Dear Mrs. Bird: A Novel

by AJ Pearce

  ‘Sounds close,’ said Joan, pursing her lips and echoing Mr Bone by adding, ‘It’s going to be busy tonight.’

  She was right.

  Within no time my telephone was the first of the four to ring. I answered it quickly. ‘Fire Brigade. Where are you calling from, please?’ I said, just as there was an enormous crash outside which made our little building shake. My new cup of tea let itself down badly by jumping in its saucer and spilling its contents.

  ‘I’m sorry, could you say that again?’ I asked, the other phones in the control room now ringing as the lady at the other end shouted information. The house two doors away from her had taken a direct hit.

  ‘Do you know how many people live there?’ I asked, scribbling down the details of a street I recognised as about half a mile away. ‘And children?’

  I hated this bit.

  ‘Six,’ she told me. ‘We can’t see anything for the smoke.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. My voice was steady but I was glad the caller couldn’t see me wince. ‘Stay where you are. They’ll be with you as soon as they can.’

  I thanked her and said goodbye, as if I had just taken a restaurant booking rather than the details of half a street that had been razed to the ground. When I had first volunteered it had seemed harsh but it was our job to remain absolutely calm no matter how awful the calls were. You couldn’t let yourself think about things when you were in the middle of a busy night. As Captain Davies said, that wouldn’t help anyone. Afterwards we all did, of course, especially if you found out things had gone the wrong way.

  I ripped the paper off my pad and jammed it onto the spike where all the calls went. Thelma and Mary jammed theirs on too and Captain Davies came in from his office.

  ‘Two pumps and a heavy unit, Mary,’ he said, looking up at the chalk board and beginning to arrange discs to show which crews would be going where. Mary was already on her feet and heading to the door to start ringing the hand bell outside. One of the crew ran in to take orders. He had the expression on his face that I had been watching for months. It was a funny mixture of looking grave and not being able to wait to get on with it. If the war lasted for twenty years I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to that.

  ‘Tin hats on, girls,’ said Captain Davies, glaring at Mary.

  My phone rang again and so did Thelma’s. Joan was trying to get sense out of someone on hers that she couldn’t hear. What with bombs going off at their end and the guns going at it non-stop right over our heads, it was a wonder anyone could hear anything at all.

  ‘Fire Brigade. Where are you calling from, please?’

  We all kept repeating the same things. Thelma’s cigarette burned away and died quietly in the ashtray, Mary kept ringing the bell until there weren’t any more men to send out and Captain Davies told Thelma to get on to Lambeth for back-up. Everyone had been right. It was one of the busiest nights since New Year and as the evening continued, the noise of the bombers got nearer and louder. We were right in the thick of it. The moaning of the planes overhead didn’t stop, and was only interrupted by the noise of the guns and more bombs.

  ‘They’re out to get us tonight,’ admitted Thelma in a matter-of-fact way during one of the few pauses on the phones. ‘I hope Mum’s got the kids in the coal cellar.’

  ‘I hope Bunty’s all right,’ I said. I knew she’d be in the shelter next door. If one of us was on our own we would bolt down the garden and through the gate into Mrs Harewood’s. Mrs Harewood was a widow who lived on her own but as her husband had been in the Diplomatic Corps, she had opened up rooms to visiting dignitaries. Bunty said you never knew quite who you’d end up sitting next to. It could be Mrs Harewood’s housekeeper Maureen, or someone hush-hush with a pipe.

  On a night like tonight though, it didn’t matter if you were sitting next to the Queen of Sheba. There was a very real likelihood that someone was going to get hit. The worst was if a call came in about a bomb near one of our families or friends. You couldn’t do much, just say a quick prayer and get on with it until the end of the shift. We didn’t want to let the boys down – after all, they were the ones outside, putting out fires as shrapnel fell about them and the bombs didn’t stop.

  By midnight we were all in need of a pick me up and in between calls I tried to eat my sandwich as it was beginning to curl up at the edges. You weren’t supposed to eat at your desk but Captain Davies was now out on a six-pump for an all hands on deck, so I thought I would be in the clear.

  Thelma was standing at the call board, looking at where Captain Davies had chalked in ‘Church Street, 8.15 pm’. She glanced at the big clock outside his office but said nothing. We all knew what she was thinking.

  Worrying about the crews was the worst bit of the job so I began to tell her about The Mark of Zorro just to take our minds off how long the boys had been out. The noise of the planes thundered on. Joan and Mary had stuck their fingers in their free ears and were leaning into the phones still trying to take calls. It was a fruitless task. The bombers were right overhead and they were deafening.

  I’d given up on Zorro just as there was the most tremendous bang – so loud that it was like being right in the middle of a thunder cloud. We all threw ourselves under the table as the whole building shook to its boots. The big clock crashed down off the wall, bringing a chunk of plaster with it, and tea cups, saucers, and plates clattered, mine falling off the desk and smashing beside me. Mary let out a squeak and then looked embarrassed, but none of us could blame her. The noise was coming from everywhere at once, as if we were being eaten by the very sound itself. There was another enormous explosion and the building quaked again.

  If our number wasn’t on this one, someone’s very near was. Even Joan looked concerned.

  ‘Blimey,’ shouted Thelma, who was on the floor next to me. She squeezed my arm. ‘That was a close one. You all right?’

  I nodded. ‘Absolutely.’ I forced out a grin and looked at the other girls. ‘Fingers and toes still on?’

  The others waggled their hands and Thelma and I waggled ours back.

  ‘Sodding Hitler,’ bellowed Joan over the guns.

  ‘I think I sat on my pencil,’ shouted Mary, trying to sound hearty and shifting to look at her bottom.

  ‘Bad luck,’ I yelled. I gave her the thumbs up and mouthed ‘OK?’

  She thumbs upped back and nodded violently. There was another enormous bang and everything shook again.

  It wasn’t quite as close this time and they obviously hadn’t managed to bring down the phone lines as above us we heard ringing again.

  ‘It’s probably mine,’ shouted Joan. She began to crawl out to answer the phone as the rest of us watched. ‘Oof, my knees.’ She heaved herself up as the fighting continued.

  Joan wasn’t frightened of anything.

  ‘Bugger you, Hitler,’ she shouted as she left our temporary bunker.

  The phones were going mad. I didn’t know what Joan thought she would be able to do as we could barely hear each other at the top of our voices, but she was the toughest of us all and our leader. Mary, Thelma, and I looked at each other. We could either stay under the table all night, or we could start pulling our weight.

  ‘Ready?’ I yelled and the others nodded.

  ‘BUGGER YOU, HITLER,’ we roared and clambered up to answer our phones.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Half of It’s Just Bloody Gone

  Hitler was unimpressed by our language and continued to bomb the daylights out of west London well into the night.

  For hours we took calls non-stop. One man gave me his address as Latham Road, but said it didn’t really matter what it was called as we’d be lucky if we could find anything anyway.

  ‘Half of it’s just bloody gone, love, it’s just bloody gone,’ he said down the phone.

  Fires were reported all around us. The young messengers not already on rounds were sent to track down the crews and tell them not to come back in, but go straight to the fires most out of control
. By a quarter past three, having done what sounded like their worst, the enemy had headed for home. Soon after, the all-clear sounded and someone rang the Women’s Voluntary Service and told them to make sure they had sent out the mobile canteens to keep the boys going.

  At six in the morning the day-time shift began to arrive and I could finally leave my seat, rolling my shoulders back as they had become stiff with crouching over the phone. I was keen to get home and make sure Bunty and Mrs Harewood and Maureen were safe. It had been a long night.

  ‘What time do you have to be at work?’ Thelma asked as she saw me rubbing my eyes.

  ‘Nine,’ I said. ‘I’ll get a couple of hours’ sleep first.’ I turned to Joan. ‘Is there any update on the boys? I’d like to report in for Bunty.’

  Joan had been in charge of the call board and I had lost track hours ago.

  ‘They’re still out in Church Street,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘They’ve been there a while.’ She saw my face and lightened her voice. ‘They’ll be all right.’

  ‘Not if Bill carries on like I hear he did last week they won’t.’

  Horrible Vera, one of the permanents on A Watch, had just walked into the room.

  ‘Tommy Lewis said Bill was that gung-ho on a call he was about three inches off losing a leg,’ Vera finished with a flourish.

  She took off her cap and shook her hair in a careless fashion. Vera and I did not always get on. Everyone knew she had a soft spot for William and said nasty things behind Bunty’s back.

  ‘Shut up, Vera,’ said Thelma.

  Vera feigned innocence, which must have been a bit of a stretch.

  ‘Well, I’m sure Emmeline would want to tell that Bunty. I know I would if it was my best friend.’

  I rather thought I would be the one to decide what I would tell That Bunty, but Vera crashed on.

  ‘Oh, did you not know? William had an ever so near escape at the warehouses on Shepherd’s Bush Road. Tommy said a great big girder came down that close he was lucky they didn’t all get killed. Back in a minute.’ She gave a sickly smile and left the room.

  I kept quiet and started packing up my report books.

  ‘She’s just stirring it, Emmy,’ said Thelma. ‘You know what she’s like. It wasn’t as bad as all that.’

  I bit my lip wondering why everyone else seemed to be in the know except me. No wonder Bill had kept a low profile last night and not hung around for a chat.

  ‘Ignore her,’ ordered Joan, stretching to put the clock back on its hook on the wall. ‘You know she’s a rotten egg.’

  ‘Humpty Dumpty in a curly wig,’ said Thelma which raised a bit of a grin. ‘Now you get going, before she comes back. Go on, we’ll see you tomorrow. Get some rest tonight.’

  She shooed me out of the control room.

  I tutted to myself as I grabbed my coat and cap from its hook in the corridor and clomped downstairs and out of the station. I was tired, and now cross that I’d let Vera rile me. Everyone knew she made mountains out of molehills. I bet everything was fine.

  All the same, Church Street was only a short detour on the way home and I decided to head back that way. It was still before dawn but it wasn’t long before my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I started to see the results of last night’s activity.

  No wonder the station had shaken like a leaf. I had never seen anything like this.

  Hatch Road wasn’t really there any more. Buildings were just charred shells, with piles of rubble still smouldering and the smell of burning everywhere. Some of the houses were partially collapsed and by the dim start of first light you could see some of the rooms were still partly intact. A bedroom clung on to the side of a house, a chest of drawers oddly untouched, but the rest of the room missing, as if it had been hacked away with a blunt knife. Two firemen stood on top of a heap of smoking debris, dampening it down with a hose. They were wet through, not speaking, just concentrating on finishing the job. I didn’t recognise them so they must have been from another station called in to help.

  I walked on, unnoticed by the rescue workers. An ambulance driver was helping an old man into the van and telling him not to worry and that it was all going to be all right. The man said he might be old but he wasn’t stupid and what did he think had happened to the people who were missing? The ambulance man ignored him and promised him tea.

  I looked away and caught the eye of a middle-aged woman wrapped in an eiderdown and sitting on a kitchen chair in the middle of what had once been the pavement. She was all on her own. I went over to her.

  ‘Hello, I’m with the Fire Brigade,’ I said, stating the obvious in my uniform. ‘Can I help?’ She was covered from head to foot in soot and ash and had a big cut on her chin.

  She shook her head and gave me a weary smile. ‘Don’t worry dear, I’m just getting my breath,’ she said. ‘This is the third time I’ve been bombed out. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, feeling useless.

  ‘Oh yes. You go on. You looked like you were going somewhere in a hurry.’

  She was right. I had to admit I wanted to get home, make sure my friends were safe, and then put on my work suit, go to an office that wasn’t in the middle of an air raid, and be a civilian who talked about patterns and romance stories and what best to do with half a pound of tripe.

  I felt ashamed. Some War Correspondent I’d make.

  I’d seen tons of burnt-out buildings, bomb craters, and people’s homes still on fire or being pulled down. But I hadn’t walked straight into the scene of such devastation before. Not when there were people on stretchers and wardens crouching beside them and writing out tags.

  I took a deep breath and told myself to brace up. Then I asked the woman on the chair if she was sure there wasn’t anything I could help with and when she insisted she was all right I headed on towards Church Street to find William and the boys.

  ‘Come on, Lake,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Pretend you’re at work.’

  I straightened up and stuck my chin out a bit.

  ‘You don’t want to go down there, miss,’ said an ARP warden as I got to the corner of the street. ‘I should go the other way if I were you.’

  ‘Thank you, but I’ve been sent from the station,’ I lied, patting the badge on my coat. ‘We’ve run out of dispatch riders.’

  He looked hesitant but said Good Girl and told me to Go On Then, so I did.

  If Hatch Road had been grim, it was nothing compared with the scene when I turned the corner. Church Street was unrecognisable. It wasn’t a very big street to start with, and the whole middle section had entirely disappeared. Where a terrace of proudly kept little Georgian homes had once stood, now there were just piles of bricks and glass, smoke coming out of them as fires were still burning underneath. There was water everywhere, some from the brigade’s hoses of course, but by the look of the water spurting out of the middle of the road, one of the mains had burst.

  I walked on, noting four pumps and two heavy units still there, and the crews busy working. There was still no sign of William and the boys. A WVS canteen was parked up and volunteers were handing out sandwiches to a couple of policemen, but our boys hadn’t stopped. One of the teams had their pump on full go at a fire in a collapsed building. The flames lit up the whole street and as I got nearer, the heat was enormous. I tried to look brisk and efficient in case someone questioned what I was doing here, but no one had time to take any notice.

  Someone slammed the door of an ambulance and banged on the back as it drove away, squeezing between a crater and the remains of a house. When it had gone, a van carrying a team of Heavy Recovery men arrived in its place and they jumped out into the street, big chaps with shovels, their sleeves rolled up and determined looks on their faces.

  I stopped to watch as a fire captain greeted the team and shook hands with a man in charge.

  ‘Be really careful, lads,’ said the captain. ‘It’s unsteady as hell. We think there are people still down there and one of
the boys is trying to get to them.’

  ‘Bleeding ’ell,’ muttered one of the big men, ‘they’re on a bloody death wish.’

  ‘Look at that wall,’ said his mate. ‘Captain, that thing’s coming down in about three minutes. Your boys need to get out bloody quick.’

  They were staring at the remains of someone’s home: half a three-storey house which looked as if it was about to fall over, and with what had been an adjoining wall now listing horribly to the right, propped up by a small mountain of smoking rubble and splintered wood. Two firemen were lying on top of the mound with ropes tied round their waists, peering into a hole. Two more were standing over them, holding the ends of the ropes. My stomach tightened as I saw that one of them was Roy from the station, who was a picture of thunderous concentration. He couldn’t have looked less like the Roy I was used to, asking for more tea and telling funny stories about his ferrets.

  I hesitated, but then crept nearer, hiding behind the team of rescue workers and aware that as female station staff I shouldn’t be there, let alone when I was off duty. If he saw me, Roy would be furious and order me to go home.

  ‘Hold it,’ shouted the other man standing at the top who I realised was Fred. He signalled with his hand for the rescue crew to stop and then pointed down into the hole. ‘I can’t hear him. Can they turn off the pumps for a minute?’

  Within a few moments, the hissing of the water jets stopped as the lads on the hoses stood down.

  ‘Everyone belt up,’ yelled Fred as the recovery gang were still murmuring to each other. His voice had an urgency that made everyone shut up and stand stock-still. You could still hear the crackling of the fire that wasn’t out, and a clank when the lady in the canteen van put down a stainless-steel teapot.

  The recovery team looked grim-faced as the older one walked carefully around the rubble and considered the listing wall. Etiquette meant the recovery boys wouldn’t issue an order to a fire team. But I knew everyone listened to their advice and the captain was waiting for his view.