My father was already emerging and we hurried down into the shelter. The raid itself lasted about an hour and we waited for the All Clear, but the sirens kept wailing. The next bombing wave hit a little after eight o’clock and we could hear the ack-ack sound of the anti-anticraft guns firing a mile away in Brockwell Park. It felt as if the ground was reverberating beneath our feet. The baby screamed itself into an exhausted sleep in its mother’s arms. I wondered why she was still in London with her children. Although not evacuated in the first wave of September 1939, she could have been with the second wave of evacuations in the summer of 1940. But Leatherhead, which was still taking such evacuees, was hardly proving to be a place of greater safety, I thought, having heard from Mrs Grice that an estimated twenty high explosive bombs had fallen around the Ashtead–Leatherhead border on 27th August, even before our return, killing one person and damaging several houses. More bombs had landed three days later in Ashtead, killing five people.
I smiled reassuringly at the older children, a boy of about eight and a girl of about five. ‘It won’t be long now,’ I said, ‘these sort of raids never last long.’
I could not have been more wrong. Later I was to read that an estimated eight hundred to a thousand German aircraft arrived over the southeast that afternoon and night and, despite the RAF and RCAF fighters, the enemy planes kept on coming. I also learned that the bombs first started falling as near as Woolwich, Millwall, Rotherhithe and Surrey Docks, this last little over five miles away, then the bombing moved to the north side of the river, devastating the East End. It felt much nearer.
After a couple of hours or so the children started to whinge that they needed the toilet. ‘Use the bucket,’ their mother ordered, and the dank, stale smell of the shelter was overlayed with the sweet, acrid stench of urine. We fished out emergency rations and shared them out, and still the barrage continued.
By now the night was moving on and when in desperation I hared indoors for the toilet myself, I was astonished how light it was. I thought I must have misread the time and that it was early evening still with a distant sunset, but the glow was in the wrong direction. Perhaps dawn had arrived while we cowered in the ground. Realising that the orange glow of the sky was neither sunset nor sunrise, where’s the fire? I thought, a little panicky, but the houses around were all intact. I heard some neighbours in another garden, who had also become curious about the strangely lit sky, exclaiming about it.
And still the bombing continued. Although the centre of the action was clearly some miles away, no one could anticipate what would happen next or whether the tactics would change and that we would suddenly find high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs raining down on us. So we passed a virtually sleepless night in cramped, smelly, claustrophobic conditions. Around four o’clock in the morning the sounds of the bombing seemed to lessen, becoming a trickle and eventually stopping altogether. About an hour later the All Clear sounded. We emerged from our primitive cave and staggered back to the house. I vaguely wondered where the neighbour’s husband had been all this time, but most of me didn’t care, just to get to my bed was all that I wanted.
‘You’d better get yourself back to Leatherhead as soon as you can,’ said my father at our later than usual breakfast following a few hours’ snatched sleep. ‘We don’t know when they’ll be back and you need to be in your billet safe and sound before that happens.’ So lunchtime was spent travelling with a packed lunch balanced on my knee, a year and six days on from my first ever journey to Leatherhead station. This time I ate my lunch before I arrived.
The bombers were back that night. Becky and I, exhausted from the previous night’s London raids, retired to bed early, listening to distant droning and muffled, far away rumbles. Suddenly the air raid warning started up. For a few moments we remained in situ, too tired to move, but Mrs Grice was banging on our door calling,
‘Pat, Becky! We have to go to the shelter.’
We dragged ourselves out of bed, shoving feet into shoes, grabbing a bag each that we had put together just in case, and wrapping ourselves in dressing gowns and overcoats. Mr Grice while on leave during the summer holidays had finally built an Anderson shelter in the back garden. We descended the few steps hewn into the soil overlaid with runners of wood (need to watch out for these getting slippery in wet weather) and settled ourselves on the benches built into the inside of the corrugated iron shelter. Please God, not another whole night in one of these, I thought. On further reflection, but at least no screaming baby.
At first it seemed a false alarm as we sat dozing the hours away, then we heard the distant droning drawing nearer and explosions occurring only a few miles away. The newspaper a couple of days later told us that on the Sunday night attacks had been made on railway lines running south out of London.
‘Fat lot of good us being here,’ said Becky as we wheeled our bikes away from the newsagent in the town centre. ‘Don’t know why anyone thought Leatherhead might be safe.’
I mounted my bike and, as I set off, said to Becky over my shoulder, ‘Well at least they’re mostly coming over at night now and giving us a chance to get back safely from school.’
I was a bit of an expert at famous last words. As we passed the field entrance, at the southern end of Warenne Road, the roar of a high revving engine and the descending flight of a falling bomb assailed our ears. Instinctively we threw ourselves off our bikes onto the side of the road, covering our heads with our hands. Just beyond the gate the bomb detonated. My head seemed to implode with the pressure of the shockwave, my body bucking at the earth tremor and a shower of earth, stones and splinters of wood descended, pummelling my back and protective hands. My face felt fiery where it scraped the ground as I landed. I heard only a high-pitched ringing tone and the pain in my ears was beyond any I had ever experienced before. I lay stunned and unmoving, feeling my heart thudding in my rib cage and an unbearable tightness in my throat. I realised I was not breathing and felt a rising panic. Is this how I die?
As the screeching in my ears subsided a little, footsteps came running in my direction. A hand was laid on my shoulder and a male voice said urgently, ‘Are you alright?’ Which was probably the best thing he could have said, for the absurdity of the question made me half laugh and I drew breath and realised I had only been winded. Well, apart from my body feeling it’s just been ground into powder, my knees shrieking from taking the brunt of my fall, my face aflame, knitting needles forced in my ears and blood now seeping from the sharp flints that assailed me, I’M FINE! Of course, what you really mean is, ‘Are you dead?’
I stirred and sensed the man’s relief. I turned my head and looked for Becky. She was beginning to sit up at a lady’s prompting. A few more neighbours came running along the road, some to gawk, others more practical. Another lady appeared with a bowl of water and a ragged sheet off which she tore a square, dipped it in the water and started to wash away some of the mud and grit adorning my face.
I realised that my father’s instructions had probably saved my eardrums for, even in that extreme moment, I remembered his words, ‘and if a bomb goes off near you don’t put your fingers in your ears but instead open your mouth.’ As a navel cadet literally learning the ropes on the HMS Impregnable, a 121-gun sailing ship built in 1860 and rigged out as a training ship, he had had plenty of experience of loud bangs from the canonry on board.
Shock was setting in for Becky too. Blood ran down her neck from her ears. Shivering and shaking she was slowly helped to her feet and my ministering angel moved over to wipe off the worst of the field debris that had landed on her.
‘Where do you live?’ the man asked, and another lady answered for us, ‘They’re the girls with the Grices, about halfway down the road.’
Two of the neighbours retrieved our bicycles and our little procession made its way slowly along the road to be greeted by Mrs Grice hurrying down the road from the opposite direction wringing her hands and looking anxiously up and around, saying, ‘Oh my goodness, oh
my goodness, where did he come from? Are there any more to come? Why no warning?’ To our rescuers, ‘Thank you for bringing them back safe. I heard the bang at the shop and thought, our road’s been hit. You’d all better come in for a cup of tea, I suppose,’ but fortunately for Mrs Grice’s larder the householders all had more important things to do like sort out their shattered windows. Mrs Grice’s bungalow was just far enough away to have survived unscathed.
The news continued to mount of the night time raids mostly, but not exclusively, to the east side of London. We also read that Kingston, Malden and Surbiton, all London suburbs less than ten miles away, were badly hit.
The daytime battles in the air were still continuing with daily reports of downed planes, mostly German fighters. I worried about James and was anxious to get back to London the following Friday and see if he had written, but again, when I did, still no letter.
My father and I decided to resume our Sunday morning walks which had become somewhat disjointed recently, promising my mother that I would be back in time to head off to Leatherhead sooner than usual. We left early that morning, 15th September, around nine o’clock, thinking to beat the air raids, and walked to Dulwich Park. As we arrived waves of Spitfires and Hurricanes in formation flew overhead and shortly after, not only to the distant southeast, but all around and above us we heard the fighting and the bombing and the sounds of planes falling out of the sky, criss-cross patterns of vapour trails in their wake. Later that afternoon, having sped back to Leatherhead in what proved to be a lunchtime lull, there was a second wave of fighting and the skies of London and all over the south east were again filled with swooping, swerving, spiralling winged creatures that belched bullets, smoke and death.
The following Thursday I found a letter from my mother waiting for me when I got back from school. ‘Don’t come home this coming weekend, dear, it’s so dangerous. I have spent every night so far this week stuck in that dreadful shelter with that dreadful family. I’ve offered to spend the nights with your grandmother but she said she didn’t marry her Albert only to spend her nights cooped up with a load of other people. I am not a load of other people! I’m her daughter and they may be newlyweds but they’re not exactly spring chickens.’
I chuckled at this and Becky looked enquiringly at me from her homework.
‘My mother’s suffering over my grandmother’s marriage,’ I explained. I glanced back down. ‘Oh my goodness, we’re moving again!’
I read on, aloud, ‘I’ve managed to get accommodation for us back in Water Lane a few doors further from Effra Road from where we were before, it’s the next but one house up from the junction with St Matthews Road. It’s one of those three-storeyed houses and I’m afraid we’re on the top floor with two flights of stairs but at least we’re back in Brixton and I am sure we’ll get used to it. We’ll have a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen in the little front room and we will share the bathroom on the middle floor with the middle-aged couple living there. There’s an attic room above which you can use as a bedroom. An elderly couple live on the ground floor.’
That’s three flights of stairs for me, I thought.
I continued reading. ‘The family that was there have had their boy called up and they’re moving to relatives in Hampshire. I’ve told your father I can’t put up with being here any longer on my own at night and I’ve arranged to put in extra hours at the Beaver Club. I’ll stay overnight between shifts in the Club’s basement shelter, so I’ll be quite safe, don’t you worry. Your father can have his meal at the café on his way home. We’ll be moving on Sunday so while an extra pair of hands might have been useful we would have been sending you back early anyway because of the dreadful bombing. Mrs Grice gets money for a full week’s food so you shouldn’t starve.’
I looked back up at Becky. ‘She drives me mad!’
8
James
The glow of the early autumn days seemed to mock the infernos raging in the East End. My mood was more reflective of the wet and cloudy days later in the month and only Becky’s ready smile and optimistic outlook helped keep me from retreating into a permanent state of misery. I kept my regular letters to James – apart from recounting the night in the theatre and the bomb in the field – short and light. I didn’t want to seem so insensitive as to chat inanely about everyday school life nor be too serious about the wartime conditions. I heard nothing from him and anxiously scoured the In Memoriam board at the Club.
The mainly night time raids continued virtually unabated and I thought how terribly badly parts of London must be suffering to now be sending yet another wave of evacuees to bomb-ridden Leatherhead for their safety. Every evening we checked that the shelter’s buckets of sand and water were stood ready and that we had a bag of essentials ready to grab on hearing the siren.
On the last Saturday in September when I had quite despaired and was scolding myself for being so obstinate and not accepting that James had just been a pleasant summer’s interlude, I found a package in the R pigeonhole addressed to P. Roberts and my legs suddenly felt weak and my hand trembled slightly as I clutched the package tightly to my side. Escaping the conspiratorial eyebrow of the doorman, I fled into the Square and, despite the chilly day, sat outside on the edge of the fountain where James had kissed me for the first time a little over three months before. Hastily I tore the package open and out spilled several letters wrapped around with a larger sheet of paper. He’s dead and they’ve sent me back my letters, my mind shrieked. No, please God, no. Then I caught sight of his handwriting on the larger sheet.
Dear Pat
Thank you for your weekly letters which have been reaching me and so cheering me up, I really can’t tell you how much. Forgive my tardiness in writing. I have written back to every letter you’ve sent but have been rather worn out with all the flying and have not had the strength to even get them to the post until now. One day I was so tired I landed the plane and promptly fell asleep at the controls and had to be woken by the ground staff who thought I had been wounded and had conked out!
Here are all the letters I’ve written and if you read them in order I hope they make a decent narrative.
I hope you haven’t given up on your friend in the skies. Your weekly writings give me hope that you haven’t.
We are told the threat of invasion continues, though in a few more weeks the weather will make it impossible for an invasion to happen before next Spring. As Mr Hitler seems to want to keep us fellows in the RCAF and RAF fully occupied fighting off his raiders, I won’t be able to get into London on leave for a while yet. Also, I and a couple of my compatriots are about to be seconded elsewhere, in fact anywhere that the need for extra hands with Hurricanes arises, and I could find myself anywhere around the country in the next few weeks.
Chin up old girl, as my RAF colleagues say. Please keep writing to me, as you have been, of the things that keep civilisation going – art, books you are reading, of plays and musical performances – anything to help lift me from the everyday routine. I laughed out loud at the funny side of your story of your night at the theatre and I hope you don’t mind that I read it to some of my buddies.
I hope this finds you well and looking forward to seeing you again one day.
Yours
James.
By the end the page was a blur and I blinked back the tears to save my mascara and to save face, as it was just not the done thing to show such emotion in public.
He’s alive, he’s just tired, he hasn’t forgotten me! I wanted to dance around the fountain and yell and scream with happiness. Of course, I did none of those things and instead took myself off to my favourite seat in the Corner House and caught up with the missing weeks there. While my father and I had been about to flee from Dulwich Park two Sunday mornings previously, James had been taking off at Croydon to rendezvous at 20,000 feet, but as we climbed we saw what I estimated were about a hundred enemy planes in our sector: Heinkels, ME 109s and No 110s, so we got behind them and lined ourselv
es up in a semi-circle with the sun on our backs and, extraordinarily, the Heinkels broke away and engaged us – right into the sun. It was their mistake. We gave them everything we had.
My blood ran cold as I read in another letter that he had been downed by rounds from an ME 109 which took me out, but I managed to crash land at a nearby aerodrome and the erks, as the British so quaintly call the ground staff, had my airplane repaired so quickly I didn’t even have time to hear back about leave I’d applied for while she was being mended. I thought I might sneak a few days to see you while she was out but no such luck. Within a couple of days she was back in the air.
As I re-folded the last of his letters I thought what an amazing narrative they made and how vividly immediate they were, just the sort of stuff he could turn into an autobiography on his retirement from the airforce or, using my second favourite subject, English, I could write up as a biographical novel about him one day. I would keep them forever.
Four weeks later his letter said simply, I will at last have a week’s leave, from 1st November. I can fly down to Croydon and get a billet sorted, then I’ll be free to meet up with you on the 2nd. Can you come back from Leatherhead for that weekend? I suggest we make the most of it especially with the darker evenings and the blackout, perhaps meet at around eleven in the morning at the Beaver Club? Please write back and say you can. The Club will know where in the country I am. I’m so very much looking forward to seeing you again.
I was up early on the morning of the 2nd November. My mother was working that day and I wanted to catch her before she left, having decided that the benefit of telling her about my plans outweighed the danger of her not knowing them and spotting me and James together later in the day. I casually dropped into the conversation, ‘I’ve heard from the airman who was kind to me in the summer after Peggy died and took me to the midsummer dance. He’ll be on leave this weekend and has asked me to provide him with a further guided tour of London.’
The Keeping of Secrets Page 14
