by Lissa Evans
‘You might feel less anxious,’ said Jepson. ‘You know – a trouble shared. And I might be able to help you, or at least to give you some advice.’
When was the last time she’d trusted another adult? She wanted to search his face, but all she had was his voice. ‘What’s your full name?’ she asked.
‘Pevensey Gerard Arthur Jepson.’
‘Pevensey?’
‘My parents met at Pevensey Bay. I was always called Gerry.’
‘Gerry Jepson.’ There was an unlikely hop and a skip to the name.
‘And I believe I know yours,’ said Jepson. ‘It’s Margery, isn’t it?’
Vee’s mouth was suddenly very dry. She took a sip of cold tea and set the cup down again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, that’s not my real name.’
The photographer from the Picture Post had wanted to pose Avril in front of a bombed-out building, but snow had given way to sleet, and at three in the afternoon it was already beginning to darken, so he had moved his camera and a plug-in light into Post 9 and was using the six-foot-by-six sector map as a backdrop. Avril, dressed in a tightly belted navy siren suit, her hair in a victory roll, was standing with studied casualness, hands in pockets and a warden’s helmet hooked over one elbow, the shadow of her profile projected dramatically across the web of streets.
‘Any other props?’ asked McLennan, who had arrived in a cape. He was, as Avril had whispered to Winnie, a well-known ‘society’ photographer, and his expression on looking around the interior of the Wardens’ Hut was that of a sculptor forced to model the Venus de Milo out of used chewing-gum.
‘Any what?’ asked Smiler.
‘Props. Objects of some description that would shout “Wardens’ Post” to an observer.’
‘Well, I can get you a sign that says “Wardens’ Post”,’ said Smiler. ‘There’s one outside.’
‘Something less on the nose, perhaps?’
Winnie opened the store cupboard and scanned the shelves. ‘Gas rattle? Tilley lamp? Telephone book? Sandwich box?’
‘That’s mine,’ said Basset.
‘You haven’t seen my Iliad in there, have you?’ asked Polesworth.
Star-fever had hit the Post and several of the wardens had turned out to watch the photographic session, whether on shift or not. Avril had been tremendously gracious, distributing kisses and handshakes all round – ‘Oh, I’ve heard all about you,’ she’d said, roguishly, to Smiler, and his leathern features had almost dimpled. Addy had made her a cup of tea and Polesworth had actually brought along a copy of Tin Helmet for her to autograph.
‘What about a blue flag?’ continued Winnie, poking through the cupboard. ‘For use during an incident. Or a whistle on a string? Or a folding canvas screen? We put them up to hide the WC in the shelters.’
The session continued without additional props. After Avril had been photographed in a variety of poses – gazing clear-eyed just to the right of the camera, pensively biting her lip and (less successfully) smiling modestly – it was Winnie’s turn.
‘Just begin by standing comfortably together,’ said McLennan. ‘Give me a moment to move the light.’
‘No stains on this, are there?’ asked Winnie, glancing down at the uniform tunic she was wearing over her slacks. She had polished the buttons that morning, and brushed the matching beret.
Avril shook her head. ‘No, you look awfully smart. You know that Picture Post want you for the interview as well?’
‘Really?’
‘They love the twin angle, apparently. It’s on Sunday afternoon at our house. Can you come?’
‘I’d have to swap shifts.’
‘I’ll cover for you, Shorty,’ said Smiler.
‘There,’ said Avril. ‘All sorted. Is that what your colleagues call you? Shorty?’
‘When we’re not calling her Chief,’ said Basset, with a tone of slight reproof.
‘Link arms, please,’ said McLennan. ‘Lean your heads together. Could you bend your knees a little, Mrs Astley-Grey, to even up the heights?’
‘Do call me Avril.’
‘Actually, it might be preferable if we had something for Wendy to stand on.’
‘It’s Winnie.’
As she spoke, there was a noise like the snap of a dried stick, followed by a directionless rolling boom, which shook the floor and set the overhead light-bulb swinging on its wire.
‘Near-ish,’ said Basset.
‘Ring up Control, would you?’ asked Winnie. ‘See where it is. And someone take a gander outside.’
‘You’re all splendidly calm,’ said Avril, as Smiler and Polesworth left the hut. ‘And talk about being in the right place – it’s like getting appendicitis while you’re in the doctor’s surgery.’
‘Could someone straighten the bulb so we can get back to the business in hand?’ asked McLennan. ‘I have a reception at the Russian Embassy at seven.’
The rocket, it turned out, had dropped over a mile and a half away, well out of their sector. ‘On a bus garage,’ Basset reported back, after a second call. ‘Hell of a mess.’
‘And now could we have Mrs Astley-Grey sitting on the edge of the desk, showing a page of her book to Wanda?’
‘It’s Winnie,’ said Winnie yet again, staring at a passage which contained the words ‘the oiled-silk skin of her thighs’ and trying to adjust her features into an expression of rapt interest. It jolted her right back to drama school – to that moment during a first-year party when she’d realized that her ability to act on stage didn’t extend to real life, and that while there were girls in her year who could apparently dilate their own pupils to order, she herself had difficulty even feigning a genuine-looking smile at someone she didn’t like.
She remembered telling Emlyn about it, not long after they’d met: ‘Well, that’s a good quality, isn’t it?’ he’d said. ‘I’ll always know what you’re really thinking.’ Though now, of course, it was more than four years since he’d had any idea what she was really thinking; nearly half a decade of mutual opacity. She’d been trying to remember the contents of the last letter he would have received from her and could recall only a rather perfunctory account of what she’d been listening to on the wireless. ‘… On the other hand, the Dorothy L. Sayers adaptation was pretty good, though I guessed the murderer about a quarter of the way through …’ Hard to imagine anyone pressing that to their heart, except as insulation.
‘Only one more left on the film,’ said McLennan. ‘How about something amusing – both of you playing Tug-o-war over the warden’s helmet?’
‘No,’ said Winnie and Avril, simultaneously.
‘Could we have a photograph of all of us from Post 9?’ asked Winnie. ‘We’ve never had the chance before.’
They bunched together in front of the map, Winnie and Avril at the centre.
‘Say “Cheese” everyone!’ said Avril.
‘Cheese? Where?’ asked Smiler. ‘Which lucky bleeder’s got some cheese?’
McLennan packed up his camera and hurried off into the gloaming, followed at a more leisurely pace by Smiler and the others – ‘We might nip into the Fox and Grapes, and then again, we might not’ – leaving only Winnie manning the Post.
‘What, all on your own?’ asked Avril.
‘Basset’s back at six. Besides, I’m used to my own company.’ The casual phrase came out sounding like an elegy, and Avril pulled a sympathetic face. ‘You do know, darling, that Clive’s keeping his ears pricked for even the tiniest bit of news. He’ll tell you the very second he hears anything.’ And instantly, all the worry that Winnie had been keeping firmly pegged was up again and waving, flapping round her like hung sheets in a gale. ‘Oh, please, let’s talk about something else,’ she said, dragging the desk back to its normal position, and handing the copy of Tin Helmet to her sister. ‘Are you going to write another book?’
‘Oh, I have to, I don’t have any choice; my publisher’s an absolute martinet and he says it’s essential I build on my success. I’m thinking ab
out short stories this time. The Home Front from different angles: the country housewife, the Ministry Man …’
The woman whose husband’s in a POW camp, thought Winnie, with absolute certainty.
‘I’ve already thought of a—’
The air in the room folded into Winnie’s face like a concertina, and then retreated, pulling out of her lungs with a tidal suck and opening the door as it left, revealing the empty cement path up to the square, footprints visible in the sludge.
The door slammed shut again, with such force that a cobweb was shaken loose from the frame and moved not down, but sideways, parallel with the ceiling, as if borne on an invisible tray, and Avril’s book, which had been on the desk, was on the rug, which itself was pleated against the far wall, exposing the concrete floor of the hut. A chair had swivelled on the spot. The map had been torn from the wall. Avril’s face was taut, her eyes enormous.
‘Rocket,’ said Winnie, her mouth moving, but no sound emerging, not enough breath left inside her to make a noise. She hit herself on the chest and tried again, a mousy squeak. ‘Rocket overhead, right overhead. Stay here. Here.’
She grabbed her oilskin from the hook, and then her helmet, and opened the door into a cloud of stinging hail, minute chips of razor ice that weren’t ice at all, she realized, pulling on her coat and running up the path: the air was full of tiny fragments of glass.
On the south side of Deddington Square, the roofs and all remaining windows were gone. Mr Iles from the ground floor of number 12 had come outside and was standing with his hands on his hips, looking up at the empty sky, as if admiring a cloud formation, and Winnie ran past him and along Fig Passage into another street of roofless houses, the road paved with slates, someone already sweeping the glass from their front path, and ahead of her was Longford Row, more rafters like toast-racks, someone shouting, and now there was smoke in the air; Archer Street, the houses shorter with every few yards, no roofs, no upper floors, no fanlights over the front doors, and then there was her colleague Polesworth, covered in dust, leaning against a gatepost, the bare outline of the Fox and Grapes behind him, more air than brick.
‘They’re under there,’ he said, his gaze twitching past her towards the pub. ‘I’d changed my mind, decided to go home instead. They’re all under there.’
Winnie gripped his arm, trying to orientate herself. The pub had been part of a long, curved terrace which faced an identical terrace across an eye-shaped communal garden. And now there was no garden, just a vast crater at least forty feet wide, a water main playing like a fountain at the far end, a faint smell of gas, the terrace on one side an arc of humped rubble, while on the other, four storeys had been reduced to two and a woman was screaming, a shrill, unwavering noise, like a railway whistle. Smoke was rising from a couple of the ruined houses, a shimmy of flame just visible.
She dragged her gaze back to Polesworth. ‘Do you think you can get to the Post and phone Control?’ He nodded, his eyes clear, though his face was bleeding from a dozen tiny nicks. ‘My sister’s still there – send her back with the field telephone and the incident flags and lamps. And the census cards for the sector. Do you want me to come back with you?’
He shook his head and left, and Winnie ran across to the gaping wall of the pub. The upper floors had collapsed into the bar-room, which had itself collapsed into the cellar, and she was confronted with a choppy floor of brick and plaster, spiked with broken laths, half a table sticking vertically out of the rubble. On the opposite wall, a tin plaque bearing the Guinness toucan glinted in the last of the light. Two men were already making an attempt to dig.
‘How many people were in here?’ she asked, castigating herself for not having checked with Polesworth.
‘Five or six,’ said one of the men. ‘They’d only just opened. Three of them were your lads, and then a couple of old boys. And Alice at the bar.’ He pulled at one of the larger pieces, causing a small avalanche of plaster dust, and the creak of bending boards.
‘Stay off it and wait for Heavy Rescue,’ said Winnie, sharply. The chances were that no one was alive under there, but you never knew, you never knew: there was luck of all kinds in every raid. Addy had survived a blast that had killed the man next to him, Smiler had been blown into a cellar and come up cursing. She could already hear a fire-engine bell approaching.
‘Win, you in charge?’ It was Constable Orr, and with him were two of the Boy Scouts who acted as messengers during incidents.
‘I think I must be. There’s a fire mid-terrace on the west side of Ashington Gardens – the engine’ll never get round the front. Can you head them off before they get stuck and direct them up the back alley?’ She groped for the name of the taller scout. Toby. Terry. ‘Terry, I need a working telephone – could you knock on doors until you find one and then fetch me straight away. And I need someone to run to Post 8. It’s not their sector, but tell them we’re down to two at Post 9 and we can do with all the help we can get.’ As she spoke she was mentally listing the immediate requirements: Heavy and Light Rescue, fire brigade, gas board, water board, searchlights – there were maybe another twenty minutes of daylight left. The fact that the V-2 had fallen in the afternoon was a partial blessing – there were fewer people at home and those who were there were downstairs, protected from the scalping force of the wider explosion, though more liable, of course, to be buried.
‘Win?’ It was Doreen Hurst from the next sector – off duty, judging by the fact she was wearing lipstick and a mouton coat. ‘I was just passing. I’ve heard about Smiler and the others. What can I do?’
‘Nothing here, but we’re going to need another incident post at the other end of the crater, otherwise there’ll be endless traffic jams, so you can set that up. If Polesworth’s well enough, he can come and give you a hand; if not, we’ve got to get someone from your own sector. See if you can find a clear route for vehicles in and out of the east side of the square, and somewhere for them to park up. I’ll get one of the messengers to bring you a mac and a helmet.’ She pulled out her notebook and started on a list. Terry was back, and she followed him to a house at the far end of Archer Street, which, despite having had its entire front hedge blown into the parlour through the bay window, had a working telephone.
‘Someone’s here for you, Warden,’ said the Boy Scout when she emerged from the house, and there was Avril, holding a couple of lanterns, a laden canvas bag over one shoulder.
‘How’s Polesworth?’ asked Winnie.
‘He seems a bit shaky, but he says he’ll come back to help. How about the others?’
‘Won’t know until Heavy Rescue arrive. The rocket we heard earlier is using up half the resources – the Borough Incident Officer’s over there, and the mobile office, but they said they’ll divert anything that isn’t needed our way. Meanwhile, they’re liaising with Holloway. I’m going to use this house as our Incident Post so can you get a lantern lit before you go?’
‘Go? I’m not going, I want to help.’
‘Terry, there’s a spare warden’s coat and helmet in Post 9. Take them to Doreen Hurst, who’ll be up at the far end of the square, trying to set up a post – you know her, don’t you? Don’t try to edge round the crater, go round the back of the houses. Take the field telephone and one of these lamps and flags as well. And ask Doreen what she needs.’ He shot off again, a good lad.
‘I want to help,’ said Avril again.
‘All right, but you have to do as I say. I mean it, Avril. If people just muck in, all we get is enthusiasm and chaos and everyone doing the same thing.’
Avril started to say something and then saluted. ‘You’re in charge, sis.’
‘We need somewhere for people to go who can’t get back into their houses. Go and find the vicar of St Agnes – his name’s Howells – and ask for the use of the parish hall as a rest centre. End of this road, turn right, the church is halfway down; he’ll be somewhere around there. When you’ve done that, come straight back to me.’
Avr
il ran.
Within forty minutes, the streets around the crater were seething with vehicles. Torch-beams flicked across the ruins, and the hiccup of a generator indicated the arrival of a set of floodlights loaned by the US Navy. During the Blitz they’d had to do all this in near-darkness, the digging teams of Heavy Rescue erecting canopies to conceal their lights; now, as daylight brilliance suddenly bathed Ashington Gardens, Winnie saw a flock of starlings rise in confusion, circling and banking in the broad white beams, their shadows interweaving across the broken terraces.
‘WVS canteen has just arrived,’ said Avril, breathlessly. ‘They want to know where to park.’
‘Here, if they can,’ said Winnie, jerking a thumb towards the pavement opposite the Incident Post. ‘It needs to be visible. It’s going to be a long night.’
She kept catching glimpses of the digging team through the perforated walls of the Fox and Grapes, the small, patient movements which always seemed so slow, and yet were the only way to burrow through the compacted mass of masonry, its surface already slimy with damp. Most of the Heavy Rescue boys were from the building trade – you’d see them tapping the rubble, hearing its hollows and struts, gauging its instability, choosing their careful route into the interior.
Two survivors had already been found in Ashington Gardens, a mother and child furred with plaster dust and blank with shock, saved by their kitchen table, but there were at least fourteen others missing on the east side of the Gardens, and more in Archer Street. Twenty-eight casualties had been treated on the spot and thirteen taken to hospital. Eight deaths had been confirmed. Winnie was using the top of a garden wall as a makeshift table, the searchlight as her desk-lamp, as she checked rapidly through the census cards, thankful that she had always insisted that they be updated weekly, her wardens noting which families had left London, or had returned, or left again, or if a resident was in hospital, or whether previously abandoned flats were housing temporary workers, or which soldiers were home on leave, so that now the rescue workers were not just digging blindly, or speculatively.