London Belongs to Me

by Norman Collins

  It was a man, all right. Mr Puddy could feel that much. And he was in A.F.S. uniform. What Mr Puddy didn’t know was how badly hurt the man was. Nor did he know that, twenty seconds before, the thing that had tripped him up had been directing a fire‐hose two floors above and had come down through the floor with the boiling‐water and the cinders. The man wasn’t unconscious. Mr Puddy could tell that because his arms and legs were moving. Particularly the arms. After exploring Mr Puddy’s body, they discovered his neck and fastened themselves on to it.

  Then began the worst five minutes in Mr Puddy’s life. He was in the dark. He was trapped in a burning building. And he was being throttled. It was now simply a question whether death would come first from strangulation or from suffocation by the smoke.

  When he found he could do nothing to make the man relax his grasp, Mr Puddy began to crawl. With the other man still clinging to him, he groped his way along the corridor as though he were playing bears again. And he was getting on quite nicely when a sudden crash behind him sent up a fresh cascade of sparks and fragments. One of them fell quite near him and lay there glowing like a red‐hot coal. Mr Puddy put on a fresh spurt. Composite and hampered as he was, he scampered.

  The stairs very nearly beat him. Steep and awkward at the best of times, they rose up sheer like a cliff now that he had to tackle them on hands and knees. It would have been bad enough if he hadn’t got the weight round his neck. As it was, the whole thing was very nearly impossible. Twice on his way up the flight he decided to give in and just die there in whatever way men do die in fires.

  But when at last he did manage to get as far as the door, and collapsed forward over the low stone steps, it was worth it. Kind hands took hold of him and one of the helpers – Mr Puddy was too far gone to notice which one – poured something down his throat.

  He learnt afterwards how it was that they were ready for him. Just before he had gone back for his ham, the fire officer had given orders to evacuate the building. Then it was discovered that one of the firemen was missing and a volunteer search‐party was trying to break in to look for him. Nobody had noticed at the time that Mr Puddy was missing, too. He didn’t make much difference either way. But when, retriever‐like, he suddenly emerged at their feet with his burden, it made the volunteer rescue party look rather silly.

  As he was carried away by two muscular A.F.S. men, Mr Puddy heard something about his being an example to the entire force. It was the fire officer himself who was saying so.

  Chapter XC

  Even though Mr Puddy knew nothing about it, his old friend, Mr Josser, had watched the blaze right through.

  From the front garden of Conservatory Cottage, he saw the whole thing. Admittedly, from twenty miles away, he couldn’t really detect which was Mr Puddy’s particular part of the general flare‐up and what was simply the rest of London going up in the flames. So far as Ditchfield was concerned, the new fire of London was just a great red glare in the sky with streamers of bright orange that ran up into it. It was a pretty handsome scenic spectacle, too, because all the while, the anti‐aircraft shells were bursting – quite silently at that distance – in the midst of it, and the fingers of searchlights waved about and pointed. Because everything was so silent, there was an unreality about it. It might have been some children’s party on a prodigious scale, complete with Bengal lights and penny sparklers, that they were watching. But, for a children’s party, it was too long drawn out. The clouds over London were still salmon‐coloured in places, a good half‐hour after the dawn began lighting things up on its own account.

  Mrs Josser stood out there beside him during the greater part of the time. And, while they watched the sky flicker and perform, they both remembered Larkspur Road beneath it. And Baby. And Doris. And Cynthia, and wondered what was happening to them. It was a grisly business just standing there, in the front row of the balcony so to speak, watching the huge funeral‐pyre on which at any moment granddaughter, daughter and daughter‐in‐law might all be heaped.

  Mr Josser was the one to speak first.

  ‘I’m going up in the morning,’ he said. ‘Reckon I’ll catch the early train. They oughtn’t to spend another night there. Not with things like this.’

  Mrs Josser, however, had already taken things a stage further in her own mind.

  ‘And if there’s any trouble with Cynthia, just you put Baby under your arm and bring her down,’ she directed. ‘Cynthia’ll come soon enough if she finds Baby gone. As for Doris, just tell her I said so.’

  ‘You… you wouldn’t like to come up yourself ?’ Mr Josser inquired tactfully.

  But Mrs Josser only held him in contempt for the suggestion.

  ‘Me?’ she asked scornfully. ‘And what about getting the cottage ready? Somebody’s got to do it. If there’s going to be three more of us to‐night, I’ve got to do the rearranging.’

  In a way, it was strange after last night even to be going to London at all. There seemed at least reasonable doubt that the place would still be there. But for the first half of the journey there was nothing to show that last night hadn’t been as peaceful as any other night‐time in September. Day had dawned on a beautiful silky morning and the little suburban villas with their small oblongs of garden backing on to the railway looked snug and comfortable. There were children playing in them and here and there a baby taking its nap in a perambulator. No matter out of which side of the carriage Mr Josser looked, there was still nothing to show for that massed midnight spectacle of star‐shells and illumination.

  Then, round a curve in the line, he abruptly found himself in the war‐zone. He was getting into London by now. And, under the balloons, the little villas were packed and crowded. They were the suburbs of a previous generation. And overnight, they had suddenly been opened out. Disembowelled. A bomb – quite a big bomb, it seemed – had come down in the midst of them. Two of the little villas had disappeared completely. There was simply a large untidy crater filled with litter where they had been standing only eight hours before. So little of them was left, indeed, that it was difficult to feel any sense of loss. It was the houses on either side that brought to mind the damage and destruction. There was something shocking and vaguely indecent about the way they were exposed. The back of one of them had been pared clean off. And a bedroom, complete with bed, was open to the railway. Another bed, upside down this time, rested in the garden. And on the end of a length of lead piping a bath, soiled and abraded by the rubbings of countless bathers, hung straight down over the remains of a staircase. In another little villa there was an iron grate, with a mantelpiece and picture over it. But it was simply a grate set in the open air. There was no room for the iron grate to warm any longer.

  The man next to Mr Josser leaned over.

  ‘Lucky it didn’t hit the line,’ he remarked consolingly.

  Mr Josser nodded politely. He was too shocked to do more. Shocked by the sheer flimsiness of the houses that people had been living in. Before the blast had caught them they had looked ugly, sordid, overcrowded – anything you like. But solid. Undeniably solid. So many dense little lumps of architecture. But he could see now that they were shams really. The bricks that they were made of were nursery bricks and the ceilings matchwood. Against the sky, the broken rafters showed up like fish‐bones. The whole thing was makeshift and temporary‐looking. It might have been in a native kraal that the bomb had fallen.

  It was quite a long time afterwards when he saw the next reminder of last night. The line ran high here and he could see out across the landscape of roof‐rops. Against the sky‐line stood the openwork girders of what up till yesterday had been a factory. Now Mr Josser could see right through it. At one corner the tall chimney stack was still standing, even though there was no smoke coming out of it. But over the whole building there hung an opaque dirty mist. And, as the firemen were still pumping in the water, the mist was constantly renewing itself.

  It was not until Mr Josser reached Liverpool Street that he actually sm
elt burning. But it was there all right. A rank frowsty odour hung over everything as though an incinerator door had been opened. But there was more than a smell of burning to distract him. The streets outside the station were full of scorched paper. Charred embers of what might once have been office ledgers. And large cobwebby smuts that were all that was left of filing‐systems and double entry book‐keeping. Under foot there was the crunch and jingle of good plate‐glass.

  The extraordinary thing was that by the time Mr Josser got to the Embankment he was out of the war again. The plane‐trees hadn’t lost a leaf and the Thames was sliding peacefully along. There was no sign of misery and desolation there. Either the Germans were very thorough and conscientious and were going to demolish London methodically parish by parish, or the late summer’s night hadn’t been long enough for them.

  The look of the Embankment comforted Mr Josser. And the thought occurred to him that simply because London was such an easy enormous target, it was safe. The Germans could go on ravaging and tearing away at it. But, at this rate, they’d need a lifetime to destroy it. By the time Marshal Goering was an old man there would still be bits that were recognisably London left standing. And it was the same all the way to Larkspur Road. Except for a church with the roof gone and a few missing windows, and a whole street roped off with a hanging notice that said ‘Unexploded Bomb’, Streatham was as calm and normal as Ditchfield had been. The chances of Baby’s survival seemed better. They seemed good, in fact. She might even have slept through it.

  Even so, when he got to Larkspur Road, it was all far simpler than Mrs Josser had hinted that it might be. There was no need for kidnapping, and scarcely any even for persuasion. Cynthia didn’t have to tell him what sort of a night she had been through. He could see. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was all anyhow. It didn’t even look so blonde as usual. This was the first time Mr Josser had even seen her really close when she hadn’t any make‐up on, and he was surprised to notice how sallow she was. How sallow and tired and unblooming. Conservatory Cottage with its sunny half‐acre was evidently just as much the place for her as it was for Baby. He blamed himself again for not having insisted that she should come down there sooner.

  And, now that he put it to her, there was no opposition. Cynthia didn’t want Baby to spend another night in London. Four or five separate and distinct times last night, she said with a little giggle, she had expected it to be all up with the three of them.

  But it was not Mr Josser who finally clinched it. It was Ted. His authority, calm, sagacious and unruffled, still hung over the little flat. And Cynthia invoked it.

  ‘It wouldn’t have seemed right to Ted leaving Baby here with all that noise going on. It couldn’t be good for her nerves,’ she explained. ‘He’d have been dead against it. Doris thinks he would, too.’

  So that was decided. And Mr Josser helped Cynthia to pack.

  It wasn’t easy because Baby required such a lot of things. Such an astonishing lot. One after another the fibre travelling cases – there wasn’t a decent‐sized trunk in the whole flat – were filled with dresses, underclothes, nightgowns, toys. But that was only the beginning. Cynthia couldn’t reasonably be expected to start a new life in a cottage with nothing to wear herself. And the pile of dresses on the bed grew steadily larger. Grew larger, while all the time, Cynthia kept adding little things that she couldn’t do without – the case of silver spoons that had been a wedding‐present, her toilet set, Ted’s photograph, the library book she was reading, a packet of jellies for Baby’s supper, a box of special shampoo sachets…

  While she was going through her shoes to see which pairs were worth taking, Mr Josser slipped out for a moment to phone Doris. He had more than half‐expected her to be at Larkspur Road. And it was awkward that she should have gone along to the office just as though nothing had happened. Because people are usually far more independent and obstinate over the phone than they are face to face.

  It took Mr Josser sometime to get through. The telephones were evidently still in a bit of a tangle from the raid. And the operator doubted whether it was worth trying. But, when at last Doris answered, it was easier than it had been with Cynthia.

  ‘My, you have been quick,’ she said.

  ‘Quick?’ Mr Josser asked her. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘Then you didn’t get my wire?’

  Mr Josser paused.

  ‘It hadn’t come when I left,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps Mother’s got it.’

  ‘Because I asked her if she could have Cynthia and Baby,’ Doris went on.

  ‘That’s what I’m here about,’ Mr Josser explained. ‘Cynthia’s packing. I’ve just been there.’

  ‘You are a darling,’ Doris said.

  ‘It was Mother’s idea,’ Mr Josser replied firmly. ‘And she says you’re to come down, too. She told me to tell you.’

  There was another pause. A longer pause this time.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Doris answered. ‘Say I’ll be down later.’

  The voice in which she answered was flat and weary, sounding with all the over‐tones rubbed out. She hadn’t meant to say she’d go. It was such a journey. But, now that she came to think about it, she supposed she was rather sleepy. And if the Germans came over again at sundown, she wouldn’t be good for anything in the morning. In the circumstances, it was only common sense to take the chance of a good night’s rest where she could find it. Besides, if she stayed on at the flat Bill might start worrying. And that was the last thing she wanted.

  By the time Mr Josser got back to the flat he found that Cynthia had thought of quite a lot of other things she needed. The cupboards had practically been emptied in his absence and the contents added to the pile. What was more, there were no spare suitcases. Mr Josser took off his coat and got down to it.

  It was evident that this was going to be a string and brown paper evacuation after all.

  Chapter XCI

  1

  It was different for Connie. She’d had to stick the raid out, too; her old teeth chattering. And if the Germans came over again to‐night or any other night for that matter, she’d have to stick it out just the same. She hadn’t got a sugar‐daddy to come and take her into the country away from all the nasty noises. She hadn’t got any one.

  And it was because of this, or rather because of this on top of everything else, that she was crying. Crying because there wasn’t anybody in the whole world who cared enough about her even to send a postcard.

  But it wasn’t only loneliness that was the trouble. If she had been surrounded by loving friends she’d still have felt awful. And not just ordinary awful, either. This was something special. Something chronic. Something that the doctors had never been taught about.

  And it was because there wasn’t any cure for it, bar one, that she was crying. Her face was all puffy and smudgy from the tears, and the eye‐black had run right down her cheeks in two dark tunnels. She’d been like that for hours, just sitting there sobbing, and trying not to think about it. But what was the use of trying not to think about it when you didn’t know what it was? There wasn’t anything specific or particular about the pain – nothing that you could actually put your finger on and say Ow! It wasn’t in any one place. Simply an all‐over sickness. Something that was in the bones and in the blood. Something that was eating the lungs and binding round the heart. Something that didn’t make her food taste so good any longer, and buzzed and bubbled inside her head whenever she lay down. Something that drew her cheeks in so that there were pockets where the dimples had once been, and made her poor old legs swell so that she couldn’t get her shoes on.

  She shook her head sadly.

  ‘It’s me notice,’ she told herself. ‘It’s me calling‐up papers. It’s me cue. Better get ready, Connie.’

  And, with this premonition, she grew calmer. Tears and all, she was steadier now. Kind of peaceful inside herself as it were. She looked back over her past life almost as tho
ugh it were somebody else’s. And crikey it wasn’t half a waste! The money she’d had in her time – and the chances. Talk about chucking opportunities away – she’d fairly shovelled ’em. Offers of marriage. Little places down at Maidenhead. Sovereigns slipped in playfully under the frilly part of her garter. Diamonds. If she’d watched her step she could have been a rich woman by now. Rolling in it. Paying super‐tax. And instead of it, what was she? Just the old girl with the dyed hair who sat behind the counter in the ladies’ cloakroom and had a saucer, with a few pins in it, in front of her ready to receive the tips.

  It wasn’t even as if she’d learnt any sense as she’d grown older. Not a bit of it. Her sixty‐odd pounds from the accident had gone the way of all cash. There wasn’t a penny left out of it. Or out of anything else. She was really high and dry this time. Washed‐up and flapping. She could feel her tired gills closing.

  She’d been too ill last night to go along to the night‐club at all. They’d had to get through the raid without her. And because she hadn’t been along, she was afraid to face them now. Afraid of what they might say to her. Afraid of what she might find when she got there. How did she know there wasn’t some new and more glossy pussy‐cat sitting there on her cushion already? And why hadn’t she phoned up and said she wasn’t well? Because, silly, you can’t phone up when you haven’t got so much as twopence in your handbag and you don’t like to borrow from your landlady because you owe two weeks’ rent already and would rather that she put it down to sheer forgetfulness…

  Connie suddenly screwed up her face so that the wrinkles all ran into one another. The pain had come back again. In her side, and working up towards the middle. In a minute it would start giving her little jabs right under the heart, the way it always did. She couldn’t rely on even five minutes’ peace and comfort nowadays.