The Bells of Bow

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘No. I just wanna say something that’s been bothering me.’ She sighed and turned round from the sink to face her sister, but she changed her mind and looked down at the lino instead. ‘Yer know when yer was joking about Sid taking me away from yer, well, that’s how I’ve felt about Albie and you.’

  ‘Babs, it was a joke. I never—’

  ‘No. Please, let me say it. I said I was worried about yer seeing him, and I am, but it’s more than that. I think I’m jealous of him.’ Babs swallowed hard, trying to stop her voice from cracking. ‘Jealous that he was gonna take yer away from me and I was gonna be left all alone. We ain’t never been apart like this before, have we?’ She took a long deep breath and looked up at her sister. ‘I’m scared that everything’s gonna change, Evie.’

  ‘Yer silly cow.’ Evie pushed back her chair and threw her arms round her sister. ‘No one could ever take us away from each other, Babs. No one.’

  Babs looked up through her tears. ‘I hope not.’

  The sound of their dad’s loud complaints from the front room made them both look towards the open kitchen door.

  ‘Bloody load of old nonsense,’ they heard him holler. ‘What’s flaming Poland gotta do with us over here? That’s what I wanna know.’

  The twins frowned questioningly at each other. ‘Poland?’ they both said.

  ‘Sod me!’ Ringer shouted even louder this time.

  On her way into the front room to see what was wrong, Babs rolled down one of the sleeves of her blouse and wiped her eyes on the flowery material.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dad?’ Evie sat herself down on the arm of his over-stuffed chair.

  ‘It’s the Prime Minister speaking from Downing Street.’

  Babs smiled at Evie. ‘Sid told me that Chamberlain’d be on the wireless this morning.’

  ‘Sssh!’ Georgie shook his head urgently then looked at each of his daughters in turn. ‘It’s the Germans. They say they ain’t gonna pull their troops out o’ Poland.’

  Babs was about to say something else, but Evie got in first. ‘What’s Poland got to …’ she began, but the Prime Minister’s ominous words echoing from the wireless in the corner of the room silenced even her.

  ‘… consequently,’ he went on, ‘this country is at war with Germany.’

  The words stunned the three of them, just as they were stunning people all over Britain.

  ‘But …’ Babs dropped down into the armchair across the hearth from the one in which her dad and sister were sitting. ‘But how can we be at war? He did say war, didn’t he, Dad?’

  Georgie nodded silently.

  ‘But war can’t happen, not on a day like this.’ Babs stared up at the window where only two nights ago she had thought that hanging the blackout curtains had been such a waste of time. ‘Look at that lovely blue sky now that that storm’s blown over. How can war happen when the sun’s shining?’

  Evie stood up and went over to the window, moving slowly as if she were in a dream. ‘What’ve we gotta do, d’yer suppose?’

  ‘Remember,’ Georgie said solemnly, ‘that’s what we’ve gotta do.’

  ‘Remember what?’ Evie turned round; she looked confused.

  ‘How things are this morning, ’cos nothing’s ever gonna be the same again.’

  ‘Dad!’ Babs looked at Evie who had now gone as white as the lace edging on the chairbacks had once been. ‘Don’t talk like that, yer frightening her.’

  Georgie stared into the empty grate. ‘If half the stories the old boys used to tell us about the Great War were true, she should be bleed’n frightened.’

  ‘Don’t, Dad, now yer scaring me and all.’ Babs went over to Evie and put her arm round her sister’s shoulders.

  Less than a quarter of a mile from Darnfield Street, Maudie Peters was in St Dorothea’s Church playing the piano for the morning service. She had just struck up the opening chords of ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ when the local beat constable poked his head warily round the metal-studded, heavy wooden door. Not being a religions man himself he always felt awkward in churches, not sure quite what to do or how to behave. He hovered around the doorway for a moment but, knowing that action was called for, he took a deep breath, removed his bicycle clips and strode self-consciously up the aisle with his tin hat tucked under his arm. First he went over to the piano and whispered something to Maudie who immediately stopped playing. Then he shuffled sheepishly over to where the vicar was standing by the pulpit. ‘’Scuse me, Mr Forsythe, sir,’ he said to the vicar. ‘Sorry to interrupt the service and everything. But I thought you ought to know that just a minute or two ago it was announced that we’re at war with Germany, sir.’

  Gasps of horror echoed around the high, vaulted stone ceiling of St Dorothea’s as the appalled parishioners took in the constable’s mumbled words. Like the Reverend Clifford Forsythe, many of the mainly elderly congregation were old enough to have nightmare-inducing memories of the Great War. In fact it had been the part the vicar had played as a young officer in that conflict that had resulted in his determination to enter the Church in the first place. He had made up his mind to dedicate his life to serving a parish where the congregation was made up of working people just like those whose sons, husbands and brothers he felt he had sent to such terrible, wasteful, pointless deaths in the mud and gore of no-man’s land.

  He closed his eyes and the all too familiar images of death came flooding back to him. When, only a few seconds later, he opened his eyes, he was momentarily surprised to find himself not in the death-stained fields of Flanders but in the cool, stone interior of the church where he had served for almost twenty years. With an almost imperceptible shake of his head in an attempt to clear his mind, he stepped forward and grasped the edge of the front pew, trying to disguise the trembling in his hands. ‘Those of us here today with memories of war will understand that there will be no sermon today.’ He spoke in what he hoped was a reassuring tone but he could barely hide the quaver that threatened to crack his voice. ‘Prayers are all that are needed today.’

  Many of his flock who were already standing, unsure whether they should leave, hastily sank to their knees.

  ‘But prayers can be said anywhere. This is a time to be with those you love, so go home to your families and may the Lord go with you all.’ With a gesture of blessing, Clifford Forsythe turned on his heel and disappeared into the vestry.

  With those words of permission and following their vicar’s example, everyone rushed out as quickly as they dared without looking impious, everyone, that is, except Maudie Peters. She stood up and carefully folded her music, put the tidy sheaf of loose sheets away in the piano seat and then walked slowly outside into the cramped churchyard of St Dorothea’s. She walked, almost reluctantly, over to the black-painted iron railings where her bicycle rested, its empty basket turned towards her. She didn’t even have anything to put in it, she thought, not a bag, not a bunch of flowers, nothing. It was empty, just like her house in Darnfield Street. She wished, as she wheeled the high-framed bicycle to the gate, that she had left it at home; people must have thought it a ridiculous thing to do, riding the thing such a short distance. But worse than what people thought was the choking feeling of depression which filled her chest when she admitted to herself the real reason she had brought her bike – to support her pathetic pretence of having somewhere to go after the service, so that no one would feel sorry for her. All she was actually going to do was ride round and round Victoria Park for an hour or so in order to put off the dreaded time when she would eventually have to go home to her lonely Sunday lunch of bread and cheese and maybe an apple – if she could be bothered to eat anything at all. But after what the constable had told them, she supposed that she should go straight home.

  As Maudie freewheeled along Grove Road, slowing down for the turn into Darnfield Street, she, and all the other people who heard them, could hardly believe it – the air raid sirens started their wailing, flesh-creeping warnings. It was impossible to accept th
at only seven short minutes after war had been declared, the country was already under threat from what everyone would now have to think of as the Enemy. Maudie wasn’t sure why she did it, but she got off her bike outside the Chambers’ baker’s shop on the corner of Darnfield Street and stood watching her neighbours, most of whom she hardly knew, as they reacted in their own ways to the threat of attack. Frankie Morgan appeared in his doorway at number eight, the last house but one from the canal end of the street. He was not a young man, but he went hurtling into the middle of the road barking out his official orders as he fastened the buttons of his jacket.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, take cover!’ he yelled, frantically signalling with his arms. He started to make his way up the street towards the open Grove Road end, but he only got as far the Bells’s when he skidded to a halt and turned back the way he had come. He sprinted over the road to the Jenners’s at number nine and bashed on the already open street door with his knuckles. ‘Turn yer gas off in there, Liz,’ he shouted at the top of his voice, trying to make himself heard over the eerie scream of the sirens. ‘Yer can forget cooking yer dinner, there’s a raid on out here!’

  Liz’s husband Ted came to the door in his vest with his braces dangling round his knees. ‘We ain’t deaf, Frankie. Now keep it down, for gawd’s sake. I’m having enough trouble trying to keep the kids calm.’

  ‘Don’t give me calm,’ hollered Frankie, pointing at his warden’s armband. ‘I’m an official, I am.’

  Ted’s wife Liz came to the door, jiggling a crying baby up and down in her arms. ‘Ted, yer’ll have to do something. They’re all in a right state in there. Yer gran’s going on about Zeppelins and all that stuff in the papers about gas and bombing raids and everything. Aw, Ted, what we gonna do?’

  ‘Get ’em all in the bleed’n surface shelter, that’s what,’ shouted Frankie. He jerked his thumb angrily towards a makeshift-looking brick building that the council had erected in the middle of the road between the Jenners’ place and number ten, the house opposite that had been empty for years because of the water that had leaked in from the canal practically since the day it had been built.

  Liz looked pleadingly at her husband. ‘Should we, Ted? What d’yer think? It don’t look very safe to me.’

  ‘Don’t bloody ask him.’ Frankie was fuming. ‘I’m the sodding warden round here, not yer old man. Now, Lizzie Jenner, are yer gonna get them kids and Ted’s old granny in that shelter, or d’yer wanna get their heads all blown off?’

  Liz burst into panic-stricken tears. ‘Are yer sure it’s safe in there for me kids, Mr Morgan?’ she sobbed.

  Frankie didn’t answer, he had other things to worry about; with a flourish of his armband, he straightened his tin hat and made off up the street to check on the rest of his charges.

  ‘I bet yer ain’t made your Ethel go in there, yer wouldn’t dare!’ Ted shouted after him and led his now trembling wife back into the house to try and persuade them all to go into the shelter, or at least to stop crying.

  Frankie didn’t hear, he was too busy banging loudly on Maudie Peters’s street door. If he hadn’t got himself so worked up with the Jenners he would have noticed that Maudie had been standing outside the baker’s and was now wheeling her bike along the road towards him.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Morgan,’ she called to him. ‘I’m here. I’m going straight into the shelter.’

  ‘Well, you make sure yer do,’ blustered Frankie and started bashing on the door of number five instead. When he got no reply there either, he ducked furtively inside the last door on that side of the road, which just happened to be the Drum and Monkey.

  Frankie knew that Nellie and Jim planned to use the pub’s cellar as a shelter for themselves and any customers who were in the pub during a raid, but, he reasoned to himself, he’d better check anyway. Inside the empty bar – purely in the interest of steadying his nerves – he helped himself to a tot of whisky which stood untouched on one of the tables. But, with his responsibilities as a warden in mind, he refused Nellie’s shouted offer that whoever it was up there in the bar was welcome to join them in the cellar.

  As Frankie took a few more moments to check that there was nobody left in the pub who had missed the warnings – or who might just have left another Scotch going begging – the neighbours on the other side of the street were having to sort themselves out without the benefit of their warden’s advice.

  Across the road, on the opposite corner to the pub, where just a moment ago Maudie had been standing with her bicycle, Rita and Bert Chambers had taken refuge in the big basement cook-house below their bakery. They had their arms round each other, fretting about their only son, Bill, who had only recently joined the air force. Next door at number four, no one was in, as Blanche and Archie Simpkins had already made their way with their four children to what Blanche could only pray was the safety of the surface shelter. In number six, next door to the Simpkins, while the siren screamed the teeth-jarring notes of its two-minute-long warning, Babs was agitatedly struggling with her gas mask.

  Evie peered nervously out of the kitchen window up at the sky. ‘Hurry up, Babs, that warning ain’t no joke, yer know.’

  ‘I told yer. I ain’t going out without me gas mask on.’ Babs was now getting furious, not only with the strap adjuster that would not budge, but with herself for not having practised putting on the stupid thing when she had the chance.

  ‘I hope Albie’s all right,’ Evie said and turned round from the window to tell Babs that she had to get a move on, but instead she burst into wild laughter, her fear making her shrill. ‘Yer look just like a pig with glasses on in that thing. Blanche was saying she couldn’t get her youngest to even try hers on. Don’t blame her though. If you could see yerself. Right idiot yer look. Really stupid.’

  Babs muttered something unintelligible.

  ‘Eh?’

  Babs ripped the mask from her face. ‘I said, sod Blanche and her kids. Where’s Dad?’

  Gas mask in hand, she rushed into the front room calling out urgently for him, while Evie hollered up the stairs. But there was no reply to either of them. The girls looked at each other. Without another word Evie ran after Babs out into the street.

  ‘I don’t believe this.’ Evie went over to where Georgie was standing in the middle of the road staring up at the sky, his hand shading his eyes from the bright morning sunshine. She grabbed his arm. ‘Are you barmy, Dad? Come on, yer coming with us.’

  He didn’t protest, he just looked bewildered as, with one of his daughters on either side of him, he let himself be frogmarched along the road to the shelter. ‘It’s like Babs said, it don’t seem right, do it? Not on a day like this. Yer know, the morning yer mum left us was a nice day like this.’

  The twins said nothing.

  When they reached the shelter, Babs grasped the handle and pulled the door open wide for Georgie.

  ‘Shut that flaming door, can’t yer?’ someone shouted from the dimly lit interior which was thick with the smells of paraffin, cigarette smoke and fear.

  Babs shoved Georgie inside and slammed the door shut behind her and Evie.

  Their eyes quickly became accustomed to the pale light coming from the single oil lamp which swung from a hook in the ceiling. There was barely room for them on the narrow wooden benches which ran down either side of the rough brick walls, and almost every part of the floor was covered in possessions or children.

  Blanche Simpkins shifted closer to her husband Archie and patted the bench. ‘Here y’are, Ringer,’ she said. ‘You sit here between me and Miss Peters.’

  Georgie nodded silently and slumped down onto the hard unpainted seat between the two women.

  ‘Not exactly luxury, is it?’ Evie said solemnly as she picked her way over the various little Jenners and sat down on the floor in the corner by Blanche’s two oldest children, Mary and Terry.

  Babs stayed where she was, standing uneasily by the door, listening for any unfamiliar sounds coming from outside.
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  ‘As I was saying before we was interrupted,’ said Alice Clarke. The street moaner and gossip fixed her accusing gaze on Georgie. ‘I didn’t know whether to stay indoors and die in me own front room or come into this death trap. I listened to the wireless for instructions but that was useless, so I went outside, and then I see that bleed’n idiot of a copper on his bike going past the top of the turning. Placards he had on him, if yer don’t mind. On his chest and back. Lot of bloody good that is after the sirens had already gone. And as for that Frankie Morgan, we might all have been bombed to death by the time that old goat got himself moving.’

  ‘Well, we’re all in here now, Alice. So why don’t you shut your cake hole and give us all a rest?’ Blanche rolled her eyes at Ethel Morgan, trying to convey to her that, no matter what Alice said, the rest of them all knew that Ethel, determined as she was, couldn’t be held responsible for her Frankie’s aggravating habits. ‘All safe and sound, ain’t we?’

  ‘Safe?’ Alice snorted. ‘I don’t think so. Not in here.’

  Blanche lifted her chin in the direction of Liz Jenner who was rocking her baby to and fro, looking ready to start crying again at any moment. ‘Can’t yer see yer upsetting everyone?’

  ‘I ain’t upset,’ said Blanche’s son Terry, doing his best to impress Evie, who rewarded his bravado by ruffling his hair and smiling at him.

  ‘Hope we ain’t in here long,’ Alice Clarke’s husband Nobby said in his doom-laden voice. ‘Our young Micky’s meant to be coming over to help me whitewash the lav and I never brought me embrocation with me. I’m a martyr to me chest if I don’t rub it in regular. But Alice said we had to come straight here once she’d made up her mind what we had to do. So I had to leave it on the mantelpiece. Hope no bombs don’t fall on the house or nothing, ’cos the chemist won’t be open till the morning and I won’t be able to sleep tonight without me embrocation.’

  Blanche shook her head disbelievingly at Babs, who was now, despite her fears, hardly able to suppress her laughter.