In those weeks, bombs dropped like the leaves of autumn. Edward Street was hit. The Lewes Road. The streets of Whitehawk.
Yet, after the nightly pounding of London, these attacks were afterthoughts only. Leftover bombs were surplus weight to be tipped by enemy pilots before the long journey home.
For those on the ground, week after week, sleep was fitful and the days were drowsy. Then, on a golden afternoon in mid-September, the Odeon Cinema took a hit in the broad light of day. The town staggered.
From every side of Brighton – north, south, east, west – people gathered on The Level to hear the reports. Tins rattled for donations. The muffin men called. A man with a sunburned face declaimed from the Book of Revelation. Gypsies read palms by the public loos. It was a morbid, confused carnival, and the tattered news of the day blew in like litter across the green.
A matinee. Dozens dead. Fifty dead. Hundreds dead. Many more injured. Children. Their parents. Gone. All before Saturday teatime.
The projectionist had been blinded by flying glass.
It had taken an eternity for anyone to find the lights.
The screams, they said, were heard as far as the seafront.
St George’s Road, Lavender Street, Essex Street, all along to Bedford Street – wrecked.
Philip and Orson were meandering through the crowd, marvelling at calamity, when Philip’s heart jumped.
‘Frank!’ He couldn’t help himself. ‘Frank! Frank, it’s me, Philip!’ He sprinted away, running after a tall, lanky figure in the crowd. Orson squinted after.
At the boating pond, Frank Dunn stopped at last, but his eyes couldn’t seem to focus.
‘Frank, it’s me, Philip.’
‘Phil?’ he said, blinking.
Should he say …? ‘You have blood on your jacket, Frank.’
‘Tubby’s mate?’
He nodded, braced for Frank’s anger because he’d left Tubby without a good friend in the world. But Frank didn’t look angry. He looked busy. He kept reaching for something in his pocket over and over again.
‘Are you bleeding, Frank?’ he tried again. ‘I thought you might be bleeding.’
Orson came up from behind, grinding a blackjack between his jaws. ‘Orson Stewart-Forbes,’ he said, offering the cornet of sweets.
Frank stared over their heads, searching the crowd.
‘This is Frank,’ Philip said to Orson. ‘Frank Dunn. Tubby’s – Norman’s – brother.’
‘Ah,’ said Orson. ‘Yes, I remember …’ He looked at the state of Frank’s shirt. ‘A jolly good thing your mother is a laundress.’
Frank had dark rings under his eyes and his skin was grey like ash. ‘We ran out of room, Phil.’
‘Ran out of room where, Frank? Have a sweet. The pear drops are nice.’
‘Sister said we had to take ’em out by trolley, tip ’em on to a stretcher in the mort, then plant ’em in the barrow out back in the yard. But the barrow was filling up and the ambulance wasn’t coming, and that first one, bloody hell, she was heavier than she looked. ’Cos I’ve only ever carried the sick, haven’t I? Not the stone dead.’ He started turning his pockets out.
‘I had the legs end and me mate, ’e had her head, but the blanket kept slipping. “Don’t look down,”’e said, like you tell someone when they’re standing on a ledge. ’Cos her legs, she had no stockings on, and they were pale. All pasty coloured. I never seen a colour like that.’
‘Frank works as a porter at the Royal Sussex,’ Philip added for Orson’s benefit.
‘The back part of her left leg was shattered at the knee. It was –’
‘Horrid,’ said Orson.
‘Meat,’ said Frank. ‘Just meat. Then we nipped back inside, stuffed some corpses closer together on the floor and cleared up to make room for the others that were coming in. But nobody comes for a while, not after the first rush, and a sort of disappointment hits us. We’re pacing up and down in the yard, getting hot and bothered, and the more bothered I get, the more I think about Lorraine, my girl, and wonder where she is, ’cos her ol’ gran lives that way, on Lavender Street, doesn’t she, and I’m wondering if she, Lorraine I mean, is okay. Except the truth is, I’m not worrying ’bout her, Phil, not like I should be, I’m imagining her looking like those people, like Lorraine, but like Lorraine as meat, and Phil – Phil? – be a good lad and go pinch us a gasper.’
Philip and Orson stared. Frank’s hands were trembling like someone had them on strings.
Orson made a sharp movement with his head, which meant, Leave him now.
‘I have to go, Frank. But would you say hello to Tubby for me?’
‘Tubby’s in hospital.’
The bottom fell out of Philip’s stomach. ‘Right now?’
Frank nodded and looked away, and it all came rushing in. Tubby had no one. Tubby had had to go to a matinee on a Saturday instead of stopping out to play. If it hadn’t been for the Pier that evening, thought Philip, and the lock-up and his father forbidding him from seeing Tubby, and him agreeing because he didn’t want his father to tell his mother, Tubby would never have been at the Odeon, watching that film. They would have been out together, like every Saturday before.
‘He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?’ He waited for the answer like a fist to his face.
The muffin men were shouting. Up ahead, a woman was sobbing. Philip opened his eyes at last and saw Frank’s eyes trained on an old gent who was lighting up a few feet away. Frank spoke too slowly. ‘Should think so, Phil. After he’s scrubbed down … Caught it in the shelter, the quack says. Scabies.’
Orson leaned in close, so close Philip could feel his breath against his ear. ‘See?’ he said. ‘What did I tell you? Dirty, dirty.’ In his eyes, the blue gaslight flared.