by Annie Groves
It wouldn’t have taken much for the flames of nearby burning buildings to be driven towards Article Row, and to consume the buildings there as they had done so much else, Tilly reflected. She gave a small shiver at the thought of suffering the loss of her home. She knew how much number 13 meant to her mother. There was something special about Article Row and the small close-knit community who lived there. Tilly felt even more fond of it now, with Drew living there as well, lodging as he did with one of the neighbours, Ian Simpson. Ian’s wife and their children had evacuated to the country at the start of the war. Ian was a print setter, working for the Daily Express on nearby Fleet Street, which was how he had originally come to meet Drew.
This new bombing raid on the city was a dreadful end to a dreadful year, and by all accounts they had an even bleaker new year ahead of them as wartime hardship bit ever deeper into their lives.
It had been trying to snow slightly on and off all day, forlorn white flakes outnumbered by the soot and cinders still raining down from the sky. Now one of them landed on Tilly’s face to lie there for a second before it was washed away by the tears she barely knew she was weeping.
‘That’s right, missie, if they’d hit St Paul’s it would have taken the heart out of everyone in London, and not just the city itself,’ said an elderly man emotionally, leaning heavily on his walking, stick, medals from another war barely gleaming on his chest in the grey late afternoon light.
It was that kind of day: the kind when complete strangers spoke and turned to one another in comfort and in hope that somehow, like St Paul’s itself, they would be saved – delivered from the awfulness of war.
A heavy pall of smoke and the darkening sky combined to create the illusion that even those buildings still standing were as fragile as cardboard, shifting on every shocked breath of the onlookers. Watchers and workers alike were pulling scarves up round their noses and mouths to block out the raw throat-burning smell and taste of smoke-filled air.
‘I shall never forget this as long as I live,’ Tilly told Drew. ‘And not just the way everything looks, but the awful, acrid, destructive smell too. I’ll remember it for ever. First Coventry’s cathedral and now this. Do you think Hitler is deliberately targeting our cathedrals?’
‘I think he’s getting desperate enough to know that the only way he’s going to win this war is to destroy the spirit of the British people,’ Drew told her, his arm tightening round her when she moved closer to him.
Tilly reached up to touch the chain hidden beneath her plum-coloured polo-necked sweater, from which hung the ring Dew had secretly given her on Christmas Eve – Drew’s own graduation ring from his American university. She might only be eighteen, Tilly thought rebelliously as she felt the comforting weight of Drew’s ring against her skin, but the war meant that people her age were growing up fast. Surveying the full horror of the aftermath of the air raid, Tilly’s heart ached for those whose lives would be changed for ever. The very thought of anything happening to her Drew made her heart pound with anxiety.
In an attempt to distract herself she asked him, ‘Will you write about this in one of your newspaper articles?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘And about how brave you all are.’
‘You’re brave too, because you’re here with us when you don’t need to be, when you could be safe in America,’ Tilly reminded him.
‘No,’ Drew said softly, shaking his head. ‘There is only one place I can be, Tilly – only one place I want to be – and that is here with you.’
‘Oh, Drew.’
For a few precious seconds the intensity of their love wrapped a protective coat around them that excluded everyone and everything else. Within that protection Tilly gave Drew a look of burningly passionate love that made his heart turn over – with male desire for her, yes, but also with a need to protect her from that desire.
To distract herself from her anxiety over Tilly, Olive turned towards her friend Audrey Windle, who had stood back when Tilly and Drew had first appeared. She had seen the look on Olive’s face and guessed she was anxious about her young daughter and the handsome American reporter.
Now as they stood side by side in their WVS uniforms, Olive asked Audrey with genuine concern, ‘Have you had any news from your nephew?’
‘Yes, thank heavens,’ the vicar’s wife responded. ‘His plane was shot down over the Channel, as you know, Olive, but we heard only this morning that, miraculously, a naval vessel saw his parachute and was able to rescue him. He’s got a broken leg, mind, so he’ll be out of action for a while.’
She paused and then offered, ‘Tilly’s young man seems nice. I know the children at the Christmas party were all thrilled with the presents he gave them when he played Father Christmas.’
‘He is nice,’ Olive felt obliged to confirm truthfully. ‘And generous. It was lovely of him to think of doing that for the children.’ Her maternal anxiety couldn’t be abated, however, and before she could stop herself she was saying anxiously, ‘Tilly is so young, though, and there’s a war on. Even if there wasn’t, he’s American; ultimately he will go back there. It’s his home, after all.’
Audrey Windle gave Olive a sympathetic look. Then, in an effort to distract her, she gestured towards a WVS mobile canteen, which was parked close by and manned by three very busy WVS workers.
‘Do you think we should offer to give them a hand? They look very busy.’
‘Yes. I was just going to ask you the same thing.’ Olive knew hard work was always a good antidote to worry. She’d still be able to keep an eye on Tilly from the mobile canteen, and it went against the grain with Olive not to offer to help fellow members of the Women’s Voluntary Service if she thought she could be useful.
‘Want some help? I should say we do,’ the woman behind the counter told Olive and Audrey fervently. ‘It’s the firemen I feel the most sorry for. Parched, they are, after the fires they’ve had to put out.’
Olive nodded, quickly getting to work alongside Audrey. It was a small enough thing to do, set against what the fire and rescue services were doing – the providing of cups of hot tea – but everyone who worked in the WVS knew how much that homely brew meant to both the bombed-out and frightened, and those who were desperately trying to protect and save them.
‘Ta.’ One of the firemen took the cup of tea Olive had just poured for him, his helmet pushed back to reveal his soot-smeared face.
After draining the tea almost in one gulp he told her grimly, ‘He’s good at planning, Hitler is, you’ve got to give him that. Coming in at night when the Thames’s tide was at low ebb and then knocking out one of the main pumping stations first so that there wouldn’t be enough water pressure for our hoses. Lost a hell of a lot of buildings we could have saved, that did, never mind the poor souls that was in them that’s now under them. We’ve had to send one of our lads home. Found a couple of kids in one of the buildings – both of them gonners – same age as his own kids. He wouldn’t have it that we couldn’t do anything for them. Had to be dragged off in the end …’
‘Those men are saints,’ Audrey breathed fervently to Olive once the firemen had gone.
‘Most of them are, but sadly there are some bad apples. Sergeant Dawson told me that they’ve had to investigate cases of fire and rescue workers – and men in the Home Guard – helping themselves to things from damaged buildings.’
‘Yes, I’d heard that as well,’ the vicar’s wife said sadly. Then, changing the subject: ‘It’s such good news, though, isn’t it, about Sergeant and Mrs Dawson giving that young boy Barney a home?’
‘Yes it is,’ Olive agreed warmly.
Barney was a bit of a tearaway, and worse – at least according to Olive’s complaining neighbour, Nancy. After the death of his mother and grandmother Barney had been roaming the streets and constantly escaping from official care because he was afraid that when his father got leave from the army, he wouldn’t be able to find him. His parents had been separated, and Olive had been able to
tell from the start that Sergeant Dawson, who lived at number 1 Article Row, had a bit of a soft spot for the boy.
When Barney had run away from the second children’s home that had taken him in and had been found begging in the streets with a group of older boys, at Sergeant Dawson’s suggestion and with the agreement of the local authorities it had been arranged that Barney would move in with the Dawsons until such time as Barney’s father was able to take charge of his son once again.
‘I just hope that Mrs Dawson will be able to cope,’ Audrey continued with some anxiety. ‘I wouldn’t say that to anyone else, Olive, and especially not Nancy, knowing how unkind she can be.’
‘You needn’t worry that I’ll say anything to anyone else,’ Olive assured her, ‘but it’s no secret to those who lived in Article Row when the Dawsons’ son was alive that it hit Mrs Dawson particularly hard when they lost him.’
‘The vicar and I came here after their little boy’s death, but Mrs Dawson was so much of a recluse I remember that I didn’t even realise that Sergeant Dawson was married at first.’
‘It’s going on for ten years now since they lost him. So sad … He was always very poorly, and Mrs Dawson devoted every minute to him. But I’m sure that Sergeant Dawson wouldn’t have offered Barney a home if he felt it would upset his wife in any way.’
‘You’re right,’ Audrey agreed. ‘I hope it works out well for them all. Sergeant Dawson is such a good sort – look at the way he taught you and Anne to drive so that we could take up Mr Lord’s offer of his son’s van for WVS use.’
Olive nodded vaguely. She was listening to Audrey but her attention was really on Tilly and the rest of ‘her girls,’ as she had come to think of her lodgers.
Sally, in her nurse’s cape, no doubt thinking of her young man, George, a doctor working under the plastic surgeon Mr Archibald MacIndoe in a hospital in East Grinstead, where they did their best to repair those men who had been burned in the course of duty. Agnes, the orphan who had come to lodge at number 13, now newly engaged to Ted Jackson, who, like her, worked on the London Underground; she was still at the stage of gazing dreamily at her pretty little engagement ring. And then of course Dulcie, from Stepney in the East End, with her brash bold cockney ways and chippy exterior, which, as Olive knew, concealed an inner vulnerability. They had all three come to be extra daughters to her over the months they had lodged with her. It seemed odd to think now that she had viewed the thought of taking in lodgers as an unwelcome necessity. Now she wouldn’t have wanted to be without her girls for anything, and the house would seem empty without them.
Another straggling line of firemen was snaking across the water hoses and dangerous mounds of rubble that had once been buildings, towards the WVS mobile canteen, their needs commanding her attention.
‘Just look at all this mess,’ Dulcie complained, picking her way with distaste over the grimy rubble, so that she could join Sally as she went to meet Tilly and Drew.
As always Dulcie was dressed up to the nines, looking more as though she was going out on a date than coming to make a silent tribute to the strength of St Paul’s and the city, Sally thought ruefully. Dulcie was a game soul, and loyal to those who mattered to her, though you might not think that from looking at her.
‘You’re better watch that ankle of yours in those shoes on all this rubble,’ Sally warned, glancing down at the ankle Dulcie had broken at the beginning of the Blitz in September. ‘If I were you I’d wear a pair of shoes with lower heels than those, Dulcie.’
‘Well, you aren’t me, are you?’ Dulcie retorted in typical fashion. ‘You’d never catch me wearing them ugly black things you’ve got to wear,’ she added disparagingly, looking down at Sally’s sturdy shoes.
‘Try telling me that when you’ve been walking miles up and down hospital corridors and wards,’ Sally responded. She worked as a theatre sister at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
‘And besides,’ Dulcie continued, ‘for all I knew Wilder could have turned up with Drew and the last thing I want is for him to see me not looking my best. I just hope this doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to go to the Hammersmith Palais’s New Year’s Eve dance,’ she added, as she and Sally met up with Tilly and Drew. Not even her scowl or her sharp tone of voice could hide the fact that Dulcie was a stunningly beautiful young woman, with her blond curls and her perfect English rose complexion. She had the figure to go with her face as well, and Tilly wasn’t surprised that the young American pilot Drew had introduced to Dulcie should be so keen on her.
‘I’m sure that nothing will prevent Wilder from getting up to London to take you to the dance, Dulcie,’ Drew assured her.
‘It’s all very well you saying that, but there’s been talk of leave being cancelled, and there not being any trains running.’
‘If that’s the case then he will just have to fly here in a fighter plane,’ Drew teased Dulcie, who pulled a face at him.
Wilder, the young American she was dating, was a member of the American Eagles, the fighter pilot unit that was attached to the RAF. These brave young American pilots, ignoring the fact that their country had not joined the war and was insisting on remaining neutral, had nevertheless come over to Britain and offered their services to the RAF. Their ‘uniform’, such as it was, consisted of well-worn ‘pants’ to fly by the seat of, a swagger, fiercely chewed gum, and well-worn heavy-duty flying jackets. Needless to say they attracted girls like honey attracted bees.
‘I know one thing that does mean,’ Dulcie grumbled, ‘and that’s that they’ll be making even more fuss at Selfridges about having us up on the roof doing fire-watching duties because of this lot, especially Miss Cotton, since she’s the one always going on about it.’
Every business in the city was supposed to provide fire-watchers from their staff to make sure that any falling incendiaries were extinguished before the flames could take hold. So far Dulcie, who worked in the cosmetics department of the luxury store on Oxford Street, had managed to wriggle out of doing any fire-watching herself by claiming that her broken ankle was still too weak for her to risk clambering about on the roof. Though it was not, of course, too weak for her to go dancing on it. Of course not!
‘We ought to be getting back now that the light’s starting to go,’ Olive told Audrey Windle with an anxious look towards the girls. ‘I’d hate for us to be caught out in the open if Hitler decides to come back again tonight.’
‘You’re right,’ her friend agreed. ‘We’ve got WVS tonight and I thought we’d go through those bags of second-hand clothes Sergeant Dawson brought in to the church hall on Saturday. I feel guilty about taking them. They must belong to someone … even if …’
Even if their owner was no longer alive to wear them, Olive knew that Audrey meant. They had an arrangement with a local laundry that had offered to launder the clothes they brought in for a very modest amount paid for out of the funds they raised, as and when they could, which at least meant they handed out clean and fresh clothes to those in need.
It was growing darker by the minute, only thankfully small fires now illuminating the nightmare scene of destruction surrounding them as Olive gathered together her small brood.
‘It’s all right if Drew comes back with us for supper, isn’t it, Mum?’ Tilly asked, tucking her arm through Olive’s.
‘Yes, of course,’ Olive agreed, earning her arm a small squeeze before Tilly dropped back, no doubt finding a much more romantic place to tuck her arm with Drew, Olive guessed. She might be thirty-seven but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t remember what it was like to be young and in love, which was why she was so concerned for her daughter. She knew the intoxication that came with true love. Sometimes even now she’d wake up in the early hours, vulnerable with sleep, aching inside for the warmth of loving male arms to turn to, and a loving husband to love her back.
They all had their torches but it made sense for them to use only one of them, to save their batteries. Olive and Audrey led the way, coming to an abr
upt halt when they nearly walked into a wooden barrier blocking off a side road, a notice pinned to it warning, ‘No Access – Unexploded Bomb’. Olive played her torch carefully to either side. On one building, its windows bombed out, the holes gaping blackly like rotting teeth in a dusty red-brick mouth, they all saw someone had chalked, ‘London can take it.’ Fiercely Olive blinked away her emotion.
Down the next street they passed a group of men still searching quietly in the filthy soot and dust-coated rubble of what had once been a row of buildings but that was now a line of jagged roofless outlines against the darkening sky.
Olive started to walk more quickly, hissing to the girls to ‘keep up’, not wanting to raise her voice in case the sound disturbed the men listening so carefully at those still mounds of rubble, just in case there might be someone inside them still alive.
‘Ugh. Look, I’ve got soot and grease on my gloves,’ Dulcie complained once they were all standing together in the safety and warmth of number 13’s hallway. Holding up her hands, she displayed for everyone else’s inspection the pretty gloves that had been a Christmas present from Olive, who had knitted a pair for each of the girls from wool she had unravelled from old jumpers and the like, handed over to the WVS for reuse. The money she’d paid for the items and the work she had to do, not just in the knitting but also in unpicking and then washing the wool in the first place, was rewarded every time she saw her girls go out with their hands warmly wrapped in their gloves.
‘Give them to me. It will wash out with a bit of Dreft,’ she assured Dulcie, in the general bustle of coats, scarves and hats being removed and hung on the hall coat stand, prior to everyone hurrying into the warmth of the cosy family kitchen at the back of the house.