Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  ‘Railway station. That Hitler can’t get us underground.’ She caught a look at his face. ‘Don’t you worry, duckie. Your mum and dad will find shelter too.’

  Will they? wondered Georg.

  The noises sounded like a giant in the sky. ‘Fee fifo fum,’ the giant had roared in the fairy story. ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.’

  He shivered. There were no giants. But still he gazed up, expecting enormous planes to soar across the sky.

  And then he saw them. They looked tiny, not giant. Only two, though he could hear more, far off down the end of the street. They must be above the river … Even as he thought it, the air ripped into noise around him, something too loud to be a crash or a bang. Seconds later the ground shuddered, and shuddered again.

  How could such small planes make the whole world shiver?

  ‘Hurry, ducks!’ urged the woman.

  But it was hard to hurry in the crush of people. High heels, workmen’s boots, shop assistants’ sensible shoes, his own school shoes. He had a sudden vision of someone falling under those feet. Would anyone notice, or stop?

  Georg glanced behind. Smoke puffed in black bursts into the sky. A tongue of flame licked upwards like it was trying to taste the clouds.

  The air tasted strange. He wanted to cough, but forced himself to keep breathing so he could keep running with the woman.

  Sudden terror struck him. Had the enemy dropped poison gas? He glanced around, waiting for people to start choking, to drop to the ground, waited to cough up blood like the air-raid warden had said.

  But the cough stayed a tickle. People around him panted, even screamed, but didn’t choke.

  How will we know when the poison gas drops? he wondered.

  They had reached the railway station now. The crowd was even thicker here. People pressed down the stairs, bumbling and shoving each other. Someone screamed, and really did fall under the press of feet. Georg tried to see who it was, see if someone had helped them up, but the crowd was too thick, the adults tall around him. When he looked back the woman who had been shepherding him into the underground station had vanished into the crush.

  It didn’t matter. He let himself be swept down the stairs and out on the platform. There was more room here; the air was sooty from the long black tunnels on either side, but somehow fresher too. As they came down the stairs, the crowd began to disperse along the platform, settling themselves against grubby walls and cold tiles.

  Georg found a piece of wall between a fat woman, wheezing like a vacuum cleaner and gripping a string bag just like his, and a smart-looking lady with a bird’s wing on her hat. He looked around, hoping to see someone he knew. The vicar, maybe, or Elizabeth. But Elizabeth must have her own shelter in her backyard, just like Aunt Miriam had a basement shelter at work. They are safe at least, he thought.

  The crowd was strangely silent. Listening, thought Georg. Waiting. But we are too far down to hear anything here …

  Boom! It was more than noise. The underground platform shook and the air seemed to shudder, then whoosh away, as though it wanted to suck your eyeballs out.

  He blinked to make sure his were still there, then touched his ears automatically. They rang from the noise. Funny, how you could hear your ears ringing with so much more noise around.

  Women screamed. A baby began to cry.

  Boom! Boom! Crash! The sound was nearer now. The planes must be right above them. It was as though he could hear every stick of the buildings ripping apart. Giant booms that were the bombs, impact, then smaller ones and also great toppling thunders as he imagined buildings fall.

  Another sound ripped through the air now. Guns. Ours or theirs? wondered Georg, and then realised that he was thinking like an English boy.

  Our guns fighting the enemy. The enemy that is trying to kill us, kill me, kill the women on either side, Elizabeth, Mrs Huntley and Aunt Miriam. Mutti.

  He hoped Aunt Miriam had made it down to the basement. What if she’d stopped to take one of her precious files? He hoped Mrs Huntley was safe too, that she had reached home and her Anderson shelter before the bombs began to fall. Hitler had tried to kill him before; he might already have killed Papa and Mutti too — he could admit it now, in this cold tunnel that smelled of trains, with the lights flickering on and off and the chorus of people’s cries. Death was real for all of them.

  But now, for the first time, he knew — knew with his stomach and his heart — that the planes up there were flown by the enemy: that Hitler was the enemy. For the first time he felt the taste of hate.

  Boom! This one was even nearer. A child along the platform wailed. Someone began screaming, over and over …

  ‘Quite enough o’ that,’ muttered the fat woman next to him. She began to sing, her wheezy voice only just audible over the shouts and crashes.

  ‘My old man said “Follow the van

  And don’t dilly dally on the way …”’

  Someone laughed. ‘That’s right, auntie. Our boys aren’t going to dilly dally over Mr Hitler. They’ll show him what for all right.’

  Everyone around had joined in the song now. Suddenly the whole platform was singing, except Georg, who didn’t know the words. He picked them up soon though.

  The fat woman heaved herself up and went over to the clear spot near the railway lines. She lifted up her skirts, showing stockings rolled just above the knee. Her veins were a tracery of blue among the fat. She began to dance, a strange half-shuffle, half-tap dance. Her breath heaved like bellows.

  ‘That’s the stuff to give the troops, Ma!’ yelled a young man by the stairs.

  The fat lady kicked up one foot, and then the other, showing an acre of pink bloomers. She curtseyed. The crowd cheered, laughing, but admiring too. They aren’t just cheering her, thought Georg. They are cheering themselves, cheering all of us, because we sing instead of sob.

  The crowd swung into another song. The fat lady puffed her way back to Georg, and slid down the wall next to him again. She patted him on the leg. ‘We ’aven’t begun ter fight,’ she told him. ‘Keep yer pecker up, laddie. While we can sing there’s life. All we can do is carry on.’

  It was night when the wail of the all-clear echoed down the railway tunnel nearly two hours later. He had shared his bread with the people around him — as well as dealing with hunger it had passed the time. He made his way slowly through the straggling crowds up the stairs.

  Would there be anything left outside? What if all of London was rubble — broken buildings and cratered streets like in the photos of Spain and Belgium in the newspaper? One photo had shown children desperately seeking food in the wreckage. What if the flats had gone? What if the shops had burned down?

  He stepped onto the footpath and stared around.

  The world was still there. For a few seconds he looked at what remained — the baker’s shop, a café — and then he saw what had gone. Gaps like broken teeth spilled rubble onto the street. It should have been dark, but instead the street was red, flame red, fire eating what had once been a butcher’s shop; there was an explosion as it found a kerosene heater.

  Strangely, it wasn’t smoky. The flames fanned his face but the fire forced the air upwards in a strange hot wind, leaving the street clearer than he’d ever seen it, dappled in its black and red.

  Far down the street a great spire of red sparkled against a pink sky. It was almost as though someone had built a great tower while he was underground. Of course this tower would last only until its fuel was gone.

  He took a step, and then another. Suddenly he was afraid to see whether the flats were there. Glass shattered like broken biscuits under his feet. He looked again at the remaining shops and saw their windows were shattered, like broken eyes staring into the street.

  He tried to avoid the glass at first then let it crunch under his shoes.

  There were more screams now: different screams. They were screams of horror and of loss.


  It wasn’t the world he’d left that afternoon. He looked at the white faces of the people around him and knew it wasn’t their world either. But, like the fat woman said, what could you do but carry on?

  He turned the corner and stopped. A body lay in front of him. For a second he thought it was a person, then he saw it was a dog, one of those few whose owners had refused to put them down at the start of the war despite the official orders, feeding them bread and their own precious rations to keep their pets alive.

  Until now. He wondered who had loved this dog. He wondered if they were alive to mourn its loss tonight. He bent down and touched its fur, to make sure it was dead, not just stunned and in need of help. If it was hurt he could look after it — surely the doorman would let him look after a dog hurt in the bombing.

  But the dog was already cold, despite the flames and the pink sky. It didn’t even seem injured. Somehow, that made it worse.

  He stood up and began to walk again. The park was free of rubble, at least. Even the sandbags hadn’t fallen in the blasts. He was halfway across the park when he saw the other side.

  Elizabeth’s house was crumpled rubble.

  He hadn’t noticed before because there were no fires there, just darkness where it and the houses either side had been. He ran across the park and down the street.

  ‘Hey, laddie, where are you off to?’ It was an air-raid warden, an old man in a blue uniform and white crash hat. He grabbed Georg’s arm with hands like wrinkled grapes. ‘Can’t go any nearer, lad. It isn’t safe.’ He hesitated. ‘You live there?’

  ‘No. My friend does.’ It was true. Even though they had never spoken Elizabeth was his friend.

  ‘I’m sorry, lad.’ The man nodded at the wreckage. ‘Nothing could be alive in that.’

  ‘They had a shelter in the backyard.’ He didn’t know that for certain. But surely people who dressed their daughter in such clean white socks, and a freshly ironed tartan skirt, would make sure there was a safe shelter in the garden.

  He began to run. The warden hesitated, then followed.

  The street had vanished under bricks and shards of glass and other things that were just … things, their purpose lost. Georg scrambled over to what was still almost a bit of footpath. Elizabeth’s front gate was intact, still a pristine green despite the ruin of the house. For the first time Georg opened it. ‘Come on,’ he called to the air-raid warden. ‘We can get through here.’

  The man followed.

  Half of Elizabeth’s house seemed to have been blown entirely away, leaving a space between the rubble of the two structures either side. Her paling fence was almost intact; he instinctively pressed himself against it as a beam crashed down in the wreckage next door, bringing a thunder of debris with it.

  ‘Watch out, lad!’ yelled the air-raid warden.

  The thunder dimmed to a trickle, a spat, spat, spat of small bits of wood … or tiles … or toys. Georg hardly listened. What good would ‘watch out’ do? By the time you saw a beam fall it would be almost on you.

  The red sky cast black shadows in a world lit by flame. It was as though a giant held a torch up so he could see. He stopped, staring at what had been a back garden. Now it was rubble.

  It looked like a child’s pile of blocks, crushed in a temper. A flash of myrtle flowers peered up out of a crush of shattered tiles and splintered wood. The air was thick with brick dust.

  The air-raid warden touched his shoulder. ‘Too late, lad. I’m sorry. Have you somewhere you can go?’

  Georg nodded dumbly. He turned to follow the man back to the street.

  And then he heard it. It was like a cat’s cry, sharp and weak. He heard the word: ‘Help.’

  He turned back. ‘Where are you?’ he yelled.

  ‘Help! Please, please help!’ The voice was louder now. ‘We’re trapped down here.’

  The air-raid warden was already blowing his whistle. ‘Got a live one!’ he yelled. ‘One, maybe more!’ He shook his head at Georg. ‘Rescue party will be here soon, lad.’

  Georg thought of Elizabeth, down in the darkness of the buried shelter. No air to breathe, no light. Like it had been in the suitcase — though at least in the suitcase he had known that the lid would open, if he only held on. At least he’d had holes to let in air. But down there …

  The wreckage might fall further and crush her. Maybe she’d run out of air to breathe.

  He ran forwards and grabbed a bit of wood, then cried out as it burned his hands: not badly, but enough to hurt. He ripped off his jumper, and used that to pad his hands as he pulled at the wood again.

  ‘Lad, leave it till the men get here —’

  ‘She might be dead by then!’ He tugged, but the beam was too heavy.

  The man looked back towards the street, then up at the flames dancing in the sky. He grabbed at the beam too with his thick gloves.

  It moved.

  ‘We’re coming, lady!’ yelled the air-raid warden. ‘Just you hold on. How many are down there?’

  ‘Two of us.’

  It was a woman’s voice, not Elizabeth’s. But she must be down there too.

  ‘Me and a little girl,’ said the voice. ‘She’s hurt. You have to hurry. Please!’

  ‘Hurrying all we can, lady,’ said the air-raid warden. ‘Ah, here come the troops now.’

  Georg looked around in relief — but they weren’t soldiers. These ‘troops’ were two more old men — one even had a walking stick — and a teenage boy with pimples. One of the old men carried a stretcher and the other a shovel. The teenager had a crowbar.

  The shovel was no use against shattered brick and beams, but the crowbar was. The old men worked surprisingly fast, as though they could read each other’s minds. One beam, another, and then the corrugated iron that had formed the roof of the shelter. It must have collapsed when the building fell on top of it, thought Georg. But the roof had still protected the people trapped inside.

  ‘Nearly there, love!’ yelled the air-raid warden.

  ‘Hurry. Please, hurry.’ The voice was a whisper now.

  The two old men wrenched the last of the corrugated iron away.

  The hole was dark. The pink sky cast shadows and no light here. The air-raid warden flicked on his torch.

  At first Georg could only see dirt, dark dirt, then suddenly a flash of white. ‘There she is!’

  Something moved: something dark as the dirt, because it was dirt-covered too. No, not just dirt, but blood. The figure rose up, the soil falling away, then gave a cry as the air-raid warden picked her up and laid her carefully on the ground. ‘Where are you hurt, love?’

  ‘My head. Elizabeth! She’s still in there! You have to get Elizabeth!’ It was the governess. She struggled to get up, but Georg had already scrambled down into the trench. He began to dig like a dog where he thought Elizabeth’s face would be, thrusting the dirt behind. Then suddenly there she was, pale in the torchlight, her eyes shut.

  Elizabeth couldn’t be dead! She couldn’t. All at once her eyes opened. She blinked, and whispered, ‘Cold.’

  ‘Got a blanket here.’ One of the old men dropped into the trench beside him. ‘Soon warm you up, love. Now come on, let’s get you out of here. You, boy, take her legs.’

  Her shoes were gone, but it was easy to see the white socks. Georg grasped Elizabeth’s feet firmly, lifted when the old man lifted, not far, just enough to get her free of dirt. The old man gathered her in his arms.

  She seemed smaller than she had at school. Her head drooped onto the old man’s shoulder.

  Suddenly the old man swore. ‘Bandages!’ he snapped. ‘Harry, look lively there.’

  ‘What is it?’ Georg tried to get closer. Strong hands pulled him away.

  He gazed at Elizabeth, lying on the old man’s lap. The old man’s hands were black as they pressed against her neck. No, not black. Red. Even as he looked more blood dripped into the ground.

  And then it stopped.

  The old man gave a cry. He laid Elizabeth down on th
e dirt. He rubbed his hand against his eyes, leaving a smear of blood.

  ‘You can’t leave her there! She has to get to hospital.’

  ‘Shh, son. Shh.’ The air-raid warden put his arm around Georg’s shoulders. ‘Can’t help her now.’

  ‘But you have to!’

  ‘Bit of the corrugated iron must have ripped into her neck,’ said the old man dully.

  ‘She’s … she’s dead?’

  ‘Aye, son. I’m sorry. If we’d got to her earlier we might have saved her. Put pressure on the artery to stop the bleeding till it could be stitched. It were too late even when we got here, I reckon.’

  The governess crumpled into a puddle of filthy clothes. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘No, love.’ The old man’s voice was gentle. ‘You couldn’t see she was hurt, not down there in the dark. No one’s fault but Hitler and the Jerries. Not yours. Not anybody here’s.’

  ‘You wait.’ The teenager spoke now. ‘Tomorrow our planes will be over Germany. They flew to Berlin last week. We’ll get the Jerries back for this, you’ll see.’

  Georg stumbled off into the blood-tinged shadows. Bombs on England. Bombs on Germany. Back and forth and back and forth, he thought, we hit you and you hit us and round and round again. It was like stubborn bullies in the playground.

  He bit his lip to stop it trembling. He had to find Aunt Miriam. She was all he had now.

  Chapter 15

  Crashes shook the air — different crashes now, not the dull roar of bombs but long slow crumbles as buildings stopped trying to stay up.

  People had already stretched tape across the worst bits, buildings that were likely to fall down or collapse further. He dodged the tape, tripping over bricks but somehow managing not to cut his hands on glass. His palms stung a bit from the burn, but not too much.

  The streets looked almost like the hospital ward when he’d cut his foot, filled with people hurt, bleeding or sitting in shock: a strange hospital, with no walls and a red ceiling that pulsed fire. Bodies lay on stretchers. No, not bodies. These people moved, cried, screamed in pain. The real bodies were laid in groups: whole families, neighbours, friends lying together in death.