warm, held fiercely to his.
‘I wrote to him, did you know?’ Better late than never. At least she’d done the right thing in the end. ‘No, course not. How could you?’
‘When?’
‘The day I chucked my job. I’m getting a divorce, Tommy.’
‘You never told me.’ It was him clinging onto her hand now, as realization crashed down on him.
‘You never gave me the chance.’ In the silence and the gathering dusk, Edie had to decide what to do next.
‘Listen, Tommy, I’ll go for Walter and George. You stay put.’ Finally she made him release her hand.
‘I ain’t going nowhere.’ He slumped down.
Then she tore herself away, climbed over the mound and ran down the street. She hammered at the doors of the Duke, called for the men to bring shovels and pickaxes. ‘He’s alive, he’s alive!’
‘Who?’ George opened up. For a second he held a glimmer of hope that Annie had made a monumental mistake in identifying Ernie.
‘Tommy. He’s trapped in his basement. I just spoke to him. Get Walter, come quick!’
January 25th, 1941. Royalty were to visit the stricken community. It was almost as big a boost as a tour of the blitzed streets by Churchill himself, when he would march along with his entourage. ‘Are you downhearted?’ he would ask. Homes were gone, every last vestige of a lifetime’s scrimping and saving. ‘No!’ came the rousing reply. Business as usual. Winnie would raise his hand in salute, cigar clamped between his teeth, jaunty in his homburg hat and dickie-bow. The people would run alongside to keep up, burst through the cordon of militia men and politicians, the women smiling gaily and waving at the news photographers.
But today it was a royal party, a time for compassion, for dignified endurance. Southwark had been badly affected by the great fire on Duke Street, and still the raids went on, night after night. The people needed recognition, a kindly ear for their troubles, a chance to mourn their dead. The visit was scheduled for ten o’clock, before the VIPs moved on to Kentish Town to talk to victims there.
‘Are we ready?’ Annie gathered the family mourners on the pavement outside the pub. Upstairs, the undertakers were standing by.
They lined each side of the door; Rob upright in his dark suit, looking older but still strong. He’d come through one war, though he’d been badly injured. He owed his life to George Mann, standing opposite him now. George had stood by him then. He’d married into the family and helped them out of other difficulties since. George was one in a million. Rob stood tall, Amy and Bobby at his side.
The women were all dressed in black. It took Ernie’s funeral to bring Jess down from the North, with Maurice, Mo and Grace. The children were grown-up beyond recognition, as smart and well-to-do as anyone could wish. Frances stood with Annie, her husband, Billy Wray, quietly on her other side. Then there was Hettie with George, Sadie with Walter, Meggie, Geoff and Bertie.
Where they found their courage no one knew. Other mourners were openly in tears; Dolly, Edie and those who had known and looked out for Ernie ever since he was little, when they would give a belt around the ear to anyone found teasing or mocking him, or would set him on the right road for school. Later, they recalled Ernie on his delivery bike, working for Henshaws, taking bread, eggs and butter to doorsteps along Duke Street, Meredith Court and beyond. Never a mistake, always on time, always cheerful. And later still, as a fixture behind the bar at the Duke; methodical, reliable. When his pa grew too old and frail to do the heavy cellar work, Ernie had come into his own.
This was the boy they’d saved from the gallows after a bloody murder that had shocked and horrified the whole neighbourhood. A brutal stabbing. The police had arrested poor Ernie because they were too lazy to look for anyone else and Ernie happened to fit the bill. But no one believed it; throughout the trial and the guilty verdict, they knew that he was innocent. Ernie would never have harmed a fly. The courts had believed them at last and issued a reprieve.
And yet Hitler had got him in the end. There was no justice; the poor and helpless suffered most in this war.
They grieved for him, and for Annie especially, who had been through a lot in her long life, who had loved Ernie as her own son, a boy-man with a gentle heart.
‘Ready.’ Annie nodded to the undertaker’s man.
The message went upstairs to the pallbearers. The mourners waiting in the snow and ice of a freezing January morning.
They carried the heavy coffin, a plain wartime one, down the stairs on Ernie’s last journey from his home to the church and on to the cemetery. They brought him out into Duke Street, into the old-fashioned hearse drawn by black horses wearing plumes and fine harnesses, a splendid affair amidst the sandbags and rubble.
‘He deserves the best,’ Dolly whispered. Charlie was out of hospital, getting back on his feet. He’d insisted on going with her and Dorothy to the church. ‘Annie will want to give him a good send-off, for Duke and the rest.’ She shook her head in sorrow.
Once the coffin was safely stowed, the hearse moved off and the procession formed behind, ready to follow on foot. Annie came at the head, flanked by Rob and George, her eyes fixed firmly on the shiny black carriage. The rest of the family came after, dry-eyed, sombre.
‘You sure you can make it?’ Edie asked Tommy as he fell in with the procession on the slow march to the church. They’d pulled him out the night before, just three hours after the boys’ discovery. He was suffering from the after-effects of cold and hunger, but nothing worse. He shrugged off any fuss, said that all he wanted was to get back to normal. Last night they’d gone back to Edie’s and made up their differences.
He nodded. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones,’ he reminded her.
At the top of the road, where the cortège had to turn right onto Union Street, the undertaker drew to a halt. Army personnel had put up a roadblock: they must wait for the royal visitors to pass. Word went down the procession; VIPs were to be allowed through. So they stood and waited, black figures against frosty mounds of brick and metal, the horses standing patiently, the hearse gleaming in the sharp sunl
ight.
The royal party approached in an open-topped car, preceded by military vehicles, accompanied by a crowd of pressmen and enthusiastic onlookers. They were set to sail past the mourners from Duke Street. But the driver received a signal to stop. The pack of cameramen grew excited as two of the visitors stepped from the car. Bulbs flashed, there was a crush along the pavement, for a moment a sense of confusion and possible disruption.
The members of the royal party approached Annie and spoke quietly to her, commiserating with her for her loss. They said they knew that kind words did little to compensate for her suffering, but they hoped she would accept their condolences. No one escaped unscathed; no family, no individual. They prayed nightly for the war to end, they would pray for her and her brave stepson. Annie shook them by the hand.
Then they returned to their car. The order was given to take down the roadblock and let the funeral cortege pass through.
It was as if the whole world had turned out to pay their last respects to Ernie. Those who never knew him stood by silently, kings and commoners alike. The hearse moved on with its solemn burden. In silence they bowed their heads. Annie and her family walked on.
Part Three
Ashes in the Sea
June 1941
Chapter Eighteen
‘We shall get used to it,’ was the grim response among East Enders. But the residents of Duke Street and Paradise Court were sadly mistaken if, after Ernie Parsons’ funeral, they imagined things could not get worse.
On a single night in the middle of March 1941, seven hundred and forty Londoners had been killed in the Blitz. In mid-April a thousand more civilians were lost; on the 10th of May, almost one thousand five hundred, with eighteen hundred injured. Westminster Abbey, the Tower, the House of Commons had all been hit, and brown smoke once more blotted out the sun.
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