East End Angel

by Rivers, Carol

  Exactly a week later, Pearl was listening to another announcement. A pilotless plane carrying one ton of high explosives dropped its deadly cargo in Grove Road, Hackney, killing six people outright. Fitz was right: the secret weapon had arrived. People were hanging their heads in disappointment and blaming the government for spreading the good news too early.

  As London braced itself for a repeat of the Blitz, a brief and uncensored letter from Jim gave Pearl the news she had been waiting for. He was in Italy. But that was all he said. It was a very short letter and he said he would write more at a later date.

  Meanwhile, Hitler’s doodlebugs or buzz bombs, as they were called, flew on automatic pilot at low altitude over Britain. When their tanks ran out of fuel, they would simply drop from the sky. The curious engine whine they made was soon feared by everyone. People would stop and look above them, praying the bombs would continue over.

  It was as Pearl was walking home from the market two days later that she too heard the eerie sound begin. She stopped the pushchair, her heart racing as she looked at the sky. Was it right that as long as you could hear it you were safe? Unlike during the raids in the Blitz, there was no time to find shelter. The rockets were a law unto themselves.

  Lifting Cynthia into her arms, she looked for cover. The other people in the street were leaning against brick walls or running away. Doors opened all along the road to let people in. It was a frequent sight now, though everyone knew that when a buzz bomb dropped there was no chance of survival directly beneath. The blast wave was lethal.

  ‘Come in, ducks, come in,’ said a woman in an overall and turban as she opened her front door. The whine of the doodlebug was growing closer. Pearl hurried in, leaving the pushchair outside.

  ‘The first this morning but it won’t be the last,’ said the woman, as they stood in her dark passage. Pearl could smell cabbage and mothballs, and as she held Cynthia close, she knew she would forever associate this smell with doodlebugs. She closed her eyes. The whine was overhead now. The woman pressed up against her and Cynthia.

  The whine continued overhead and onwards. Pearl breathed a deep sigh of relief, but felt guilty for doing so. ‘It’s gone,’ she whispered, and the woman nodded.

  ‘Some poor sod has bought it,’ the woman sighed.

  ‘Thanks for letting me in,’ Pearl said as she opened the door. ‘It’s frightening to be in the street. But you can’t stay in all the time.’

  ‘Course not. Have you got someone in the forces?’

  ‘Yes, my husband. He’s an engineer in the army.’

  ‘Was he at Normandy?’

  ‘No, he’s in Italy.’

  ‘Well, be careful, ducks. I heard on the wireless that over seventy of these new bombs have landed since Tuesday. Who knows what will happen in the next few weeks?’

  Pearl stepped out cautiously. ‘Goodbye, and thanks again.’

  It was the first of many occasions that Pearl sought cover. The anti-aircraft guns were no help as they only made the situation worse over built-up areas. Even the news that the French landings had been a success couldn’t cheer people up. Whole rows of houses were being demolished by a single V1. Why hadn’t our armies stopped them?

  ‘Be careful; go inside someone’s house as soon as you hear it,’ Pearl warned Ruby as she set out each morning.

  Ruby was terrified of them. She wouldn’t have gone to work if she wasn’t now the breadwinner.

  Pearl knew as well as her sister that it was pot luck when it came to the buzz bombs. Life had to go on, but the skies always held a threat.

  On Sunday afternoon Pearl was washing up the dinner things when Ruby rushed into the kitchen. ‘Turn on the wireless, Pearl. I was looking out the front window when Gwen shouted up from the street. The Guards Chapel, St James’s, has been hit in the middle of morning service.’

  The news was unbelievable. ‘Over a hundred killed,’ Ruby gasped at the end of the announcement. ‘More possibly.’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ Pearl whispered, but it was. The eventual death toll was one hundred and forty-one, and the nation was shocked.

  The following morning, Ruby took the bus to work. ‘I don’t feel like riding me bike,’ she said as she left. ‘It’s not so easy to hear them coming if you sit up the front with the driver, with the noise of the engine.’

  Pearl didn’t want to go out shopping either. But she knew she must, even though news of the terrible death toll spread an intense gloom. The newspapers announced that ack-ack guns and barrage balloons were now established in a line along the North Downs in Kent. These were meant as a trap for the pilotless planes. But confidence in deterents was waning, and people dreaded the ominous whine in the sky.

  By the end of the month it was recorded that over one hundred and twenty-five doodlebugs had left their mark on the city. And the following week Ruby brought home even worse news.

  ‘A V1 went into a dive outside the Air Ministry in the Aldwych,’ she breathlessly told Pearl when she arrived home.

  ‘What happened?’ Pearl asked as she poured a cup of tea for Ruby, who was shaking.

  ‘The Aldwych was packed ’cos it was the lunch hour. The wall outside the Ministry stopped a lot of the blast but even so, the wave went down the street and killed people. The girls sunbathing on the roof of the Ministry were killed, and even the passengers in the buses. Some were sucked out of their office windows.’

  Pearl shook her head. ‘Don’t tell me any more.’

  Ruby sank down on the chair in a daze. ‘That bloody Hitler.’

  ‘If this goes on, what will happen?’

  ‘Someone’s got to do something.’

  A noise in the street made them jump up. They listened, attuning their eyes to the sky above. But there was no whine.

  Cynthia banged her fists on the table and blew bubbles. She laughed, showing her baby teeth. Pearl gave her a smile, then looked at Ruby. ‘It’s just a plane. We’ll become nervous wrecks if we let these things get the better of us.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And anyway, if one fell on us, we wouldn’t know a thing about it.’

  Ruby nodded slowly. ‘I don’t think I want anything to eat. I wish Ricky was here. But at least there are no buzz bombs at Brawton.’

  Pearl went to the drawer and took out the cutlery. She placed it on the table in front of Ruby. She had waited in a queue at the market for an hour this morning for a piece of fish the size of a finger. She’d spent a further two hours trying to make it look tasty. She felt desperately sorry for the Aldwych victims, but life had to go on. Since D-Day everyone had been in a state of tension. Most families had someone in France as the Allies moved forward towards Paris. There had been hundreds of thousands of casualties and letters weren’t getting through. They had to believe what the newspapers and BBC said. As for the pilotless planes, well, they were a fact of life and had to be dealt with.

  In no uncertain terms Pearl told Ruby she was going to eat her dinner come what may. They weren’t going to waste a forkful, despite what was going on overhead.

  Jim opened the letter with eager fingers, his eyes flying over the greeting. ‘My darling Jim’. No doubt she’d be over the moon about the Normandy landings. Someone had managed to get hold of a newspaper yesterday that showed the King and Monty on the French beachhead, with the Tricolour fluttering over Cherbourg. It wouldn’t be long now before we broke through to Caen and the open road to Paris. Britain must be waiting with baited breath for every new development . . .

  Jim wanted to linger on each sentence but his brain was so desperate for news that he was on to the second page before he realized what he was reading. This was not about the invasion, but Ruby and, God forbid, Ricky Winters. She had only gone and married the man! What in the world had made her do that? And how could Pearl condone such a thing? She knew very well his views on the bastard. Now he’d wormed his way into his sister-in-law’s life and put a ring on her finger.

  He read the next paragraph and h
is bottom jaw dropped. His own wife had been at the wedding! At some high-falu-tin country house, turned into a hospital, according to Pearl. Ricky bloody Winters wasn’t any ordinary mortal. He even had to do getting wounded in style. An icy sensation crept over Jim, though it was stinking hot in the fields of the Italian countryside. What had been going on in his absence? He knew Pearl well enough to guess that she wasn’t writing everything. She could write pages on Cynthia, and although he loved his daughter, there was only so much you could say about teething and nappies and breast-feeding. But Pearl had found a dozen different ways to describe the stages of her growth and what she said and did, and what a lovely kid she’d turned out. And give Pearl her due, she was a true homemaker, telling him every detail about Pride Place and the Hemsleys and their friends, and Amy and Syd in Abingley. But she’d not said much about Ruby, though he hadn’t noticed before. Some of the letters went missing anyway, so he’d not thought much about it. Now, out of the blue, it turns out Ricky Winters had his feet under the table and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  In frustration, he screwed up the letter. He’d never done that before. He treasured his letters from home. He swatted away the midges that taunted him as they circled his sweating and dirty skin. In the ruins of the old barn, where once a tractor had stood along with the cows in the byres, there were now just burned-out relics. The landscape was grilled to charcoal during the fighting where once there had been a thriving farmyard.

  They were still on the alert for snipers, but Jerry was long gone from here. The dawn had spilled a rosy light into the spines of the bombed building. A battered but intact Jerry helmet acted as a makeshift pee pot. At night it was too dangerous to stumble outside.

  Fury swelled inside Jim and he strode over and booted the helmet. The contents flew into the dust. A lone chicken, a miraculous survivor from the battle, scuttled out with singed wings.

  With all the force of his right fist he aimed a blow at the charred beam. It splintered noisily, coming down at his feet.

  What in God’s name was Pearl thinking of? What wasn’t she telling him?

  ‘Jim?’ A tall, sunburned soldier strode across the barn floor, a frayed leather bag on his hip. ‘Another one for you. Missed it first time round.’

  Jim barely heard, but found the envelope in his hands. He was not even conscious of opening it, not until he saw the name ‘Blackwood’ and his mind made the connection.

  Dear James or Jim,

  I’m very sorry to have to tell you that our son, Albert, known to his friends as Blackie, died of his wounds at the Mareth Line, North Africa on 29 March of this year. A letter was written on his behalf by one of the nurses who tended to him. He said he wished to be remembered to you and to wish you good luck. We wish you the same and hope that this letter gets through. If you ever feel like looking us up when you’re home, the address is as above.

  Regards, Dolly and Albert Blackwood (Senior)

  Jim sank to his haunches, dropping his head to the ground. He wanted to weep for Blackie – do something, react in some way – but war had robbed him of emotion. He wasn’t equipped to express his grief now; he’d seen too much death and dying.

  He wanted to shout ‘Stop!’ To reclaim his old life and start where he’d left off. But he’d chosen his path and left his family behind in the process.

  He put his hands over his lice-riddled head and rocked, listening to the sound of his breath.

  In the middle of July the Prime Minister announced that well over one hundred flying bombs were being launched against Britain every day. This figure was followed by the number of deaths they had caused, which equalled the number of individual bombs: over two thousand seven hundred so far.

  Pearl had reluctantly agreed to Fitz’s proposal of setting up a Morrison shelter in the kitchen. The Andersons were no use with these types of bombs. Fitz had just finished building a Morrison for Gwen and himself, and was eager to make another.

  ‘I can’t see a wire box is much protection,’ said Pearl one Saturday morning, as Fitz showed her the pieces of welded mesh. ‘If one of them flying bombs lands on us, a cage ain’t going to save us.’

  ‘The government says they’re very successful, Pearl. And this one will be big enough for the three of you. I don’t feel happy having one meself and there’s you up here, undefended.’ He went on his knees and with his glasses on the end of his nose, studied the sheet of directions.

  Pearl put her hands on her hips. ‘I don’t know where it’s going to go.’

  ‘You can use it as a table.’ He indicated the flat parts and horizontal struts that were to be screwed together to make the oblong box. ‘It’s six foot six long and four foot wide. Put a nice clean cloth over it and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got a table.

  ‘But I like the table I’ve got. It’s just right for Cynth. She draws on it all the time.’

  ‘She’ll be able to draw on this too. And play inside it.’

  At that moment Cynthia appeared. She was holding a rag doll Amy had sent her. She saw Fitz and sped across the kitchen floor, seating herself beside him. She was all smiles and both Fitz and Pearl began to chuckle.

  ‘Your mother doesn’t approve of this, young lady, but I’ll bet you do.’ He showed her the picture of the Morrison. ‘See, you can crawl inside and play. Or you can eat off it. Or draw pretty pictures in your book.’ He lowered his voice as he handed Cynthia the instructions. ‘Now, just tell me what nut and bolt goes where.’ Their laughter almost drowned the knock at the door.

  When Pearl opened it at first she didn’t recognize the visitor. He wore a trilby hat and a dark coat with the collar turned up. His gloves seemed far too dressy for such a warm day. It was then the penny dropped.

  ‘Ricky?’

  He smiled, slowly raising his arms to carefully take off his hat. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve given you a shock.’

  ‘No . . . well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘You . . . are the last person I expected to see this morning.’

  ‘I’ve left Brawton.’

  ‘Have you had the all clear?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  Pearl felt a tug at her skirt and looked down. Cynthia was staring up with her blue eyes. A lock of sandy-blonde hair dangled in front of her nose.

  Ricky stepped in. ‘So you must be Cynthia?’ He bent down, smiling. ‘I’ve heard all about you and am very glad to meet you.’

  Pearl watched her daughter as she slid her thumb in her mouth. Swaying back and forth on her heels, she was quick to return the smile.

  ‘A lovely child,’ Ricky said in a quiet voice. He touched his upturned collar self-consciously. Then looking into Pearl’s eyes, he added, ‘As lovely as her mother.’

  Ruby stepped off the bus and searched the sky before hurrying along West Ferry Road. There had been several alerts this morning, but the noise at the factory had drowned out the stomach-churning sound. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t scared, because she was and it showed. She hadn’t been herself since the Aldwych tragedy. She just wanted to be with people. Not that it would make any difference if the bomb dropped on the bus or in the street or on the house. But at least if you were in company you could share the danger. Some East Enders even made a joke of it, like the bus conductor when he shouted over his shoulder that his bus, the number fifty-seven, was faster than any V1.

  As Ruby approached Pride Place, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her ten-minute walk home had been uneventful. The first thing she was going to do was wash her hair. The heat of the factory and smell of machinery was ingrained in it under her scarf. Then she’d change from her working slacks into a skirt and perhaps she and Pearl could chance a walk to the market. It was too nice to stay in. And why should the fear of the doodlebugs prevent them from going out? She was still giving herself a pep talk as she waved to Gwen in the shop and turned into the alley. Fitz wasn’t in the storeroom, so perhaps he was carrying out his promise to build the Morrison shelter. The thought gave Ruby a shudder as neither
she nor Pearl fancied one of the ugly contraptions. Dad had refused to have one at Roper’s Way, preferring the Anderson. But then, of course, there had been no V1s.

  As she ascended the stairs, a low whine could be heard in the distance. Ruby froze, her ears pricked for the direction. A V1 was in flight, but where was it? She grabbed the handle of the door and with a sweat breaking out over her skin, rushed inside.

  ‘Pearl! Pearl! One’s coming over!’ she screamed, and almost fell over Fitz.

  ‘Steady there, gel.’ He stood up as the noise grew louder. Then two figures appeared from the living room. As the buzz bomb travelled closer, Ruby’s face crumpled.

  ‘Ricky? Oh, Ricky! Is it you?’

  He opened his arms and she fell into them. The sound of the high-pitched whine was so loud that everyone ducked. She buried her face in his chest and closed her eyes. For a moment she didn’t care about dying. If she died it would be in the arms of the man she loved. Then, as the noise faded and continued into the distance, she could hear only the beat of her heart.

  ‘Ruby, it’s gone,’ he told her. ‘You’re safe now.’

  She looked up at him as if waking from a dream. Then she saw Pearl with Cynthia in her arms. They all stood still, waiting for the inevitable crash. It came as the bomb found a target.

  ‘With a bit of luck, it might have gone in the drink,’ said Fitz, even though they all knew it hadn’t.

  Ruby looked up at her husband. ‘Why didn’t you write to tell me you were coming home?’

  ‘I didn’t know myself.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I’ve decided they can do nothing more.’

  ‘But what about your hands?’

  ‘I shall keep my gloves on. I don’t want to upset you.’

  Ruby put her arms around him. ‘You’d never do that. Oh, Pearl, isn’t it wonderful he’s home?’