The Safest Place in London

by Maggie Joel

  Why could she not move?

  ‘Mummy!’

  Beside her, three-and-a-half-year-old Abigail stared up at her wide-eyed, clutching Teddy tightly in both hands and in her distress—though only dimly comprehending their predicament—holding him upside down. The child was a facsimile of her mother (the flat little nose, the funny little chin, the thin little lips, the pale features and the dark hair), though when Diana looked at her child she saw only Gerald—the sticking-out ears, the thick dark brows, the unshakable belief in right over wrong—and saw nothing of herself, and was glad.

  ‘MUMMY!’

  Let it be a false alarm. Frozen, Diana clutched Abigail’s hand, clutched Teddy’s paw. No one paused to help them. No one seemed to notice them. One woman swore at them when they did not move out of her way. And the darkness, it seethed and thickened about them, its tentacles slithering deep inside Diana’s clothes and she remembered as a child being so afraid of the dark that she had screamed in terror night after night.

  The all-clear did not sound.

  But she was not helpless. She may be alone and a long way from home and a little frightened but she was at least as good as these shapeless and faceless figures who pushed past her without a thought. And she had her daughter to protect. Diana grabbed the arm of a passing man and demanded in a voice that served her well at the tennis matches she had adjudicated at her local club: ‘Please tell me where the nearest shelter is. We are lost. We went to a pantomime and we got on the wrong bus and—’

  She made herself stop. The man did not need to know they had been to a pantomime yet the urge to explain their presence in what was, one must assume, London’s East End was paramount. She knew she could not possibly blend in and nor, quite frankly, would she wish to.

  ‘The station—go to the tube station!’ the man shouted as he pulled his arm free.

  Of course: the tube station. That was where people in London sheltered.

  ‘Thank you so much—’ But he was gone. ‘We shall go and shelter in the tube station,’ Diana said to Abigail. ‘You’ll like that, won’t you, darling? It will be a grand adventure.’

  They set off at once and it was a relief to be moving swiftly, if not at a run—no one else was running—then certainly at a brisk pace. Abigail, who was flagging even before the adventure had begun, made heavy weather of it, and Diana had to half drag, half carry her.

  But now Abigail stopped, jerking her mother to a halt too.

  ‘Mummy, we didn’t go to a pantomime.’

  Diana could only dimly make out her child’s form in the blackout, her face was quite invisible, but her voice was full of indignant consternation and it seemed extraordinary to Diana that this was what Abigail was pondering as they hurried together through the strange and frightening darkness.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Abigail. We must hurry. Oh, do come on!’

  And though she clearly did not think this a satisfactory reply to her observation, Abigail allowed herself to be led onwards. They passed shops, boarded up or derelict, and row after row of bombed-out terraces, gaping black holes in the black night. But ahead the busy street on which they found themselves reached a junction with a much larger thoroughfare. They passed beneath an archway beside a pub that was shuttered and dark, and on the corner was, unmistakably, the entrance to a tube station. They saw the comforting red and blue and white of the Underground sign and the stream of people disappearing into its depths. Which tube station it was hardly seemed to matter: Whitechapel, Shoreditch (was there a station at Shoreditch?) . . . Stepney, perhaps?

  ‘Here we are—almost safe now!’ Diana shouted above the rising noise of the siren, for they had made it, the two of them; in this hostile environment, they had triumphed!

  But Abigail promptly sat down and refused to move. At this display of defeatism when they were so close to their salvation, Diana felt a moment of despair. She kneeled down, and pleaded with her child to get up, but Abigail closed her eyes and shook her head resolutely. ‘Teddy doesn’t want to go down there!’

  From where Diana was standing Teddy looked extremely keen indeed to get down into the safety of the tube station, but sadly he was in no position to say so. ‘Very well, then. I’m going to leave you both here on your own to fend for yourselves.’

  At this, Abigail scrambled to her feet and flung herself at her mother’s legs. This hampered their progress, especially as Diana was carrying her best handbag and a small travelling case containing sundry other items she had thought it necessary to bring with them on this day trip into London, along with some that she had procured during the course of the day, but they were at least moving in the right direction and, once they joined the flow, the sheer mass of urgent and frightened people behind swept them along so that really all one had to do was to keep on one’s feet and not trip.

  In this manner they were carried down a short flight of steps and across a concourse, they squeezed through the open turnstiles (one did feel a little conspicuous not purchasing a ticket, even under such unusual circumstances) and found themselves at the top of the escalator.

  The crush of people was suddenly much denser as they were funnelled onto the stationary escalator and Diana grasped the handrail with one hand and her child’s hand in a fierce grip with the other, not caring at this moment if she hurt her, concerned only with keeping both eyes on the lip of the stairwell just ahead. An old woman wrapped in a grubby blanket blocked their way. Another woman, much younger with a determined expression and a small child in tow, grabbed the old woman’s arm and practically pushed her down the escalator. But now the crush of bodies behind them intensified and almost at once Diana lost her grip on the handrail and was swept away down the escalator, her feet barely touching the ground, and she scooped Abigail into her arms in the nick of time.

  Phee-oow! Phee-oow!

  Unseen enemy bombers flew overhead dropping incendiaries, or perhaps landmines—it was hard to tell, especially if you were more used to reading about the raids in The Times than experiencing them firsthand. But there was no need to look up for they were safely inside the station and all Diana could see above them was the enormous curvature of the enamel-tiled ceiling that led down to the platforms and the streams of people on all sides. The bottom of the escalator was in sight and with one final leap into the unknown they were at the bottom, carried by the sea of people onto the eastbound platform.

  They had made it, they were safe, and she held Abigail tightly to her. All they had to do now was find a spot where they could sit tight and wait it out.

  But there was no spot.

  Every inch of space was taken. Diana stood in the entranceway in silent dismay as around her the platform dissolved into a sea of bodies all trying to find a place on the hard concrete with whatever blankets and bedding they had brought with them, seething and wriggling like the glistening black cockroaches that had frequented the cellar of her dad’s old shop in Pinner before the First War and that scuttled away to the corners when you opened the door and turned on the gaslight on a summer’s evening.

  Where were they to go? They could not stand here, and already people behind them were jostling. For a moment Diana resisted, standing her ground—for where was she to go?—but the crash of bodies behind was too great and she was propelled forward, right to the platform’s edge where, beyond, lay the electrified tracks.

  ‘Wait! Stop! Please stop!’ she cried, but they did not wait, they did not stop, and she gasped and flung out a hand to stop herself falling. For an agonising moment she teetered on the brink of the platform, closed her eyes, and Abigail, in her arms, stared over her shoulder into the abyss and screamed. Then Diana opened her eyes and saw that the tracks could not be seen for all the people sheltering down there.

  But the electrified tracks? Even as she thought this she saw that there were no tracks, that this stretch of line was not yet completed, that the people sheltering down on the lines, and further into the tunnel, were perfectly safe. There was even a crate placed just h
ere so that one could step down. Diana availed herself of the crate, she stepped down, and as she did so saw the Underground sign on the tunnel wall: they were at Bethnal Green, and though sudden tears threatened to overcome her she did not give in to them.

  They had made it. They were safe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The station swirled in a thickening cloud of cheap Woodbine and Craven A cigarette smoke mingled with the cloying odour of damp bedding and too many unwashed bodies in close proximity. Diana, holding her dismay tightly in check, wondered: How long are we to remain here? One of her gloves had lost its button during their headlong flight and both stockings were now laddered. For a moment she did not quite believe this double catastrophe, laying a finger on the laddered stocking, gazing dumbly at the spoiled glove.

  The raid could not last all night.

  But they did last all night, she knew that. And even if a miracle should happen and they got the all-clear before midnight they could not possibly make it home; the last train would have long gone. They would be stranded. They would have to find a hotel at Liverpool Street. Yes, she resolved, if they could make it as far as Liverpool Street they would get a hotel. It helped, making this decision, gave one a sense of having some control over events. In the morning they would return home, they would tell Mrs Probart about their adventure, they would write a letter to Gerald, and in a month or so Abigail would forget.

  In the meantime, it was simply a question of sitting it out.

  She had found a position not far from the entrance to the tunnel. It was strange to see the tunnel, the Underground station, from the angle at which a train driver must see it, or a mouse down on the tracks scurrying away into the darkness. She closed her eyes, pushing down thoughts of mice. Of rats. And yet people were sheltering there, right inside the tunnel, almost swallowed up in its blackness. For it stretched away into oblivion, into East London, and when she tried to think what station would be next heading eastwards she could not. There was nothing: her knowledge of London stopped dead at Liverpool Street.

  The place she had found for herself and Abigail allowed just enough space for her to sit on the hard compacted earth (the tweed Liberty coat!) her legs beneath her, her handbag clutched tightly in her hand, the little travelling case at her side and Abigail on her lap. Abigail stared about, wide-eyed and silent, at the sprawling, shifting spread of humanity, at the gaping mouth of the tunnel.

  ‘Mummy, Teddy doesn’t like it!’

  Diana stroked her hair. She had brushed Abigail’s hair this morning and placed a hairband on it and Abigail had sat squirming, waiting for the ordeal to be over, impatient to return to her dolls, to her bricks, to her world. She had not wanted to come out for the day. She had not wanted to come up to London.

  ‘Teddy wants to go home!’

  ‘Sssh, sweetheart. We’ll go home as soon as it’s safe. Until then we shall just have to make the best of it, shan’t we?’

  ‘It smells funny!’

  Abigail was determined not to make the best of it. And there was no denying it did smell funny. Worse than funny. Diana pulled her handkerchief from her handbag and held it to her nose. She would not look at the people all around them; their presence was vivid and compelling without one actually needing to view them. For they seethed, spreading like some virulent Victorian disease that began less than three inches from her feet and stretched without end in every direction. A family of half-starved children shuffled past, their eyes huge and too large for their faces. Their mother was barely out of adolescence herself. She walked dully and without expression, as though she had awoken to find herself in the middle of a war with five runny-nosed children to provide for and no husband in sight. Diana dropped her gaze lest the woman see her staring but the woman seemed to see and hear nothing. And perhaps that was the trick.

  Up on the platform tarpaulins formed a closed-off area where, one presumed, the lavatories were. But what horror lay beyond the tarpaulins? Buckets? Were they expected to use buckets? She would not go there, no matter the discomfort. She pulled Abigail closer to her, wondering about her child’s bladder capacity, knowing it was really only a matter of time. To see and hear nothing, yes, that was the trick. She imagined herself relating this to Mrs Probart, putting it in her letter to Gerald. But why had she gone up to London at all, he would ask in his reply, and why bring Abigail?

  The air seemed to be thinning as more and more people sucked it in and coughed it out again and Diana felt her chest constrict. It was just her imagination. She knew the air could not really be thinning.

  She would not mention it to Gerald. There would be no letter. And in a month or so Abigail would forget.

  The piece of ground that, in their panicked flight, Diana had found and claimed was right beside a woman and child with a pile of belongings and bedding that the woman had rather ungraciously moved aside in order to make space. The woman was in her early twenties with a scarf tied over her head from which strands of fair hair had escaped. She wore vivid scarlet lipstick and had high, shaped eyebrows over eyes narrowed either in annoyance or to ward off the trail of smoke from her cigarette, all of which gave her a severe, rather hard face—but what should have been cheap, vulgar even, somehow was neither, somehow was striking. It was a beauty—vivid, compelling, and yet, somehow one knew, that would fade, if not this year then the next. The woman wore, oddly, an old apricot dressing-gown with a man’s overcoat slung over her shoulders and the cigarette was wedged in the corner of her mouth as though she had placed it there some hours earlier then forgotten about it. She was deftly laying out bedding, provisions and her child on the ground as if she had done it all fifty times before, which no doubt she had. There was something rather splendid about this woman who would not have looked out of place in the pages of a magazine but whom fate had put here, in the East End, in a tube station with a cigarette in her mouth and a small child. It set her apart from the wretched mother and her five starving children. The child, like its mother, was fair-haired and bundled up in mismatching clothes with a ghastly little red knitted hat on its head. She had the same neat little nose and deep-set eyes as her mother, with that same severity, almost hardness about her that was a little disturbing in a child so young. It was the child who saw Diana, her mother oblivious it seemed, absorbed, unconcerned. It was the child who stared back at Diana with black eyes that glared with a measured look that was somehow furious and patient both at once.

  Diana felt herself shrivel under the gaze and she looked away and hugged Abigail to her, feeling her own child’s sleek good health, her plump little arms, her rosy cheeks—streaked at the moment with dusty tears—her shiny chestnut hair pushed neatly off her face by the gay little hairband. But oddly this felt, now, like something to be ashamed of, something, instinctively, to hide. For the other woman’s child was wretched, her hair lank and unwashed and undoubtedly nit-infested, her features were grey, her arms and legs pitifully thin, and it was easy to blame the war, to blame rationing for the little girl’s miserable state, but what sort of existence would she live normally in a place like this?

  One ought to feel compassion, thought Diana, yet she felt nothing. Worse, she felt revulsion. It was the war: it focused one’s priorities. Her priority was her own and her child’s safety. And Gerald, of course. Nothing else mattered. And if they did not look after themselves, who else was there to turn to? Both her parents were dead. John was dead—more than twenty years dead, though it was extraordinary to realise it. Gerald, thank God, was not dead—or if he was, the Ministry of Defence had not yet informed her of it.

  The child had a scrap of blanket clutched to her cheek but now its eyes had settled, disturbingly, on Abigail. No, not on Abigail—on Teddy. Diana felt tiny creatures crawl up over her flesh and she pulled Abigail closer to her. She closed Abigail’s little fingers tighter about Teddy’s round, furry tummy.

  Gerald was somewhere in North Africa, or perhaps the Med, or even the Near East; it was difficult to know with any certainty becau
se all he could say in his occasional letters and hurriedly scribbled postcards was that it was hot, that the flies were a jolly nuisance and that he had acquired a marvellous winter tan—he could just as well have been writing to her from the terrace of a hotel on the French Riviera. Wherever he was, it was safe to assume he was not on board a ship in the North Atlantic being bombed by U-boats and that was a comfort, for Diana had a horror of him drowning in rough seas. But Gerald was in a tank regiment so the chances of his dying at sea were, thankfully, remote.

  Abigail, clearly having waited what she considered a long enough time, stirred restlessly. ‘Mummy, when can we go home?’

  ‘Darling, I know it’s not very nice, but however horrid it is, however much we dislike it, we must always remember that it’s far, far worse for Daddy than it is for us.’

  She had used this line before and Abigail had accepted it, for the most part, though what she understood by the term ‘Daddy’ Diana could hardly imagine, for Abigail had met him just the once and as this was the day after she was born it hardly counted. Her daddy was a figure as mythical as Father Christmas, which was wretched for Abigail (though she appeared unconcerned by it), wretched for herself, who had had no husband for the past three years, and of course dreadfully wretched for poor Gerald.

  Diana spat on her handkerchief and wiped away the dust and grime from Abigail’s shoes, giving the little silver buckles a polish. The futility of this was clear in Abigail’s silent observation but she could not stop herself. She wiped harder.

  Gerald had been thirty-eight already at the outbreak of war with quite a senior position at the merchant bank of Goldberg Staedtler in the City, which, though not exactly essential war work, still it had seemed that this, coupled with his age, would keep him out of active service. And so it had proved, with Gerald drafted to the newly created Ministry of Supply in the early weeks of the war. There had followed a strange but not entirely unpleasant period, with Gerald travelling into Whitehall each day rather than to the City, and, apart from the rare occasions when he was obliged, by weight of work or civil defence drills, to sleep in the office, their lives in those first months of the war had not changed noticeably. They had still played tennis on the weekends and, when rationing allowed, had a roast on Sunday. True, they had listened gravely to the Home Service news each evening on the wireless, and in a burst of patriotic duty Diana had ordered Mr Baines to dig up the garden and plant vegetables—she had drawn the line at keeping chickens—but, on the whole, the war had barely touched them.