The Way Ahead

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Am I?’ said Daniel. ‘Yes, so I am, and I’ll make a note of it.’

  ‘I appreciate the offer, Daniel, I really do,’ said Patsy, sharing with him the feeling that talking was good for the beleaguered. The constant droning was oppressive. ‘I like it that we’re friends.’

  ‘Would you say, in American lingo, that we’re buddies?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Sure I would,’ said Patsy, then gave it some thought. ‘Buddies, you said? Like in an army?’

  ‘No, like you’re a girl and I’m a feller,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not a mail box,’ said Patsy with a little laugh. There might be rolling thunder above them, but there were no bombs dropping in the immediate area. ‘It’s crazy dark in here. Daniel, you’re my first English guy, d’you know that?’

  ‘I hope your second and third don’t get in a hurry to elbow me out,’ said Daniel.

  ‘What? Oh, you flathead. Listen, are you going to make a habit of kissing me on buses?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Daniel. ‘What’s your American custom about that?’

  ‘I tell my Pa, and my Pa goes round and kills the guy,’ said Patsy.

  ‘That’s given me second thoughts about your good old Pa,’ said Daniel. He flinched then. Bombs were dropping, after all, in the Herne Hill area, not far from them. The harsh crumping noise of each explosion was unmistakable. Moments later, one bomb crashed down at the foot of Denmark Hill. That brought the roar of an explosion savagely to their ears. Darkened houses shivered, and residents crouched deeper inside their shelters. To Patsy and Daniel, the ground seemed to shudder and the shelter to quiver. Patsy clutched at Daniel.

  ‘Oh, my knees, I’m losing them,’ she gasped, at which point the heavy droning mercifully began to lessen.

  Noting the receding thunder, Daniel breathed, ‘Patsy, let’s take a look. If that bomb has smashed some houses, there might be people needing help. Come on, better than staying here and doing nothing.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to do anything,’ said Patsy, and gritted her teeth as she followed Daniel out of the shelter. He guided her around the remnants of his family’s old house, and as soon as they reached the pavement they saw flames flaring high, way down the hill. That and the receding bombers put determined life into them, and they ran. Daniel, who knew every inch of the hill, its road and its pavement, travelled fast through the darkness, hand in hand with Patsy, whose flying legs put their trust in the sureness of his long limbs. The flames gave them light in a short while, enabling them to increase their pace. Down the hill they went. Houses on each side of the road fell away and they reached the empty stretch close to Ruskin Park. There the road was clear of properties, and there on the left, close to the shattered pavement, were the great yellow flames leaping and hissing.

  ‘Bleedin’ blind Amy,’ gasped Daniel, at one then with his cockney roots. His dad and his Uncle Tommy could still sound off in that way. ‘It’s gas, Patsy. The bomb smashed a gas main.’

  They came to a halt before the searing heat scorched them.

  ‘Daniel, oh, my stars, look!’ Patsy was aghast. ‘Daniel, look!’

  On the other side of the road and a little farther down from the flames, was a car. It was on its side, its bonnet smashed, its windscreen totally absent, its roof crumpled.

  ‘Oh, gawd blimey,’ breathed Daniel. ‘Stay here, Patsy.’

  He ran to the far side of the road, to the pavement, getting himself as far from the hissing, twisting tongues of flame as he could. He felt the heat. It plucked at him. Patsy, watching him running towards the car, gritted her teeth again. If he could get to it, so could she. She went after him.

  Daniel reached the car, leaned over it and looked in through the glassless frame of the windscreen. He sucked in breath and expelled it. The light of the flames revealed a man and a woman, both slumped, both unconscious. Their hats were off, their foreheads bleeding. Patsy arrived.

  ‘Daniel—’

  ‘Two people, Patsy. We’ve got to get them out.’

  ‘Daniel, the auto! It could blow up in this heat.’

  Daniel was wrenching at the door handle. It wouldn’t even turn. The door was buckled.

  ‘Can you smell petrol?’ he panted.

  ‘No – no – Daniel, shouldn’t your police and ARP people be here?’

  ‘They’ll arrive any moment, Patsy.’ Daniel was leaning over the wrecked bonnet now, peering into the car again. ‘Let’s see what we can do now we’re here. Grab my legs.’

  He pitched himself over the upturned bonnet, and Patsy, demented with shock but gritty, wrapped her hands around his ankles and held on to him with fingers like limpets. Daniel thrust his head and shoulders through the windscreen frame, and reached in. With the driver’s seat uppermost, the driver, the man, was a collapsed bulk, hip and shoulder resting on the unconscious woman, trapped between him and the passenger door.

  The sky above Camberwell and Walworth was quiet. The nerve-racking droning had ceased. The last of the bombers had followed other flights north over London to the East End and the docks.

  ‘Daniel, be quick,’ begged Patsy, the radiating heat of the burning gas at her back, ‘I’m afraid for you.’

  Daniel had his hands gripping the lapels of the driver’s jacket. He pulled and yanked, but the man was such a dead weight that he had a sick feeling the poor bloke was lifeless. He pulled again, Patsy’s tight grip on his ankles giving him leverage. He managed to bring the collapsed victim free of the woman. He simply could not get at her until he had dragged the man out through the windscreen frame. One thing was in his favour. The glass had been completely sucked out, and there were no jagged edges. The loud hissing noise of the flaming gas turned into a roar, and Patsy shuddered as heat seemed to billow around her and Daniel and the ear. Daniel was pulling, tugging and wrenching, and the unconscious driver’s head appeared at the window frame. Patsy glimpsed a face ghastly white and a bloodstained forehead. Daniel heard a faint moan from the woman. His hands now were under the man’s armpits. He pulled with desperate strength. It moved the man only an inch or so.

  Down the hill a car came racing. It pulled up with a high-pitched protest from tyres and brakes, and helmeted ARP wardens seemed to expel themselves in a burst of movement. There were five of them, a woman and four men, including Tommy and Sammy. Tommy and Sammy stared in momentary shock at the illuminated figures of a young man and a girl, both recognizable to Sammy. Tommy hadn’t yet met Patsy. The young couple looked as if they were trapped around the bonnet of the overturned car. All five wardens rushed at the overturned vehicle as a police car began to approach from the direction of Camberwell Green. At the same time, the clanging bell of a fire-engine was heard.

  ‘Daniel! Patsy!’ Sammy shouted as he ran up. ‘Leave it, leave it to us!’

  ‘I’d better not let go now, Dad,’ gasped Daniel. ‘The bloke’s a dead weight. All I need is another pair of hands.’

  The woman warden, bulky but agile, reached, gripped Daniel’s legs just below the knees and used her weight to push Patsy aside. It wasn’t a time for begging her pardon first.

  ‘I’ll hold him, ducky, you get yourself clear and take a rest.’

  ‘Everything’s getting hotter,’ gasped Patsy. ‘Something’s going to blow any moment.’

  ‘Go and wait in Sammy Adams’s car, there’s a love,’ said the ARP lady, applying a beefier grip to Daniel’s straining legs to ensure that he didn’t tumble in through the windscreen frame. However, she was unable to persuade Patsy to make herself scarce. The American girl stayed where she was. Somehow, in these heart-stopping minutes, she and Daniel had become comrades of the war-torn night.

  Sammy ran back to his car, opened the boot and brought out a sledgehammer, something he had kept permanently there since the Blitz on London. He ran back with it. Tommy and Daniel together were heaving at the still unconscious driver, but the dead weight factor and the awkwardness of their position was hardly working in anyone’s favour. Sammy swu
ng the sledgehammer and smashed handle and lock of the driving door. The buckled door issued a metallic screech and burst open. Sammy dropped the hammer, put his head and shoulders into the car, and slid his hands around the driver’s ribs. He established a firm and strong hold. He hesitated fractionally, then decided however badly damaged the man was, he had to risk worsening his condition in case the heat of the burning gas caused the car to combust.

  ‘Right, got him, Daniel. Got him, Tommy. Let go and let me pull him out.’

  Daniel was grateful to let go. His arm and shoulder muscles were at their limit of exertion. Tommy let go and placed his trust in Sammy. Out came the limp body of the driver and another warden lifted the unconscious man clear. Right in over the driving seat went Sammy to take hold of the moaning woman. She was a dead weight too, but only half that of the man. The front of her scalp was seeping blood, staining her forehead. Hit the windscreen, he thought, just before it blew. He dragged her out.

  The police had arrived. The fire-engine followed. The gas from the burst main kept feeding the flames, and the heat kept the wardens necessarily distant. The police and the firemen, taking control, pushed everyone even farther back, the injured couple having been gently laid down on a policeman’s cape well out of danger, An ambulance was summoned from nearby King’s College Hospital to pick up the casualties.

  With no further help being required from the wardens, Sammy spoke to Daniel and Patsy.

  ‘Let’s get you two home,’ he said, ‘you’re both—’ A gusting roar shook the night, and blinding light sprang. ‘Holy cows!’ he hissed.

  The crashed car had blown up and turned into a flaming torch. The safety first precautions insisted on by the police paid off, for no-one was within dangerous distance of the act of explosive combustion, and that included several people who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere to gape at the towering tongues of burning gas. A police inspector was contacting the gas company about shutting off supply, and the firemen turned their hoses on the flaming car. Patsy, standing between Daniel and Sammy, regarded everything with wide-open eyes, little breaths escaping. Sammy said it was time to get her home, and while Tommy and the other wardens remained at the scene of the incident, helping to divert desultory traffic, he drove Daniel and Patsy to Danecroft Road.

  ‘Couldn’t get to that incident earlier,’ he said. ‘We were all at Herne Hill, twenty of us. Jerry chucked several bombs around Half Moon Lane, and made a hell of a mess. A message, relayed through our ARP post, took some of us off. Glad it did, otherwise the people in the car might not have been pulled out in time. You two could have gone up with it. Still, good on you both for having a go, and I’ll give you a mention if I ever meet King and Queenie. You could end up being promoted to Lady Patsy Kirk and the hon’rable Duke Daniel of Adams, and receive a fiver each into the bargain.’

  ‘Keep talking, Dad,’ said Daniel, seated in the back of the car with Patsy. Not many members of the Adams families ever lost their tongues, never mind the circumstances, and that included himself, he supposed. Well, at the age of twelve and during his last term at school before the war started, his science teacher had said, ‘Who’s that talking in class? Oh, gasbag Adams, I see.’ He grinned at the memory, then thought well, come to that, Patsy hadn’t left herself out of the species. She’d contributed any amount of chat in the clammy darkness of that old shelter. Some girls – and some fellers too – would have been struck with nervous silence.

  ‘Mind, I’m not sure either of you ought to have got yourselves that close to the incident,’ said Sammy. ‘Daniel, me lad, I nearly had kittens when I saw you and Patsy both shaking hands with that car.’

  ‘Oh, we thought we ought to say hello,’ said Patsy, now quite exhilarated by the fact that effort had triumphed over disaster. Both occupants of the car had been injured, but an experienced police sergeant had said quite confidently, ‘They’ll live, miss, they’ll live.’

  The All-Clear sounded as Sammy turned into Danecroft Road. He stopped outside the large house in which Patsy’s father had a rented flat. Patsy and Daniel alighted, and Patsy said goodnight to his dad.

  ‘So long now, Patsy, take care and sleep tight,’ said Sammy, giving her a smile.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Adams, you’re great,’ said Patsy.

  ‘If your dad’s doing his wireless talks on Sunday afternoon, come to tea with us,’ said Sammy.

  ‘Mr Adams, I’d like that, I really would,’ said Patsy.

  I’ll get some fat shrimps, thought Sammy. Have to touch black market suppliers. Won’t tell Susie, she sort of starts walking backwards whenever I mention black market. She’s got these Christian principles. So have I, only mine stretch a bit now and again. This time it’ll be with the help of John the Baptist, who happens to be a fishy Billingsgate acquaintance of mine.

  He waited while Daniel saw Patsy to the front door of the house. In the darkness, Daniel caught the whisk of her skirt. Miraculously, her little purse appeared, and out of it a key. Daniel smiled. She opened the door.

  ‘OK now, Patsy?’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine, Daniel,’ she said. ‘Well, I am now. Call me tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll get you on the blower when I’m home from work,’ said Daniel. ‘Patsy, I liked having you with me this evening. Proud of you, in fact. Listen, what time will your Pa be home tonight? D’you know?’

  ‘About three in the morning,’ said Patsy. ‘Over here, we’re five or six hours ahead of New England, but I’ll be OK, you bet. There are tenants above and below me, and I know them all. ’Night, Daniel, it’s been an experience I don’t think I’ll ever forget.’

  He gave her a kiss. She gave him one. They parted, and he went home in the car with his dad. The family had just come back into the house from the shelter.

  What happened next, of course, was that Chinese Lady made a large pot of steaming hot tea.

  That night, Daniel slept well after lying awake for a while. It was Sammy who couldn’t get off. He kept thinking of Daniel and Patsy at that car, lit up by huge flames of burning gas from the other side of the road. If the car had been leaking petrol, it could have blown up and torched them. His repetitive reflections, running about in his head, eventually made him think of the war and how long it had been going on. Nearly five years. Ruddy carbolic, five years. People in their twenties when it started were growing old while it was still going on. They’ll have wrinkles by the time it’s over. I’ll get rheumatism and an old man’s trouble with me waterworks. And on wartime rations, Susie and Lizzy’ll get so skinny they’ll fall through their corsets. The day Susie does that’ll be the day I’ll take to me bed for good. Well, that’s if me business can do without me. Business. I seriously ask myself, are Tommy and me going to spend ten more years turning out uniforms and Army knickers, female issue, while Hitler and Japan keep slogging it out with the Allies? I won’t say such business is unprofitable. There’s handsome bonuses coming regularly to Gertie and her girls at the factory, and mouthwatering fees for the directors, including Boots, which’ll help him keep Polly living in the kind of style that suits her, she being upper class, but where’s the challenge like there used to be in promoting each year’s fancy female fashions? And if Hitler’s starting another Blitz on old London, Susie and me’ll have to think about sending Paula and Phoebe to live in the country with Bess and Jimmy. If those two little treasures left, I’d get chronic depression, which means gloomy headaches, which I can do without.

  He turned in the bed. Beside him, Susie breathed evenly in sound sleep. He thought about their flattened house, and the fact that Susie favoured building a new one on the site. She liked the position, and she liked the idea of eventually having the now overgrown garden put to rights. Susie liked the familiar, she still liked talking about her times in the old house in Walworth, which her family had taken over from his family in 1921, twenty-three years ago. Twenty-three? Stone the crows, that many? And every one of them related to what they had shared, before and after she became his wife. That ha
d been the best move of his life, getting her to the altar of St John’s Church, and getting her to say, ‘I do.’

  Love, honour and obey, that’s what she’d promised. It hadn’t worked, not the obedience bit. More like the other way round. By rights, the marriage trousers belonged to him, but when he’d mentioned to Boots that he couldn’t get them off Susie, Boots said well, let’s face it, Sammy, they fit Susie better. Typical. He mused. He dropped off. He slept. It was gone three in the morning.

  * * *

  In his headquarters buried deep in a forest in East Prussia, from which he was directing the war against Russia, Hitler was still up. He was keeping his clique of yes-men up with him. He was a compulsive night owl, and rarely rose before midday. At the moment he was ranting about the incompetence of German generals who had failed to smash Russian offensives and obliterate the subhuman hordes of Stalin. Hitler, regarding himself and his directives as infallible, was now given to literally foaming at the mouth when indulging in fits of hysterical rage. Spittle ejected as he cursed the idiots who misunderstood his orders, and the traitors who chose not to obey them. No-one among the yes-men pointed out that it was strict obedience to his orders that caused most of the setbacks.

  A signal arrived from Goering to inform the Fuehrer that the Luftwaffe was bombing London. Hitler ranted about London, Churchill and the incompetence of Goering, who had promised as long ago as 1940 to bring Britain and its warmongering Prime Minister crawling to Berlin.

  ‘Ah, promises, mein Fuehrer,’ said a yes-man, ‘and the raid itself is quite unnecessary under the circumstances.’

  ‘Himmler, take that man’s name!’ raved the Fuehrer.

  ‘But, mein Fuehrer—’

  ‘Wait, yes.’ Hitler calmed down. His blue eyes, thought magnetic by some people and cold by others, showed a glint. ‘My scientists. Am I able to put my trust in them, or will they prove as incompetent as some of my generals?’

  A rambling monologue developed, and his clique of yes-men listened like men who were collective in their faith, with not a sign that most hated each other.