In Sloane Square there had been a terrifying smell of gas. All round it buildings were damaged and the square strewn with wreckage and glass. Only the ultra-modern newly designed Peter Jones building stood proudly without a pane of its acres of glass broken. This was explained by the caving in of the station itself so that the blast went up the Underground tunnel and the actual explosion was muffled. Mr Wilde told me that it was not such a tremendous thud as one would have expected. At first they did not realize that it was so near, and the cries of those below on the station were muffled too by the debris which had descended on them from above.
After this incident there was again a call for volunteers for the mortuary to help piece bodies together. There was one woman, a local resident, doing magnificent work on the bodies. She was a delightful person – I can remember her vividly, but not, alas, her name. She was not a nurse, and, after all, the last service to the dead is part of a nurse’s training, but she was doing this, she told me, as an offering to those brave transport personnel who had carried on all through the Blitz and lost their lives in the canteen on the station.
I was accustomed to the task by now but never lost my violent revulsion, just as it never lost its grim horror. The wardens hated it too, for it was part of their everyday duties to pick up the pieces of their fellow-men and women after the raids. The police, they told me, would not do this, nor would they help move bodies. Connie had experience of this when it was her job to move a man’s heavy body outside a house in Burton Court. A chair leg had been driven right through him. The dead man’s family would have had to step over his body welded to the chair when they emerged. She was not strong enough to move it herself, but two policemen refused absolutely to help her. I should have thought that some dead were less unpleasant than the drunks they had to move.
On the Sunday after this Mr Rock Carling came to lunch and walked with us in Battersea Park. He was interested in all I could tell him of the Sloane Square casualties, and when I said that his last long talk with me about such things had made my small part in it much easier he was very pleased and told me a lot about some of the incidents which he had recently investigated as Consultant to Administration to Civil Defence and the Ministry of Health. He had already been bombed in eleven cities. In the terrible fire on the docks the Isle of Dogs suffered terribly. Immediately afterwards he had to inspect the FAPs there. One of them, in charge of a large elderly East-End lady, had everything in such perfect order that he was astonished. He said to her, ‘Look here, I can always find something to criticize in a FAP if I want to. I don’t believe your needles are sharp.’ ‘You can take a look at ’em,’ she retorted. They were the sharpest he had come across and he asked her how she got them like it. ‘I’ve got a friend who’s a watchmaker who looks after ’em for me,’ she said. The idea spread from this and soon all over the country the surgeons’ needles were looked after by watchmakers.
Some of the things he had discovered were fascinating. In one naval yard he found the ammunition stored right up against a timber yard. In another place he found large stores of war gases in exposed tanks which, if hit by a bomb, would have spread poison gas all over the country. In the making of camouflage piles of old car tyres were burned for smoke screens, and in one place this was being done right up against the water supply of a city. Richard often accompanied him and Colonel Bateman on some of these investigations, as he also did to the mortuaries. ‘Rockie’, as I always called him, was so absolutely sick of seeing mortuaries that he refused to visit any more. He agreed with me that it was a pity that we did not disintegrate as the burial service said ‘earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes’ without any flesh and blood to have to be dealt with by our fellow-men.
Rockie liked to discuss painting and painters – he loved looking at my work and asking me about it. I have found that doctors and surgeons in all countries have this appreciation and love of art and are amongst the greatest patrons of it. My very first commission had been from a young surgeon whose wife wanted him painted in his robes soon after he qualified, and he paid me for it in instalments.
With the onset of real winter and the early fall of darkness – it was suddenly bitterly cold – the nightly trek to the shelters assumed a grim aspect. Many left their bedding and rugs on their bunks – but the shelters were often damp, and although there were wardens in charge it was not always possible for someone to be on duty all day and there were dishonest people ready to steal and re-sell blankets and pillows, just as there were ghouls to be seen picking away at the ruins of houses from which it was forbidden to even the owners to remove their own possessions. Sometimes the things left lying about in rain and wind were just asking to be stolen; it was quite common to see them still there after several weeks if they were in a place inaccessible to the passer-by.
Not all the men who were employed to do the salvage work were above looting from the houses on which they were working, judging from the weekly reports of court cases for this crime. There were a great many more than one would have thought. Commodities were scarce and it was a temptation to see things which could be used left rotting in the inclement weather. All goods salvaged from ruins had to be taken to places set aside for them by the borough from which they had to be claimed by the owner or heirs. By now there were many ruined houses, many great gaping holes between rows of badly damaged ones, and whole devastated areas over which no guard of any kind was kept. As darkness fell earlier so the sirens sounded earlier every night and life became one scramble to get things done before the warning sounded its mournful curfew.
One little Belgian boy in a house in Royal Avenue had been very unwell for some weeks. He had intermittent fever and a cough, he was losing weight and had no energy or appetite. Dr Thompson asked me to take him to a well-known children’s specialist at the Victoria Hospital. The specialist, after examining him, asked me if I could keep a very careful chart of the boy’s temperature for the next two weeks during which time he was to stay in bed.
This was no easy task and I explained that the family were housed on the top floor of the house and went regularly to a shelter every night. I doubted if they would agree to the boy staying in bed or to staying with him. It was impossible to take him into the hospital – only one ward was kept open now – and that was for emergencies. If, as the specialist suspected, the child was threatened with tuberculosis, then he could send him to hospital in Windsor – but until he was fairly certain there was no chance of getting him into hospital.
It was a difficult task to get Madame C to understand that her son was threatened with a serious illness. She was certain that all that was the matter was constipation, from which the whole family suffered, made worse, she said, by the shelters having no proper sanitation. The specialist told me to impress on her that it was the child’s chest which was the danger, not his bowels. She was a very talkative woman and, once started on the subject of constipation, it was almost impossible to get her to stop. I promised to try to get the boy kept in bed and to make the chart at the times requested. Madame C had three other children and a husband who was extremely affected by the Blitz. This was understandable as the family had experienced machine-gunning and bombing on their trek from Belgium, but it was his fear which affected the wife and children, who would not have minded the Blitz so much otherwise. As I had feared, Monsieur C would not hear of Raymond staying in bed in the house; he must go to the shelter. I argued with him and was finally obliged to warn the father that his son had suspected tuberculosis and that taking him to a damp shelter when he already had a fever was highly dangerous and could result in serious trouble.
The child himself had told me that he wanted to stay in bed, that he felt tired, he only wanted to sleep and sleep. I tried to persuade the family on the ground floor of the house to change rooms so that the boy would at least not be on the top floor, but no one liked top floors since the Blitz had started.
I think it was during some of those many visits to Raymond to make that chart that I
first began to know real fear. Up to that time I had not really minded the Blitz at all. I had just married, and we were very happy, although the occasions when we were both together were increasingly rare. Richard was frequently away on tour for the Ministry, and I was often on night duty, but the bombs seemed only a macabre background to our personal life, and the fear that either of us would be a victim of the Blitz was a remote thought – but it was one which now began recurringly to enter my head. Richard had told me that when they had to ‘go over the top’ in the 1914-18 war it never occurred to the individual that he would be killed – the next man, or the one behind him perhaps, but not him. I suppose the same feeling made us all able to get on with our various occupations. It was, in a way, like entering for a lottery: out of millions of houses only a very small percentage got destroyed in each raid. When I told Richard that I was beginning to be afraid, that I worried sometimes when he was away, that was the argument he used to reassure me. ‘It’s one house in a million which is hit,’ he said. Nevertheless, when watching at night by the bedside of this little boy, his mother having gone in exhaustion to the shelter, I was often afraid alone there on the top floor of that empty house in deserted Royal Avenue. The child needed frequent reassurance, being feverish and apprehensive at each fearful whoosh and whistle of a bomb. The succeeding explosions caused him to bury his small face in the pillow and his hot little hands would grip mine in an agony of suspense.
I used to play a game going to and from these nightly vigils. I would run down the dark avenue and as each bomb fell I would count it as one more orange for Nell Gwynne. Sometimes her orange basket was quite full before I reached Raymond, who liked to play the game with me, I having told him an interminable story about the orange girl and the King. Sometimes I took Vicki with me. She was indifferent to gunfire and bombs and lay quite happily in the bed with the child. Out in the open I never felt nervous, the spectacle in the sky was too exciting, the beauty of the searchlight patterns too diverting for fear. It was when under a roof that I was the victim of these stirrings of apprehension.
One very bad night when a bomb had fallen in Royal Avenue very near the house, Raymond said to me, ‘Marraine, are you frightened?’ I hesitated. Should I admit that I was or should I lie? Which? Before I could answer he said, ‘I am very frightened indeed – shall I say my prayers to Our Lady for both of us?…I’ve got my rosary here…’ I agreed thankfully, and he murmured the prayers, telling the beads round as the planes circled as if he were following their death wish and fighting it. So had Suzanne’s mother done, her frail ivory hands making exactly the same movements. When the terrific crash came which shook the house and we heard the ensuing clattering of tiles and glass Raymond took my hand and pressed it in anguish between his small hot ones…but he did not falter in his prayers. When silence came – and we were still there – he put down the rosary and said, ‘I said one for Vicki too. I’m sure Our Lady likes dogs, aren’t you?’
At last the chart was complete and the specialist, satisfied that his suspicions were justified, asked me to bring Raymond’s parents to see him as the boy would have to go out of London to a hospital in Windsor.
This was easily decided, but to persuade the parents was quite another matter. The child himself was quite willing to go – he wanted to get well and he didn’t like being left to sleep in the house during the Blitz while the rest of his family were in the shelter.
It took hours of argument before they agreed to talk it over and let me know the next day. Raymond had to go almost at once as there was a vacant bed waiting for him. We did not get much notice when the actual day came. The parents had finally agreed to let him go after being told that they could visit him on Sundays. Madame C was upset that she was not allowed to go with him, but she was, I found, chiefly upset because she had administered a laxative to the boy and was worried about its having effect on the journey. Having reassured her that this could be dealt with, she was very good about his going. There was another child travelling in the ambulance with Raymond and one of the nurses from the Victoria Hospital came with us.
I missed Raymond very much, he was a darling little boy, but it was lovely to feel that he was in the country air, and in comparative peace compared with Chelsea, and there was no denying those nightly visits had weighed heavily on me. If I left him with his mother alone in that house I could not sleep myself and had, sooner or later, got up and gone round to see that they were all right. He settled in very quickly at the hospital and, like Catherine, was learning English, and wrote me some delightful little letters.
The suspicion and spite of some refugees against their fellows were a headache to us. Suspicion, as in Ruth’s case, seemed to be one of the qualities born of fear and uncertainty. There were constant complaints of light signals being made from the windows of some refugee or other. Deputations of refugees had come several times about an unfortunate widower who occupied a room on the top floor of a house in St Leonard’s Terrace. They said that during the raids this man signalled the Luftwaffe by a series of flashes done in some code or other. These accusations grew so insistent that the police came to hear of them. One day a member of the CID whom I had met already in connexion with the refugees, came to see me about the matter. I had not myself seen the signals – but was obliged to admit that a great many of the refugees were emphatic that Monsieur D, a most mild and amiable man, was a spy. He kept apart, they said, he did not mix with the other refugees. He was secretive and did not sleep in a shelter. Why not? What did he stay up there for – there must be some good reason. He was a spy and signalled the raiders. I liked Monsieur D, perhaps because he was that much different and because he never complained about anything. I told the Inspector all I could about him, and his file was carefully studied again. There was nothing against him – anyhow nothing known against him.
Two days later the same CID officer came again. They had put a watch on the house – it seemed that there were peculiar lights from the window of Monsieur D’s room. They were going to keep watch the following night and if the same movements were observed they would come and fetch me in a police car so that I could accompany them to confront him. Would I hold myself ready if they came?
I was very excited about this – my instinct was to go at once to Monsieur D and warn him, but this I was told expressly not to do. I agreed to go after the CID officer had told Richard about their plan. The next evening was extremely dark, and shortly before midnight a police car came for me. A constable had been on watch, and Monsieur D was signalling again. ‘Come and see for yourself,’ said the police.
We drove to St Leonard’s Terrace and parked the car under some trees in Burton Court. ‘We have to investigate this because the man’s window is, as the complainants said, directly opposite the balloon site,’ I was told. It was – that was obvious.
We sat there with the Blitz for entertainment and listened to the gun-fire and the planes. Suddenly the police officer next to me said, ‘Now! Look at his window.’ I looked. There were certainly some queer quick streaks of yellow light shooting across the window. In the pitch blackness of the November night they appeared startlingly noticeable. We watched for a minute or so and then the inspector opened the door of the car. ‘Is the house unlocked?’ he asked me. It was – all the refugee houses were left unlocked at night because of firebombs. ‘You go up first,’ said the Inspector. ‘We don’t want to scare the man – it may have some absolutely innocent explanation, but in any case he must be warned that he is infringing the black-out regulations.’ There was such a noise from the anti-aircraft barrage that our footsteps on the stairs must have passed unnoticed. All the rooms on the landings were closed, and as all electric-light bulbs had been removed, we used our hooded torches to find the way. I knew the room well, having often visited Monsieur D in it. He had been in bed with a heavy cold for a few days and Mrs Freeth had cooked his meals and I had carried them up to him.
When we all stood outside the door we could hear voices. Monsieur D was
not alone – and clearly not in bed. I had been told to tap on the door and at the same time open it so as not to give him time to hide anything. I did not like doing this – but had to obey instructions. Accordingly, at a signal from the police, I tapped sharply on the door, saying, ‘Monsieur D, Monsieur D…’ and opened it.
Monsieur D was in his shirt and socks – he appeared flabbergasted at my intrusion. At first he did not see the police behind me…‘Marraine…’ he faltered, staring open-mouthed at me. In his hand was a torch. It looked bad. But by the light of mine I had seen something else – a bare leg emerging from under the iron bedstead in the corner. Not a man’s leg – a white, shapely, feminine one. I said to the terrified man, ‘Who have you got under the bed? Quick, tell me.’ He faltered, stammered, and finally said, ‘Someone you wouldn’t know, Marraine.’ I went over to the bed and shone my torch under it. Monsieur D was wrong. There was a squeal of protest, but the face revealed had so much merriment in it and at the same time such pleading that I stood against the bed so that the legs were no longer visible. I addressed myself to Monsieur D, telling him of the accusations against him. He was open-mouthed with astonishment. Him signalling? Him? Why he’d kill anyone with his bare hands if he found them signalling to those Boche swine. I cut him short. ‘I know what you are doing – I know her,’ I said, ‘but what are you doing with that torch, that’s what the police want to know? Your morals are your own affair – but lights in the black-out are theirs!’ He looked down sheepishly at the unguarded torch in his hand. ‘It’s her stockings,’ he said reluctantly. ‘She’s lost her stockings…you know how scarce stockings are, Marraine. I had to look for them. I can’t put the lights on as the windows are not blacked out – I was hunting with the torch. I have to undress by it every night. I keep it down, it can’t possibly show from the window.’
A Chelsea Concerto Page 21
