So we put the saucepans on our heads and paraded across the kitchen pretending we were mannequins, while Dad laughed and clapped. ‘Oh, very smart—full marks for initiative!’
After that, he said he had to get back to the post, and that we ought to go home and get some sleep. The All-Clear hadn’t gone, but it was pretty quiet, so Minnie and I went up to our rooms. I caught sight of us in the bathroom mirror while we were washing our faces, both hanging on to the basin with one hand, leaning shoulder to shoulder to keep upright. ‘Oh, dear, look at us! I’m so tired I could sleep for a week.’
‘Me, too.’ Minnie yawned. ‘But it was lovely, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. Yes, it was.’
‘I’m glad we went. Well done you, for suggesting it.’
Minnie mumbled something, but I couldn’t hear it because her face was covered over with her flannel.
I said, ‘I’m sorry we argued.’
Minnie pulled the flannel off her face and hung it on the rail. ‘So am I.’
‘That silly poem…our friendship won’t fade, will it?’
Minnie rolled her eyes at me. ‘’Course not. Come on.’ She put her hands on my hips and pointed me towards the door, and we did a very feeble version of the conga across the landing to our rooms.
‘’Night, Lucy.’ She closed her door.
‘’Night, Minnie.’
I stared for a moment at the saucepan, which for some reason I’d brought upstairs, then went into my room. I shut the door, fell on the bed, and was instantly asleep.
I was too tired in the morning to think sensibly about anything. I’d have been excited about my first shift on the mobile canteen if I wasn’t so jolly tired. I just hope I don’t make a complete hash of it. Told Mums, so she shouldn’t worry, and—to my surprise—she seemed to think it was a good idea. Minnie looked rather jealous, and said it sounded heaps more fun than fire-watching.
I yawned my way to work and back, and was asleep by half past eight, and so were Mums and Minnie. I don’t think anything short of a direct hit would have woken us. A month ago, that would have been out of the question, so it just shows that you can get used to anything, given time. I am looking forward to the mobile canteen tonight, but even more to the weekend—more sleep—and to a letter from dear, dear Tom: short of the war ending, I can’t think of a better recipe for happiness. I do hope he’s safe. I don’t think I could bear it if anything happened to him. Said a prayer for him, as I do every night, now. I go into the garden with the excuse of checking the blackouts and stand by the rosebush where I buried the bird’s wings. I know it sounds silly, but it makes me feel closer to him, somehow.
Friday 11th October
Rene
Every night this week I’ve tried everything to put it out of my mind, but every time I look at the clock, I think, three more hours, two more hours, and I’ve got to go out there… Tonight was no different. I tried to get dressed, picking things up and putting them down again, putting on stockings—that was as far as I got, because my hands were shaking so much I could hardly fasten the suspenders. I had a cigarette to calm my nerves, then another, and I thought, I won’t have any left at this rate; I’ll have to go out for those, at least, try to get some more.
I’ve been thinking, suppose something does happen to me, I ought to write a letter for Tommy to read when he’s older. Not to say…not that I’m—not that I do what I do—but just to tell him I love him, really. No one’d want to discover that their mother was a prostitute, would they?
I wasn’t doing this when he was born, of course, only later, but I don’t want him to think it was his fault, you know, that I did it for the money because he came along, although I suppose that’s true, in a way. Mind you, there’s plenty of women in my situation that don’t go on the streets, but it came easy to me, and it was good money, so I did it.
My first idea was, if I’m going to write this letter, I ought to put something about his father. But then I realised, I can hardly write that Vic was a bastard who lied to me and left me in the lurch, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought that, sometimes, it’s better not to tell the truth. Then I thought, well, if I’d known the truth about Vic being married, I wouldn’t have gone with him. But that was a lie, really, because I was head over heels in love with him, and when you’re like that you’ll do anything they ask, won’t you? And if I hadn’t, Tommy wouldn’t have been born; and then…well, it’s no use trying to change history. Heavens, if we could do that, we’d never have a war, would we? If I were to tell Tommy that I’m his mother, not Dora, I’d be doing it for myself, not for him. And I want him to have a good life. Respectable. I don’t want him to think badly of himself. Suppose when he’s older he finds a nice girl and wants to marry her, and if he feels he’s got to tell her about me, she might not want any more to do with him. No one could blame her for that. Mind you, it’s not my name on the certificate—we agreed it before: Joe would go and register the birth and put Dora down as the mother. That’s against the law, of course, but she is his aunt, so it wasn’t like putting down just anyone.
We made a promise, the three of us, and it wouldn’t be right to break it. Mind you, when we said that, I didn’t reckon on Joe turning into a miser, and I don’t suppose Dora did, either. The more I think about that, the more I see I will have to have it out with him—interference between a man and wife is one thing, but when it’s affecting my boy…and I’ve always kept my side of the bargain, so Tommy’s never wanted for anything. But it’s set me wondering—I always give the money to Dora, but if Joe’s been taking it off her and putting it in that chest of his, under the bed… She told me he wouldn’t go down the shelter with them during the raids, so I thought, I suppose he must sit at home counting out his money.
In the end, I just wrote a few words to Tommy—Dear Tommy, You mean a great deal to me. I wish you a long and happy life. Your loving Auntie Rene xxx—then I put it in an envelope with a photo of me and Vic on the pier at Brighton. Nothing special, just strolling along together, arm in arm, all done up in our best. There was nothing written on the back, and I didn’t put anything.
Perhaps I should have written a longer letter, but I decided I’d never be able to explain, not properly. And I’d never be able to tell him that, however he came about, the first time I held him I felt so much love for him that I could have just about burst— more than anything I’ve ever felt in my entire life…
I wrote on the envelope:
Dear Dora. If I’m no longer around, I hope you will give this to Tommy on his twenty-first birthday. I have broken no confidences, but if he should ask any questions, tell him as you think fit. Thank you for all your kindness to him and to me, from Rene. One more thing I will say, I couldn’t have wished for a better sister.
I’d say Dora’d recognise Vic all right, and Tommy’s got a look of him, so perhaps he’ll guess…but she could always tell him it was a relative, a cousin or something. Then I thought, right: now I’ve done that, I’ll go and see Joe. I wasn’t going to let on that I know about the chest with the money in it, only to say how I’m frightened because of the murders and I can’t go out and earn for a while. I’d got it planned for him to tell Dora that I was still feeling poorly, but nothing serious, so she wouldn’t start worrying about me.
I was just crossing Drury Lane when the siren went, but I thought, no time like the present, I’m damned if I’ll stop now, and I knew Joe’d be at home with his precious money, while Dora’s always in the shelter by half past six, warning or no warning. They’ve got one they share with some of the other blocks, not in their yard, but further down. It’s a good one, too—iron bunk beds they’ve got, and two Elsan toilets—a lot more comfortable than Soho Square. But you can’t just go and park yourself in there because it’s only meant for the residents.
I thought I’d better get a move on, so I went pelting across the junction and down to Dora’s building, and just as I got there, I heard this great load of planes, hundreds of them by
the sound of it, all droning, and then the guns started up and the noise was enough to deafen you. Fortunately, Dora and Joe’s flat’s on the nearest staircase—it’s one of these arrangements where the stairs are outside, but they’re covered, if you see what I mean, and you’ve got three floors with one flat on each, and then there’s the courtyard outside with the washhouses and a place to hang the washing and all the rest of it.
Dora and Joe are up on the top floor, but I never got there. The whole building’s shaking and I’m huddled under the stairs, eyes tight shut, fingers in my ears—fat lot of good that did—when suddenly there was this tapping on my shoulder, so I look round and it’s Mrs Everley, their neighbour from downstairs, and she’s making signs at me, come in, come in…so I follow her, and we run through her front room and into the bedroom and we both crawl in under the bed, which is one of those old-fashioned affairs, big high iron bedstead, and she’s got the eiderdown underneath, so we’re both lying on that, fairly screaming at each other over this racket. ‘It’s Mrs Nicholls’s sister, isn’t it?’
I said, ‘That’s right. Rene Tate. Kind of you to take me in like this.’
‘I’m Mrs Everley. Honestly, this is the worst yet. I hope we’re giving them a taste of their own medicine, I really do, because this is murder, no other word for it. I’d be in the shelter now only I was looking for my cat, because he’s expecting— Oh, I’ve done it again, said “he”—it’s a “she” really, but that’s what I thought at the beginning you see, that it was a boy, so I called it George. He’s out there somewhere and I’m worried sick.’
I said, ‘They can take care of themselves, can’t they, cats?’
‘I suppose so, but with all this… Oh, I do hope he’s all right—’
At that moment everything went black and there was this sound of smashing and crashing, tearing paper, crackling and ripping, not a bomb but more like a building being knocked down, and it was right over our heads. I suddenly thought, it’s true what they say, you don’t hear the one that gets you, and then all my nose and throat were filled with dust, thick white stuff, choking me so I thought I’d suffocate. I could hear this sort of croaking noise coming from my left, and I thought, it’s Mrs Everley, I’ve got to get to her, and then that was drowned in this great rumbling—more collapsing brickwork—like an avalanche, the whole building crashing down on our heads. After that, there was a bit of quiet. I couldn’t hear anything from Mrs Everley because my ears were still ringing like anything, and I didn’t know if I ought to move, but I started feeling towards her with my fingers, inching along this eiderdown, and then suddenly I couldn’t get any further so I felt around a bit and it was the bottom of the bed, the springs—and I realised that her side of it must have collapsed from the weight of the ceiling and everything coming down, and she was trapped underneath it.
My first thought was to find my torch, which was in my pocket, not my bag, or I’d never have got it out, so I slid my hand down, very carefully, and got hold of it. It was all gritty with dust, but it still worked, thank God. When I shone it about, it was like looking into a thick fog, but I could see bricks and bits of cornicing and what have you on the floor in front of me, and I started inching out, little by little, because I didn’t want anything coming down on me. When I looked over to my right I could see Mrs Everley’s head, twisted to one side, just one eye and the corner of her mouth, and this bedstead right across her neck, squashing it. I think I must have called out her name, because I saw the eye move to look at me, and then she made a little noise like she was trying to clear her throat. I said, ‘It’s all right, the rescue men’ll be here soon.’
She said, ‘I’m only sorry I couldn’t offer you a cup of tea.’
I said, ‘Oh, never mind about that, I’m sure we’ll be out of here in a minute.’ She didn’t answer, and after a few minutes I realised that she was dead, poor woman.
I thought I ought to try and move the other way, but when I looked towards the door, it was all blocked with bricks and mortar and heaven knows what, but I thought there might be a way through and anyway, I wasn’t going to get very far stuck under the blasted bed, which might have collapsed on me at any moment, so I started wriggling out, very slowly, on my stomach, so as not to disturb anything, until I found myself on my hands and knees in the middle of a lot of rubble. I started inching forwards, but then more stuff came raining down, great lumps of debris, and I hunched right over to make myself as small as I could and put my arms over my head to protect myself.
There was complete silence—at least, I think it was silence, or perhaps I was still a bit deaf from all the din—and I stayed like that for a while because I was a bit frightened to move in case I dislodged anything. When I looked through my fingers I could make out laths and bricks through the dust, and what looked like bits of smashed furniture, and I was just wondering if I could manage to get over to the door before anything else came down when I realised there was something lying across my shoulders. I put out one of my hands to feel it, and it was fingers: a hand. You know my first thought? That’s nice, someone’s got their arm round me. I wondered for a moment if it was Mrs Everley, that she wasn’t dead like I’d thought, and she had managed to crawl out from under the bed somehow and get to me, but when I clasped the fingers I knew it couldn’t be a woman’s hand because they were hairy, and thick, and I thought, it can’t be the rescue, not yet…and then it fell down on the floor in front of me. It was still attached to an arm, but where it should have been joined to the shoulder, it was just a bloody, sticky mess. I was too shocked to scream, just stared at it, and I saw this mark on the forearm, dark blue, and even through the dust I could see it was a tattoo, an anchor, and letters underneath.
It was Joe’s. He’d got the tattoo when he was in the navy. Dora always said it looked common. She never liked him to roll up his shirt sleeves in case someone saw. Even when I came round, if he’d been doing something in the house, because he was good that way, she’d say to him, ‘Put yourself straight, we’ve got company.’ I could see him in my mind’s eye, whole, with a hammer in his hand and a mouthful of nails, and I thought: where’s the rest of him? Could he still be alive with his arm ripped away like that? There wasn’t no material on it, no shirt or anything. I suppose it must have been blasted off him when the bomb came down. It sounds stupid now, but I thought, Dora wouldn’t like people to see that. I ought to cover it with something, but of course there wasn’t anything, and the next minute the noise started again, and I curled tight into a ball on the floor with this stuff—bricks and plaster and wood—raining down on me. I can tell you, I’ve never prayed harder in my life than I did then.
When it stopped it was all pitch black again, and I couldn’t find the torch, so I felt about a bit with my hands, very gently, and it seemed to me I was underneath this sort of criss-cross arrangement of floorboards and beams like a tent, but flatter, with not even enough space to sit up. I couldn’t see Mrs Everley any more, or Joe’s arm, which was a blessing, but then it dawned on me that the whole block was directly above my head, two storeys’ worth perched on top of my little wooden tent, and it could all come down on me at any moment. And of course I was in the bedroom, so if the rescue wanted to come through where the door had been, there was the front room to get through first, and from what I’d seen in the doorway, that wasn’t going to happen for a while. I started thinking, supposing it all falls in before they come? I’ll be crushed.
I thought, it’s like a grave I’m in, a tomb, because it was, just like it, so I said to myself, pull yourself together you silly cow, they’ve got to have the rescue men out there, looking. But I’d got all these thoughts running through my head: what if it’s just my legs or my chest that get crushed? What if I don’t die quick? What if there’s gas? I had a sniff, but I couldn’t smell anything, and then I suddenly thought: what if the whole street’s been hit? The shelter? Tommy and Dora? I said, ‘Dear God, I’ll give my life willingly if you’ll only save my Tommy. Let him live, let him
not be hurt, and you can do what you like with me.’ And in the back of my mind, all the time, I’m waiting for it to happen, but then I’m calling out, ‘Help!’ and ‘Down here!’ just in case, you know…but at the same time I’m imagining these bricks falling down on me, smashing my arms and legs, and praying, ‘Let it be quick, please God, let it be quick,’ and all these pictures were going through my mind: Mrs Everley, and Joe’s arm, and poor Mrs Mitten clutching Mr Mitten’s metal nose, and the rescue man telling me how he was all in pieces like a jigsaw, and imagining this whole heap of stuff on top of me, toppling over, just ready to come crashing down…
Well, after a while—I couldn’t tell you how long, because I think I was in a daze—an old hymn suddenly came into my mind, one of those we used to sing at school. So I thought, let’s see if I can remember it, and I’m warbling away to myself, very quiet, just to try and raise my spirits a bit: The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want, He maketh me down to lie, In pa-a-stures green, He leaea-deth me, The qui-i-et waters by…but then I got to the bit about death’s dark vale and I thought, blimey, this is no good, I’ve got to think of something a bit more cheerful than this. So then I tried ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and that was a bit jollier, except I could only remember one verse and the chorus. ‘Lead, kindly light, amidst the encircling gloom’ didn’t do me a lot of good, and then ‘Rock of Ages’—well, the only words I could remember for that was the bit about While I draw this fleeting breath, When my eyelids close in death, When I soar through tracts unknown, See Thee on Thy judgement throne… So that wasn’t much comfort, either, and as for the bit about judgement, well!
I suppose I’d never thought about it much before. I mean, you don’t when you’re a child, you just sing the words, la, la, la, and never stop to think about what they mean, do you? So I lay there racking my brains in the pitch dark, and every so often, I called out ‘Help!’ but the only hymns I could think of had words about death and darkness and judgement and all the rest of it, and in the end I said to myself, this is no bloody good, so I started off: Joe brought his concertina, and Nobby brought the beer; And all the little nippers swung upon the chandelier; A blackout warden passing yelled, ‘Ma, pull down that blind; Just look at what you’re showing’ and we shouted ‘Never mind’; Ooh! Knees up Mother Brown, knees up Mother Brown; Come along dearie, let it go, ee-i, ee-i, ee-i-o…
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