by Jan Casey
‘Could do I suppose.’
Evelyn thought Gwen would be close to tears, but she looked past that, as if she couldn’t find it in herself any longer. There was an unsettling air of resignation about her. ‘I’ll wait and see for a while.’
‘Well,’ Evelyn said, groping for something to say that might help. ‘At least they’re out of here already. Hundreds are on the march again, desperate to get their kids somewhere safe. You must have seen them all making their way to the station. Little mites with their suitcases and masks in their hands.’
‘Yeah,’ Gwen said, misjudging her cup in the depression of the saucer and sending the whole thing rattling around. ‘My kids are so lucky, ain’t they? Been out of London for years already. Away from home, miles from Mum and Dad, everything they know. Then there’s Marty, Will’s pal. Don’t suppose you remember me telling you about him? Lost his dad a while back? Then his mum, nan and brothers all went the same way when their house took a packet. I suppose you could say he’s lucky as he was helping the butcher for a few bob when the bomb hit. Now he’s back with the Gwilts in Wales.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Evelyn said. ‘Forget I said anything.’
‘It’s just that I’d…’ Gwen closed her eyes but it didn’t stop her looking exhausted. ‘I’d convinced myself George would let the kids come home with us.’ Gwen snorted with derision at her own naivety. ‘But now…’
‘Maybe it won’t be for much longer,’ Evelyn said. ‘It can’t be. Only yesterday Dad was saying…’
Scraping her chair back and pocketing her fags, Gwen said, ‘Sorry for going off at you.’
Watching her scuttle through the door, Evelyn wondered where she would go to hunker down now. Her old hiding place was gone, built into the new contours of the bridge.
14
August – November 1944
Gwen
For the first time in years George had used his pet name for her – but the moment was blighted by the rigid edge of frustration in his voice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gwennie,’ he’d said – and he was right. She was a ridiculous woman. Idiotic even, her base stupidity an embarrassment. There was no visit to Wales and nor would there be. No snug family reunion. No point, George had said. He didn’t need to say anything else, but she knew that what could have been a happy occasion had been tainted and spoiled by her mithering. She’d ruined things yet again. Kids who’d never been sent away, and those like Marty, who’d come home to London, were being evacuated again. Another mass exodus was under way, and here she was pleading with George to allow Will and Ruth to come home. Her foolishness beggared belief.
Silently, resentment in his every move, George filled the coal bunker, trimmed the wicks, washed the windows with newspaper soaked in vinegar, tightened a loose catch on the meat-safe. Then he gathered his things together and clicked the door behind him. A minute later he was back, kissing her face without any other contact between them.
‘Everything’ll be alright,’ he said. ‘It’ll be over soon.’
She couldn’t bring herself to respond. If she had, she would have said something rude like, ‘Now who’s being stupid.’ This was never going to end, not even when it was over.
It had taken Gwen weeks to make the final decision to sort Johnny’s things – and what a terrible waste of time that had been, the way it all turned out. Betty had rolled her sleeves up when Gwen announced she was ready for the big clear-out. ‘Good on you, love,’ she said. ‘Len might be able to find a tin of leftover paint somewhere, and we can freshen up the walls. Take that old rug out the back and pretend it’s Hitler. Beat the hell out of it.’
It wouldn’t have been possible for her to face the job if she hadn’t believed Will and Ruth were on their way home soon; it would have been heart-breaking for them to go straight back into a room filled with things that dumbly shouted their dead brother’s name.
Carrying a bucket of water, rags, a cake of carbolic and a scrubbing brush, she and Betty pushed the door open together. A layer of dust, the work of the hit three years ago and the passage of time since, flew up and settled back on the surfaces again, unused to the disturbance. The blackouts were pulled closed, so the room was a uniform grey amongst darker shadows. It smelled, too, of unaired clothes, socks, shoes, sleep, and sticky, finger-marked books. And somewhere underneath it all, the musty sweetness of her kids. All three of them. Pulling a face and wafting a hand in front of her nose, Betty pushed the curtains aside and lifted the sash before Gwen could stop her. Air streamed in and the elusive bouquet slipped out.
To start with, they made three piles: Johnny’s things that Will could use; Johnny’s things that Gwen would allow herself to keep, one small box of mementoes that would fit neatly in the bottom of the wardrobe; a pile of things to be taken to the WVS that would, Gwen was surprised to realise, include Will and Ruth’s clothes and games they’d outgrown.
With half of the room still to sort, the crammed box of keepsakes stood in the middle of the floor. Betty, who had been nattering about everything from her grandchildren to the neighbours, from Len to the Landings on the Riviera, the humid weather, the lovely bit of fish she would fry later, sat on Ruth’s bed and shook her head. She pulled the box to her feet and took out a pair of worn socks and an imprint of Johnny’s hands, the clear-cut, finely chiselled, undefiled fingerprints preserved in flaking green paint. ‘I think these,’ Betty said, holding up the threadbare socks, ‘will have to go. This, though—’ she pointed to the picture ‘—can stay.’
Gwen looked into her friend’s watery blue eyes, a little cloudier than they used to be, her white eyebrows thick and heavy over the folds of her lids. She was being practical, as always, pointing out what should have been obvious. But her voice was gentle.
‘Don’t you think so, love?’ Betty asked, throwing the socks onto the pile to be handed out to some poor bombed-out kid. Another child wearing her Johnny’s socks, wriggling pink, blood-filled toes around in the material or scratching at a blister through the wool. An imperceptible scrap of Johnny’s skin, caught in a fibre, might adhere itself to another boy’s foot and bond with him, allowing a part of Johnny to grow and mature as should have been his right. For a moment the thought consoled her, but any flake that had once been part of Johnny was dead, and had been for a long time.
‘Gwen? What do you say?’
‘Sorry, Bet. Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go through this box again, shall we?’
By the time the room was straightened out, the box held a deflated football, an annual plus a dictionary Johnny had won for good spelling, a note he’d written to Will saying sorry for something insignificant, a pared pencil, a comb harbouring a few strands of light, silky hair, a striped jumper knitted by Betty, the picture of his hands, and another showing the five they used to be as stick people, clown-red smiles dominating their faces.
Plumping his pillows, she’d found a white cotton handkerchief, clean and soft, and pocketed it in her pinny before Betty could see. Pressing the spot where it rested, she felt close to her little boy. She promised herself to keep the square of material, something that Johnny had touched and clutched, close to her heart.
‘I’ve some ribbon in my workbox,’ Betty said. ‘What colour would you like to hold the lid on? We can get it later.’
‘Black,’ Gwen said.
‘I ain’t got black.’
Gwen didn’t believe her.
‘What was Johnny’s favourite colour? Blue, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ Gwen said. ‘Royal blue. For Millwall.’
‘Lovely,’ Betty said. ‘I’m sure I’ve a length of that somewhere.’
They stripped the beds and heaped the sheets ready for the wash. Will would go back into his own bed, but Ruth was too old for her cot with the barred side, so she would sleep in Johnny’s bed. ‘If I move it behind the curtain for her, she probably won’t put two and two together and remember it was his.’
Together they lugged the furniture around, washed the window and
the skirting boards, dusted surfaces, rearranged the bedding. After dragging the rug downstairs and into the yard, they threw it over the line and took turns bashing it as they shouted the names of everyone they thought would benefit from a good hiding.
Now the room was shut up, gathering dust again. When the kids were allowed to come home she’d have to clean and rummage through a second time. Perhaps by then she would have to get a shaving brush and hair oil for Will, hang a suit behind the door for him. As for Ruth, she’d be in need of women’s undergarments and stockings, lipstick, a pot of rouge. That was even supposing they’d want to come back. And why would they? More than likely they’d have Welsh sweethearts and thick accents and be accustomed to the fresh air and open countryside. It didn’t bear thinking about, all the lost years, the time that could never be made up.
Gwen was convinced that George stayed away even when he could be at home. She listened to the wireless, read the paper sometimes; she knew what was going on. Troops were advancing across France and Belgium; Paris was liberated, Antwerp captured. Personnel had to be ferried to and from Portsmouth, Southampton, Dover and Plymouth, and his permanent posting had been shifted to somewhere on the South Coast. So he said. She wondered sometimes if he had another woman, maybe the greasy, unkempt landlady he’d aped to make her laugh. Or a blousy, blonde barmaid. It could be a young widow or the wife of one of the uniformed men he drove to the port.
She wouldn’t be surprised, looking the way she did. The hair dye she’d used a couple of times was out of circulation and she couldn’t be bothered to search out an alternative. Grey roots no longer just showed through at her parting, they covered her entire head of hair. What she glimpsed when she happened to catch herself in a mirror or shop window made her turn away before she could undertake a thorough inspection of her reflection. She preferred not to see what those irreclaimable years had done to her. She told herself she should make an effort, but couldn’t get past thinking to doing.
The same lack of energy pertained to George and the affair she’d created for him. It should hurt her to imagine him heaving on top of the tart, whoever she might be. Sweating and losing control in his ungainly, boyish, endearing way. The same thoughts that would have driven her to madness five years ago, making her pull George to her by his ears or the hair on his chest until she was satisfied he’d never think of anyone else, now passed through and over her without the slightest change in emotion. Let her have him, this fantasy woman. It saved him from bothering her, which he never did.
Some mornings she woke acutely aware of herself and her place in her surroundings. Colours, sounds, shadows. The piercing shrieks of buzz bombs. The smell of powdered dust, falling plaster mixed with the musty odour of rotting leaves, sharp, crackling air, smouldering wood. The intensity of those things was heightened, reminding her of the time she’d had influenza, but now there wasn’t a cough, no fever or chattering chill. So powerfully did she feel her aches and pains that, lying in bed, she thought of herself as nothing but a sack in which to carry them around.
Minor ailments that at one time wouldn’t have fazed her stung and throbbed and tortured. The nerves around her fingernails screamed, each fresh tear an electric shock; she could almost see her red, raw chilblains pulsating in rhythmic waves of pain, the bridge of her spectacles digging into the thin skin on her nose, a knife twisted in her lower back, anything she ate scratching its way down her gullet like a shard of glass.
Other times she woke feeling numb – and it was during those days that she felt some relief. The stunned sensation started outside her body and made its way in, surrounding her with a sense of lightness and insensibility. Then she was able to work, tidy up, write to the children, queue for her rations, step calmly into doorways to shelter from doodlebugs, chat to Betty and Evelyn as if through the fine membrane of a bubble. Every part of her that could hurt was blunted and deadened.
But the days when she found respite dwindled, and she longed for the times to return when she’d felt more like her old self. When had that been? She had to sit in a chair, hands in her lap, and concentrate hard to remember. There had been periods when she thought the murk was lifting and that if, like Johnny’s coat, she could hold on to them tightly enough, she could see her way forward. But, like the wool in her fist, the feeling of brightness tore away from her grasp. Perhaps this time the bout of melancholy might be less distressing. Or last for less time. After all, she managed to get up every morning and put in a decent day at the bridge.
Betty watched her carefully, but didn’t pass comment. Nor did Evelyn or anyone else for that matter. She told herself to keep going, tried to be less scornful, nodding and smiling whenever anyone said it would be over soon. If she kept focused on Will and Ruth getting home instead of picturing their bedroom standing empty, then maybe everything would be alright.
*
There was no let-up to Hitler’s doodlebug onslaught. Through swollen, grey clouds the buzzing bombs droned, without aim, gracefully sashaying down to balance momentarily on a restaurant in Beckenham or the Dulwich Co-op. Hundreds upon hundreds of hits. It felt like a backward step. The wireless reported daily on the advances in France but even so, London was taking it again.
The 6th of September wasn’t one of Gwen’s few good days. An eerie silence hung heavy, making the softest and most ordinary sounds deafening. Once or twice, the hum of a crane or the hiss of a welding flame made Gwen jump, but when she looked around to see who might be watching her, judging her ability to stay unruffled, no one seemed to have noticed.
Crowds pressed around newsstands on the evening of the 7th, arms reaching out to grab the Herald, Standard or News. Each of the papers had the same gritty, grey photo on the front page of a good-looking young man standing behind a black mouthpiece, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a sheaf of papers. A map covered the wall behind him; uniformed and suited men sat to his left and right. Gwen dropped a threepenny bit into the news-seller’s outstretched palm and read the headline: Duncan Sandys Announces End of Flying Bomb Campaign. She took the paper in to Betty and Len and started to read it aloud to them.
‘I never knew there was such a person as a… what does this say?’ She pointed a line out to Len.
‘Chairman of the War Cabinet Flying Bomb Counter-Measures Committee.’
‘Well, I’m glad I’m only a navvy. If I had his job the working day’d be finished before I could get that mouthful out.’
Betty chuckled from the kitchen where she was refilling the water steaming a suet pudding. ‘You and me both, love,’ she called out.
‘Well,’ Len said, smoothing the paper on his lap. ‘Seems like he’s done a good job.’
‘Is what it says true?’ Gwen asked.
‘Heard it on the wireless, too. More than once,’ Len said. ‘What the man said is right here. “Except possibly for the last few shots the Battle of London is over.” We’ll listen when it comes on again later.’
‘How could that happen?’ Gwen asked.
‘How could that happen?’ Len repeated the question, sounding amazed. ‘We’re better than them Jerries,’ he said. ‘It’s as simple as that. Our lads are kicking down their dirty little launching sites over there, and our barrage balloons and ack-acks are doing their bit over here.’
‘Put that paper down,’ Betty called from the kitchen. ‘Duff’s up.’
Gwen took the paper from Len, folded it and put it in her work bag. She might have another read of it later to see if it was as simple as Len said, although she’d be surprised if it was. Nothing else was that easy.
The following day, Duncan Sandys’ words were proved true. There were no sirens, no warnings, no rumbling drone or cut-outs before an explosion. There seemed to be a collective intake of breath and then a sigh, as natural and unhurried as the breath of a peaceful, sleeping infant. The lack of bombing was easy to get used to. Taking the void for granted, dinner and break times were filled with chatter about other things, as if Sandys’ statement had given th
em licence to be jolly again.
If only the battering rain could be dealt with in the same way, Gwen thought, hanging her sopping things up to dry in the kitchen. She had tiny bits of leftovers to use up: potato, onion, carrot, bacon rind, flour, powdered milk. It was her turn to get something together for Betty and Len, which would help them as they’d be tired when they came in from visiting their daughter-in-law. She’d settled on a flan, if she could eke out the last crumbs of cheese.
Opening the gas tap, she lit a match and bent over the oven door. From somewhere high above there was a double crack. The flame she was holding shook in her hands and fell, sizzling in a patch of wet from her boots. For a moment she was back in the Anderson, all three children clamouring around her, watching for the candle to be lit. In the whistling roar that followed she managed to stop the gas. Then came the rush of something splitting the sky and a boom that seemed to be reverberating from the surface of the moon.
There were no softer days after that. The V-2 rockets, Churchill assured them, were inaccurate, most of them missing their objective. But that didn’t help the people who lived, or used to live, in Staveley Road or Adelaide Avenue. The noise could be heard all over the place as well, whether you were near the hit or not. There was another lull for a few weeks at the end of September, beginning of October, but there were no wild announcements from the Government this time. Gwen thought it was because they knew no one would believe them.
What they did say, though, was that a partial dim-out could replace the blackout, unless of course there was a raid, when the weak haloes of moonshine allowed to glow around streetlamps would have to be switched off again. Evelyn, Betty, Sylvie and even the sensible Jim were beside themselves with excitement about this development, but Gwen couldn’t understand why. What difference did it make when you were indoors, the heavy blackouts closed around you?
Nights were getting longer and the wet, grey autumn would merge into a colder, gunmetal shade of winter. The rockets kept coming. Huge craters were scooped out of the earth where they struck, floorboards shuddered and windows shattered miles away from the hits. Once again people were snuffed out, houses were roofless, there was no running water, Andersons were reopened, underground stations sheltered thousands of weary families. No, the Government dare not say it was coming to an end now.