The omelettes arrived and Bryan poured the tea. As they ate, they reminisced about schooldays and friends that had become lost to them both in the folds of time.
The sun dipped below the treetops on the Common opposite as Bryan got up to pay.
‘If we walk across the Common, we should get to The Windmill for opening time,’ Jenny suggested. ‘It’s my round.’
As they strolled along the path, the light mellowed out into the orangey texture of a dying day. Jenny glanced up at Bryan, his features highlighted in the warmth of the sunset, his face neither noble nor ordinary, neither kind nor harsh.
‘What would you be doing if there wasn’t a war on?’ she asked.
‘Probably waiting for one to start.’ He chuckled at the look Jenny shot him. ‘I joined the Air Force in 1932, so I’d been waiting for this war for seven years.’
She smiled in her turn. ‘I was hoping for something like poet or artist.’
‘Or vicar?’
She laughed. ‘It’s a steady job.’
As they approached the pub door, a monotonous wail rose in the distance as another district of the city raised an air raid alert. Bryan paused and looked at Jenny, eyebrows raised.
‘Come on,’ she said, opening the door, ‘let’s not let the Germans spoil the afternoon. What do you want to drink?’
They ordered their drinks and Jenny paid.
‘Come this way, I want to show you something.’
The bar opened out at one end into a large rotunda. Several tables stood against the curved walls. Jenny headed to one of these and the pair sat down.
‘It’s like the whispering gallery in St Paul’s’ – Jenny grinned – ‘you can listen to other people’s conversations from across the room as if you were sitting right next to them.’
‘The cathedral of careless talk,’ Bryan observed. ‘Aren’t you worried people will eavesdrop us?’
‘Let them’ – Jenny sipped at her gin and tonic – ‘these are dangerous times and tomorrow it will be Monday morning.’ She laughed at her own gaiety. ‘Cheers for a lovely afternoon.’ She clinked her glass against his pint and took another sip.
‘You know, it’s funny,’ Bryan said lighting a cigarette, ‘I’ve spent most of the summer watching air raids from altitude. To me, bombs were little puffs of smoke way below me on the ground.’ He took a draught from his beer. ‘I’ve seen what bombs did to my airfield while I wasn’t there. But, up until now, I haven’t been underneath the bombers, I haven’t been as helpless or felt as vulnerable as I do when I’m in this city.’
Jenny leaned forward. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who is easily frightened.’
Bryan rolled his cigarette around in his fingers. ‘Maybe a man’s level of bravado is related to how much he thinks he has to lose.’
‘I think that might be true,’ Jenny said. ‘Sadly, I believe there’s little in store for us but loss and more loss, as least for another year or so. We can only face that with whatever bravado we can muster’ – she smiled – ‘which is why we’re sitting in a pub, enjoying a drink, while there are bombers flying about in the sky above us.’
Bryan placed his hand on Jenny’s. ‘I’ve been worrying about what might happen to you.’
Jenny’s eyes narrowed slightly and she pulled her hand from under Bryan’s. ‘You’d forgotten I existed until a week ago.’
Bryan shrugged: ‘Yet, here I sit.’
Jenny leaned back in her chair and sipped her drink in silence.
‘I wasn’t supposed to be on that train,’ Bryan continued, ‘I wasn’t supposed to be in London on the night we met’ – he stubbed out his cigarette – ‘and you didn’t want to be out that night at all.’
Jenny smiled at him over her glass. ‘Yet, there I sat…’
‘Exactly.’
‘Right, finish your drink. We should go. Alice will be worried about me, what with the air raid warning and everything.’
They walked out of the pub into the thickening darkness, heading towards Clapham South station. The traffic had faded away and the breeze had dropped with the sunset.
Bryan cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you-’
‘Shush,’ Jenny interrupted, ‘don’t spoil it.’ She smiled up at him. ‘It was a lovely thing to say.’
They arrived at the station entrance and Jenny paused. ‘It’s only one stop from here, but we could walk it if you like, it’s such a nice evening.’
They started south down the hill towards Balham, past shuttered shops and blacked-out pubs. In the background, the boom of distant anti-aircraft fire ruffled the air. The road was all but deserted, the few pedestrians they encountered tipped their hats or nodded as they passed. The hill flattened out and the shops became more substantial as they reached Balham’s main street.
Bryan placed a restraining hand on Jenny’s arm. ‘Listen’.
Underneath the rumble of big guns, a different reverberation lurked and throbbed.
‘Engines,’ Bryan breathed. ‘Sounds like a bomber.’
They both gazed up into the black velvet void.
A sharp hiss shredded the background drone and a thin column of silver grey flashed through their vision, a momentary thread connecting the ebony sky to the roadway two hundred yards ahead of them. A dull thunk echoed down the street and resonated into silence.
Then the pavement heaved and the air sucked away from their faces, tugging at their eyes and pulling them forward onto their toes. A huge spout of fire and earth erupted in a vertical column and a flat wall of blast swatted them backwards onto the ground.
Bryan struggled to his feet. ‘Jenny, get up,’ he shouted through the ringing in his ears, ‘we need to get under cover.’
He grabbed her arm and hauled her upright. Together they lurched the few steps to the nearest shop doorway. Bryan pushed her into the deepest corner, pressing his body against hers. Clods of earth and pieces of masonry thudded and clunked onto the road amidst the staccato rattle of pebbles and wood splinters. Behind that, the rushing crash of collapsing walls, one following another like the breaking of huge waves.
‘What’s happening?’ Jenny’s voice was stretched with fear.
‘A bomb,’ Bryan shouted against the dull clanging in his ears, ‘a big one. Stay still. There might be more.’
They both flinched at the crash of batteries on Clapham Common opening fire, blindly hurling vengeful metal into the empty sky.
‘I saw it.’ Jenny’s voice wavered with incredulity: ‘I saw it hit the ground.’
An ambulance bell jingled forlornly as the vehicle passed their makeshift shelter.
‘Stay here, Jenny’ – Bryan squeezed her shoulders – ‘just for a moment while I check it’s safe.’
Bryan stepped out onto the pavement and looked down a road strewn with debris towards Balham station. A smoking crater reached almost from shopfront to opposite shopfront, fifty feet across. Dark smoke curled up from its centre and two fountains of water curved away from broken water mains. More emergency vehicles clanged past him as he stepped back into the doorway.
‘I think it’s clear’ – he gestured her out – ‘we should go and see if we can help.’
Jenny stepped out of the doorway, her cheeks wet with tears.
‘Are you alright?’ Bryan reached out to her. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘No. I’m fine. A bit shaken.’ She nodded: ‘Yes, we should see if there’s anything we can do.’
Bryan put his arm around Jenny’s shoulders and together they picked their way through the debris towards the chaos at the end of the road.
As they drew closer the acrid fumes of spent high explosives scratched at their throats and dried their teeth. The assiduous stench of gas mixed in the air with the more visceral, clinging odour of breached sewage pipes. Figures in white helmets moved through the murk at the edges of the crater and another ambulance ground past them, zig-zagging through the scree of broken bricks and clods of hard earth dotting the road.
<
br /> On the pavement ahead two medics knelt next to the prone figure of a woman resting amidst a scattering of broken plate glass, her body protruding from the shop doorway in which she’d landed. Her skirt and shoes had been blown off and she lay there, incongruous in her underwear, once precious stockings rent with gashes. One medic shook his head and the other pulled the woman’s coat over her face. As they passed, Bryan gave as much leeway to the body as the wreckage on the road allowed, but they still had to step over the turgid flow of blood oozing from beneath the corpse and draining towards the gutter. Bryan felt Jenny’s guttural sob and squeezed her shoulders tighter.
They skirted the edge of the crater, keeping close to the shop walls, their shoes crunching on crystal shards of glass. On the opposite side of the road the three-storey buildings stood frontless, like a row of opened doll’s houses, with furniture and beds strewn in childlike disarray. Heaps of bricks lay piled at their footings, speckled with the shattered wood of window frames and shredded blackout curtains. Bryan risked a look into the crater.
‘Christ, it’s deep.’
Jenny pushed her face into the folds of his coat.
‘It’s the tube station.’ Her voice trembled in a strained monotone, she sounded like someone trying not to vomit. ‘The tube line runs under the road.’
Thirty more yards and they came to the crossroads where the exit to the station spewed dazed and bedraggled shelterers onto the pavement, their clothes and faces blackened with soot, their hair deranged by blast. Some pressed palms to cuts and gashes, one man, suspended between two helpers, lost blood from his ears in a languid pulse. Around them, and between them, the firemen and ARP wardens scurried, intent on imposing some order amidst this tiny slice of Armageddon.
Bryan grabbed a warden by the arm: ‘What’s happening? Can I help?’
The man’s face was stretched with stress. ‘The bomb breached the tunnel, north end of the platform. There’s a lot of ‘em. They’re underneath the mud and shingle.’
‘So, give me a shovel, let’s get down there.’
The warden shook his head, imploring horror filled his eyes: ‘It’s filling up with sewage. They’re drowning in shit and there’s no way to shut it off.’
Bryan stared aghast into the man’s face.
‘But thank you.’ The other’s features softened slightly and he squeezed Bryan’s shoulder. ‘The best thing you could do is get the lady home safe.’ He nodded towards Jenny, slapped Bryan’s shoulder and hurried away.
Two more ambulances clattered to a halt as Bryan surveyed the people standing and sitting on the pavement. Many cried, shaking in spasms of shock. One old man, alone and dazed, stared into the middle distance and walked up and down the pavement as if searching for something lost. A woman, dishevelled and grimy, noticed the wandering man and moved to marshal him towards an ambulance. A mud-caked fireman emerged from the dust billowing up the stairwell, retching against the rising miasma, and the whole scene was overlain with the sobs of terrified children.
‘Let’s go.’
Bryan placed his hand on Jenny’s head, holding her close against him as he guided her through the rubble and refugees, under the railway bridge and away towards her flat. Another fire engine clanged by, rushing to help from the south, but no other person walked the dark street as they retreated from the bubble of hell sitting atop the tube station.
It took only two minutes to reach Du Cane Court. As they walked through the entrance gates into the courtyard, Jenny disentangled herself from Bryan’s embrace.
‘I must look a complete state.’ She forced a smile as she straightened her jacket and wiped the damp grime from her skirt. ‘The porter’s a terrible gossip.’
They stood together for a moment on the loose shingle of the courtyard, Bryan waited while Jenny reassembled a fragile normality in the space of three or four deep breaths.
‘Right,’ she said, her voice small and strained, ‘I’m ready.’
They pushed through the curtained doors into the dimly-lit foyer. The porter’s desk stood unmanned.
‘Emergency lights,’ Jenny noted. ‘No electricity and a long walk up the stairs to the sixth floor.’
‘We can take it steady,’ Bryan murmured. ‘No rush.’
‘Better without these.’ Jenny flipped her shoes off, picked them up and headed for the staircase.
Bryan followed and they climbed the carpeted flights without speaking. The plush silence cocooned them as they walked and Bryan felt the adrenalin of the last half hour drain out of his blood to be replaced with a familiar tingling fatigue. He watched Jenny’s figure sinuating up the stairs ahead of him and plodded along behind her, unable to define the feelings she stirred.
‘Sixth floor,’ Jenny murmured and padded down a corridor, fishing in her handbag for keys. She unlocked Number 21 and went in. Bryan followed.
‘I need a drink’ – she dropped her shoes in the hall – ‘would you like one?’
‘Yes please.’ Bryan shrugged off his coat and stood uneasily in the gloom. He heard a match strike in the living room.
‘Come and sit down,’ Jenny called.
Bryan walked into the lounge where Jenny was lighting candles around the room, quiet tears ran gently down her cheeks, glistening in the candlelight.
‘Are you alright?’ he asked.
‘Sit down,’ she repeated and walked to the kitchen. ‘Will brandy do?’
‘Seems appropriate.’
Jenny returned with two wine glasses and a squat green bottle.
‘Would you pour? My hands are a bit shaky.’
Bryan poured two small measures and pushed one glass across the coffee table towards Jenny. She picked it up with both hands and took a sip.
‘Alice left a note; she’s in the basement shelter.’
‘Shouldn’t you join her?’
Jenny shook her head: ‘Imagine if this whole building came down’ – she took another sip – ‘how much rubble there’d be piled on top of that basement.’
Bryan dropped his eyes to the brandy in his glass and said nothing.
‘There’s only one floor above us here’ – she glanced at the ceiling – ‘so at least I’d be near the top of the heap…’ Her voice trailed off and a fresh tear welled onto her cheek.
‘You can’t think like that, Jen-’
‘We could’ve been down that hole’ – Jenny cut across him – ‘if we hadn’t decided to walk, we could’ve been in that station’ – she looked into Bryan’s face, trying to connect with the eyes that were still downcast – ‘under that earth.’
Bryan’s eyes flicked up to hers and he gazed into their chestnut depth. ‘Yet, here we sit,’ he said with a gentle smile.
Jenny leaned forward and poured herself more brandy. She stood and took her drink into the bathroom. Bryan heard the match-strike as she lit more candles, followed by the gush of water into the bath.
He poured himself another large measure; sleeping in the car and setting off at first light was a far safer prospect than driving through the blackout against the flow of emergency vehicles in a hurry, and he was enjoying the spirit’s warm glow spreading through his taut nerves. He closed his eyes and listened with semi-detached interest to the sound of Jenny undress and step into her bath.
***
Bryan drifted out of a gentle doze with the feeling he was being watched. He opened his eyes to see Jenny standing in the room brushing her still-damp hair. The candlelight made the dark blue silk of her dressing gown shimmer with her movements.
‘I’m sorry’ – he pulled himself upright in the chair – ‘I dropped off.’
Jenny smiled, her head tilting against the brush-strokes. ‘It was nice to watch you sleeping. You looked almost angelic.’
Bryan snorted a laugh and reached for the last of his brandy. ‘That will be from my father’s side.’ He drained his glass and stood up. ‘So, if you’re all settled, I’ll be on my way.’
Jenny shook her head: ‘I want you to stay.’
‘Yes.’ Jenny went from candle to candle, blowing them out. She picked up the last one, walked over to Bryan and took his hand. She led him into her bedroom where she released her gentle grip on his fingers.
‘Shut the door.’
Bryan closed the door with exaggerated care, as if afraid to break the moment. When he turned back, Jenny was on the other side of the bed, near the window. She put the candle on her bedside table, blew it out and pulled back the blackouts. A dark vista of London spread out into the night, its edges teased with wisps of desultory moonlight. Jenny paused for a moment, watching distant searchlights playing their light across the cloud base. She let her dressing gown fall to the floor and climbed into the bed, settling with her back to Bryan.
‘I don’t really…’ Bryan’s voice trailed away into his discomfiture.
‘Come to bed and hold me.’
Bryan eased his shoes off with his toes while he undid his jacket and shirt. Laying them across a chair, he unhitched his belt and removed his trousers. He hooked a thumb into his sock and pulled it off, cursing under his breath as he teetered on the edge of imbalance. He sat on the chair to pull off the other one. He balled the socks together and bent to place them in one of his shoes. He paused for a moment, standing in only his underpants, wondering how much to read into Jenny’s invitation. Deciding to risk a misunderstanding, he dropped his underwear to the floor and climbed into bed.
He settled facing Jenny’s back, careful to keep a few inches of space between their bodies. He reached out his right arm and rested it over Jenny’s waist. The smooth warmth of her skin and the curve of her hip under his forearm sent a thrill of urgent desire through his temples. Her breathing took on a lower undertone and Bryan flattened his palm gently against her abdomen, his middle fingertip resting in the hollow of her belly button.
Jenny arched her back, moving her buttocks to close the gap between them. Bryan’s hand applied a gentle pressure on her belly, pulling her up, back, and onto him. He pushed forwards gently with his hips and her soft warmth enveloped him. Jenny placed her hand over Bryan’s and together they pushed and rocked her pelvis, undulating her body against his penetration, breathing in counterpoint against the low rumble of anti-aircraft guns booming far away across the city.
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 32
