The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set

by Melvyn Fickling

  Tommy’s shoulders tensed as he squinted out the window, struggling to identify landmarks in the dark. The bus lumbered to a halt, people got on, people got off, the bell dinged and the bus lurched on through the night. At length, the vehicle slowed to a crawl and passed the shadowy, crouched forms of workman heaving bricks and masonry off the road.

  The conductor caught Tommy’s eye and smiled. ‘Them boys don’t mess about. Peckham High Street’s your next stop.’

  Tommy skipped off the bus as it slowed at the bus stop, his momentum forcing him into a trot along the pavement. He hurried down the High Street onto Queen’s Road, past the railway station and took the next left up Astbury Road, eyes darting for signs of bomb damage. His anxiety forced him back into a jog, his boots thumping the road in counterpoint to his heart.

  There, at the end of the road, safe and undamaged, stood his little end-of-terrace house. His footfall slowed and he breathed deeply against the release of tension. Pushing through the gate into the tiny front yard, he paused to find his keys. With a final glance at the still-hostile skies, he unlocked the door and slipped inside. The warm smells of home flooded his nostrils as he dumped his duffel bag and shrugged off his greatcoat.

  ‘Hello?’ he called.

  Footsteps sounded upstairs.

  ‘Come up Mister Scott,’ a woman’s voice he didn’t know. ‘Your wife has a little surprise for you.’

  Tommy climbed the stairs, treads creaking under his heavy boots. Candlelight glowed from the main bedroom and he stuck his head around the door. Next to the bed sat a midwife, smiling to herself with bovine torpidity. In the bed, her hair matted and tangled with dried sweat, lay Lizzy with a bundle of towels cradled in her arms.

  Tommy crept closer and his wife pulled back the edge of the swaddling to show a red and crumpled face latched to her nipple, rocking to the rhythm of its sucking.

  ‘When?’ Tommy whispered.

  ‘About two hours ago’ – Lizzy smiled through her fatigue – ‘but it took most of the afternoon.’

  ‘Boy or girl?’ Tommy gazed at the battered little head, raw against his wife’s smooth breast.

  ‘It’s a boy.’

  ‘It’s like he knew I was coming home.’

  The midwife stood up. ‘Now you have company, I’ll be on my way.’ She slung her satchel over her shoulder. ‘Mind, Mister Scott, there are some sheets and towels in the kitchen that could do with a wash as soon as you’re able. I’ll be back in the morning to make sure everything is alright.’ She paused at the door and flashed a stern look at Tommy. ‘And I don’t want you bothering her for anything.’

  Thursday, 10 October 1940

  The clear skies persisted through the night and the new day dawned crisp and fresh. Tommy boiled kettle after kettle and scrubbed the blood and mucus stains from the bed linen, sweating over the washboard despite the chill of the room. He pegged out the dripping washing in the back yard. His hands, red-raw from the hot water and washing soap, tingled in the cold air. As he fumbled with the pegs, he tried to ignore the faint, bitter tang of burning timber that drifted across in the languid breeze.

  Tommy ducked back into the kitchen and filled another kettle, this time for tea. He glanced around the cluttered room at the jigsaw of his domestic dream. On this fine morning his wife held the final piece in her arms upstairs and he knew he should be the happiest man in the district. But in his imagination, the spectre of a broken man scratched through the rubble of a house, much like the rubble the bus had skirted last night, desperate to salvage the mangled pieces of his own demolished dream.

  Tommy gave the tea a final stir and poured two mugs. He dropped the cosy over the teapot and took the mugs upstairs.

  Lizzy sat propped up on her pillows, gazing into the cot next to the bed with heavy-lidded eyes. She looked up as Tommy entered the room.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Sweetheart’ – she smiled – ‘just what I needed.’

  ‘How is he?’ Tommy sat on the edge of the bed and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  ‘Fed and resting,’ she said. ‘He seems content.’

  ‘Have you been getting to the air raid shelter?’

  Lizzy grimaced. ‘It’s always full by the time I get there, so I have to walk all the way back. Bad enough when you’re pregnant, it’ll be even worse with a new baby.’

  ‘We live next to the railway tracks’ – Tommy took her hand in his – ‘and that’s the kind of target a bomber is trained to look for.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘They hit a few properties on Hill Street last night. I saw the damage from the bus.’

  ‘I know, I heard the explosions’ – Lizzy pulled a wan smile – ‘but I was busy with other things at the time.’

  ‘And that’s what makes it even more important,’ Tommy pressed, ‘now we’ve got…’

  ‘Robert.’ Lizzy gazed down again into the cot. ‘His name will be Robert.’

  The front door rattled under a brisk knocking.

  ‘That will be the midwife. Let her in Tommy, love, would you?’

  Tommy descended to the hallway and opened the door.

  ‘Good morning, Mister Scott’ – the midwife pushed past him – ‘it’s certainly a brisk one out there.’

  Tommy closed the door and followed her upstairs.

  The woman stopped halfway up and glared at him. ‘We won’t be needing you up here for an hour or so, Mister Scott.’

  Tommy trailed back down to the kitchen and swilled the dregs of his tea around the bottom of his mug as he looked out the kitchen window. The sun shifted the shadows of the window frame imperceptibly across the sill towards another night-time, another bombing raid. His muscles tensed and relaxed with waves of anxiety. Unable to keep his legs still, he strode to the hallway, threw on his greatcoat and opened the door.

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he called up and stepped out into the cold.

  Action dispelled the worst of his jitters as he strode along the road, hunched into his coat against the chill of the morning air. He walked onto the main road, past the station and beyond, heading for the distant right turn into Hill Street.

  Walking back along these roads seduced him towards the notion that the bomb damage was reassuringly far away from his house and family. But he dismissed that absurdity immediately. The city stretched out like a blank canvas below a night sky filled with bombers prone to scattering their loads wherever they found themselves and wheel about, relieved to be on their journey home. The crews threw the dice from too great an altitude to worry too much about the score.

  Tommy’s exertion warmed his blood. He loosened his coat as he came to Hill Street and walked up the gentle slope, reversing his bus journey of the previous evening. Ahead, whorls of thin, black smoke stained the clear morning air, creeping up over the roof-tops and bending away in the breeze. At its source, wardens and workmen stood in small groups on the pavement. A bus gunned passed on the now-cleared road and the men swivelled to scowl at it. Tommy slowed as he approached the tense assembly.

  ‘Can’t we get the police to set up a detour?’ a warden hissed to a companion. ‘Bloody buses, roaring about like it’s a bank holiday in Brighton.’

  The knot of men stood before a gap in a row of Georgian town houses. Where three dwellings had once completed the neat sandstone-faced terrace, there was now only rubble, timber and broken slate, heaped between the cracked and pitted walls of the neighbouring homes.

  One of the workmen stood apart from the group and Tommy approached him.

  ‘What are they doing?’ he asked.

  The workman put a finger to his lips. ‘Listening,’ he whispered. ‘They believe there’s someone left alive.’

  ‘Under that?’ Tommy muttered.

  ‘It happens a lot.’ The workman scratched his chin. ‘They don’t often make it out.’ He looked at Tommy and shrugged. ‘But we have to try.’

  The silence pressed on Tommy’s ears as he strained with the others to discern any sound. At length a sad-faced warden clapped his hands. ‘A
lright, lads,’ he called, ‘back to it. Careful and slow.’

  One of the men climbed back onto the rubble and bent to loosen more pieces from the tangle. The others formed a line behind him and handed the bricks, one to another, away from the chaotic heap to be stacked neatly on the pavement.

  The lead man lifted a lump of masonry, handed it on and then bent to brush away cement dust with gentle care. He stood, beckoned to a medic, then stepped back with hands on hips and looked up at the sky.

  The medic scurried up the scree and crouched at the spot. A moment later he stood, holding what appeared to be a small bundle of dust covered rags. With a sickening lurch of recognition, Tommy saw the lifeless limbs of a broken baby dangling from its tiny body.

  He stifled the gasp that jumped into his throat and averted his eyes as the medic carried the dead infant past him to an ambulance. Tommy looked back at the line of men as they resumed their delicate demolition. The workman he’d spoken with returned his gaze, his face haunted with the grim futility of his task.

  Tommy lurched away on legs that wobbled under his weight, fighting the churn that gripped his guts. He turned left off the main road, following the progress of the sticks of bombs that had slashed a rent through this close-packed carpet of houses. A glance up each side road revealed more smashed and broken walls, more scattered rubble.

  Tommy tottered to the next junction and staggered to a halt. He stared without comprehension at the vast empty space that opened out before him. Drawn in by the morbidity of his dread, he walked slowly up the shattered road.

  Broken glass lay like dirty drifts of pack ice against the low sections of garden walls that still protruded from the dust-covered earth. Splintered roof timbers, like the broken skeletons of a defeated armada, hung together in ragged piles. Pulverised roof tiles scrawled gritty red lines across the asphalt. Here and there, dotted through the chaos, deformed saucepans and ragged toys sat forlorn of their owners, and books flapped their scorched pages in the breeze like wounded butterflies.

  A policeman stood in the centre of the devastation, hands behind his back, his black cape marred with streaks of grey soot. Tommy walked towards him.

  ‘What happened here?’ he asked.

  The policeman glanced at Tommy and then returned his eyes to the middle distance. ‘Socking great parachute mine. Last night.’

  Tommy followed the man’s gaze. From where they stood, they could see over a quarter-of-a-mile along the furrow ploughed by the night raiders through residential London.

  The policeman sighed. ‘It’s a terrible thing when it comes to this.’

  ***

  Tommy unlocked the front door and ducked inside. The walk home had allowed his breathing to steady and the buzz behind his forehead to subside. But the worm of dread still wriggled in his stomach.

  ‘Is that you Mister Scott?’ the midwife called. Without waiting for his answer, she clumped down the stairs to the front door, wrestling her arms into her heavy coat. ‘All’s well with mother and baby. I’ll drop by again tomorrow. Cheerio.’

  Tommy shrugged off his greatcoat and went through to the kitchen. He filled the kettle and switched on the gas. He spooned the coarse, twisted tea leaves into the pot with hands that betrayed a faint tremor. While the tea brewed, he brought in the dried washing. As he pulled the towels from the line, he surveyed the yard; too small for an Andersen shelter, barely large enough for the outside toilet.

  He bundled the washing onto a chair and poured the tea. Making an effort to steady his hands, he climbed the stairs to Lizzy.

  She was cradling baby Robert in her arms and smiled broadly as Tommy walked in. He put the mugs on the bedside table and took his son from his wife. Standing and gazing into the still-crumpled face, a fresh chill of memory washed up his spine.

  ‘We have to sort out a plan to get you and the boy under shelter at night,’ he said. ‘The bombing will likely carry on all winter. We can’t trust to luck forever.’

  Lizzy sipped at her tea. ‘Well, let’s trust in God, then. That’s always seen me through in the past.’

  Tommy turned to look out the window so his wife wouldn’t see the exasperation that creased his brow.

  ‘Everybody in the city is trusting in God, Lizzy. It doesn’t stop a couple of hundred getting killed every night.’

  ‘Have faith, Tommy. It all starts and ends with faith.’

  The calmness of her voice made him want to share in her solid certainty, if only for a moment, but he knew that wasn’t possible. So he held his tongue and kept his face to the window.

  Their house abutted land belonging to the railway. Their bedroom window overlooked the wasteland separating the house from the viaduct that carried the tracks north, away from Queen’s Road station. Tommy’s eyes wandered over the rough grass and settled on a pile of what looked like scaffolding poles, overgrown and partially hidden by the long grass. He placed the sleeping child in its cot and reached for his tea.

  ‘We need to be practical, Lizzy. We need to do everything we can to protect you and the baby. You can sort it out with God later.’

  ***

  Dusk coloured the sky a darker grey as Tommy prised off the fence boards with a claw hammer and slipped through onto the wasteland. A train shambled across the viaduct, but no faces appeared at the darkened windows to observe him. Tommy moved through the long grass with exaggerated steps, like a cat stalking its prey, wary of the broken glass and rusty iron that the undergrowth undoubtedly concealed.

  He reached the pile of scaffolding and pulled the bindweed and ivy away. Hefting a pole off the pile, he balanced its weight in his grip and moved back to the fence, feeding it through into his backyard. Five more trips and he judged he had enough piping to fulfil his plan. On a hunch he returned to the pile and kicked around in the nearby vegetation. Wincing as his toe struck something heavy, he bent down to disentangle the object from the brambles. He emerged in triumph with a bucket of scaffold clamps and heaved it back through the fence, crawled through after it and tapped the boards back into place.

  Full darkness shrouded the neighbourhood by the time he’d finished. Away to the east an air raid warning moaned out its mournful message and the Woolwich searchlights flicked their icy tendrils into the sky. Tommy quaked with a shiver that was only partly due to the dropping temperature. Tingling within his own soft vulnerability, he went back into the house.

  Friday, 11 October 1940

  Lizzy awoke to the faint, but harsh grating of saw blade on metal. She checked all was well in the cot by the bed, pulled on her dressing gown and padded down the stairs. In the kitchen, she peered out of the window. Tommy stood in the yard, bent over a length of metal, cutting in even strokes with a large hacksaw. She turned away from the window and put the kettle on the stove. Pulling a bread knife from the cutlery drawer, she cut four slices from the loaf, fired up the grill and placed the bread under the flames. Outside, a section of piping clanged onto the concrete yard. Lizzy winced at the sound and cocked her head, listening for any sign of movement from upstairs. All remained quiet.

  She poured the boiling water into the teapot and flipped the bread. She went back to the window and watched her husband work for a few moments before she knocked on the glass and beckoned him in.

  Despite the chill of the season Tommy had a sheen of sweat on his forehead as he sat down and poured the tea.

  ‘What on earth are you doing with metal poles?’ Lizzy shut off the grill and put the toast rack on the table.

  ‘Making a bomb shelter for you and the boy.’ Tommy beamed and grabbed a slice of toast.

  ‘A bomb shelter?’ Lizzy levelled a quizzical gaze. ‘And where do we have room for a bomb shelter?’

  Tommy slapped his hand on the heavy oak tabletop. ‘Right here.’

  ***

  Lizzy opened the gate and reversed the pram off the pavement and into the front yard. The door opened behind her and Tommy’s smiling face poked through the gap.

  ‘Right on time. I’ve j
ust finished.’

  Lizzy pushed the pram into the parlour. Letting the baby sleep on, she followed Tommy through to the kitchen.

  ‘There,’ Tommy announced and stood back, hands on hips.

  Between the stout wooden legs of the table, on three sides, vertical lengths of scaffold pole filled the gaps, clamped one to the next, with the end sections spliced to the legs with stout cord.

  Lizzy looked from the mutilated furniture to Tommy and back again.

  ‘That’s my mother’s kitchen table.’

  ‘It gets better’ – Tommy gestured – ‘take a look underneath.’

  Lizzy crouched by the open side. Every other vertical supported a right-angle joint that held a horizontal pole bracing the tabletop.

  ‘It’s a prison cage.’ Lizzy straightened. ‘I can’t sleep in there.’

  Tommy kissed her forehead. ‘Only when a raid is close, my love. It’ll keep you and the baby safe if things start flying about. Promise me you’ll use it.’

  Lizzy looked into his eyes and nodded. ‘You’re a good husband, Tommy Scott. But I’ll leave you to explain it to my mother.’

  Saturday, 12 October 1940

  The guard at the aerodrome gate flagged down the dark blue truck. It staggered to a halt and the idling engine rattled pulses of vibration down its metal flanks. The sentry slung his rifle and walked to the back of the vehicle, sticking his head over the tailgate.

  He glanced at a note clutched in his hand. ‘Sergeant Scott? Is Sergeant Thomas Scott on this transport?’

  Tommy raised a hand. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘You’re to report to the adjutant immediately.’

  The guard walked back to his hut, waving the truck on. It lumbered its way to the mess buildings where it disgorged its passengers. Tommy hefted his duffel bag onto his shoulder and trudged to the office block. He walked down the corridor, loosening the buttons on his greatcoat, knocked and opened the adjutant’s door.

  ‘Sergeant Scott, reporting as ordered.’

  The older man behind the desk looked up over his spectacles. ‘Ah. Sit down, Scott. Enjoy your leave?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Tommy shrugged off the bag and took a seat. ‘My wife has just had our first baby.’