Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  For the rest of the week Steve hobbled about the farm and listened to his father grumbling about the regulations that dropped on the mat almost daily, not to mention the inspectors who turned up now and again and tried to teach him his job, a job he had had ever since he left school at the age of thirteen, a job he had been born to. ‘Dozy lot, don’t hev the sense they were born with,’ he said in his inherent Norfolk brogue. ‘They think you ken plough up a medder and grow wheat straight off. I told them the ground were boggy, not fit for crops, and where did they think I was going to put my cattle? It was the same in the last war. Men from the Ministry telling farmers how to run their businesses, just as if they were a lot of schoolboys. I remember your grandfather sending one of ’em off with a flea in the ear.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ Steve said. The farm had been in the family for several generations and Steve knew his father wanted him to take over one day. He supposed he would; he could think of nothing else he wanted to do. But first there was a war to win. He followed the news assiduously and knew that the airfields were being pounded and every available pilot was needed. He could not sit at home, pretending to be an invalid. There was nothing wrong with him.

  The plaster was taken off at Attlesham Cottage Hospital later that week and, after a few days getting used to being without it, he returned to duty.

  The airfield was in a mess. Everywhere there were craters being hastily filled in. Some buildings were severely damaged; most had their windows blown out. Where once there had been a gun emplacement was now a hole filled with metal and concrete. There was evidence of aircraft being hit on the ground, although others appeared to be in a state of readiness. ‘We copped it yesterday afternoon,’ the wing commander told him when he reported for duty. ‘We managed to get most of the squadron off the ground before they arrived but there are four aircraft completely useless and several more needing repairs.’

  ‘Any casualties?’

  ‘Two ground staff killed and one pilot, caught trying to take off. Several WAAFs from the ops room were cut by flying glass.’

  ‘Have you got a kite for me?’

  ‘We’ll find one, even if we have to take it off one of the new boys. Grab a bite to eat and get into flying kit, then go over to dispersal. They’ll be glad to see you.’

  Steve went to his room and sat down on his bed. Beside it was a small cupboard and next to it a wardrobe. A chair stood at the end of the bed. Everything was neat and tidy. Across the room an identical set of furniture which had once served Bob was now used by Flight Lieutenant Brand. This was far from tidy. A jacket was hung over his chair, a pair of shoes lay on the floor just as he had kicked them off. The locker was covered with knick-knacks, an empty Craven A packet, a cigarette lighter, a single cufflink. Steve smiled and opened his kitbag. Soon his things were back where they belonged and his bedside locker was sporting the photo of Laura he had purloined from Bob’s kit and a snapshot of his mother and sister, posing with Boy. He changed into flying kit, pulled on his boots and made his way over to the hut close to where the aircraft were parked.

  ‘Ah, the wanderer returns,’ Brand said, waving his hand at two flying officers he had not seen before. ‘Come over and be introduced.’ Steve walked over to join them, trying not to limp. ‘This is Flight Lieutenant Steve Wainright, chaps. He’s been on holiday, but now he’s back we can get on with this war.’ He waved a hand at his companions. ‘Steve, let me introduce Flying Officers Olliphant, known as Jumbo, and Bullimore, known as Oxo.’

  ‘Hallo,’ they said together.

  The telephone shrilled suddenly. Steve went to answer it. ‘Scramble,’ he said.

  There was a mad dash for the door and in thirty seconds the room was empty.

  Steve forgot his leave, forgot his injuries, as he sprinted for the aircraft and climbed inside. Three minutes later he was airborne. He was back in the thick of it and there was nothing in his head but the need to bring down the enemy.

  Chapter Three

  THE HALF-HEARTED raids on London, which had been more like gnat bites than real wounds, suddenly assumed a more sinister aspect. Instead of bombs falling on London as a result of bombers being lost or damaged so they had to jettison their cargo, the Luftwaffe turned on the capital with a vengeance. In the middle of a sunlit Saturday afternoon in early September, the sirens wailed, first one and then another, area after area, and the population trooped to the shelters, grumbling about the time being wasted. Laura was on duty and set about the well-rehearsed routine of taking her patients to safety, helping those patients who could walk and others who could be taken in wheelchairs to the basement shelter. The beds of those who were bed-bound were wheeled into the corridors away from the windows. If a surgeon was in the middle of an operation there was nothing to be done but carry on. The whole process went into reverse when the all-clear sounded.

  She had returned to work, knowing that if she stayed at home she would mope about and weep and it was better to be somewhere where she could do some good. Everyone was kind to her, but she could tell they were afraid to mention Bob, that they measured every word in case it might upset her. Sometimes they forgot, and she would smile at their look of embarrassment and tell them it didn’t matter. Work was her panacea, but she wondered for how much longer. She had committed the worst transgression an unmarried woman could commit and there were those who would brand her a fallen woman and walk by on the other side of the street. She dreaded that, but she dreaded telling her mother even more.

  Would she welcome the baby? She would not expect her to have it adopted, would she? They would have a serious falling out if she did; nothing on this earth would persuade her to part with Bob’s child. It would be hard because she did not know how they would manage financially, but her mother had brought her up without a father, at least since she was ten, and she could do it too. She would work until she could no longer do so and save every penny.

  She was too busy to see the aircraft, but she heard them. She could not break herself from the habit of thinking of the airfields and the fighter pilots and Bob whenever the siren sounded. But Bob was no longer there. Bob was where they could not reach him. Steve would be up, taking Bob’s place, and she prayed for him, as she did all the young men in danger.

  She heard the crump, crump, nearer than she had heard it before, and then she heard the jangle of a fire engine’s bell. How close were they? She paused on the way back from escorting a patient to the basement and stepped outside. The drone of hundreds of aeroplanes, the shriek of bombs followed by the earth-shaking blast of explosions which made the ground shake and the windows rattle, the bells of fire appliances and ambulances tearing off towards the trouble, blended into a cacophony of sound. This was no gnat bite. She went to a phone box to ring home. There was no answer. Her mother ought to be in their Anderson shelter, but was more likely in the thick of it, doing what she called her ‘bit’ in the Women’s Voluntary Service. It was just like her to put herself out to help others; she had always been like that, always thinking of those less well off, always sewing or knitting or baking cakes. She hoped fervently that Mum had not put herself in danger, for what would she do without her? How was she going to cope with her pregnancy and a baby without her support? She really must pluck up her courage and tell her. ‘Oh, God, don’t let me lose her too,’ Laura prayed, before going back inside.

  The casualties started arriving a few minutes later and for the next few hours Laura, no longer on the airmen’s wards, treated broken limbs, lacerations from shattered glass, wounds to heads and eyes and stomachs, and dreadful burns. She nursed patients who had had emergency surgery, including amputations. They were not all adults, either. Seeing the poor wounded children broke her heart. She knew many must have died but she did not ask about those.

  ‘They’ve gone for the docks,’ one of the ambulance men told her when they brought in a man with an arm hanging by a thread of muscle and flesh. ‘It’s an inferno.’

  The all-clear went at six o’clock, the
new admissions trickled to a stop and the patients were returned to their wards. They were hardly back and tucking into their tea when the siren went again and the whole process was repeated. A new wave of enemy aircraft flew in and pounded the docks, the gasworks and the Arsenal. Laura, who should have gone off duty, worked on. There was no escape from the noise, the whine of falling bombs, the explosions, the crash of falling buildings which seemed frighteningly close. And added to the unrelenting noise was fire. Incendiaries mixed with high explosives sent flames and dense black smoke high into the sky, first in little pockets, then joining up to make a wall of fire and, though it was some distance from the hospital, Laura imagined she could feel the heat.

  At five o’clock in the morning the drone of the bombers faded and the all-clear sounded. Everyone was worn out: doctors, nurses, ambulance men, police and especially firemen. Some were casualties themselves. Laura went home for a couple of hours’ rest before she was due back on duty. Miraculously, the buses were running. She climbed aboard one and collapsed into a seat, so exhausted she could have slept there and then.

  Anne, who had been one of the first to join the Women’s Voluntary Service, had been working all night at an East End school where the homeless were brought to be given clothes, blankets and hot food. The wounded had been taken to first aid posts or the hospital, so the people she saw were uninjured in the physical sense, but they were bewildered, wandering round in a daze, their eyes gazing almost sightlessly out of faces blackened by smoke and dirt. It was from these she learnt that Stepney had been one of the areas worst hit.

  Stepney, where she had lived when she was married just before the Great War. The houses, commonly called ‘two-up, two-down’, were crammed together, back to back, with no inside taps, let alone bathrooms. The lavatories were in the tiny backyards. There were cockroaches and mice, even rats sometimes, and the drains stank. Keeping it clean had been a nightmare, which she supposed was why so many in the neighbourhood didn’t bother. But one thing the orphanage had taught her was that cleanliness was next to godliness and she had done her best to keep their house and herself neat and clean. She had been laughed at for it. ‘Miss Whiter than White,’ her mother-in-law called her, as much for her insistence on attending church as for her obsession with cleanliness. She had hated having to bring Laura up there, and she swore that one day they’d get out.

  It had taken years of scrimping and saving, but they had achieved it in the end. Her mother-in-law, who had always lived in Stepney and said she wouldn’t live anywhere else, had been left behind. Anne had been guiltily glad of that. They had not spoken to each other since the awful row they had had at Tom’s funeral. But the woman was Tom’s mother when all was said and done, so as soon as she came off-duty Anne went to see what she could do.

  The bus was stopped short of her destination by an ARP warden and she had to walk the rest of the way. She passed houses with all their windows blown out and doors off their hinges; some had their fronts blown off, revealing their interiors like open dolls’ houses. Fireplaces hung on papered walls, beds stood covered in debris, ripped curtains were snagged where there had once been windows. The air was so overlaid with smoke and brick dust it made her eyes stream and got into her lungs and made her cough. Everywhere fire appliances, some antiquated and pulled by London taxis, were directing their hoses against the flames. Whole houses were nothing but rubble. Policemen and wardens were busy everywhere, some directing those who stumbled about unable to comprehend what had happened to them, others digging in the rubble for survivors. After picking her way over broken glass and bricks and snaking hoses, she stopped by a warden. ‘You can’t go any further, missus. Too dangerous.’

  She pointed down the street, only it didn’t look like a street, more like an untidy builder’s yard. ‘I am looking for Mrs Drummond from number 18.’

  ‘Relative, was she?’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, love. She wouldn’t go to the shelter. I warned her enough times but she took no notice and she was inside when the house took a direct hit. They got her out but it was too late. She’s been taken to the mortuary. Are you next of kin?’

  ‘I’m her daughter-in-law, but she has a daughter. Maisie Youngs. Lives in Essex.’

  ‘Perhaps you could make sure she is informed.’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned and left. The past was gone, wiped out in a single night, and now there was no one to accuse her, no one at all. Except… Anne shook the thought from her and clambered onto a bus to take her home.

  Laura was making a cup of tea and a sandwich when she arrived. ‘Thank goodness, I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to.’

  ‘I’ve been helping out at a rest centre down the East End. There’s hundreds killed and thousands homeless. It seems as though half the East End has gone.’ She sighed. ‘Granny Drummond with it. The warden told me she refused to go to the shelter. That’s just like her, stubborn old fool, never would listen to reason.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m sorry. Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘No. I saw Maisie as I was leaving. She said she’d see to everything.’ She paused and changed the subject. ‘What about you? What sort of night did you have?’

  ‘Pretty horrible. I only got off an hour ago. I thought I’d have a couple of hours’ sleep before going back.’

  ‘You do that. I think I will too. You never know when the devils will be back. I reckon last night was only the beginning.’

  During the course of the day, they learnt a little of the extent of the damage on carefully monitored BBC news bulletins, laced with encouraging homilies about not being beaten and everyone pulling together and helping those in need. Instances of bravery were cited, instances of looting glossed over. Much of the real news was passed on by word of mouth from people who arrived at the hospital and had witnessed it. Laura, back at the hospital treating casualties, pieced it together bit by bit as the day wore on. They spoke of whole streets going down like ninepins, of dead bodies and bits of bodies being thrown about like rag dolls, of people staggering about covered in brick dust and soot; of dockside warehouses containing barrels of rum, tins of paint, rubber, pepper, timber and food all going up in flames, the smell of their contents adding to the general stench. The Royal Victoria Docks and Surrey Commercial Docks were sheets of flame. The mooring ropes of barges had burnt through and sent the blazing vessels drifting down the river. They came back when the tide turned, still blazing.

  Telephone lines, gas and water were cut off and the only means of communication were dispatch riders and messengers on yellow bicycles wearing tin hats and armbands. Firemen at Woolwich Arsenal were fighting flames surrounded by live ammunition and stores of nitro-glycerine. In Hackney, a brick road shelter had a direct hit. It was crowded and the blast from the explosion sucked the walls out and the concrete roof fell in and crushed the people inside.

  It was all very well to say, ‘London can take it’ but how much could they take? It wasn’t the whole of London; it was the fact that the damage was concentrated in a particularly poor area, as more than one person pointed out to her. ‘And where were the bleedin’ RAF?’ someone asked. ‘And the guns. They’ve left us unprotected.’ Laura treated their wounds and soothed their anger until four o’clock that afternoon, when she returned home utterly exhausted.

  They ate tea quietly and sat listening to ITMA on the wireless before deciding to have an early night. They weren’t given the opportunity. At eight o’clock the raiders returned. Gathering up their belongings, all ready to hand, Laura and her mother trooped out to the Anderson shelter and sat, sleepless, listening to the now familiar hum of aircraft, the explosions, the crash of falling masonry. Anne picked up her knitting, but Laura sat doing nothing but rehearse in her mind how she would tell her mother she was pregnant. She had to do it soon because someone more observant than the rest might notice, or she might be ill or injured in an air raid. It would be terrible for her mother to find out from an anonymous doctor.

 
‘Don’t dwell on it, dear,’ Anne said.

  Laura, startled out of her reverie by the thought that her mother could read her mind, pretended to be searching in her pocket for her handkerchief. ‘Dwell on what?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Whatever it is that’s bothering you.’

  She wasn’t ready yet, she truly wasn’t. ‘Nothing’s bothering me. I’m just tired.’ She was a coward, a yellow-bellied coward, ready to deny her child when that child would be the most welcome, the most wonderful thing that had happened to her, except meeting its father. Bob still filled her thoughts. It was as if he were still there, somewhere up in the sky, watching over her, protecting her just as he had done in life.

  ‘Still thinking of Bob, are you?’

  ‘Yes, all the time. If he were alive now, he would have been so angry at all this destruction, all the people being killed and injured.’ If he were alive now, she would be Mrs Rawton and everyone would be delighted that she was expecting a baby. What a difference a wedding ring would have made!

  ‘And you would still be worrying about him. At least you’ve been spared that.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. But I think of the others too. Steve and the rest of the squadron. I haven’t heard from Steve for ages and it makes me wonder if he’s still alive. If he is, he must be just about exhausted.’

  ‘We all are.’ Anne was knitting a pair of socks with oiled wool, intended for some unknown seaman, but it was horrible stuff to handle and she was glad to lay it down and give her fingers a rest. She unscrewed the cap of the Thermos. ‘Can’t you get a spot of leave, you look all in.’