The Night Raid

by Clare Harvey

  She turned when she heard the lorry, saw a hatless man jump down from the cab, slouch-swagger towards the pub – something in his gait made her pause a moment. He hadn’t noticed her, and if she kept on walking he probably wouldn’t clock she was there at all.

  ‘What a coincidence, meeting you here,’ she called down the street, and watched as he looked in her direction, faltering, one hand already on the cracked black paint of the pub doors.

  ‘Vi?’

  ‘Hello, Frank.’

  She waited for him to come to her, along the cracked kerbstones, treading on the lines. He looked smaller than she remembered, older, too, his dirty blond hair beginning to inch away from his creased forehead. He drew close. ‘I thought you’d gone, Vi. I thought—’ He stopped speaking and looked into the pram.

  ‘You thought what, Frank?’ Her hands gripped the smooth rubber on the pram handle as she watched him lean over and peer into the muddle of sheets.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Yours?’ he muttered.

  ‘Of course she’s mine. Who else’s would she be? Her name is Zelah, in case you were wondering.’

  He cleared his throat again and straightened up. ‘She’s a little darling, Vi,’ he said, and Vi thought she heard a catch in his voice. She knew what he was thinking: a whole year since she’d done a bunk after that night in the alley, and here she was, back in town, baby in tow.

  ‘Yes, she’s a pretty thing, ain’t she? Blonde, like her dad.’

  ‘Vi, I didn’t know—’ he began, but she cut in.

  ‘How’s Frank Junior, and how’s your missus these days?’ She saw him start, pull into himself. ‘What, you thought I didn’t know?’

  He shook his head, the sunset behind the gas works casting his face in partial shadow. ‘We lost him, Frank Junior. Scarlet fever – Gloria hasn’t been the same, since.’ Frank’s features disintegrated and then reformed themselves into position as he spoke. I used to kiss those lips, Vi thought. I used to kiss those lips and run my hands down inside his jacket, around his waist.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and reached over to pat him on the sleeve with her left hand. The gold ring caught the lowering sunshine. ‘I lost someone myself recently,’ she said, leaving her hand on his sleeve. She saw him look down, knew he’d seen it. ‘Zelah’s dad was a Polish pilot,’ she said.

  The chippy doors flew open, letting out the hot-fat-vinegar smell, along with the knot of girls, talking nineteen-to-the-dozen through their chip-filled cheeks as they traipsed along the pavement opposite. She took her hand off his sleeve, looked up at his face. His eyes were grey, just like the pilot’s had been, that night in the hostel.

  Frank blinked. Was it relief or disappointment that washed over his face as he spoke? ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, running a hand through his hair and tousling it up, the way she remembered it. He took a packet of Woodbines from his pocket. ‘Where did you go, anyway?’ he said, beginning to sound and look more like the old Frank, the one who’d liked a joke over the bar in the King’s Arms. He held open the packet: ‘They said you’d been sent to Coventry, but I never believed them.’

  ‘No, not Coventry. Somewhere up that way, though.’ She smiled and waved away the offer of a fag. ‘I did night shift – better paid.’ In the pram Zelah shifted and made a sound like a small miaow. She’d be due a feed, soon, Vi thought. ‘Anyway, don’t let me keep you,’ she said, starting to shift the pram forward.

  ‘You back for good?’ Frank said, flicking ash into the gutter. ‘You might be able to get some shifts in the King’s Arms, if your ma can help out with the little one?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m only on leave,’ Vi said. ‘I’m back in work end of the week. They’re opening a nursery in the factory, see – so many women on munitions these days – and I’m to be the manager.’ Zelah was beginning to make gurgle-cough noises. She’d wake up hungry soon. ‘Better go. She hasn’t half got a set of pipes on her, this one,’ Vi said, and she leant across to kiss Frank on his stubbled cheek, rough as brickwork against her lips. ‘Goodbye, Frank.’

  And she set off, not looking back to catch his expression, but sensing him watching her, as she walked up the street, past the chippy and the shelter, past the bombed-out house on the corner and the shuttered-up fishmonger’s, all the way. Everything’s just the same, Vi thought, pushing the pram over the broken kerbstones. Everything looked the same, smelled the same, nothing had changed at all, except her: the girl who’d got a second bite at the cherry.

  Chapter 30

  Laura

  ‘Did you order fruit scones, or the plain?’

  ‘Keep still, Harold. Your head dips when you speak.’

  Harold closed his mouth and Laura placed her stick of charcoal back on the paper. She was using charcoal, chalk and watercolour, just as she’d used for the factory poster. If she could get a decent likeness then she’d work it up in oils afterwards. Harold was letting her paint him, after all these years.

  There was the usual muted chatter and chink of china in the British Camp Hotel tea room. Outside, the sky was a slice of amber. Inside, the air was fragrant with the applewood log on the fire. Laura pulled the charcoal over the paper, tracing the line of her husband’s jaw. Her watercolour tin lay beside her on the table. She’d move it, when the girl came with the tea things.

  She put down the charcoal and picked up a piece of chalk, working at the highlights, where the firelight silver-plated the planes on his face. He kept very silent and still – an excellent model, as it turned out, even though it had taken him fifty years to allow her to discover that for herself. She pulled a forefinger across the paper, stroking his face and softening his features.

  Laura paused and squinted at her work, her head on one side. Had she finally captured Harold: the heavy brows, the long nose, the dark eyes behind his spectacles? Had she finally captured Harold, after all these years?

  She put down the chalk and Harold shifted in his chair. ‘You can relax for a moment, if you’d like,’ Laura said, still regarding his face on the paper, unsure of what she’d drawn. ‘Do you think I have time to make a start on the watercolour before tea arrives? It does always seem to take an age, even when they’re not busy. Sometimes one wonders what goes on in that kitchen.’

  ‘I shouldn’t. She’ll be here any minute,’ Harold said, taking out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Might just have time for a smoke, though. Care for one?’ He pushed the packet across the table towards her.

  ‘Actually, I think I’d rather get on, before the light changes. Put that down and take up your position again, please.’

  Why did she have to be so defiant, Laura thought, even now? He was probably right about the tea things, but she always had to stick out her chin and do the opposite. She lifted the lid on the watercolour tin and dipped her brush in the jam jar of water next to it on the table. The carmine would be too pink, wouldn’t it? Even for the ruddy shadows on the fireside edge of his face. She mixed it with a little yellow, loaded her brush and looked across at her husband’s face. From behind her she heard the thud of the kitchen doors and Kipper yapping at something. She swept the brush in an arc, describing the flush of firelight on Harold’s features. She had the brush poised again, ready to run a wash round his jawline, when she was shoved from behind and there was a clatter-crash as a tea tray thudded to the floor.

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Missus Knight. I must have caught my shoe on the chair leg there. I do apologise – are you all right, Missus Knight?’

  ‘I’m fine, dear. No harm done. It was only a sketch,’ Laura said, to soothe the girl. But the brush had splodged against the paper, making a pinky-yellow welt on Harold’s face, as if someone had slapped him, very hard. Harold was up and out of his chair, helping the girl with the dropped tea things. Laura tore off the spoiled sheet and took it over to the fire, kneeling down on the hearth. The flags were hard beneath her knees. The girl and Harold were fussing with the things. Someone had gone to get a dustpan and a damp cloth.

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bsp; Laura reached into her pocket and took out the scrap of painting, still there, after all these months: the painted eye, soot-dark, with a heavy, arched brow. She held it next to the spoiled watercolour. Then she laid it over the top: the arch of the brow, the distance between the eye and the bridge of the nose. If you covered up the watercolour of Harold with the fragment of Zelah, it was an almost perfect match.

  Laura could hear the palaver of the tea tray calamity continue behind her. She took the canvas and the watercolour and fed them both into the flames, watching as the features combined, blackened, curled up and disappeared into nothing but ash and smoke.

  She felt Harold’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Here, let me help you up. They’re going to get more tea things.’ She let him help her to her feet. ‘I’m sorry about all that,’ he said, as she stood upright. And he bowed over and kissed her hand, in that gallant, theatrical way that had been the fashion when they were young. He kissed her left hand, in the place where her wedding ring should have been. ‘I’m so sorry, Laura,’ he said, again, straightening up and looking into her eyes. ‘Shall we start afresh?’

  George

  The half moon was sliding westwards. Low clouds pulled sideways, alternately blotting and revealing a smattering of stars. The rooftops of the terraced houses in the Meadows were a dark scribble, and the River Trent uncoiled like the tail of one of the dolly knots they used to sling the gun barrels to the cranes. George imagined a giant hand reaching down from the skies and giving the river rope a tug, and watching as the tangled mess of slipknots gave way, and everything falling apart.

  Everything falling apart.

  One day it all would, he thought, looking out into the Nottingham night. Hitler was done for, the papers were full of it. It was only a matter of time before the war was over. And then what? Who needs anti-aircraft guns in peacetime? No more war effort. No more night shift. What then? What the hell would he do when it was all over?

  George thought of the empty house on the Park Estate, the moored-up dinghy at Trent Lock, Lexi’s grave in Attenborough churchyard. The peacetime years stretched ahead, dark, flat and empty as the farmland beyond the riverbank.

  He rubbed his hands together and blew on them. Should have worn gloves up here. It was still chilly at night on fire watch duty, even though spring was on its way. He heard the door to the stairwell open behind him. ‘You’re back early. No need to hurry back on my account, though. Adolf’s otherwise engaged this evening.’ He took his pipe out of his pocket and tapped the remains of the old baccy out on the wall, hearing footsteps coming towards him across the factory roof. ‘I’m quite all right, really, Alfie, you get back down to the canteen and have another cuppa in the warm.’

  ‘Mr Handford?’ He turned, then. Because it wasn’t Alfie Perkins’ voice.

  ‘Violet?’

  ‘I thought you might like this.’ There she was, in the old beige coat of hers, holding two mugs of steaming tea. ‘Mrs Whiley’s minding the night nursery so’s I can have a break. Alfie said I’d find you here. Thought you could use a hot drink.’

  She walked over and put the mugs down on the parapet. He stuffed his pipe back in his pocket. ‘Thank you. How thoughtful.’ The mug was warm in his cold palms, and the tea ran hot-sweet down his throat. He saw her pick up her own mug and turn as if to go. And with a sudden rush he realised that that wasn’t what he wanted. ‘How are things going, down there?’ He stalled her with a question.

  ‘Very well, thank you for asking. We’ve got six at present on this shift, although Mrs Fry is due any day, so that’ll take us to seven in a few weeks’ time.’

  ‘And how are you coping?’

  ‘The babies are calm as anything. Strange, you’d think it’d bother them, all that noise, but they seem to like it – I manage to get the odd forty winks in myself, between feeds.’

  ‘I should come down and take a look, do a report for the Board.’

  ‘That would be – nice.’

  He noticed how she hesitated when she replied. He looked at her, holding her mug like a prayer, steam blurring her features. She had always been just another factory girl to him, Zelah’s mouthy colleague – a nuisance, at best. But she was making a real success of this workplace nursery – production was better than ever since the women could come back to work with their little ones.

  ‘I should probably leave you to it,’ she said, removing the mug from her lips. A faint breeze lifted her coat collar, and it flapped against her face like a wing. She began to turn away.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said, watching as she paused. ‘Finish your tea, at least.’

  She smiled, then, and he noticed how her left cheek dimpled. ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘I could use the company, to be honest.’

  So she stood beside him, looking out across the ragged edges of the city, where railway tracks frayed farmland and waterways hemmed terraced rows, and the colliery belched smoke.

  She lit two cigarettes and passed one to him, without asking if he wanted it. The smoke was a warm curl inside as he inhaled. Together they sipped tea and finished their cigarettes and George felt no need to say or do anything other than just be with her, looking out into the night.

  It was Violet who flicked her fag away first and drained the dregs of her drink. He waited for her to take her leave. It had been a comfort to have someone to share the empty skies with, just this once, he thought. Then – ‘I miss her,’ Violet said, and he felt a hand reach for his, a warm contrast to the cool concrete beneath his fingertips.

  ‘So do I,’ he said, taking her hand in his – small and smooth. ‘Every moment.’

  And they stayed like that, hands clasped, looking out into the midnight skies: fire watching, together.

  Author’s Note

  Although The Night Raid is entirely fictional, certain real-life characters provided a catalyst for the story, as did actual wartime locations.

  Dame Laura Knight was a war artist in both the First and Second World Wars. Her husband, Harold Knight, was also a well-known painter from the ‘Newlyn School’. (Anyone who has read Barbara Morden’s excellent biography Laura Knight – A Life will know how much I am indebted to her. Janet Dunbar’s biography Laura Knight also provided valuable insights, as well as Laura’s own autobiographies Oil Paint and Grease Paint and The Magic of a Line). Director of the National Gallery Sir Kenneth Clark – known to friends as ‘K’ – chaired the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, which commissioned and acquired work from more than 400 artists during WWII.

  During WWII there was a Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) in Nottingham on the site of what is now the NG2 business park. Around 14,000 (mostly women) workers put in 12-hour shifts, making anti-aircraft guns. After the war the factory made Centurion tanks, and finally closed in 2001. Nearby ROF Ruddington, a shell-filling factory and ammunition depot, was decommissioned in 1945 and the land converted into Rushcliffe Country Park in the early 1990s.

  The Flying Horse Inn, Nottingham, was a popular drinking spot for the Polish pilots who trained at RAF Hucknall. The pub itself no longer exists, but the frontage remains, as the entrance to a shopping arcade. Other actual locations in and around Nottingham include Laura’s childhood home opposite Forest Fields (there’s a blue plaque above Ethel Villas), Angel Row (Bromley House Library still exists, but the Ritz Cinema closed a few years ago), The Park Estate, Wilford Village, Attenborough Village, and Trent Valley Sailing Club.

  Laura and Harold Knight spent much of the war living in the British Camp Hotel (now the Malvern Hills Hotel) in the Malvern Hills.

  Six army camps lay within three miles of Barnard Castle in County Durham in WWII, including a Battle School for training tank crews near Stainton Grove. The last army camp closed in the 1970s.

  Scores of city children were evacuated to Sennen Cove on the Cornish coast in wartime. The fishing village also hosted RAF Sennen (otherwise known as Skewjack), which operated Chain Home – an early warning radar system. The RAF camp closed in the 1970s.

>   Laura Knight’s famous painting ‘Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring’ provided the stepping-off point for the creation of The Night Raid, which inserts an entirely fictitious timeline and set of circumstances into the renowned war artist’s life. Laura Knight fans will know that ‘Ruby Loftus’ was first exhibited on 30th April 1943 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. For the purposes of this story, the date and location of the painting’s unveiling have been altered – I hope readers and Laura Knight devotees won’t mind a touch of artistic licence in this instance.

  If you’re interested in discovering more of the books and films that inspired The Night Raid, take a look at my website: http://clareharvey.net

  Acknowledgements

  Massive thanks go to all friends and family who have had to put up with me during the writing process.

  Here are some who deserve a particular mention: Phill Brookes for explaining about capstan lathes and the workings of munitions factories; Alex Walker for providing useful information on WWII bombs; Rob Murphy for mentioning dolly knots; Tessa Carpenter for reminding me of boarding school, and Caroline Mullen, who suggested I iron out a plot wrinkle by having a scene with a giant eagle swooping down and carrying everyone off (sorry, that bit got edited out, Caroline . . .).

  And special thanks to my fabulous agent, Teresa Chris, for her wise advice to ‘lose the butcher’s shop’ (she will know what this means) – as usual, she was right.

  Clare Harvey is a former army wife. Her mother-in-law’s experiences during WWII inspired her novel, The Gunner Girl, which won both The Exeter Novel Prize and The Joan Hessayon Award for debut fiction. Clare lives in Nottingham with her family. Find out more about Clare on her website: http://clareharvey.net or catch up with her on Twitter: @ClareHarveyauth or Facebook: ClareHarvey13.