The Evacuee War

by Katie King

  Ted had decorated the shelter’s internal walls with some yellow paint, and there were two Tilley storm lanterns hanging from hooks in the roof that Peggy could light (there was a box of matches on a small shelf at the far end, placed beside a metal box with ‘First Aid’ scrawled on its lid). There was plank trestle seating about eighteen inches off the ground the whole length of each side so there was seating, or even a bed if one didn’t mind it being very narrow and not having a mattress to lie upon.

  It all felt very cramped to Peggy, and the shelter certainly wasn’t tall enough for her to stand upright in. Even the twins were hardly able to do this.

  Peggy couldn’t prevent an involuntary shudder when she turned on her torch and then pulled the wooden door shut for a minute to see what it would be like if they all had to use the shelter later, and she felt a bubble of claustrophobia course through her.

  But if it were a choice between protection inside the shelter and possible death or maiming outside of it, then Peggy knew what she would choose; she owed it to Holly to look after herself as best she could.

  While it would be a tight fit for herself and the twins, and Barbara and Ted to huddle up together inside the shelter, they could manage, Peggy knew, and she suspected she would feel most comfortable having other people sharing the space with her, even if was a bit of a squeeze.

  Goodness knows though how some large families were faring if this was all they had to protect them; Peggy knew the shelters had been designed to take six adults – six! – but that simply didn’t seem possible to her.

  She knew tube stations were providing shelter for some once the last trains had run, with the underground platforms then being turned over to become makeshift sleeping areas. But Peggy didn’t like the idea of nestling down to sleep with a load of strangers around her, as who knew how well behaved or how honourable these strangers would be, and she doubted the sanitary arrangements would be anything other than the most basic kind, probably just a bucket with a blanket slung up in front to give a semblance of decency. Perhaps it was just as well that in this part of London tube stations were non-existent.

  Dusting her hands off, Peggy headed back inside Barbara and Ted’s house, and switched on the wireless to listen to the news, leaving the twins in the shelter as they wanted to stay there for a bit.

  She realised that this was the first time since the onset of war that she had heard the daily evening broadcast from the BBC on her own. It felt quite strange, she decided, and she was grateful when Fishy jumped onto her lap for a stroke.

  A pensive Barbara returned home a while later, and she told Peggy that from the following week, she would be out on her volunteer stints three nights a week, and possibly more often if Jerry’s bombardments remained heavy.

  Ironically, in the light of the system not having worked when it came to Ted, Barbara’s nightly duties would include maintaining a record of the various hospitals the injured had been sent to (or, although this hardly bore thinking about, the temporary morgues), while she also would also have to establish exactly who it was that might have been injured if any private homes were hit and whether anyone might still be missing, as they could possibly be lying gravely injured somewhere buried in the rubble. Barbara would then attempt to make sure relatives were matched up with where their loved ones had been taken. She would also make a note of which emergency centres bombed-out families would be offered temporary beds in.

  ‘You’re going to be brilliant, Barbara,’ said Peggy as reassuringly as she could as she didn’t like to see Barbara looking so nervous at the thought of such responsibility. ‘You’re so organised and you know this area like the back of your hand, plus you know who all of your neighbours are. And your experience with having Ted mislaid this week has shown you how traumatic it is when good records aren’t kept and somebody can’t be accounted for. I know that if I were in trouble then I would really want someone like you looking after things, and keeping records, and telling me what had happened.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Peg. We were reminded tonight that we might be first on the scene and this means we could well see some mortal injuries, and that we should prepare ourselves for such an eventuality. I’m not good with blood and gore at the best of times, and I can’t bear the thought of somebody dying. What if it were a little baby that I found …?’ Barbara’s voice had become quiet, and then quivery with pent-up fear.

  ‘Barbara dear,’ Peggy began, deliberately sounding quite firm as she wanted to buck up her sister’s spirits, ‘you are simply wonderful in a crisis, I promise you, and the fact you are thinking about this as you are, is precisely why you are going to be such a boon to Bermondsey’s war effort. I know you may well see some frightful things and it’s possible you won’t be able to save or even help everybody you have to deal with, and I’m not in any way trying to make less of you being worried about this. But you will make a tremendous difference to many other people, an absolutely tremendous difference, do you hear me, and at one of the most difficult times of their lives, for which they will be eternally grateful. That is a privilege, you know, and something for you to embrace, safe in the knowledge that without you these affected folks would be having a much worse time. And it’s something you should feel very proud that you can do. I am in awe of you, Barbara – in awe, do you hear me? – and whatever life throws at you in the next months, I want you to know that I love you and nobody could have a better sister than you are, or be more perfect for this new volunteering role than you. And I know Connie and Jessie, and Ted too, feel just as strongly as I do about how wonderful you are.’

  Peggy leaned over, even though Fishy wasn’t happy about being a bit squished on her soft lap as she did so, and the two sisters spent quite some time with their arms wrapped around each other in a heartfelt hug as they each felt that tears were hovering very near.

  And then Jessie came in and said as if it was just an ordinary day like any other, ‘Is there anything to eat? We’re starving,’ and the sisters pulled apart.

  Sure enough, within an hour the air-raid siren droned out its message that Jerry was coming and everyone should race for shelter, and Peggy thought there was no sound quite like it.

  The hairs on her neck quite literally stood to attention; the sensation made her shiver with another rush of adrenaline and she was surprised to discover her tightened nipples pushing against the cotton of her underwear.

  She ran up the stairs to find Ted on the landing about to come down, and then grabbed first her coat and hat, followed by cushions and eiderdowns that she thrust at Ted, and finally a discombobulated Fishy, before she followed the others out to the shelter.

  It took a while for everyone to get inside, and so Peggy had time to pause and look upwards at the dramatic sight of the enormous tethered barrage balloons floating high above in the night sky as searchlights sent beams upwards around them to deter the bombers, accompanied by the alien sound of muffled retorts from what Peggy took to be British anti-aircraft weapons.

  ‘Oh …’ escaped her mouth as she stood mesmerised, and she shivered as Fishy tried to burrow deep inside her open coat in fear.

  ‘Peggy, do come on, else you’ll be the death of us!’

  Barbara’s anguished entreaty interrupted Peggy’s reverie, and with an effort she tore herself away and hurried down into the Anderson shelter, feeling very small and insignificant after seeing such a huge and panoramic sight stretching right across the heavens above the cityscape as far as her eyes had been able to see.

  The light from the one Tilley lamp they lit – Barbara saying they should save paraffin by just using the one – threw sinister shadows that turned them into a parody of dancing figures who shimmied up and down the walls as they settled themselves as comfortably as they could. Ted had the end space, and closed his eyes and seemed to fall instantly asleep while Fishy mewled to go out, but Peggy told her no.

  Peggy didn’t know what she should do once she had fussed about and had finally become still. It felt very strang
e, and she realised that what she hadn’t expected was quite how noisy the bombardment would sound from down in the shelter, even when the dropping bombs going off felt quite a way away.

  There were terrifying crashes and thumps, and Peggy experienced wave after wave of fear and excitement pulsing through her, and she got used to the way the blood rushing through constricted veins seemed to pound deep within her ears.

  Peggy could hear Barbara breathing quite heavily and so presumably her sister was experiencing many of the same physical sensations as she was. She looked at Jessie and Connie who, a bit to her surprise, looked exhilarated rather than afraid of all the commotion, and Peggy rather envied them. She realised that what was as bad as the noise of the destruction being caused by the falling bombs were the brief moments of respite, punctuated by shouts and awful cries made by people nearby, which gave free rein to the worst that her imagination could conjure up.

  The shelter became warm very quickly, and then oppressively hot, with not quite enough air, but Barbara wouldn’t let Peggy crank the door open even an inch.

  As Fishy’s cries faded to a whimper and then nothing, and the cat slithered under a bench to hide behind Ted’s legs where she crouched in fear with eyes so terrified they’d become opaque and opal-like, Peggy and Barbara agreed that the pungent and earthy smell of being inside the shelter would be remembered by them both long after the war’s end.

  ‘It pongs,’ said Connie, and Peggy thought that was exactly the right word.

  There was one very loud blast that seemed to vibrate through and then upwards within the shelter, and Peggy fancied she could clearly hear the corresponding crack of shattering glass, and then some horrifying smashes as if nearby roof trusses and brick chimneys were cascading to the ground, followed by the deafening snaps of what might be roof tiles smashing to the earth in smithereens.

  Whatever had been hit seemed terrifyingly close. Peggy was sure that Barbara’s saucer-like eyes, looking blacker than Peggy had ever seen, such were the size of her sister’s panicked dilated pupils, would be matched by her own reflecting equal horror at what was occurring outside.

  ‘I’ve made a will, Peggy,’ cried Barbara.

  ‘So have I,’ Peggy answered. She looked at the ground, and then she added in a wavery whisper, ‘I hope we don’t die tonight, Barbara.’

  And that second comment immediately felt such a daft thing for her to say – as of course nobody wanted to die that night, or the next, or the night after that either – that in desperation the sisters caught each other’s eye, and the madness with which they looked at each other ignited their tickle bones and then they began to, quite literally, howl with uncontrollable laughter.

  The twins stared on with wrinkled brows as if they were rather embarrassed by the behaviour of the older generation, and Ted let out a loud snore.

  ‘Stop it, Peggy, else I’ll be needing the lavvy,’ gasped Barbara.

  ‘Well, at least it’s nearby,’ said Peggy. ‘In fact, any closer and we’d be sitting on it.’

  At this the sisters rocked their bodies and screamed with such hysteria bordering between the happy and the panicked that their bellies began to hurt. The humour was contagious, and although quite sleepy now despite all the noise, it wasn’t long before the twins joined in the laughter too, even if they didn’t quite understand what all the merriment was about. Peggy thought she should probably say that she and Barbara didn’t know what was making them laugh either, but immediately there was another deafening bang that made the shelter feel as if it were shuddering with aftershocks of a bomb exploding for quite some time, and it killed stone dead the sounds of laughter of just a second earlier.

  And as the judder didn’t seem to abate, in abject terror the sisters then threw their arms around each other and the children, with Barbara having linked her arm through Ted’s, as they all buried their faces in each other’s trembling shoulders, fully expecting these to be their last moments on earth as Ted slept on.

  ‘I think I’d rather be at Tall Trees,’ said a muffled Jessie, and Connie nodded that she felt the same.

  Peggy knew what they meant; the only good thing she could think of was at least she wasn’t exposing Holly to this terrible danger.

  ‘I know,’ said Barbara. ‘This is horrible, and very frightening for all of us.’

  ‘Even Daddy?’ said Connie.

  Everyone looked at Ted, whose mouth was now slack as he slumbered.

  ‘Yes, Daddy too,’ Barbara insisted, ‘even while he is asleep. Being scared is nothing to be ashamed of, Jessie and Connie. You both, and Peggy too, will be back at Tall Trees soon, I promise.’

  ‘Really?’ Jessie sounded as if he wanted very much to believe his mother.

  ‘Yes, really,’ said Barbara in the sort of voice that allowed no argument.

  The bombardment seemed to go on for ever, but when the all-clear sounded they hadn’t been in the shelter even an hour, Barbara said, although Peggy felt it had lasted for what could well have been the whole night.

  Barbara tapped her wristwatch and nodded as she listened to her timepiece continue faithfully to mark time passing with its ticking, and said in that particular older-sister-being-smug manner that had always irritated Peggy, ‘No, not even an hour, Peggy. You are very wrong about that.’

  Peggy didn’t say anything back although that was more because she felt used up and weary now and not quite up to thinking of a smart retort, than because she agreed with her sister.

  As the sound of the all-clear faded, cautiously the twins opened the door to the shelter and peered outside as Peggy and Barbara began to fold up the bedding tidily, and then Barbara shook Ted awake.

  Once outside, it was a bit of a surprise for a stiff-legged Peggy to see that everything looked exactly as if it had done when they had gone down into the shelter, with no obvious damage that she could see. While they had definitely heard bombs striking homes, it seemed as if Jubilee Street had managed to come through the bombardment unscathed.

  Peggy squinted as she peered about to see if she had missed anything, and then she noticed various neighbours also hesitantly venturing from their shelters at the same time, staring around themselves with equally confused looks on their faces – exactly as Peggy suspected she was too.

  She chirruped for Fishy to come to her, but the cat stared accusingly back at her and flatly refused to move from beneath the bench.

  Finally Ted woke up, and said, ‘Is it all over? That was quick.’

  As people nearby called to each other to see if everyone was all right – and it seemed as if everyone in Jubilee Street was – a huge wave of exultation suddenly exploded right through Peggy’s body.

  They were alive! The mere fact of that felt wonderful – absolutely wonderful – to Peggy, and immensely precious in a way that quickly manifested itself into a powerful physical sensation the likes of which she had never experienced before.

  In fact Peggy almost wished she had a man at her side who she could passionately kiss at that very moment, so overwhelming was her desire to reinforce her sense of survival and just being there. In fact she couldn’t recall ever having felt so vital as right at this moment.

  The memory of James kissing her outside Milburn’s stable flashed into her mind, as that moment had aroused sensations slightly akin to what she was feeling now, and immediately Peggy experienced an answering wriggle of pleasure from a secret place somewhere deep within her.

  Peggy looked at Barbara, and Barbara glanced back at her with what seemed to be a similarly exultant look. Presumably others were likewise feeling a joy in simply being alive, as spontaneously several people had started to clap.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s not a surge in the birth rate round here nine months on from tonight,’ Peggy commented dryly. ‘Ted had better watch it.’

  ‘Peggy!’ cried Barbara, acting as if she were more than a little shocked.

  But Barbara couldn’t help then laughing once more, as what Peggy had said was
so obviously true.

  At breakfast the next morning, Ted had shaken off his headache of the night before and was much less dozy and more like his usual self, and he had been out early to see what the damage was locally. Doctor’s orders were that he wasn’t to return to working on the river ambulance until the following week, and although normally Ted hated sitting around, Barbara and Peggy had agreed it was good that he could spend a little time with the twins.

  Barbara had already left for her daytime job at the haberdashery, and the twins had just got up and were sitting blearily at the kitchen table with sleep-tousled hair, when Ted came back to announce that the Jolly had taken a hit, but in spite of that the landlord was still managing to provide pints of ale to thirsty rescue workers in the wee small hours.

  ‘I told ’im ’e were taking the “’ole in the wall” for serving drinks to those outside a bit too literal,’ said Ted, ‘for the ’ole of the pub’s porch ’ad been knocked off an’ most of the outside wall to the ladies bar ’as gone too. Oh, we did roar!’

  Peggy smiled, although it was only a little one as she hadn’t been able to get to sleep for ages once she had got into bed and she felt quite drunk with exhaustion. Her excitement of the previous evening was quickly fading to a dull-feeling memory.

  ‘Oh Peg, I almost forgot to say but you ’ave an appointment with Mr Ainsworth, a solicitor, at eleven o’clock this morning,’ said Ted. ‘’E’s also on the river ambulance team, an’ I saw ’im this morning on ’is way ’ome, an’ so I asked about solicitors, an’ ’e turned out to be one an’, best of all, one with experience in divorce law. ’E said you’d be best advised not to get your ’opes up as it’s still a man’s world endin’ a marriage. ’Is office is in Borough. Me and the twins’ll attend to the allotment while you ’ead over there.’

  Ah, yes, the solicitor. The other reason she had come to London. It was the last thing she felt like doing that morning as she was quite done in, but Peggy knew that she would be furious with herself if she didn’t go. She poured herself a second cup of tea from the pot and tried not to feel nervous at the prospect.