The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  He couldn’t have sounded more incredulous if she had said she had leprosy.

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly as he stepped abruptly away from her. ‘Leon doesn’t know yet, but when he next has leave . . .’

  She was about to say that when Leon next had leave they would be getting married but before she was able to Lance said:

  ‘Leon? What kind of a name is that, for Christ’s sake?’

  Kate’s eyes held his. She knew instinctively the kind of reaction she would meet with if she told him Leon was part West Indian and she knew also why it was she had never been able to become really close to him.

  She said, indifferent to his reaction, ‘Leon is a very popular West Indian name.’

  ‘West Indian? West Indian?’ He looked as if he had been slapped hard across the face. ‘Dear Christ! I treat you like the Virgin Mary because I believe you’re still grieving for Toby and all the time you’re consorting with a . . . a . . .’

  He couldn’t bring himself to even say the word.

  As she saw the revulsion in his eyes she knew they were never going to have a civil conversation again and that it was the end of their always unsatisfactory relationship; never lovers, not even true friends.

  ‘He’s a sailor,’ she said, knowing that she was making a dire situation worse and not caring, ‘and he used to be my lodger . . .’

  ‘Jesus!’ He looked as if he were going to be sick. ‘You kept me at arm’s length and all the time you were laughing behind my back, behaving like a whore with a black seaman! And I wanted to marry you!’

  His nostrils were pinched and white, his eyes blazing. ‘Did you behave like this behind Toby’s back, too? Is Matthew Toby’s child or is he the offspring of another so-called lodger? A Ukrainian, perhaps? Or a Pole?’

  Oddly, she felt no anger towards him. Only pity.

  ‘Goodbye, Lance,’ she said quietly. ‘Please take your chocolates with you.’

  With something that sounded like a half-strangled sob, he snatched the gold-paper-packaged box from the kitchen table and turned on his heel, slamming the door behind him so viciously that it rocked on its hinges.

  Only when the front door had also slammed did she realize she was trembling. She sat down in the rocking-chair. In a minute, when she was quite sure his car was no longer in Magnolia Square, she would go down to Miriam’s and see if Carrie was home.

  ‘You’re out of luck,’ Miriam said cheerfully, inviting her in. ‘Everyone else is at ’ome, bar Carrie and Albert, ’ave you come to take Daisy ’ome? Because if you ’ave, she won’t want to go. She’s upstairs with Rose, playing with the doll’s ’ouse.’

  ‘I’ll leave her here for a little longer then,’ Kate said, still bemused that, thanks to Nellie Miller’s propaganda work on her behalf, she was again a welcome guest at the Jennings’.

  ‘Ma’s just made some bagels,’ Miriam said, and Kate noticed that Miriam’s own beefy red arms were dusted with flour, ‘come into the kitchen and ’ave one.’

  They had barely moved half a dozen steps down the clutter-filled passage-way when the air raid sirens wailed into life.

  ‘Bugger,’ Miriam said graphically, side-stepping a wooden clothes-horse heavy with freshly ironed laundry. ‘It’s another of them bloomin’ “nuisance” raids. Two planes at the most. If it wasn’t for the kids I wouldn’t bother traipsing down to the shelter.’

  Kate sympathized. Though a daylight ‘nuisance’ raid wasn’t as inconvenient as a night one, when it meant deciding whether or not to leave a warm bed for the nearest shelter, it was exceedingly annoying. Most Londoners now took them in their stride, refusing to give the pilots of the planes the satisfaction of being the cause of widespread disruption. Like Miriam, Kate would have liked to have ignored the sirens but, like Miriam, she felt too responsible for the children to be able to do so.

  ‘I’ll go upstairs and bring Rose and Daisy down,’ she said to Miriam. ‘Where have we to go? The Anderson or the public?’

  ‘’Ardly anyone goes to the public any more for a “nuisance”. I’ll get Ma and Christina to keep us company in the Anderson. We can take some bagels with us.’

  Kate ran up the stairs, calling, ‘Rose! Daisy! Can’t you hear the sirens? Come on, we’re going down the shelter!’

  ‘And what about Hector?’ Daisy asked anxiously as she and Rose tumbled out of the bedroom Rose shared with Carrie. ‘Where’s Hector? He doesn’t like the sirens, Auntie Kate. He won’t be happy on his own. Can we go and get Hector?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said firmly, shooing her and Rose downstairs. ‘It will only be one or two planes and they’ll have gone away in a few minutes. Hector will be fine. He’ll get under the kitchen table and most likely fall asleep.’

  ‘Bonzo never falls asleep,’ Rose said as Kate hurried her through the kitchen and out into the back garden. ‘And he always wears a tin hat. Grandma bought one specially for ’im and Grandad painted ’is name on it in white paint.’

  As the two children scampered down the concrete steps into the shelter, Kate could hear the approach of planes. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the unusually bright February sun. As Miriam had predicted there were only two of them, their intention not so much to cause damage by bombing as to cause widespread disruption by obliging vast numbers of London factory workers to down tools and head for the nearest shelter.

  Kate ducked her head down and entered the Anderson. The ack-ack guns on the Heath had already opened up on the invading planes and with a little luck would bring one, or even both of them, down.

  ‘And if they do bring one of the momzers down, where will it fall, my life?’ Leah Singer was asking practically. ‘Better they don’t hit one than they fall out of the sky on top of us!’

  It was the first time Kate had ever been in the Jennings’ shelter. Albert had fitted it out with a couple of bunk-beds, a deck-chair, a large rag rug and a storm-lantern and there was a beer crate from The Swan with half a dozen bottles in, most of them empty.

  ‘Sit down, bubbelah,’ Leah said, shifting up a little so that Kate could sit beside her and Christina on the bottom bunkbed. ‘Why do the schleppers always fly over our heads? Why can’t they fly over the heads of the rich instead?’

  ‘They do, Ma,’ Miriam said, pulling a well-worn jacket on over her sleeveless flower-patterned overall. ‘In the last proper raid Bromley didn’t ’alf cop it.’

  ‘Not like the East End,’ Leah persisted, lifting Bonzo on to her knee. ‘No-one’s copped it like the East Enders.’

  The two planes sounded to be heading directly for Magnolia Square.

  ‘I can’t understand why the ack-ack guns don’t bring ’em down,’ Miriam muttered, hugging her arms across her ample chest. ‘And will you two stop jumping up and down on that top bunk, Rose and Daisy? You’re making so much racket I keep thinking we’ve been ’it!’

  ‘Will Albert be all right?’ Christina asked suddenly. ‘You don’t think the planes will strafe the High Street, do you?’

  There was no way of knowing and no-one replied.

  ‘At least Beryl and Jenny will be in the school shelter,’ Miriam shouted as the droning engines above them caused the walls of the shelter to vibrate. ‘And so will Billy, if he ’asn’t scarpered off for the arternoon. The trouble with Billy is that . . .’

  It was a sentence she never finished.

  There was a screaming, whooshing sound, as if all the air around them was being sucked up into the sky and then a blast so tremendous that none of them thought they would survive it. The earth buckled and ruptured beneath their feet, an avalanche of flying masonry and timber and tiles thundered down on top of the Anderson’s steel roof. Kate was plucked from the bunk-bed and thrown bodily into the steel-grooved wall opposite. She could feel blood, hot and sticky, streaming down her face and when she opened her mouth to scream Daisy’s name, she choked on smoke and cordite fumes.

  ‘We’ve been ’it! We’ve been ’it!’ Miriam was screaming unnecessarily, proving that sh
e was at least alive.

  There were other screams. Rose’s and Daisy’s. But they were screams of terror, not pain.

  From outside came the roar and crackle of flame. ‘The ’ouse is gone,’ Miriam was sobbing, picking herself up from where she had been thrown. ‘Oh, what am I goin’ to tell Albert! What’s Albert goin’ to say?’

  Kate pushed herself away from the still rocking wall of the shelter. Miraculously Rose and Daisy were still on the top bunk-bed, clinging to each other hysterically. ‘I’m here, darling. I’m here,’ she shouted reassuringly, reaching up to lift Daisy down to the ground.

  As she did so, the earth juddered.

  ‘I’ve got Rose,’ Christina said in a voice of remarkable calm. ‘Let’s get out of here! Quick!’

  ‘Oy vey! Oh veh! Oh veh!’ Leah moaned, clutching a half-stunned Bonzo to her chest. ‘All through the Blitz he wears his helmet and today, when he needed it, I left it behind!’

  As they stumbled out into the fresh air their first reaction was disbelief at finding that Miriam was wrong and that the house was still standing, their second all-engulfing horror at the scene only a few doors away.

  The entire two upper storeys had collapsed and flames were shooting up through the right-hand side of the wreckage from the ground floor.

  ‘Oh dear God!’ Kate whispered, letting go of Daisy, so great was her shock. ‘It’s the Misses Helliwells’ house!’

  Without another word, she and Christina broke into a run. Somewhere in the distance fire-engine bells were clanging. As she and Christina ran and scrambled over the debris that had once been a neat and tidy pathway, Kate was aware of other people running in the same direction, but she and Christina were the first on the scene.

  Masonry and exposed wooden joists shivered and settled amid huge clouds of rising dust. The fire was gaining hold, feeding on crushed furniture and doors. Where the Misses Helliwells’ sitting-room had been was a cascade of bricks and smashed roof-tiles and, somewhere buried beneath it, the Morrison shelter.

  With smoke stinging their eyes, Christina and Kate began clawing at the rubble, hurling it away from above where they judged the Morrison to be. The flames were roaring nearer and still the fire engine had not screeched to a halt.

  ‘I’m with you, girls!’ Mr Nibbs panted, seizing the corner of a crushed brass bedstead and dragging it from the debris with almost superhuman strength.

  The fire was scorching them as they dug and clawed with lacerated hands. Dimly, Kate was aware that the fire engine had arrived. She could hear Daniel Collins’ voice. Hear the blessed hiss of water.

  ‘The gas pipes may be leaking!’ a male voice shouted. ‘There may be an explosion! Get those girls to a place of safety!’

  There was a spitting sound and as Kate ignored the warning and heaved a jagged corner of ceiling moulding to one side a demented animal, fur on end, sprang from what had very nearly been its tomb and leapt past her shoulders.

  ‘Faust!’ Kate gasped to Christina. ‘They always took him with them into the Morrison. They must be directly beneath us!’

  Male hands had come to their aid, but despite the arrival of the firemen, the fire was still crackling and roaring closer and closer.

  ‘There’s a gap here!’ Daniel Collins shouted to his fellow auxiliary firemen. ‘We need someone thin to worm a way down! The old ladies are elderly and one of them’s a cripple, they’re not going to be able to scramble out unaided!’

  ‘I’m thinner than any man,’ Kate said swiftly, beating out a shower of sparks that had landed on her dress.

  ‘You’re not thinner than me,’ Christina said, pushing a way past her. ‘And I’m not pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant?’ Daniel Collins eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘If you’re pregnant, Kate Voigt, you shouldn’t be risking life and limb on a bomb site! There could be a gas explosion any minute, either that or the whole bloody lot could cave in!’

  ‘Oh, helloooo!’ a frail voice called faintly over the din of rescue-workers and the menacing roar and crackle of flames. ‘Oh, can anyone hear me? Is anyone there?’

  ‘Hold on tight, Miss Helliwell!’ Daniel shouted down into the ink-black gap between broken joists and brick-work. ‘We’re going to have you and your sister out in a jiffy.’

  ‘That’s if the sister’s alive,’ a fireman said pessimistically. ‘She always looked as if a puff of wind would be enough to finish her off, let alone one of Hitler’s ruddy bombs.’

  No-one paid him any heed. Despite Kate’s protests, Christina was squeezing herself down into the narrow gap they had uncovered.

  ‘Does she know the bloody danger?’ another of Daniel’s colleagues asked him. ‘We haven’t got the fire under control yet and if she gets trapped down there. . .’

  As Christina wriggled down into the debris, Kate dropped to her hands and knees at the edge of the opening. Emily, at least, was alive. Surely if Esther had been killed by the blast Emily would have shouted the news up to them?

  Reading her thoughts, Daniel said, ‘They may not have been together when the bomb fell. They may have done what a lot of other people do when it’s only a nuisance raid. Ignored it.’

  From below their feet came the sound of muffled voices.

  ‘Have you got her?’ Daniel shouted down to Christina, a coil of sturdy rope in his hands. ‘Are we going to be able to lift her out?’

  There was a silence that seemed to last for ever and then Christina’s voice shouted back, ‘We need to get the other Miss Helliwell out first. She isn’t conscious but she’s alive.’

  ‘We’ll have to get a shift on, Daniel,’ Daniel’s colleague said to him, grim-faced. ‘The fire’s still alive below the rubble. It could reach them at any moment.’

  Daniel didn’t reply. Keeping firm hold of one end of the rope, he threw the coil into the narrow void at his feet. As he did so there was a hiss and a spurt of flame shot through a narrow crack only feet away from him. A fireman immediately doused it with a hose but everyone who saw it knew what it meant.

  ‘You’d best get clear,’ Daniel said to Kate. ‘There’s nothing else you can do now.’

  Kate ignored him. At the bottom of a deep dark shaft she could see the tops of two heads, one white-haired and one glossily dark. The glossily dark head turned, looking upwards. ‘She’s out cold, Kate! I’m going to lift her up as high as I can. If you can reach down and get hold of her . . .’

  Laying flat on the rubble, Kate stretched down into the pit and, as Daniel and another fireman began to haul steadily on the rope looped around Esther’s chest and under her arms, did as Christina asked.

  As Esther’s lolling head began to surface, other hands came to her aid.

  ‘Christ! Is she dead?’ someone asked anxiously.

  Someone else said, ‘She needs fresh air and she needs lying down. Have you got hold of her? Can you carry her somewhere where a doctor can look at her?’

  From down below there came the sound of harsh coughing and a wisp of smoke curled into the air. ‘Are you ready with the rope?’ Christina shouted urgently. ‘The fire is on the far side of the Morrison! We’re being choked down here!’

  Daniel threw the rope down again and Christina looped it swiftly around Miss Helliwell. This time, the operation was easier. Dazed and disorientated, Miss Helliwell was hauled inch by excruciating inch to the surface, like an unwieldy bucket from a well.

  ‘Oh, Kate!’ she gasped as Kate’s hands reached down to her. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! I was in contact with one of the dear departed when all of a sudden the world just erupted around me!’

  ‘You were very near to being one of the dear departed yourself,’ Daniel said dryly as he lifted her free of the jagged opening. ‘Now let’s get Christina out of there before she chokes to death.’

  ‘I can smell gas!’ one of the firemen shouted urgently. ‘Get everyone as far away as possible, Daniel!’

  As the crowd of sightseers that had gathered in the debris-strewn road retreated prudently to St Mark’s
Church’s grassy island, Kate leaned so far over the edge of the opening that unseen strong hands grabbed her legs to prevent her from falling into it head first. Smoke stung her eyes and heat beat up into her face in waves.

  ‘Can you reach my hands?’ she shouted down to Christina.

  She could hear Christina dragging something and then scrambling on top of it and then the pale oval of her face looked up into hers.

  ‘I think so . . .’

  Somewhere, something gave. Kate was aware of shouts of alarm. She ignored them, stretching her hands down to Christina’s. Their fingers touched and then, with the blood rushing dizzyingly into her head and the smell of gas nearly overcoming her, Kate stretched far enough to be able to grasp hold of Christina’s wrists.

  ‘Pull me back!’ she cried to whoever was holding on to her legs. ‘I’ve got her! Pull me back!’

  Mr Nibbs, now aided by Daniel, pulled. Seconds later Christina was being hauled to safety and Kate was pushing herself up onto torn and bleeding knees.

  ‘Now let’s get the hell away from here!’ one of the firemen shouted. ‘There’s going to be a God-almighty explosion any minute!’

  The explosion came only seconds later. Kate and Christina had only just reached the comparative safety of St Mark’s when the broken debris that had once been the Misses Helliwells’ home blasted scores of feet into the sky. Tiles on houses as far away as Miss Godfrey’s shattered down into gardens and on to the pavement. Every window in Mavis’s house blew out. Flames leapt across to the tree in the Jennings’ garden, burning furiously.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bob Giles was saying comfortingly. ‘The firemen will soon have it under control. Other emergency services are already on their way.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Miriam said as she looked at the yawning gap which had once been the Helliwells’ home, ‘our Billy’s goin’ to be sick as a parrot missing this little lot.’

  ‘And what about Mavis’s winders?’ Leah said, hugging a still whimpering Bonzo protectively to her chest. ‘I told her she should have kept the sticky-tape across ’em, but would she listen?’