‘I wish it wouldn’t,’ Lily said. ‘It’s enough to give you the creeps all this talk of war and gasmasks and bombs and everything.’
‘It makes you wonder what’ll happen next,’ Pearl said, wiping her eyes.
‘My baby’ll happen next,’ Lily said, patting her belly.
But she was wrong.
That spring when the sky was pleasantly blue, the market stalls were yellow with daffodils and the gardens round the park were bold with the bloom of white and purple lilac and the long golden ringlets of laburnum, the newsreels were full of monochrome horror.
A little market town in Spain had been bombed by Franco’s German aeroplanes. It was called Guernica and the day Franco had chosen for its destruction was market day when its streets would be crowded with shoppers. The newsreels showed horrific shots of men and women terribly injured, children screaming, houses blown to pieces, and bombs falling like grotesque eggs from the belly of terrible planes. ‘Heinkels,’ the commentator said, ‘and Junkers.’ The names were as ugly as the aircraft. The attack started at half past four in the afternoon, and from then on the town was bombed and machine-gunned by wave after wave of aircraft flying in every twenty minutes until a quarter to eight. There was nothing to stop them and nowhere to hide. The carnage was dreadful.
This time Flossie came home from the cinema in a state of collapse and took to her bed for the next two days, prostrated with nerves, which Mrs Roderick said was hardly to be wondered at. ‘Showing such things,’ she said angrily, ‘in the middle of the afternoon when you’re not expecting it. It ought not to be allowed.’
But Peggy was profoundly moved by what she’d seen.
‘I feel I should be doing something about it,’ she wrote to Jim, ‘only I don’t know what.’
‘Cheer up,’ he wrote back. ‘We’re developing a plane that will be more than an answer to the Heinkels, if we can get enough of them built in time.’
He had meant it to be an encouraging letter but Peggy was cast down by it. What if we can’t get them built in time? she thought. And for several weeks her dreams were riven with the scream of falling bombs and the terror of children she couldn’t help.
But then Lily’s baby was born, a small skinny boy with a bald head and his father’s face. He was called Percy after his paternal grandfather and Lily declared him the prettiest baby alive, but Mrs Geary told Peggy privately that she thought he looked ‘like a skinned rabbit, poor little beggar. Though I dare say he’ll grow out of it in time. They usually do.’
Jim came home briefly for the christening and stayed at number two with his sisters, which he said was quite a treat even if young Percy did spend rather a lot of the night crying to be fed. ‘But I dare say he’ll grow out of it,’ he said to Peggy.
There were rather a lot of things for this baby to grow out of, and his skin wasn’t one of them. He remained thin and fretful for the first six months of his life, putting on weight very slowly and to the continual concern of his mother and father. But at last he was strong enough to sit up in a high chair and take mouthfuls of lightly boiled egg or a spoonful of custard. And that was such a relief to Lily that she grew quite lightheaded.
‘Now he’s sitting up he’ll be a different child,’ she promised. ‘We shall have him dancing at the ding-dong in no time.’
That December the New Year ding-dong was held in the Earl Grey, because Mr Allnutt had had the flu and his wife said he was to give himself a chance to recover instead of rushing about organizing a party.
‘No one’ll mind,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’
And nobody did. Although the party had quite a different flavour. They wore paper hats and sang the old songs but their hearts weren’t in it. Perhaps it was because it had been such a difficult year with the threat of war so close and so many people in the street involved in war-work in one way or another.
Mrs Roderick said she’d be jolly glad to see the back of it. ‘1937,’ she said. ‘What with one thing and another, it’s been a perfectly dreadful year. Almost as bad as ‘36.’
‘Has it?’ Baby said, examining her red nail-varnish. ‘I thought it was all right. Not exactly thrilling but all right. You had a coronation.’
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Roderick agreed heavily. ‘We had the coronation but think what we had to endure beforehand, with the Prince of Wales such a disappointment to us.’
‘Oh that,’ Baby said, dismissively.
‘Yes, that,’ Mrs Roderick told her. ‘It isn’t even two years since poor old King George passed away, and if you ask me it’s just as well he did when you consider what’s been going on ever since. The poor man must be turning in his grave. Turning in his grave.’
‘Yes well… ‘ Baby said, trying to get away.
But Mrs Roderick was determined to give vent to her grievance. She held on to Baby’s skirt and continued with her lecture. ‘To get himself mixed up with an American was bad enough,’ she said, ‘but a married woman, like that Mrs Simpson. Well really! And she’s so ugly. You could understand it if she was a beauty. Fancy giving up the throne of England for a woman like that. I can’t imagine what he sees in her. She looks as though she’s been run over by a bus.’
‘Yes, well… ‘ Baby said again, sending frantic glances to her mother to be rescued.
‘And now there’s his poor brother got to be king and I’m sure I don’t know how he’ll make out stuttering the way he does, poor man. I think it’s a scandal.’
‘Yes,’ Baby decided to agree. ‘It is. Shall I get you another drink, Mrs Roderick? That glass looks jolly empty.’
Over by the piano Uncle Gideon was talking about the Spanish Civil War to Mr Allnutt and Mr Cooper.
‘A bad business,’ Mr Allnutt was saying, sympathizing with the Spanish government. ‘They won’t be able to hold out against Franco much longer, not with Hitler sending him planes and guns. We could’ve stopped that, surely to goodness.’
It’s a rehearsal,’ Mr Cooper said. ‘That’s what it is. They’re testing all those planes. Trying ’em out for the real thing when they invade Hungary or Austria or poor old Czechoslovakia.’
How boring they all are, Baby thought. I wish Jim was here. And she remembered again how jolly good-looking he was in his uniform and wondered whether he’d got himself a girl out on his RAF base. She didn’t actually fancy him herself because he was more like a big brother really, but he was useful to flirt with and she didn’t want someone else to have him.
Flossie was grumbling to old Mrs Allnutt that it was perfectly dreadful the way the government was going on. ‘Making gasmasks,’ she grumbled, ‘building aeroplanes. You’d think they want a war. Why don’t they go over and talk to that Hitler, that’s what I want to know? Talk to him and make him stop all these awful things he’s doing. That’s what they ought to do. He’s only a silly little man when all’s said and done.’
Peggy was sitting by herself in a corner alone with her thoughts. We are all drifting, she thought, drifting nearer and nearer to a war we don’t want and we can’t avoid. It was futile and terrible and inevitable and it made her want to cry. Whatever 1938 had to offer, she was sure it would be difficult and painful.
CHAPTER 21
‘Aye. It’s serious,’ Mr MacFarlane said. ‘There’s no way oot of that.’
The morning’s copy of the Daily Herald lay on the counter before him. ‘Czechoslovakia crisis,’ it said. ‘Chamberlain flies to Germany. Hitler speaks.’
‘That’s all we ever hear,’ Megan complained. ‘Hitler speaks. Hitler speaks tomorrow. Hitler speaks Wednesday. Speech by Hitler. And where is this Sizzek place anyway? I can’t see why it’s so important.’
‘It’s important, lassie, because we might have to go to war to protect it.’
‘Well that’s daft if you ask me,’ Megan said. ‘What’s it got to do with us?’
‘Do you think we will, Mr MacFarlane?’ another girl asked. ‘Go to war I mean.’ There was no larking about this morning. The news was far too grave fo
r that.
‘I dearrly hope not,’ Mr MacFarlane said. ‘Perhaps Mr Chamberlain will make them see a wee bit sense.’
‘Until all this started I’d never even heard of the place,’ Megan said. ‘It can’t be that important.’
‘It’s half past eight, Mr MacFarlane,’ Peggy pointed out. ‘Madame Aimee’ll be down any minute. Did we ought to open the doors?’ The conversation was upsetting her because she knew in her bones that this crisis was horribly important. It was the only one that had stayed on the front page of the newspapers day after day, and it had been going on all through the summer.
‘Oh aye,’ Mr MacFarlane agreed, looking round nervously for his wife. ‘Chop chop, girrls. And currrtesy and efficiency remember.’
It had been a glorious summer. Even now, in the middle of September and with the autumn approaching, the days were warm and easy. And yet London was a city preparing to be bombed. Every day brought changes and all of them alarming. Long ugly slit trenches were being dug in all the public parks, and brick sheds labelled ‘Air Raid Shelter’ were being erected on several street corners, while important buildings like banks had already been barricaded behind mounds of sandbags. And last week they’d all been issued with gasmasks, which looked and smelt quite terrifying and were the clearest and most unavoidable sign that the authorities thought that war was inevitable.
‘It is coming, ain’t it?’ Peggy said to Mr MacFarlane as Megan sped to open the doors.
‘Aye. I fear so, lassie. If our Prime Minister cannae prevail.’
‘It makes me feel helpless,’ Peggy said. ‘I wish there was something I could do.’
He looked at her thoughtfully, stroking his moustache with his forefinger. ‘Do you?’ he said.
‘Yes. I do.’
‘Even if it were dangerous?’
She thought about that for a while, then she said ‘Yes’ again.
‘You could join the ARP if you’d a mind,’ he said.
‘Would they have me?’ Peggy asked. She’d heard of the ARP, the organization to provide Air Raid Precautions. Who hadn’t in those jittery times? But it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be eligible to join them. Join the ARP. Now that was a good idea. And just the right sort of thing for a soldier’s daughter, born in the Tower.
‘I could introduce you,’ Mr MacFarlane offered, ‘if you’d a mind. I’ve – ah – been a part-time warden, d’ye see, for quite a wee while now.’
It was a characteristically modest understatement. He’d been a member of the ARP for over eighteen months, as Peggy found out when she met him that evening at the Wardens’ Post on the corner of Billingsgate Street. And on his recommendation she was received with open arms and a cup of strong tea.
The post was actually somebody’s front room and there were eight people already crowded into it, five men and three women. They all told her their names but she was so nervous she forgot them as soon as they were spoken, except for a small dark-haired woman who was called Joan, which was easy to remember, and the Chief Warden who was called Charlie Goodall. She was given a tin hat with W painted on the front, a whistle, a form to fill in, and an ARP respirator which was a lot bulkier than the one she had at home but smelt just the same. Then her name was added to a duty list.
‘If it came to it,’ the Chief Warden told her, ‘we’d want you on duty for two evenings a week for about three hours. I’ll take you on a tour of the local shelters after the talk. Show you the ropes. We have talks most weeks, various topics, a’ course, black out, blast, gas, that sort a’ thing.’ He was very casual about it all, as if they were preparing for a Boy Scout outing. But that reassured her.
‘Tonight’s gas,’ the woman called Joan told her as they drank their tea. ‘You come with Mr MacFarlane, didn’t you?’
‘Our Mr MacFarlane’s a tower of strength,’ the Chief Warden said. ‘Speaking of which, there’s a demonstration of one of them new barrage balloons tomorrow afternoon. Anyone free to go?’
Nobody answered although he looked at them all one after another.
‘Well I could,’ Peggy volunteered, ‘if you like. Seeing it’s early closing.’
‘Capital,’ the Chief Warden said. ‘Right. That’s settled then.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Oh just watch it. See what they’re like. See what you think of ’em. That sort of thing. They’ve asked us to send someone along. It’s a courtesy really.’
There was a rustle of interest near the door, a newcomer arriving.
‘Our speaker,’ the Chief Warden said and set off to welcome him.
Peggy followed him. ‘Um – excuse me,’ she said politely. ‘You ain’t told me where it is.’
‘No more I have,’ the Chief Warden laughed. ‘That’s me all over. Two o’clock at the Tower.’
‘The Tower of London?’
‘That’s the place. D’you know how to get there?’
The Tower, Peggy thought, and her heart expanded with affection at the memory of it. The dear old Tower. ‘Oh yes. I know how to get there.’
The pleasure of it sustained her through the first five minutes of the talk, while the speaker, who was a mild-mannered man with a slight lisp, embarked upon a list of the ‘known gases used in warfare’. But when he got to phosgene and was describing its effects, the horror of what he was saying pulled her into the present with a jolt. How on earth were you supposed to cope with someone when he was frothing up his lungs? Or choking to death before your eyes? And what if it was a child?
The obscenity of it clogged her mind long after the talk was done and the chit-chat was over. It was still upsetting her as she walked home through the quiet streets from one peaceful lamp to the next, past the cheerful racket of the pubs, the shuttered shops, noticing for the first time how many drawn blinds there were, and thinking of the children sleeping peacefully behind them.
I wish Jim was home, she thought, as she turned the corner into Paradise Row. He was the one person who would understand what she was feeling.
And there he was, striding down the street towards her, clear in the light from the streetlamp on the corner, as if she’d conjured him up by wishing for him. He looked more handsome than she’d ever seen him, with his tunic unbuttoned and his tie loosened and those long legs striding in such a strong steady rhythm that the cloth of his trousers seemed to ripple as he walked. He was so at home in his uniform now, with that funny little cap set at a jaunty angle on his dark hair and his buttons gleaming as they caught the light. And he was smiling at her as they approached one another, such a warm, loving smile that it made her yearn to run and throw her arms round his neck and greet him with a kiss.
She didn’t do any such thing, of course. She was far too sensible for that.
‘Hello,’ she said, standing still as he walked the last few steps towards her. ‘I didn’t know you’d got leave.’
‘Ten days,’ he told her. ‘It’s been brought forward. I’ve been accepted on a new course. For engine fitter.’ It was obviously very important to him. He was glowing with the pride of it.
‘That’s good,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It is rather. It’s the engine for the new fighter planes I was telling you about. The Spitfires.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, trying to remember what he’d told her.
He grinned at her. ‘What’s the news?’
Now it was her turn to feel proud. ‘Nothing much,’ she said. ‘I’ve joined the ARP.’
Naturally, he thought. She would. ‘Good for you,’ he said, nodding at her. ‘Is that where you’ve been tonight?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’ve been learning us about different gases and how to recognize them by their smell. Lewisite smells of geraniums, so they say.’ Telling him like this, calmly and out in the open air, lessened the evil of it a little.
But then Baby came squealing down the street to join them. ‘Well hello!’ she said to Jim. ‘Fancy seeing you! I didn’t think you’d be back for age
s yet. Here, d’you know what the blighters have gone and done now? They given us all gasmasks! I ask you!’
‘She won’t wear hers,’ Peggy said. Let him know what a fool she was being.
‘I can’t wear it,’ Baby said. ‘It suffocates me. I can’t breathe in it. It wrecks my hair and it makes my mascara run and you can’t see anything out of that silly eyepiece. It’s perfectly horrid.’
‘I should write and tell Hitler if I were you,’ Jim advised. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t want to make your mascara run.’
Lily was standing on her doorstep with Percy in her arms urging the little boy to wave to his uncle. He was sixteen months old now and beginning to look quite sturdy. ‘Ain’t you the lucky boy? Look who’s come to see you.’
So they all went their several ways.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Jim called as he strode into number two.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Baby said. ‘You’re back jolly late.’ It wasn’t like Peggy to be gadding about at night. Usually she only went to the pictures with Megan and came straight home afterwards in her dull old way. Baby had been dancing at the local palais, and she still smelt strongly of sweat and Evening in Paris.
‘Tell you when we’re in,’ Peggy said. It would be better to tell Mum and Baby at one and the same time just in case they got shirty. You never knew with either of them these days.
Fortunately Mrs Geary was still downstairs in the kitchen. The two women had been listening to ‘Band Wagon’ on Flossie’s new radio.
‘You done what?’ Mum said, frowning with displeasure. ‘What d’you want to go an’ do a thing like that for?’
‘Good fer you, gel,’ Mrs Geary said, decidedly. ‘You got my vote.’
‘The ARP!’ Flossie complained. ‘You’ll be out all hours, I hope you realize.’
‘That’s right,’ Peggy said, agreeing with her, because that was one way to placate her and avoid an attack of nerves. Since that awful screaming fit she’d treated her mother’s nerves with great caution. ‘I shall be out tomorrow afternoon for a start.’
London Pride Page 29
