A Ration Book Christmas

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘Just a crate of posh soap that smells like violets,’ added Fred. ‘I’ve told the fellas not to put it next to the coffee, and this little lot,’ he indicated the remaining three boxes of rum at his feet, ‘and then we’re done.’

  ‘Good,’ Reggie replied. ‘Not bad for two hours’ work.’

  Grasping the tailgate’s chain, Fred heaved himself up into the back of the lorry as Jimmy deposited the final boxes of rum. While they secured the load for transportation, Reggie paid off the other two helpers who then slipped away through the gates.

  Taking the cigarette from behind his right ear, Reggie lit it and took a puff as the nightwatchman shuffled over. Reggie peeled off ten-pound notes from the roll in his back pocket then slipped them into the warehouseman’s waiting hand and he too disappeared into the darkness.

  All finished, Jimmy and Fred slammed the tailgate shut and Fred climbed into the lorry’s cab. Reggie flicked his half-smoked roll-up away and then he and Jimmy strode to the back gates.

  ‘Let’s go,’ shouted Reggie.

  Jimmy unbolted the metal gates and, holding one each, he and Reggie walked backwards until the gap was wide enough for Fred to drive the lorry through. Loaded to the gunnels with stolen crates and boxes, the Bedford growled into life as it rolled across the yard and into the silent blacked-out streets.

  Slipping through to the outside they pulled the gates shut as tightly as they could for the warehouseman to secure later. Fred stopped the lorry and Reggie opened the passenger door.

  Jimmy climbed in first and shuffled into the middle of the bench seat as Reggie clambered in behind.

  Another explosion flashed red and yellow fire across the sky in front of them, the shockwave from it shaking the vehicle from side to side.

  ‘That looked like it was over Shadwell Basin way,’ Fred said, gripping the steering wheel tight with both hands.

  Reggie looked through the windscreen across the shimmering waters of the docks before them to where the ragged-topped wharfs and spindly arms of the dock cranes stood silhouetted against the blazing skyline.

  An image of Tommy, dog tired from dealing with the onslaught the previous night, and dressed in his rough clothes and a tin hat with his red scarf tied around his mouth, flashed through Reggie’s mind but he pushed it aside.

  Just like when they were boys, hiding from their mother’s drunken rage, it could be either one of them that copped it or neither, and no amount of fretting would make a difference.

  Locking his childhood memories back into the deepest recesses of his mind, Reggie turned.

  ‘Right, boys, that’s us done,’ he said, grinning at the two men sitting alongside him. ‘Let’s pull our fingers out and get this lot tucked up smartish like and then we can have ourselves a well-earned pint or two back at the Admiral.’

  An hour later, and just as an explosion somewhere close by shook the ground under his hobnail boots, Reggie strolled through the side door into the Admiral public house with Fred and Jimmy on his heels. The bar, as you’d expect in the middle of an air raid, was dark and empty. However, Lenny Walker, the publican, wasn’t one to let the Luftwaffe interfere with business and so he’d made contingency plans.

  Sliding in behind the counter, Reggie pushed open the door to the right of the bar and descended the stone steps.

  The cellar below, with its crude stone pillars and roughly plastered walls, showed the Admiral had a history going back centuries. There was even a rumour of a secret passage leading from the public house to the river that the Thames pirates had used for smuggling; but if it existed, it had never been found.

  Now, though, the low-ceilinged vault was packed with drinkers who had decided that if they had to spend all night below ground they might as well do it somewhere with booze and company. Last orders at ten thirty had been hours ago but with bombs dropping all around them, the police had more to worry about than the licensing laws. Lenny had set up an improvised bar made out of an old door balanced on a couple of barrels behind which he and Rita, the Admiral’s long-serving barmaid, were standing. Rita, a slim blonde in her late thirties, wearing a tight skirt and red striped blouse and down-trodden high heels, looked up from wiping the counter with a rag that looked suspiciously like a pair of dirty underpants.

  ‘’Ello, Reggie,’ she said, adjusting her neckline to give him the benefit of her disproportionately large breasts. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘A pint each for me and the boys and I’ll have double Scotch as a chaser.’

  Rita nodded and took a glass from the apple crate behind her.

  ‘I see Lou stayed?’ said Reggie, nodding at the Admiral’s newest employee who was washing up glasses in an enamel bowl and stacking them on a tea towel on the earthen floor to drain.

  ‘Yes, she’s a good kid,’ said Rita, holding the first glass under the tap hammered into the side of a keg. ‘Although, I think it was because she’s hoping your Tommy would be in. She’s a bit sweet on him, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  Reggie hadn’t but then Lou wouldn’t be the first pretty thing to cast her eye in Tommy’s direction. He studied the new girl a little more closely.

  Probably a year or so younger than Tommy, with a pretty heart-shaped face, a warm smile and blonde curls, Lou was the sort of woman a man wanted to see pulling his pint at the end of a long working day.

  ‘He could do a lot worse,’ he replied, as Rita put the last of the three pints in front of him. Fred and Jimmy took their drinks and moved off to try to find seats.

  ‘I’ll tell you who else seems to have taken a bit of a shine to your little brother, Reggie,’ Rita went on, reaching up for a bottle of Black & White.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That Brogan girl whose old man is the rag and bone man down Chapman Street arches,’ Rita replied, as she poured him his Scotch. ‘Saucy madam. You should have heard how she spoke to me.’

  ‘Jo’s been here?’ he asked, panic starting in his chest.

  ‘No,’ She placed the whisky in front of him. ‘She phoned a few days back and again today, just before the siren went off.’

  An uneasy feeling niggled behind Reggie’s breastbone. He took a long swallow of beer to steady the vein pulsing in his temple.

  ‘Did you mention it to Tommy?’ Reggie asked.

  She shook her head. ‘It slipped my mind the first time and I haven’t seen him today.’

  Reggie relaxed.

  All this nonsense about ‘making something of himself’ and ‘not wasting his life’ that Tommy kept carping on about had only begun when he’d started knocking about with that Paddy girl, so when she’d been evacuated Reggie had counted it a top-score result. He’d hoped that would be the end of it and that, after a week or two of mooning about, Tommy would be back to his old useful self, but then the silly little girl had started sending Tommy soppy letters. Still, he’d soon put paid to that by slipping their postie ten bob to give the letters to him instead of Tommy.

  ‘Did she say what she wanted?’ he asked.

  A smirk slid across Rita’s face. ‘I think it was personal.’

  Reggie took another mouthful of his drink. ‘Will you do me a favour, Rita?’

  ‘Anything,’ she said, popping the cork back on the bottle.

  ‘Don’t mention her to Tommy,’ said Reggie. ‘He’s a bit easily led and I wouldn’t want to see him get himself tangled up with a bit of pikey skirt so . . .’

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ said Rita, placing a friendly hand on his arm. ‘If I had a brother I wouldn’t want to see him get mixed up with those Paddies. Bunch of bloody thieves they are, the lot of them.’ Reggie put his hand in his pocket to pay for his drinks but Rita raised her hand. ‘Keep your money, Reggie. On the house.’

  ‘You’re a good ’un, you are, Rita,’ said Reggie. ‘I’ll fetch you down a couple of pairs of stockings when I next come by.’ He winked. ‘On the house.’

  Someone called her at the other end of the bar and she wiggled off to serve them. Reggie took
another mouthful of drink and then he noticed the new girl Lou hovering around.

  ‘Oi, sweetheart,’ he beckoned.

  She hurried over, grabbing at a crate of brown ale to steady herself as the ground vibrated again with the impact of a high-explosive bomb.

  ‘Get us another Scotch, luv?’ Reggie said, shoving his glass across at her. ‘Make it a double.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Sweete,’ Lou said, picking up the bottle from the shelf. ‘Tommy not with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Reggie as she refilled his glass. ‘He’s freezing his nuts off on the top of the India and Imperial.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Do what?’

  ‘He’s on fire watch duty,’ Reggie explained.

  Another high-impact explosion boomed somewhere, making the hurricane lamps swing and grit fall from the ceiling.

  ‘He’s so brave,’ she said, her eyes shining with admiration.

  ‘He’s a pillock, you mean.’ Reggie grinned. ‘After all, what sort of man prefers to be stuck on top of a warehouse when he could be down here with a drink in his hand and gazing into your pretty little face?’

  She dimpled pleasantly. ‘I know the customer is supposed to always be right but I still think your Tommy is very brave. And I shall tell him so when I see him.’

  Reggie laughed and took another large mouthful of Scotch.

  A bomb burst somewhere close by, setting the bottles rattling on the shelf behind Lou.

  ‘So how are you liking it at the Admiral?’ Reggie asked when the noise subsided.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ Lou replied. ‘Much better than where I was before.’

  ‘Well, you certainly brighten the place up,’ Reggie said. ‘And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Tommy’s noticed it, and that you’ve got class, too.’

  A hungry look spread across her pretty face. ‘Did he say that?’

  ‘Not in so many words but I know my brother.’ Watching her over the rim of his glass, Reggie swallowed a mouthful of spirit.

  ‘I didn’t think he’d even noticed me,’ Lou said.

  ‘Course he has,’ said Reggie. ‘But he’s a gentleman, is my Tommy, and not one to press his attentions until he’s certain they’ll be welcomed.’

  Lou picked up a tea towel and started polishing a glass. ‘Rita says he was knocking around with some Irish girl.’

  ‘He was,’ said Reggie. ‘And half a dozen others. After all, with his good looks he’s had women throwing themselves at him since he started wearing long trousers, lucky bugger. But you know what?’ Resting his arms on the bar, Reggie leaned forward. ‘For all that, I’m hoping one day, my brother’ll find himself someone a bit special.’ He took another mouthful of drink. ‘Someone with a bit class like—’

  Lou’s gaze shifted past him and her mouth dropped open.

  Reggie looked around to see Tommy, his face and clothes smeared with mud and grime, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Well, talk of the devil,’ said Reggie, ‘and he will appear!’

  Feeling as if he’d rubbed his face into a cinder pan and with legs made of lead, Tommy trudged across the beaten-earth cellar to the improvised bar.

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ said Reggie, as he reached him. ‘Where you been?’

  ‘Helping the Auxiliary Fire Service,’ Tommy replied, putting his tin hat on the bar. ‘The cardboard factory on Stepney Causeway is ablaze and we had to evacuate the boys’ home next door.’

  ‘I hope none of them were hurt,’ said a voice to his left.

  Tommy turned to see the new barmaid gazing at him.

  ‘No, most of them have been evacuated so it was just the matron and a couple of the older boys,’ he said, trying to remember her name.

  ‘I think you’re very brave,’ she said, gazing admiringly up at him.

  Tommy gave her a vague smile and turned back to his brother.

  ‘I was hoping to find you here, Reg. One landed at the railway end of Bow Common Lane.’

  Alarm flashed across his brother’s face. ‘Did it hit the lock-up?’

  Tommy shook his head, dislodging a quantity of grit in the process. ‘But some of the yard fences are down so I thought you might want to know.’

  Reggie knocked back his drink in one.

  ‘Fred! Jimmy!’ he barked.

  The two men ambled over. Reggie gave them their instructions and they left.

  The ack-ack guns on King Edward Memorial Park just south of them popped off rapid rounds, sending the glasses jiggling again. Reggie signalled to Lou who glided over.

  ‘Gi’ us another,’ said Reggie, placing his empty glass in front of her. ‘Do you want one, Tommy, or are you going back out?’

  ‘No, the fire brigade chief has stood the fire watch down for the night,’ Tommy replied, ‘so a bitter would go down a treat.’

  ‘A pint for the hero,’ said Reggie. ‘Have one yourself, Lou.’

  Lou went off to get their order.

  An explosion shook the ground under their feet and sent the hurricane lamps’ beams flashing chaotically around the space as glasses and a couple of bottles of spirit shattered on the floor.

  Tommy whistled through his front teeth. ‘That was a bit close.’

  Reggie shrugged. ‘If your number’s up, your number’s up.’

  A smile spread across Tommy’s face. ‘That’s just what Mum said.’

  Reggie shot him a hard look. ‘I don’t know why you bother with her.’

  ‘Because however bad she was she’s still our mother,’ said Tommy.

  ‘Some mother she was,’ said Reggie. ‘Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Tommy, as the terrors of his childhood clawed at him. ‘But you have to look after your flesh and blood.’

  ‘Well, you can if you like but not me,’ said Reggie. ‘If I had my way I’d leave her for the Sally Army to deal with like they do all the other meths drinkers in Whitechapel.’

  Tommy gave his brother a sad look and Lou returned with the drinks.

  Taking his, Tommy swallowed a large mouthful, feeling the cool liquid wash the dust from his throat. Reggie paid for the drinks and they drank in silence for a moment or two then Lou’s giggly laugh cut between them.

  ‘Our new barmaid’s a pretty little thing, ain’t she?’ said Reggie.

  Taking the glass from his lips, Tommy glanced across at her. ‘Not bad.’

  She was sweet enough, with her fluffy blonde hair, but he’d recently developed a preference for curvy brunettes with deep brown eyes.

  His letter to Jo would arrive in tomorrow’s morning post and please God he’d have one from her by return telling him she’d be waiting at the station for him when he arrived on Saturday.

  Reggie knocked back his drink and signalled at Lou and she came over.

  ‘Same again?’ she asked.

  ‘Not for me, luv.’ Tommy swallowed the last mouthful. ‘I’m heading home to get some shut-eye.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Lou, ‘I was just thinking about doing the same.’

  ‘Well then, my brother can walk you,’ said Reggie. ‘Can’t you, Tommy?’

  ‘Would you, Tommy?’ Lou asked, gazing wide-eyed up at him.

  Although every bone in his body was screaming for sleep, Tommy smiled. ‘Of course, where do you live?’

  ‘Creasey Buildings in Hannibal Road,’ she replied, refilling Reggie’s glass and recorking the bottle. ‘It’s not far.’

  It wasn’t but it was in the opposite direction to their place in Tarling Street.

  He forced a weary smile. ‘Get your things.’

  She hurried off to return in a few moments later wearing her coat and hat with her handbag over her arm.

  ‘Ready when you are, Tommy,’ she said as she joined them.

  He picked up his tin hat. ‘See you later.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Reggie. ‘Me and Jimmy are going to stroll down the Limehouse and try our luck at Charlie Chang’s tables after I’m done here so I p
robably won’t be home tonight.’ He winked. ‘So you’ll have the place to yourself.’

  Having joined Lou at the top of the cellar steps, Tommy pushed open the public house’s side door so she could step through. Although the enemy aircraft still droned overhead and the red glow from the burning wharf a few streets south of them lit the night sky, Brewhouse Lane was remarkably peaceful.

  ‘Probably best to cut up to Sutton Street and through to Stepney Green that way,’ said Tommy, turning his collar up against the night chill. ‘And you’d best take my arm so you don’t miss your footing in the blackout.’

  She slipped her arm through his and they headed for the Highway but within minutes found their path blocked by a fire engine frantically pumping water into a blazing shop while a heavy rescue crew hammered a brace beam against the neighbouring building to shore it up.

  ‘Oi, you,’ shouted an ARP warden, clambering over the rubble towards them. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Stepney Green,’ shouted Tommy, as an ambulance screeched around the corner.

  ‘Well, not up Sutton Street you’re not,’ said the warden. ‘There’s a UXB at the back of Newton’s timber yard that could go up any moment. And if you want my advice, I’d get your girlfriend off the streets. We’ve got enough walking wounded to deal with without adding you to the list. There’s a street shelter in Maroon Street or you can head back to the Tilbury.’

  Tommy looked at the woman clinging onto his arm. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Your place,’ she replied. ‘It’s only around the corner, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Tommy agreed. ‘But we haven’t got an Anderson shelter or a cellar so if there’s a direct —’

  ‘Please, Tommy,’ she said, the flames from the burning building around them dancing in her eyes and giving her face a warm glow. ‘I’ll feel safe there, with you.’

  Tommy opened his mouth to speak but a long creak cut off his words. There was a peculiar moment of absolute quiet then the blazing building at the end of the street crumpled to rubble, shooting flames into the black night sky.

  Lou jumped and her fingers dug into his arm.