A Chelsea Concerto

by Frances Faviell

  The inspector said now, ‘What explanation does he give? Who is under the bed?’ ‘He has a woman under the bed. He says she went under it when she heard me tap at the door. She’s lost her stockings – he was looking for them with the torch. That explains those queer streaks of light we saw. He says that he undresses by it every night.’ The inspector went over to the bed and looked underneath. Without a word he came back to Monsieur D. ‘Tell him that this is a police warning about infringing the black-out,’ he said. ‘Make it stern. Tell him if it happens again he’ll be fined – he could be imprisoned.’ At the same time he bent and picked up a silk stocking and handed it without a word to the frightened man. ‘I’ll see if I can get you some black-out curtains tomorrow,’ I promised him. He caught hold of my arm and began a long excited apology for the predicament in which we had found him.

  The police were already going down the stairs again and said they would wait for me below. ‘Get the lady dressed,’ I advised him; ‘it’s bitterly cold up here, and here’s the other stocking!’ I picked it up from where the beam of my torch had caught it. ‘Why didn’t you hang a blanket over the window?’ I asked him. ‘But, Marraine,’ he stammered, ‘we did think of it – but it’s so cold – as you said just now – we needed the blanket on the bed!’

  I said good-night, ran downstairs and collapsed with laughter in the police car. The lady was as well known to them, I was told, as she was to me. The raids and the black-out were conducive to her trade but not to the amenities associated with it. We sat in that car and laughed and laughed at the story of poor Monsieur D and the stockings. I promised to see to his blackout, and was driven home, the police all still chuckling.

  Next morning Monsieur D arrived to make his apologies. ‘You must understand, Marraine, that I am deeply ashamed that you should find me in such a predicament, but after all I am a lone man. She is a good girl – she does not charge me much. She knows that I am on Public Relief.’ All the refugees were on Public Relief, and it was this remark of Monsieur D’s which so amused Richard. It had been my duty to take many of the refugees to the Relieving Officer so that they could draw a weekly allowance. He wondered what officialdom would think of this use of its money.

  We had another midnight adventure with the police a few nights later – but this one was less amusing. One of the very noisiest raids which we had ever had was on. We had not gone to bed because we had been putting out incendiaries – now almost a nightly task which, as Richard said, at least gave us some exercise and a lot of fun. We were just going to bed when there was a violent knocking at the front door. When we opened it a Special Constable almost fell in. He appeared in such a state of collapse that we helped him into the room, which was now a sort of bed-sitter. He was in a pitiable state – weeping, shuddering, and groaning. I thought he was suffering from a shock of some kind. We gave him a drink but when I was going to give him another one Richard stopped me and told me in French that he thought the man was already drunk. He had collapsed on to our bed and lay there shivering and moaning. It was impossible to get anything coherent out of him. We saw that he did not come from Chelsea and asked him which was his beat. Time went on and the Blitz went on – but we wanted to get some sleep ourselves and here was this stranger lying inert on our bed.

  Richard tried to rouse him and when it was unsuccessful he looked in his pocket for his police identification. When he found it he saw that he was miles off his beat. What was he doing in Chelsea? Richard was very tired, he said he had no intention of sharing the bed with a policeman, we should get him on his feet and turn him out again. I would not agree to this as he seemed to be ill from fright already and the inferno going on all round could only make him worse – besides, what chance would he have of taking cover? Richard said a Special Constable should not take cover – he was on duty in the Blitz to help others. It was after midnight and he decided to telephone the police station to which the man was attached.

  I got the man to drink some coffee and he seemed better after it, but quite unable to realize where he was, how he got there, or what he was supposed to be doing. While Richard was telephoning I went to get some more coffee because it seemed to be reviving him. When I returned from the kitchen the front door was open and the Special had disappeared! When Richard came down from the studio he joined me in the search. He had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. After waiting some time we went to bed.

  About three o’clock in the morning we were awakened by loud peals of the bell. There were two police cars outside. The station had sent to collect its lost Special but we could not tell them where he was, and after we gave them a very guarded account so as not to injure the poor fugitive they departed with a lot of noise. We had just got to sleep again when more loud peals at the bell woke us. Two more police cars had arrived to collect the missing man! I was glad that he had gone – maybe the coffee had pulled him together. He did not seem to know what had happened to him. It was almost dawn by the time that the second lot of police left us and so I made some breakfast and we got up and went out to see how the raid was getting on.

  Chapter Eighteen

  OUR FRIENDS Eve and Moley were in trouble at this period of the Blitz. Their flat had been badly damaged by bomb blast and was unsafe, and Eve had to enter University College Hospital for a major operation. She had barely emerged from the anaesthetic when Maples’s enormous store, which adjoins the hospital, was bombed and became a raging furnace. The patients were wheeled in their beds into the corridors, packed closely together.

  The firemen were fighting heroically on the blazing Maples fire but from the corridor window the glare of the flames was reflected and was terrifying to the helpless patients, who knew that the flare was a target for the Luftwaffe, which was dropping high explosives into it. Eve was not frightened; like the others she was quite calm until one of the patients panicked. Suddenly the panic spread like lightning all down the closely packed beds. ‘We’ve got to get out of here! We’ll all be trapped like rats. Get us out! Get us out!’ a man began screaming – and others took up his cry, ‘Get us out of here!’ and now Eve was really frightened – not so much of the fire but of the panic.

  A huge smoke-grimed fireman came pushing his way down the corridor between the beds – they were fighting the fire from the hospital as from all sides. He took in the situation immediately from Eve’s face. Pausing by her bed he said, indicating the screaming panic-maker, ‘Shall I knock him out for you?’ and in a few moments he had restored confidence and wheeled Eve’s bed to the window so that she could watch the firemen at work on the fire which, in ferocity and size, made an unforgettable sight. There is something horribly stimulating and exciting in a big fire – and even there, unable to move and in great danger from its proximity, she could but marvel at its beauty. I had seen several terrible fires in Chelsea since the beginning of the Blitz and they never failed to give me a horrible thrill with their blend of terror and sheer terrifying beauty. I had watched the magnificent work of the firemen and was equally thrilled by their superb bravery.

  Next morning Eve had to be taken by ambulance to the country. Moley travelled with her. All the way across London and its outskirts the vehicle bumped violently over the firemen’s hoses still blocking the streets as they fought the smouldering fires before nightfall. Each bump was an agony to the patient, who feared that the recently inserted stitches would give way. In order to distract her mind from her discomfort and pain, Moley described to her a series of beautiful country houses which they were passing. He is an authority on certain periods of English architecture and made his descriptions so real in minute details of their setting, style, and period that Eve could visualize each one. It was only when they reached their destination that she realized that he could not see a thing from his seat in the ambulance!

  At the end of November reports of war damage were published in the Press. We Londoners had not been able to avoid seeing the ruins of some of our most beloved buildings – but to the provincial people th
e report was news – just as reports of their losses were news to us. Censorship was strictly enforced, and the deaths of our friends from enemy action were not allowed to be published in the newspapers until fourteen days after the event. St James’s, Piccadilly, that lovely church familiar to every visitor as well as every Londoner, had been demolished, Notre Dame de la France in Leicester Square had been totally wrecked, the Carlton and the Savoy Hotels damaged, as was Greenwich Observatory. My sister had written to me about the damage in Bristol and the loss of so many lovely buildings there, now the public knew that the University Great Hall, the Elizabethan St Peter’s Hospital, the famous Dutch House, the Old Crown Court in the Guildhall were all destroyed, and the lovely old Temple Church completely wrecked.

  America was sending gifts from Red Cross and charitable organizations. My sister, working in Bristol, was receiving great cases of blankets and clothing for the bombed-out people. Margerie Scott had now extended her already wide activities all over Canada, whence a steady stream of parcels was pouring in. She had been heard in her broadcasts by a huge organization called Beta Sigma Phi, an international sorority, and their International HQ in Kansas City wrote to her and asked her to become an honorary member. She agreed, not knowing exactly what it involved, and they began sending her thousands and thousands of dollars to buy mobile units, to equip an air-raid shelter under a dramatic club for young people which she ran in Elm Park Gardens, in fact money to provide for all kinds of things which war-time Britain could not find. Many old bombed-out people in Cheyne Hospital received beautiful blankets and warm coats and jerseys from these wonderfully generous people in Canada and America. The children all received toys and clothes – Margerie Scott was indeed the real Father Christmas in Chelsea. (These organizations kept up their stream of gifts until after the end of the war and formed Margerie Scott Clubs all over Canada.)

  In the desert of Libya the battle against the Italians was proceeding with great violence, but our air raids on Germany had been somewhat slackened owing to the weather, as had theirs on us; and our bombers visited Naples, that lovely bay which no imagination of mine could connect with such things as war and air raids, but which now held cruisers and destroyers that had to be eliminated.

  In Chelsea we were still having bombs, and on the morning of December 8th, after a noisy night, I was due for day duty at the FAP and arriving there early in the morning was greeted by Peggy, immaculate as usual, who said, ‘Come and see our visitor who arrived early this morning – but take off your shoes first. You might wake him up.’ I thought that she meant that a child casualty had been brought in during the Blitz of the previous night – but no! It was no baby but a large UXB sitting in the surgery!!

  We peeped round the door, which Peggy opened very cautiously. There it was, in the small room, an uninvited guest waiting to be removed like all gate-crashers! There was intense excitement at the FAP, which had been ordered to evacuate. Everyone was creeping about in stockinged feet. Sister-in-charge wanted all equipment and drugs removed from the cupboard before we had to evacuate. She said that each of us could make one trip past the bomb to the cupboard and carry all we could. This we did in our stockinged feet, scarcely daring to breathe. The young officer from the Bomb Disposal Squad had told me that UXBs were not nearly as dangerous as people imagined. They seldom went off, he said, and, as Sister insisted when one VAD demurred, if the thing had crashed through five floors after striking the roof and landing with a terrific impact on the surgery floor why should it go off when we ‘walked delicately like Agag in the sight of the Lord’ round it?

  But there was one UXB which had gone off eight hours after being dropped. It had fallen in a house in Sydney Street on October 16th. Eight hours after the occupants had all been evacuated the bomb exploded and took a complete slice out of the house as if it had been cut with a knife as a cake is. The walls each side were exposed, displaying the rooms, and on a landing hung a little boy’s hat and coat, forlorn and pathetic.

  I could not help thinking of this as I crept round in my turn to rescue Sister’s precious equipment, but I was consoled by what the young officer had told me. ‘If it goes off and you’re near it you won’t know a thing.’ But all the same I couldn’t help wondering if this wasn’t perhaps the bomb with my name on it!

  We had to evacuate our post for several days and the whole road was roped off and barred to traffic until the disposal squad’s arrival. They were kept so busy now that this took time. This was the first unexploded bomb I had seen at such close quarters, and somehow it didn’t seem to have any connexion with the violence caused by explosion. It just looked like an ugly snout-nosed greenish-grey torpedo with small horns coming out of it. Our post had to be closed and we were all detailed to hospitals until the bomb had been removed.

  The same night a bomb had fallen in Tedworth Square and caused consternation amongst the refugees who lived in the houses there. Smith Street and Wellington Square had also had bombs and all these were in the immediate vicinity. Many of the refugees who had been separated from their acquaintances and friends on arrival in England had by now got into touch with them. Some of them were quite near in London, and every few days one or another of them would excitedly bring me letters from various London boroughs. It seemed that we were lucky in Chelsea, having not so far lost one of our refugees. Quite a number of Belgians had been killed in October in an air raid when sheltering in Bounds Green underground station. Each Belgian who told me about it enlarged the number of casualties, but certainly it was over a dozen – probably fifteen – including several known to the Chelsea ones.

  The bomb in Smith Street made a huge crater in the road and I asked a man who worked in the local pub there if he had heard anything of it. He said, ‘Heard? Well, not exactly heard. It was like this. I’ve got a cat, and hearing the raid on, I come out to look for ’m, see? I calls Puss, Puss – and this ruddy great thing comes down. I couldn’t hear nothing for some time! and all me clothes was blown off me. But the cat – he come back as large as life waving ’is tail as pleased as punch!’

  On the 20th we had quite heavy day raids again on London, and I sat with Carla’s letter before me. In two days she would be breaking up – could she come up just for the actual Christmas, please, please? she wrote. Well, I just couldn’t take the risk and decided to telephone the nuns to break it gently to her. But that evening Madeleine, a charming young French refugee, was taken suddenly ill. Her mother came round to fetch me, and in the excitement of getting her to hospital – for she had bronchial pneumonia – I forgot about Carla. Madeleine was terribly ill; she had been poorly for days but had said nothing as she did not want to worry her mother. Dr Thompson took her into St Luke’s at once and gave her the new drug M and B. He was so delighted with the results that he telephoned me to come the next afternoon and see his patient. Madeleine, who had been taken away in an ambulance, blue in the face and breathing in harsh, ugly, rasping spasms, was sitting up in bed looking pink and pretty again with all the taut strained lines gone from her young face. Beside her sat her mother wreathed in smiles – she just couldn’t do enough for the nurse and the young doctor who had miraculously restored her only daughter. Every time one of them passed the bed she caught at their hands and kissed them – they were embarrassed but I think rather touched.

  When I got home from this satisfactory outcome I saw a small figure sitting patiently on a suitcase on the doorstep inside the archway. It was Carla.

  She had apparently saved up her pocket money, got one of the day girls to buy her a ticket and simply joined the school party going to the London train. When she saw me she flung herself at me in a storm of tears. What could I do but tell her she could stay?

  Just before Christmas the raids on Bristol became even greater in magnitude. My sister, Gerry, had been in touch with me all through our bad weeks of Blitz and telephoned me every day to ask if I were all right – lately I had been telephoning her. Bristol had suffered terribly. She sent me her comments on the sp
lendid behaviour of the Bristolians during some appalling nights. Her husband was a doctor and on constant call, and she herself was working full-time in Civil Defence.

  On October 20th, during a terrible air attack on Bristol, Kumari’s brother, Indi, was killed flying with the Nizam of Hyderabad’s Squadron, which was helping to defend the town. The squadron gained glory in history by shooting down sixty-four out of the hundred enemy planes destroyed in the huge-scale attack on Bristol. But Indi, an eager, intrepid, and skilled pilot, was one of those whose planes were shot down after he had destroyed several German planes in fierce dog-fights.

  Kumari came to tell me of his death. She was so quiet and restrained in her grief that it was agonizing to look at the tragic beauty of her small face. She had adored her brother – and he was the only son. Her parents had two more daughters but Indi alone would have carried on the family name. He had loved the life with the RAF, she said, he had been supremely happy – and she knew that he had died happy – because he was defending the country he loved. I could not accept her attitude. Whenever some lovely young life had been sacrificed I felt only fury – and despair. Sometimes when I awoke in the night I would think of all the young lives being lost all over the battle areas – and in every country. In Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, and Norway they were dying every day for their country – being sent to monstrous prison camps because they would not bow to the Nazi heel – and every day there were RAF men being killed in these endless air battles, or ‘failing to return’ as the BBC put it in their bulletins, and all those who were being lost at sea. Kumari did not see it as I did. ‘Why do you all fear death and regret it so much?’ she asked. ‘Surely if you are Christians and know that you are going on to eternal life you should welcome it.’ Kumari was a Hindu and knew that her present life was but a small cycle in the reincarnations of the soul until she attained eternal rest with the Brahma. She accepted Indi’s death as his destiny – that his incarnation on this earth had been ruthlessly, and to my mind needlessly, cut short by war did not upset her. She grieved for the loss of her beloved brother – but she did not grieve because he was dead. ‘He is reincarnated, that is all,’ she said. ‘He is to get a decoration. His wing-commander wrote to me. Father will be very proud of him.’