Rose in the Blitz

by Rebecca Stevens

  Aunt Cosy? Aunty Coseeee!

  Rose smiled at the photo, remembering the day she took it. It seemed a very long time ago that she’d followed her aunt out of the house and down into the underground at Clapham South. The sun felt warm on her face and she lay back on the step with her head in the hood of her parka and closed her eyes.

  Somewhere, in the quiet of the evening, the fox barked.

  Rose was woken by something wet spattering on her face. She opened her eyes and at first could see nothing, nothing at all. And then, as she stared into the solid darkness, she saw one tiny point of light, a pinprick in a black velvet curtain. As she gazed, afraid to take her eyes off it in case it disappeared, it winked at her. And then she saw another and another and another and she realised that she was looking at the night sky.

  And it was raining.

  Rose lay there for a moment, feeling the rain on her face and gazing up into the star-studded darkness. She’d never seen the sky like that before, not in London. That was because of light pollution, Grandad had told her. The city was so brightly lit that all you could see was the orange glow of the street lights reflected on the sky. You couldn’t see the stars. Rose shivered. It had been warm when she’d fallen asleep in the sun on that September evening in 1940, but it was cold now, really cold.

  Is it still autumn? Rose wondered. Is it still 1940? Is the war still going on?

  And then, just as she was hoping it might all be over:

  NoooooooOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOooooo . . .

  She recognised it now, the way it began with a sad intake of breath and then spread out, up and down, up and down, in its desperate drawn-out wail. The air raid warning.

  As if in response to the sound, three great beams of white light sliced up through the sky, moving and crisscrossing each other, stroking the darkness like giant fingers. And then another sound joined the siren’s wail:

  Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?

  One of the lights picked up the outline of a single plane, high up above the rain. The other beams honed in on it and held it like an insect pinned against the sky.

  Where are you? Where are—

  BAM! BAM-BAM!

  The guns started up, shouting their fury at the tiny plane. Rose was on her feet now, searching her pockets for her phone, to put on the torch, give herself some light. But there was no need. Silvery lights started dropping from the sky, sparkling like fireworks, falling with a strange popping sound and spreading their ghostly white light over the common. Rose started to run, back the way she’d come when she’d followed Aunt Cosy, back towards the road, back to where there might be a shelter.

  Just in time.

  Because there was another sound, a sound that seemed to tear straight through her body. It was the same terrible whistling scream that she’d heard in the shelter with Rosemary and Betty, but this time it was much louder, much closer, much much more terrifying. Rose didn’t stop to think, there was no time. She threw herself on to the ground, her face on the path, gravel in her mouth, digging into her cheek. And waited for the blast.

  It didn’t come. The ground shook, jerking and juddering beneath her as if it was alive, but there was no explosion. The seconds slid past and Rose waited, with the night roaring all around her, until the guns had stopped their furious barking. She got up, gravel from the path sticking to her face, and started to run again.

  She wasn’t sure how far she’d gone, she just knew she couldn’t go any further. She doubled up, trying to catch her breath, afraid she might be sick, barely conscious of the white-painted edge of the pavement opposite and the dim light that came from the entrance to the station. A few people hurried through the darkness like shadows, shining their torches down at the pavement so they could see where they were going.

  And it was still raining.

  Once Rose’s breathing had slowed down, she found the torch on her phone and crossed the road, making for the station entrance. Didn’t people use the stations to shelter from air raids in the war? She was sure she’d heard that somewhere. It would certainly feel safer down there, deep beneath the ground. There might even be a train, she thought. A train that could take her home, back to the twenty-first century.

  ‘You can’t go in there, sweetheart.’ A man stopped her at the station entrance. He was wearing the same sort of boiler suit and tin helmet as Billy.

  ‘What?’ Rose looked up at him. His face was tired and grey and he needed a shave.

  ‘No trains running. Not now. They’ve closed this station for the night.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’ll have to go to Balham. They’re letting people shelter there.’

  ‘Balham?’

  ‘You’ll get there in a few minutes if you hurry. Follow the road round and—’

  ‘I know the way!’ Rose felt bad as soon as the words came out. She hadn’t meant to snap. ‘Sorry,’ she said, then stopped. ‘This is going to sound really stupid, but I’m a bit confused. Can you tell me what the date is?’

  ‘The date?’ The man stared at her. ‘It’s the fourteenth of October, love. Monday. The start of a brand-new week.’

  ‘1940?’

  He looked at her to see if she was joking. ‘Yup, it’s still 1940, worse luck. Roll on ’41, I say.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rose. ‘Sorry. I’m just . . . sorry.’

  But as she turned to walk away—

  CLACK! CLACK-CLACK!

  Things were dropping from the sky again, lighting up the rain-streaked darkness and turning the street into a black-and-white photo of itself. One landed with a sharp crack on the road right beside Rose. As she stared, it started to fizz and crackle with a lurid white light, jerking about on the ground as if it was alive.

  ‘Stand back, love,’ said the man. ‘This one’s got my name on.’

  He took his helmet off and approached it cautiously, putting one foot carefully in front of the other as if he was afraid it would bite him, and then, in one sudden movement, threw his helmet over it as if it was a spider he was catching beneath a glass.

  ‘Gotcha!’ he said and grinned at Rose as he stood there, holding the helmet in place with one foot. ‘That’s one that won’t hurt anybody tonight.’

  ‘One what?’ said Rose. ‘What is that thing?’

  The man stared at her. ‘Incendiary bomb,’ he said. ‘They’re all right if you get to them in time. Bucket of sand’s best.’ He grinned. ‘Or you can always jump on ’em if you’ve got a good enough pair of boots.’ He kicked the helmet away, then, using the edge of his sleeve to protect his hand from the heat, picked it up and made his way back to the station entrance.

  ‘What happens if you don’t get to them in time?’

  The man shrugged and got out a packet of cigarettes. ‘London burns down,’ he said and lit a match.

  Rose hurried off down the High Road, finding her way as best she could by the feeble light from her phone. The battery wasn’t going to last much longer. As she got nearer Balham station, the pavements filled up with shadowy figures, all hurrying in the same direction. There were some older people, their shoulders hunched against the rain, and women with children who looked dazed with sleep, mothers laden down with blankets and bundles and babies. Some of the younger children were clutching cuddly toys, stuffed rabbits and teddy bears, worn out with kisses. Big sisters held the hands of little ones, older boys carried bags and tried not to look scared. The old men were grey-faced, tight-lipped, silent, trudging through the darkness. They’d seen this all before.

  And still the planes came over and the guns barked at the sky.

  Rose felt a surge of relief as the station appeared, its low shape looming up out of the gloom. It looked familiar, in its place at the crossroads, in spite of the sandbags piled up against the walls. She hurried across the road to the entrance, slipping through the crowd, and made her way into the ticket hall. A kind-faced woman in a tin helmet waved her through the barrier and Rose joined the others, standing in silence on the cre
aky wooden escalator.

  Down they went, into the gloomy depths below the street. There was an earthy smell of damp clothes and not very clean people and a whiff of public toilets that caught you in the back of the throat and got stronger the further down you went. There were people everywhere at the bottom, sitting propped up against the tiled walls or lying down, covered in blankets and rugs, their heads on rolled-up coats or small suitcases. Mothers whispered to their children, stroking their heads, others had brought flasks of tea and sandwiches as if they were on some strange underground picnic. An old man sat on a camping stool and stared straight ahead, holding a tin mug of tea against his chest with both hands. A woman glanced up as Rose stepped over a sleeping child and then went back to turning the pages of her magazine. And then:

  ‘I know where I’m going . . .’

  It was the voice Rose had heard every evening since they’d moved into the house on Nightingale Lane. The voice she’d heard in the Anderson shelter on that sunny afternoon when the planes flew over London and the bombs rained down on the East End.

  ‘And I know who’s going with me . . .’

  She followed the sound through to one of the platforms, the northbound one. It was even more crowded there and you had to be careful where you put your feet to avoid standing on somebody. An old man was already snoring, propped up against the wall, his legs covered in a grubby-looking bedspread printed with smudgy pink roses. Everything looked faded and old and shabby, blankets were grey and pinkish and beige; faces, white and expressionless, turned in the same direction as they listened to the song.

  ‘I know who I love . . .’

  It was Rosemary. She was standing at the end of the platform, wearing dark-blue or black trousers and jacket, with her curls held back by some sort of hairband or scarf. Her lipstick was very red, her face very pale. She seemed somehow more real than the faded people on the platform, more solid, as if they were an audience in a dream.

  ‘But I don’t know who I’ll marry . . .’

  Rose turned suddenly. It was as if somebody had called her name or tapped her on the shoulder, although she knew they hadn’t. And there, at the far end of the platform, shimmering in the gloom, was Aunt Cosy in her silky dressing gown and red velvet slippers, smiling as she watched her younger self singing to the people.

  ‘Some say he’s bad but I say he’s bonny . . .’

  A few of the other women joined in with the last words of the song.

  ‘The fairest of them all, my handsome, winsome Johnny.’

  There was a little pause like a sigh as the people let the final notes sink away into the gloom. Then, another voice, a squeaky out-of-tune one, shattered the moment.

  ‘It’s a long way to TippeRARy, it’s a long way to go—’

  Betty. Everyone burst out laughing, including Rosemary. Rose saw mothers hugging their children, old men grinning, showing mouthfuls of bad teeth, old women rolling their eyes and shaking their heads.

  She didn’t hear the explosion.

  The lights went out. The darkness was complete. And the screams started.

  Rose found herself on the ground, her face pressed up against something hard that she realised was a shoe. She couldn’t tell if there was a foot inside it. She tried to get up, but there were people moving around her in the darkness, pushing, falling, trampling. She was knocked down again. Somebody trod on her hand. There were shouts in the dark.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Over here!’

  ‘Mummy!’

  And then there was a great WHOOOMPH and a crash and a rushing sound. And—

  Water.

  Water?

  In the middle of the screams and the chaos and the terror, Rose’s mind went: How can there be water? We’re nowhere near the river. But there was. She couldn’t see it, but you couldn’t mistake the sound. Or the smell. It stank – of drains and rubbish and muck. She struggled to her feet, feeling the wet starting to penetrate her boots. She found the tunnel wall and pressed herself against it as people pushed past, frantic to get away from the rising tide of filth and terror. Her mind was quite clear and she was surprised to find she wasn’t actually frightened. Perhaps there was a point where you got beyond fear. She mustn’t get knocked over again, she told herself. She would feel her way along the wall towards the exit and then maybe—

  ‘Don’t push now!’

  A voice cut across the terrified babble of the crowd. A warm voice with some sort of accent. A voice Rose had heard before.

  ‘Keep calm, ladies and gentlemen, and we will all get out of here in one piece.’

  A beam of light came slicing through the darkness, passing over the dark forms of the struggling, stumbling people and lighting up the great wall of water that was gushing from the roof of the tunnel. A beam of light with a figure behind it, a tall, slim figure wearing a tin helmet.

  ‘And please, whoever was singing, carry on!’ The figure behind the torch called out again, trying to calm the frantic people as they fought their way towards the exit. The beam of his torch swung through the dust-filled darkness. Rose saw shadows, piles of rubble, terrified faces, mothers clutching their children, an old man falling to the ground—

  ‘Please!’ came the voice again. ‘Whoever you are! Just keep on singing your song!’

  There was nothing at first, just the sounds of rushing water and panicking people. And then:

  ‘I know where I’m going . . .’

  Rosemary’s voice was shaking, making her sound more like Betty than herself, like a little girl who was trying not to cry, but the song already seemed to be calming people down. Their pushing became less frantic, their screams less terrified. And then the beam of the torch found her, standing stock-still as the people surged around her, face white in the darkness, one arm holding Betty clutched close to her side. And as she sang, her voice gained in power, until, by the last line of the song, she was singing with all her might, as loud as she could and with all her heart—

  ‘The fairest of them all, my handsome, winsome Johnny . . .’

  And then Rose realised: this was the moment. The figure behind the torch was Johnny, and Rosemary was looking straight at him.

  For a moment they seemed to hang there, the two of them, suspended in time, linked together by the beam of the torch. And then the picture broke up as, with a sickening crack, part of the roof of the tunnel gave way and Rose was hit by a huge wall of water. As she fell, she heard a scream, very close by, and realised with a jolt of surprise that it was her. Everything seemed to slow down. She saw blood on people’s faces, hands clutching at the air, Betty screaming as she was knocked down in the rush, Johnny going to help her and being pushed over himself, the torch flying out of his hand and his helmet coming off as he fell, down, down, down on to the tracks where the water was deepest.

  And Rose thought: Is this what happened to Aunt Cosy’s long-lost love? Did he die on the northbound platform of Balham underground station?

  And then:

  Is that what’s going to happen to me?

  She thought of Mum and Grandad, and Aunt Cosy sitting in her special chair, and Grace laughing and Ella smirking, and Fred smiling down at her, his eyes all crinkly behind his floppy fringe, and her mind went: NO!

  There was no way in the world that she was going to let that happen.

  She struggled to her feet and fought her way through the desperate, screaming crowd. It wasn’t pitch-dark any more, some sort of emergency lighting had come on and was casting a horrible blue light over everything, turning the terrified faces white, making their blood look black. Rose saw Betty on someone’s back, being carried towards the exit, but no Rosemary, no Johnny.

  Where is she? Where is he?

  Where are they?

  And then she saw her. Down on the track, up to her knees in water, her hands beneath Johnny’s shoulders, trying to lift him out. It was Rosemary.

  ‘Help me!’


  Rose knew that was what she said, even though she couldn’t hear her amidst the screams of the people and the gushing of the water. She jumped. It wasn’t as far down as she expected, but the water still came up to her knees and it was rising, pouring down from the shattered roof in a vile, stinking torrent.

  ‘I’m here!’ she shouted. ‘I’m coming!’

  She waded through the water, shuddering at the smell, until she got to them.

  ‘You take one shoulder,’ she yelled. ‘I’ll take the other.’

  Rosemary nodded. Rose’s hands ached with cold, but she put them in the water, under Johnny’s shoulder. Her eyes met Rosemary’s across his still body.

  ‘One. Two. Three—’

  One great heave and Johnny’s shoulders were up out of the water and on the platform. His legs were easier. They swung them up and then clambered back on to the platform themselves. There was an old man lying face down nearby. Rose didn’t want to think what had happened to him.

  Johnny was lying on his back, with Rosemary beside him, looking into his face. When she touched his cheek with one finger, his eyes flickered and opened. They focused on Rosemary and for a second the two of them were linked together, just as clearly as they had been by the light from the torch. And—

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Rosemary looked up at Rose, her face shining in the gloom, as if she’d just had the most wonderful piece of news in the world. And Rose thought, We did it! We saved him – me and Rosemary saved him! Everything’s going to be different now!

  Then a woman pushed past them carrying a crying child and the picture broke up. Johnny struggled to his feet, coughing with the effort and flinching with pain.

  ‘We need to get these people out of here,’ he said, almost to himself. And then, raising his voice to a desperate shout, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Please! Try and stay calm! We—’