by Rachel Hore
Once, recently, someone had got up a sort of cabaret in a space in the middle, with an accordion player and a girl dancing, but the sombre spirit of this place must have made its disapproval felt, because the performance was desultory, and they packed up after half an hour. Any who walked the aisles to visit the latrines or to visit a friend did so quietly, with head bowed. There was no joking, none of the community singing that took off in other shelters. It was something about the monolithic nature of the building, Beatrice thought – it was like a giant mausoleum that crushed all human hope and laughter. The people had claimed it from its owners as a place of safety, and although it deigned to share its loneliness with them, it was making no concessions.
Mary was sitting against the wall beside Beatrice. With her head tipped back, her perfect profile gleamed palely in the gloom. Her eyes were closed, and with crossed arms she held her great-coat tight around her willowy body against the cold. No one could look at Mary and doubt that she’d been tipped for Deb of the Year only eighteen months back, in a different London. Now look at her, Beatrice thought with an affectionate smile. Modelling Army breeches with soot on her nose and a tin hat hanging off her arm.
Bea’s thoughts moved naturally on to Angelina. She’d met up with her, of course, soon after she’d received that awful letter about Ed, taking a couple of days’ leave from the depot to travel up on the train.
It had been hard, very hard, to walk up the steps to the house in Queen’s Gate and ring the bell, not only because it was now a house of mourning, but because the last time she was here it had been the scene of such anguish for her. That had been only nine months ago, but in so many respects it was a different world. The only thing that hadn’t changed was her feelings for Rafe. The freshness of that terrible moment of realization hit her again as she waited for the door to open. Then it did open and at the sight of Angelina’s grief-stricken face she was swamped not with jealousy but pity.
‘Oh, Bea, thank God you’ve come,’ she said, opening her arms and clinging to Beatrice. Her hair was limp and unwashed, her face blotched from crying. She still smelt faintly of apples. It was the old Angelina. The one she’d grown up with and loved, the one who needed her.
‘Of course I came,’ Beatrice said, hugging her, her own tears starting. ‘Of course. Angie, I’m so sorry. Poor, poor Ed.’
In the drawing room Oenone was standing by one of the windows, watching some children play hopscotch in the street, a vacant expression on her face. Bea went forward hesitantly and said, ‘Mrs Wincanton.’
Angie’s mother turned. ‘Oh, Bea,’ she murmured. ‘So glad you’ve come. Awful, isn’t it awful.’ She kissed her, but her mind was somewhere far away.
‘Mummy, why don’t you come and sit down,’ Angie said, going to her, but her mother waved her away.
‘No, I’m all right,’ she said, and continued to watch the children, a sad smile on her face.
‘I’ll show you the letter, Bea. Mummy, may I?’
‘What, dear?’
‘Show Bea the letter from Wing Commander Lewis?’
Oenone Wincanton gave a shrug.
‘Is she all right?’ Bea whispered. Angie fetched an envelope from the mantelpiece and they sat together on the sofa where she’d seen Angie with Rafe those few months ago.
‘The doctor’s been giving her these dreadful pills. She doesn’t sleep, you see,’ Angie said in a low voice. ‘Daddy’s no help. He’s never here. And no one seems to know what Peter’s up to. Daddy fixed him up running errands for one of his government friends and now he’s been given some desk job.’ Great tears splashed on the envelope.
Bea took it gently from her, withdrew the letter inside and read it. It was a masterly expression of sympathy. The man had known Ed personally. She sensed his own grief and anger at the loss of this brave and beautiful young man. He gave his life that we might be free, was his final sentence, and despite her own sorrow her heart lifted. That was what it was all about, selfless love for others. It was what it had to be about, or what was the point of it all?
‘I want him back,’ Angie sobbed beside her. ‘I just want him back.’
Bea put her arms round her and held her tight.
Later, she asked carefully, ‘Has there been any word about Rafe?’
‘No, of course not, or I’d have told you,’ Angie said, her voice dull. ‘Nothing.’
Two months after this conversation, there had still been no news. And now, sitting in the gloom next to Mary, listening to the planes and the bombs, Beatrice said a small prayer for him.
An hour passed. There had been no bombs for a while. The gunfire became more sporadic, and soon died out altogether once the throb of aircraft engines had faded.
Mary whispered, ‘Shall we see what it’s like outside?’ and the two of them got up and made their way over to the door.
‘Now then, ladies,’ said the warden guarding the entrance. ‘Where do you think you’re going? We haven’t had the all clear yet.’
‘Open the door, please do,’ Mary begged. ‘They’ve gone, you know they have, and we simply must get on to the next shelter.’
The warden eventually let them out, grumbling about falling masonry and saying that young ladies these days didn’t know what was good for them. Mary thanked him with one of her very dazzling smiles and he grunted and shut the door behind them.
It was a terrible world they passed into, back-lit by fire, the air filled with billowing smoke and dust, through which shouts and screams could be distantly heard. With coats pulled up over their chins and gloved hands protecting their eyes they felt their way out of the little gate, feet crunching on glass, to where the canteen mercifully still stood intact. They stood for a moment, contemplating its thick coating of dust and debris with dismay.
Just then came a cracking and groaning like a tree in a high wind. They looked up in time to see, a few hundred yards away, a building disintegrate in mid-air and tumble into the street.
‘If we’d gone that way a couple of minutes earlier—’ Beatrice started to say.
‘Don’t,’ Mary stopped her. ‘We’ll have to take another road.’ When the latest dust had settled, she opened the passenger door and seized an old towel, with which she started to brush the mess off the windscreen. Then they both climbed aboard and Beatrice fired up the engine.
‘Down to the river, don’t you think, if we can get through?’ She edged the vehicle forward and drove down a side alley, the weak headlights picking out lamp-posts and a pillarbox daubed with white paint. They emerged into a broader highway that they were able to follow for a time, then turned left towards the river. Ahead, a blazing building cast a dancing light.
‘Look out!’ Mary shouted, and Beatrice jammed on the brakes just short of a large crater. They both got out. Beatrice shone her torch down inside it. A taxi had tipped in and lay, wheels presented to the sky, like a large dead insect. The driver’s door was open and though they called, no one seemed to be left inside.
‘We could just about get round here,’ Bea said, strafing the pavement with her torch beam. They returned to the van and she wound down the window to check how close they were to the crater as they mounted the kerb and carefully drove past.
Further up the road they came to a scene of frantic activity. A stretcher was being loaded into an ambulance. Several bodies lay by the roadside, half-covered with blankets. At least one, Beatrice saw with dismay, was a child. Firemen played jets of water on the flames and various people were sifting through rubble. A warden gestured them to go on, and Mary opened her window to speak to him. Somewhere a man was shouting, ‘Mrs Cardew? Mrs Cardew!’ in desperate tones.
They arrived at the next shelter soon after, parked by the entrance and set about heating water and cutting sandwiches. Mary walked back to serve the rescue workers whilst Beatrice served the queue of people from the shelter. Everywhere cement dust was settling on people’s heads and shoulders like snow. Near the entrance to the shelter she glimpsed a pair of dray h
orses, as stoic as Pip and Wilfrid, eating from nosebags, hardly bothered by the disturbance around.
‘Shall we move on?’
By half-past ten the skies remained quiet and clear, and the queues had gone. Beatrice and Mary packed up their van and drove on to the last shelter on the night’s watch, stopping occasionally to feed emergency teams. Sometimes they’d find a road impassable and Beatrice had to turn the van in the darkness and seek an alternative route. Given the blackout, the fact that there were no street signs, and because bombs had altered the look of everything anyway, it was easy to get lost if you didn’t have a good nose for direction. It was one of the things Beatrice had quickly had to acquire.
There were other things she’d learned too: how to keep calm in an emergency, how to hold herself together and carry on in the midst of terror and carnage – and she’d seen some terrible things. She’d discovered in all this that she had a great desire to help people, and felt a tremendous loyalty to this community who were nightly enduring appalling experiences of death and destruction. When she had time to think about it, which was hardly ever, she looked back on her life at school with amazement. It was such a short time ago, but it was as though she’d been another person then.
Around five o’clock in the morning, while it was still dark, people came to queue for breakfast. It was seven before the two girls left the canteen near the First Aid Post in the Mile End Road, and flagged down a bus to take them home to an ATS hostel in Bloomsbury Here, they stumbled upstairs to the room they shared with two others, already up and out, peeled off their dusty uniform and climbed into their bunks. Beatrice fell asleep instantly and did not even dream.
The following night, she was woken in the small hours, not by an air raid, but by stones rattling on the window. ‘Your turn,’ came Mary’s groan from the lower bunk. Beatrice slid down from her bed, tiptoed downstairs and opened the back door. A small slight figure slipped inside.
‘Thanks, you’re a brick,’ Judy whispered, shivering. She smelt gorgeously of Chanel No. 5 and foreign cigarettes.
‘Good time?’ Beatrice was yawning.
‘Marvellous.’ Judy gave a delicious wiggle as she took off her shoes. ‘Took ages to find a taxi back, though.’
Together, they crept upstairs, determined not to wake Matron.
‘Come with me tonight, Bea, do! Dougie’s bringing some pals.’ Judy, who’d been preening in the mirror, twisted round to show her pretty face lit with excitement. ‘You’ll moulder away if you’re not careful.’
‘I do go out – I went to the pictures last night.’ She’d accompanied Rosemary, the fourth member of their dormitory, who’d declared herself ‘off’ men following a broken romance with a Polish Spitfire pilot.
‘Don’t tell me, Gone With the Wind again.’
‘I like Gone With the Wind. But no, last night it was Rebecca.’ She’d felt dreadfully homesick seeing the Cornish setting.
‘That’s exactly the same thing.’ Judy addressed her reflection as she dragged carmine lipstick across her mouth. ‘You’re happy to watch love affairs on screen but not to find any of the real thing for yourself. What’s the matter with you?’
Beatrice, reading on her bunk, closed the book and sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, swinging herself down. ‘I’ll come, though I don’t imagine I’ll know anybody. What are you doing?’ Judy had thrown open the cupboard door and was rifling through dresses. ‘We have to wear our uniform, Ju.’ Rosemary had recently got into trouble with Matron on this matter and been barred from an evening out. Judy, however, broke every rule in the book, if she could get away with it, and she usually did.
‘This’ll do – catch,’ Judy said, throwing over a long pale-blue dress of her own. ‘You put it on in the nightclub, silly. Hurry up,’ she commanded, ‘and I’ll do your hair, if you like.’
It was nine o’clock when they joined the queue for the nightclub, a large cellar below Leicester Square. Sleet was coming down fast, and once they finally got down the stairs, Beatrice was more than happy to follow Judy through the crowds to the ladies’ powder room. There they changed into their dresses and repaired their make-up. Fair little Judy, in figure-hugging scarlet, stood out from the dowdy navy and khaki of the other girls jostling for space at the mirrors, but Beatrice, too, in her borrowed dress, was subject to the odd approving look.
When they were ready, they pushed their way through to the bar where Judy had spotted her boyfriend ordering drinks. His pleasant, boyish face lit up.
‘Judy, darling. And Beatrice, what angels you look. Where’s Guy gone. Guy? Girls, this is Guy Hurlingham from the mess. Now what will you have to drink?’
Beatrice liked Dougie, whom she’d met on a previous occasion. Whilst he and Judy chattered away she shook hands shyly with the other man. Guy Hurlingham was tallish and well turned out, with a Captain’s pips on his shoulder and a musical lilt to his voice. He was a few years older than her eighteen years, with clever, slightly foxy features. His glossy dark hair contrasted with very pale skin.
He offered her a cigarette, which she declined, then lit his own with graceful movements. He had a quiet way about him which some people might have thought stand-offish, but which Beatrice sensed was only reserve. She wondered whether Dougie and Judy were deliberately pairing them off and felt a little annoyed with Judy for not warning her.
‘Are you on leave like Dougie or just up for this evening?’ she asked.
‘We’re both on twenty-four-hour passes,’ he replied. His voice was deep, almost gravelly. ‘Came up from Aldershot this afternoon.’ His smile was slow and serious, but no less genuine for that. ‘You’re billeted with Judy here, I gather. What sort of a place is it?’
‘The hostel? It’s two big terraced houses knocked together,’ she replied. ‘Rather a rabbit warren, with Matron prowling about like a vixen.’
‘You poor bunnies!’ he said and she laughed.
‘We’re pretty good at creeping past her. It could be worse. The place feels comfortingly solid in a raid. We sleep in the basement when it’s very bad.’
‘Which I know it has been. I say, it looks as though that party’s leaving. Shall we?’
They hurried to secure one of the plush banquettes that lined the red-silk-covered walls while Dougie and Judy trailed after with the drinks. The whole place was so wonderfully glamorous, Beatrice thought, liking the crimson velvet curtains and the burgundy carpet glowing in the low light. She was glad she’d come. The band was playing a slow number and several pairs of dancers were drifting about on the dance floor. Before long, Judy and Dougie got up and joined them, leaving Beatrice and Guy to guard the drinks. After a minute or two the music turned lively, and they had to sit quite close together on the sofa to hear one another speak.
‘I haven’t known Dougie long,’ Guy told her. ‘He’s a cheerful fellow, isn’t he? I enjoy his company.’ Being from Wales, he said, he didn’t know many people in London, though he hoped to look up an old school pal who’d written to say he was in Town.
Dougie and Judy were coming back now. They’d met some other friends, and soon there was quite a crowd roosting around their table. An extraordinarily beautiful Italian-looking girl with a sardonic expression perched on the arm of Beatrice’s sofa and talked to a stocky young Flying Officer, some story about her brother. Then she mentioned the name of a school and Beatrice couldn’t help interrupting to ask the young man, ‘You were there? You didn’t know anyone called Wincanton, did you? Their sister is a friend.’
The Flying Officer looked dismayed. ‘I should say I did. Ed Wincanton was in my year. You heard the news, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ Beatrice said sadly. ‘Poor Ed.’
‘You know the parents, obviously,’ he said. ‘How did they take it? Badly, I expect.’
‘Awful,’ she said, and it rushed back, her meeting with Angelina, Oenone’s devastation.
‘And his brother was a couple of years below. Peter, I think his name was.’
‘That’s
right. You haven’t come across him recently, have you?’ Beatrice asked. ‘No one seems to know quite what he’s up to.’
‘I remember Peter Wincanton,’ the Italian beauty cut in. ‘He came to stay with my brother once. I thought him rude.’
‘I don’t think he meant to be,’ Beatrice said. ‘He’s shy, you see.’
‘Most awkward. What does the father do now?’ the beauty asked. ‘Isn’t he in the government or something?’
‘I think he’s a Minister in the War Office,’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s a bit vague.’
‘Who knows what anyone does these days,’ said Guy, who’d been listening to the exchange. ‘No one will tell you anything.’
The band had struck up a popular number, and two by two the group peeled off to dance.
‘Would you like to?’ Guy said. Beatrice wondered if he was merely being polite.
‘I really don’t mind sitting out. I’ve two left feet, I’m afraid,’ she told him.
‘And I’ve two right ones, so we’ll match,’ he said, smiling. ‘Come on.’ They danced to two lively numbers before the music turned slow again. ‘Shall we try this?’ Guy said, and when she demurred he gently pulled her to him. She closed her eyes as they drifted dreamily. It was easy in here to forget the fear and the horror for a while, just to feel the music and the comfort of someone’s arms around you. Then she remembered he was a stranger and the feeling was lost.