by Beezy Marsh
He caught the look in Mum’s eye and thought better of continuing, muttering, ‘All right, all right, it’ll be fine. We’ll make room.’ He grabbed his coat and made for the front door before Mum could flick a tea towel in his general direction. ‘I s’pose I’d better go and see if I can find another chair or two down at the totter’s in South Acton.’
‘Well,’ said Elsie, giving the baby a quick hug as Bill set off, ‘when the siren went, I grabbed my lippie and my best blouse, and three guesses what Ivy ran back into the house for?’
‘I’m up here!’ came a voice from the landing. ‘I can hear you, Elsie, you cheeky minx.’
‘Yes,’ said Elsie, waving her arms melodramatically. ‘The dress!’
Annie called up to her sister: ‘Do you need it pinning again?’
‘The waist’s gone all baggy,’ Ivy wailed. ‘Oh Gawd, Annie, I look a sight. No man’s going to want to marry me looking like this.’
Mum and Annie exchanged glances before Annie said, ‘I’ll be up in a minute, then, just let me sort the baby out.’
She was climbing the stairs to help her sister with her wedding dress when Harry burst through the front door, still wearing his black tin hat with ARP on it. He pulled her into an embrace. ‘Oh, Annie! All I could think about was you and the baby staying safe. I couldn’t bear to lose you.’
‘We’re fine,’ said Annie, gazing into his grey eyes, which melted her heart. ‘We’ll get used to this. We can’t let them beat us.’
Annie knew then, beyond any doubt, that the battle for Britain’s future, for all their lives, would be waged on their doorsteps.
6
Annie
Acton, October 1940
The bombing went on, night after night.
The incessant wail of the air-raid siren in the early hours of the morning became as much a part of everyone’s daily routine as the pips marking the top of the hour on the BBC Home Service.
Daylight raids were rare because of the ack-acks and spitfires but the bombers flew in under the cloak of darkness with alarming regularity, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
The East End had been flattened in the first attacks, with huge damage to the docks and factories on both sides of the Thames. Annie got used to seeing small gaggles of survivors, with all their worldly goods in bundles, at bus and tram stops in the town as they headed further west, to get out of London, to the safety of the countryside. Others queued patiently outside the town hall, waiting to hear if they could be rehoused.
But German bombers were having a field day in Acton too. Horn Lane, which lay less than half a mile away, had been hit three times in as many weeks and the last bomb demolished an entire house, leaving a hole the size of a trolley bus on the corner of Acacia Road.
Annie couldn’t imagine ever getting used to what was happening to the area she loved so much.
She’d be wheeling her pram through streets she’d known for years, only to round a corner and find a bombed-out home standing there, like a doll’s house with the front blown off and all the furniture smashed to smithereens. Clothes, photographs, children’s toys – all the little treasures that people liked to keep, to make their mark in this life – were strewn in every direction. People helped, of course, to go through the wreckage, to salvage any belongings from the Blitz, offering comfort to those who were lucky enough to have survived.
After one nightly raid, when Annie was on her way down to Soapsud Island to see Bessie, she passed a bomb site and spotted a photographer from the local paper taking a picture. The fella who’d lived there was kneeling down beside some things he’d pulled from the wreckage: an old suitcase, a table and – miraculously – some china. His house lay in ruins behind him. ‘That’s right,’ said the photographer, ‘let’s show old Hitler we’re not beaten yet.’ The man smiled for the camera, giving a cheesy grin, as his life lay in tatters and the flashbulb went off.
The hostilities with Germany seemed to have led to an uneasy truce between Bessie and the lady downstairs over who had the rights to the copper in the scullery on washday, although there was always the possibility of a skirmish on the stairs.
Annie parked the pram outside and left the baby there to sleep, while a couple of girls in tatty pinafores played hopscotch nearby. Bessie’s front door was open, so she walked in, just as she always did, making her way up the creaky staircase. She rapped lightly on the door to Bessie’s kitchen and pushed it open. It was spotlessly clean, as ever, and smelled faintly of carbolic soap.
Bessie was sitting on her favourite chair at the kitchen table, her grey hair pulled up into a bun, with a heap of rags at her feet. Her eyes lit up when she saw Annie, but her fingers kept working, prodding strips of material through an old jute potato sack with a wooden clothes peg. ‘Oh, Annie, love! Nice to see you. How’ve you and the baby been keeping?’
‘We’re fine,’ said Annie, pulling up the only other chair in the room to sit beside Bessie. ‘I can’t say I’m getting much sleep but then, I suppose nobody is these days.’
‘Changes your life for the better, having a little one, though, don’t it?’ Bessie said, beaming at Annie. ‘Here, hand me another pile of those rags, will you? My lumbago is killing me from the washboards yesterday.’ Bessie was around the same age as Mum, but she still worked shifts at one of the local laundries down Bollo Lane. It was back-breaking work, for just a few pounds a week, but it was all she had ever known.
Annie handed her the strips of material and then stood up to pop the kettle on the stove in the corner. There was a scratching sound at the back door, which led, via a rickety wooden staircase, to the yard below. She opened it and a fat, ginger tomcat strutted in. He wandered over to a china saucer of milk by the fireplace and began to lap at it; he was all the family Bessie had, so even on rations, he wasn’t going to go hungry.
‘They say it’s going to be a bomber’s moon tonight,’ said Bessie, her brows knitting in concentration as she held up her rag rug to check it for evenness. ‘Seen much of Vera lately?’
‘No,’ said Annie. ‘She popped round to see the baby a few weeks ago but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since, because she’s joined the ARP, you know? Harry sees her from time to time. Says she’s actually quite a good worker.’
‘Mmm,’ said Bessie, fixing Annie with a gimlet eye. ‘I’ve heard she’s making the most of being an air-raid warden.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Annie, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.
‘Well, she’s been seen hanging around with that Herbie a lot lately and you know he’s a right little so-and-so.’
‘But Bessie,’ said Annie, stiffening, ‘at least she’s got a job and she’s doing something for the war effort. More than me, in fact. And she’s known Herbie since school, their families are friends from way back.’
‘Hasn’t stopped her taking liberties on account of her position, though, has it? And that’s before we get onto her flashing her knickers at anything and everything in uniform,’ said Bessie, putting down her rug, smoothing her pinny and walking to the stove, where the kettle had sprung to life and was whistling its head off.
‘I don’t know anything about that, so I wouldn’t want to gossip . . .’ said Annie.
‘Well, neither would I!’ said Bessie huffily. ‘But I know she’s been seen handing packets of tea to that Herbie and the other day, someone swore blind they saw her pulling some rashers of bacon out of her drawers, like some kind of bleeding hoister!’
‘But—’ Annie began.
‘Everyone knows the ARP are getting extra rations down at their headquarters! Everything from milk and butter to tea and bacon and eggs, if you please! Everyone knows it, while the rest of us are scraping by on what we can get on the coupons. It don’t seem fair, Annie, because it ain’t, and Vera’s making money out of it. I’m not saying she ain’t doing her bit, with all the other ARP girls, but why should she be getting extra helpings?’ Bessie folded her arms across her ample bosom an
d glared at Annie.
‘I don’t think it’s fair to have a go at Vera about the extra rations at the ARP,’ Annie murmured. ‘I mean, Harry is getting extra too, you know, for working the nightshifts.’
Bessie coloured up. ‘Oh, I’m not having a go at Harry, goodness me, no! I couldn’t begrudge a working man like him, doing shifts at the factory and then volunteering on top of it all. He’s entitled to it. It’s just Vera being on the take that rankles. Besides, she’s getting a bit podgy around the middle, if you ask me.’
Annie looked at her friend, who was almost shaking with anger as she spoke. She had no answers to give her. The silence was punctuated by the crying of Anita, who had woken in her pram outside and was exercising her lungs as best she could.
‘I’d better go,’ said Annie with a sigh, ‘or the woman downstairs’ll complain about the racket.’ She was secretly quite relieved to be going. ‘I’ll try to talk to Vera about it the next time I see her.’ Although God only knows how she was going to manage to broach this lot with her friend.
Annie paused for a moment, walking over to Bessie and giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t dwell on what is going on with Vera. I know you wouldn’t spread gossip about her, but I just think the less said, the better.’
Bessie tutted at her, shook her head and went back to her rag rug.
‘Suit yourself, Annie,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘But it ain’t gossip, because it’s all true.’
As night fell, Annie was only too happy to be down at Grove Road with her mum, sisters and Bill, huddled in the Anderson shelter in the back garden. It was not much more than six feet long and about four feet across, so everyone had to sit cheek by jowl in there. Mum had tried her best to make it comfortable, with an old camp bed covered with blankets and a couple of chairs with cushions on. But because it was made of corrugated iron, it was blooming chilly inside, even with earth piled on top of it, which is what the government had told everyone to do for extra protection.
Bill had hung a picture of the King on the wall, for patriotic reasons, and Mum had all their important papers – health insurance policies, birth certificates, the rent and the tallyman’s books – safely tucked inside, in an old tin box, in case the house took a direct hit. When the air-raid siren went, everyone would tip themselves out of bed, chuck on a dressing gown or jumpers and a coat, and shoes, and rush downstairs. Bill kept a paraffin lamp and matches by the back door and it was only a few steps to the bottom of the garden in any case, so it didn’t take long to get inside.
The baby was everyone’s priority. Mum had made her a little cot in the shelter, out of an old drawer, and the bedding was changed nightly to stop it getting damp. Inside the house, she slept with Annie, in Elsie’s bed, while Elsie and Ivy bunked up together, top to tail – which was the source of a lot of rows, but everyone tried to make the best of it.
In the dim glow of the paraffin lamp, with Anita wrapped snugly as the ground shook, it seemed to Annie that their whole world was shrinking. Jerry liked to drop a stick of bombs, in fours or sixes, so the explosions went off one after the other. They’d close their eyes and hold hands, praying, Dear God, please let it pass us by, as they waited for the all-clear to sound, but always with a horrible guilt that the bombs had landed on some other poor souls in Acton. Then, they’d push open the shelter door, shout hello to the neighbours over the garden fence, who were bumbling their way back into their own home – ‘That was a close one!’ – and go back to bed, to try to snatch some sleep until the siren went again.
When dawn broke and Annie opened the curtains, it was always with a sense of trepidation, to see what was left standing in the neighbourhood. Harry would usually bring news of what had happened, popping in for a quick kiss and a cuppa before heading back to their flat for a few hours’ kip before his factory shift. But as the days of bombings turned into weeks, he said less and less about what he’d seen during his nights on the air-raid wardens’ watch.
The worst thing was, one night, there was a direct hit in Soapsud Island, on Church Path, which flattened half the street. Everyone felt it happen; the foundations in Grove Road – less than half a mile away – shook with the impact. Eight houses went down, along with the corner shop. It was a dreadful blow to the community – unspeakable. Half a dozen lost their lives, including people her mum and Bessie had worked with in the laundries for years.
Harry barely said a word when he came around, ashen-faced, the next morning after his ARP shift, to check on her and the baby. She didn’t push him. It just felt wrong. Someone had to remove the dead bodies and search for the living, calling out, ‘Is anybody there?’ into the rubble, as volunteers frantically lifted bits of masonry aside. All too often, they were searching in vain or there was little they could do to save people, due to the force of the blast.
Even then, in its darkest hour, Soapsud Island showed it wasn’t beaten. When the funeral services were over, mourners went back to Church Path and draped Union Jacks over the ruins.
They stood together, arm in arm, heads bowed, and vowed never to give in to Nazi Germany.
‘Ivy, you are going to look pretty as a picture!’ said Mum, as Ivy teetered in her high heels and wedding dress on a chair in the bedroom, while Annie pinned the hem to get it just right.
‘Do you really think so?’ said Ivy. ‘I hope Charlie likes it.’
Annie gazed up at her younger sister for a moment. She was as pale as a ghost, with a cloud of dark hair framing her face, which used to be like Mum’s, but now seemed to have developed high cheekbones. Her dress was of cream satin and fell from her nipped-in waist, making it look impossibly tiny. Annie had worked hard to create the puffed sleeves and sweetheart neckline that Ivy wanted but if she lost any more weight, the bust would need taking in too.
Elsie was busy practising a few dance steps across the wooden floorboards in her knee-length dress, which had the same puff sleeves as her sister, but was in peach artificial silk. Annie had picked a couple of dress lengths of material up at Derry and Tom’s in Kensington High Street for next to nothing back in the summer when they’d had a sale on and there was just enough of the peach material left over for her to make herself a blouse. She was planning to wear it on the big day, along with her best woollen skirt and shoes, as matron of honour.
Charlie had volunteered and was away square-bashing in Kent with the army, so Ivy hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks, but she tended to pop down to his mum’s in Soapsud Island, because she wanted to get along with her mother-in-law and Charlie liked her being around there. They were planning to rent an upstairs flat nearby, in Steele Road. ‘It’s next door to the stonemason’s yard,’ Mum had confided in Annie, ‘which means the first thing Ivy’ll see every morning when she draws back the curtains is a bunch of headstones. That’s not very cheerful, is it?’
Elsie sashayed back and forth across the floorboards, swishing her dress about as she went. ‘Do you think you could make me a siren suit for the shelter, Annie, if you have time? We could use one of our old blankets and fashion it with arms and legs.’ She picked up a blanket from the foot of her bed. ‘The suits are quite stylish. Joan’s got one.’
‘Oh, I bet she has,’ said Mum, handing Annie some extra pins. She had little time for Elsie’s friend; for a start, she blamed her for luring her daughter out gallivanting all over the place with men in uniform.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Annie. ‘Perhaps I will get some time next week.’
In truth, she was barely sleeping and the last thing she felt like doing was taking on another sewing project, but at least if Elsie had a siren suit, she’d be more likely to be in the air-raid shelter at Grove Road, rather than going out dancing at all hours of the night.
The wedding was quite a small family affair on a brisk and sunny Saturday morning but the whole neighbourhood wanted to share in the excitement of it.
Mum had used up all the dried fruit she’d been hoarding for Christmas to make a
fruit cake, and Bessie chipped in with a bag of currants and some spare sugar. There was no question of icing it, so Mum did what most people had to do nowadays and created a cake-shaped cover in white cardboard to look like icing, with some flowers on the top.
Bill had borrowed one of the laundry delivery vans to take Ivy down to All Saints Church on Acton Green. While Ivy was getting dressed, Annie and Elsie spent ages fixing a length of white ribbon to the bonnet to make it pretty. The big surprise was that George had been allowed some home leave for the wedding, and as Ivy came out of the house and realized it was her big brother sitting there at the wheel of the van, grinning from ear to ear, she almost burst into tears.
‘Now, now,’ said Mum, dabbing at her daughter’s face with a hankie, ‘no tears yet or you’ll ruin your face for Charlie!’
‘Come on, Ivy,’ said George, ‘you don’t want to keep him waiting too long. Hop in!’ A crowd of kids had already gathered to peer at the blushing bride and housewives waved and shouted their good wishes to her as the van made its way down Grove Road. George planned to drive her up and down the High Street a few times to give the rest of the wedding party a chance to get to the church first.
Harry slipped his hand into Annie’s as they walked down Acton Lane in all their finery. He’d put on his best suit, of dark navy wool, and last night he’d spent ages polishing his shoes. Annie leaned into him as they fell into step together, pushing the baby in the pram as they went. It reminded her of her wedding day, just before the war broke out, when things were the way they’d always been and bombs didn’t rain down from the sky every night.
Mum’s sister, Aunt Clara, was waiting in the church with her friend Dora, who’d lived with her for as long as anyone could remember. They’d organized some of the washerwomen to help decorate the church and they’d done a beautiful job with the flowers which were tied to the end of each pew. Bessie was bustling about checking that everything was just as it should be, and she sat, with some ceremony, with Mum and the rest of the family, as a mark of her status in the proceedings.
