‘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 for 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 ages 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.’
‘Jim Boxall’s home,’ Baby said, changing the subject because that was another way to deal with nerves.
‘Is he?’ Mrs Geary said. ‘Well that’s nice. Tell him to come up and see me tomorrow morning, will yer, Baby? You could pop in on your way to work couldn’t yer. I got something I want him ter do for me. Now then Peg, tell us where you’re going tomorrow afternoon.’
It was quite a surprise to Peggy when Jim Boxall came knocking at the door the following afternoon just as she was putting on her hat and coat.
‘Escort to the Tower,’ he said. ‘Reporting for duty.’ He was smiling at her but his eyes were wary because he wasn’t quite sure how she’d take it.
‘Escort to the Tower?’ she laughed. ‘I don’t need an escort to the Tower. I was born there.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he admitted at once. ‘It was Mrs Geary’s idea. She thought you ought to have company.’
‘Soppy ha’pporth,’ she said affectionately.
The words and their tone encouraged him. ‘You like her a lot, don’t you?’ he said as they walked out of the house together.
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ She could be a bit of a pest sometimes with all the errands she wanted run, but she was an old love really.
‘I can tell,’ he said.
‘How?’
‘You called her soppy,’ he explained. ‘You always call people soppy when you like them. You called Lily soppy when I was in hospital that time. And when you’re playing with Yvey and Norman you call them old soppies too. It’s your word.’
She hadn’t given it much thought until then but he was right. It was her word.
There was a chill wind blowing straight up the street. She tucked up her collar and put her head down against it. The little protective movements touched him. Sensible Peggy, he thought, sensible Peggy who knows how to endure things. If only she wasn’t quite so sensible sometimes. If only she could act the way she did in his dreams.
But they were walking in the light of common day, catching a tram, sitting side by side without touching, as pure and proper as nuns.
‘Least it’s a bit warmer in here,’ Peggy said, fishing in her pocket for her fare.
‘I’ll pay,’ he told her. ‘I’m the escort.’
As it was only tuppence she agreed. ‘It’ll be really funny to see the Tower again,’ she said.
And it was. It gave her the oddest sensation, a mixture of affection and yearning nostalgia and regret for the passing of time. After all these years, she thought, standing on Tower Hill and looking across at the familiar buildings. How long has it been? Fifteen years? Sixteen? She’d been about eight when they left and now she was twenty-four. A lifetime. And yet there it was, just the same as she remembered it, the stone-solid walls with their dark arrow-slits peering down at the grassy bank that had once been the moat, with a village of towers and barracks and terraces behind them. The White Tower high on its mound, with those four grey domes topped by four gilded weather vanes, and the wind in the east, she noticed, the twin towers of Middle Tower and the Byward, the Bloody Tower and Traitor’s Gate, Wakefield, and Lanthorn, and the Salt Tower where she’d felt the ghost. She could remember every single one.
‘There it is,’ Jim said, turning her by the elbow so that she was pointing in the right direction. ‘There’s your balloon. Over there on the ground, look.’
The balloon was a heap of crumpled silver fabric, rubberized cotton, so Jim told her, sprayed with aluminium. It looked like a deflated elephant and far too cumbersome to be capable of flight, but there were gangs of Auxiliary Air Force men labouring over the carcase with great intensity and determination, so they stayed where they were on the edge of the crowd and waited.
And the elephant expanded before their eyes, swelling and shifting, sprouting ears or flippers, swelling further and further, rounder and rounder until with a squeak of rubber on grass it took off and began to float into the air, trailing its restraining cables.
The little watching crowd gave it a cheer.
‘That’s the ticket,’ a man near them said. ‘That’ll keep the buggers out. They won’t be able to bomb us with them things in the air.’
Peggy glanced a question at Jim. ‘How high will it go?’ she said.
He was knowledgeable about that too. ‘A few thousand feet,’ he told her. ‘Four, five, no more. If there’s enough of them, they’ll stop the Stukas. That’s what they’re designed for. To stop dive bombing.’
‘But ordinary bombers’ll get through?’
He gave her the truth, ‘Yes.’
Then we shall be bombed, Peggy thought, the Tower and the docks, the theatres and cinemas, St Paul’s and all the lovely churches that have stood here for ages, it will all be destroyed. Her dear, dear London. And the memory of the broken buildings of Guernica, the weeping women and frantic children and the ghastly, broken dead crammed her mind with horror, and she thought of Joan and the kids and old Mrs Geary and Mr Cooper in his wheelchair and dear old hamfisted Mr Allnutt always trying to help, and tears brimmed out of her eyes before she could control herself.
‘Peggy?’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
The tenderness in his voice melted the little control she had left. ‘Oh,’ she said, her face crumpling, ‘it’s all going to be destroyed and I love it so.’ She was ashamed to be crying in public, making an exhibition of herself, and right outside the Tower too in the very place where she should have been at her most controlled, but she couldn’t help it. All the feelings she’d been carrying about with her for so long, unspoken and unacknowledged, fear of war, love for her city, and above all her endless hopeless love for him, came welling up with her tears. Turning, she hid her face in his tunic because it was his tunic and the nearest available cover.
He’d never seen her cry before, and the sight of that anguished face precipitated him into instinctive action. He put one arm round her and began to rub her shoulder, comforting her as though she was a child. ‘Don’t cry, my little love,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’
She lifted her head with the tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Jim?’ she said. Had she been hearing things or had he just called her his little love?
He was fishing a clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket. ‘Dry your eyes,’ he said, opening it out for her. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’
She dried her eyes obediently, while he stood with both arms encircling her, warm and close at last, so close that he could feel her breath fluttering underneath his chin. ‘My little love,’ he said again.
‘Am I?’ she said. Such an unnecessary question when he was beaming his love at her.
Now that he’d spoken he was full of unexpected confidence. ‘Oh yes. Always have been. Didn’t you know?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you were interested. Leastways not in … ’ He was still beaming at her, encouraging her to change direction. Had she known it? ‘I don’t think I knew. I might’ve done.’ The encircling warmth of his arms and his mouth so red and those blue eyes so tender were making it difficult to think at all.
‘I think I’ve loved you since we was both kids,’ he said.
The pleasure of standing in his arms was so intense she was almost afraid of it. And a little embarrassed too because they were in such a public place. ‘People are looking,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we ought to.’
‘Let them look,’ he said. He was smiling so widely his face had quite changed shape. ‘Do them good. I love you. Love you, love you, love you. Do you know that? D’you know it now?’
‘Yes,’ she said, rather breathlessly. Was this really happening or was she dreaming it all? She was swimming in emotion and sensation, buoyed up, carried along.
‘And you?’ It was demand, entreaty and question all at once.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember.’ But then she glanced round her anxiously in case she’d been overheard and was relieved that the people nearest to them were making a lot of noise and looking up at the balloon.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. He needed to kiss her and hold her very close and show her how very much he loved her.
They went to the pictures. Neither of them paid the least attention to the images flickering on the screen for this time they were in the back row among all the other courting couples with the freedom to kiss as long and as often as they wished. By the time the lights came up for the interval they were dizzy and dishevelled and drowsyeyed.
‘We’re daft,’ he said, leaning back in the seat still cuddling her. ‘All this time an’ never saying a word.’
‘Soppy,’ she said. She felt quite drunk with all that kissing.
‘I nearly told you that day at Brighton,’ he confessed.
‘I wish you had.’
‘What would you’ve said?’
‘The same.’
‘Would you ’ve?’
What a lot of time we’ve wasted, he thought, aching to kiss her again. ‘Still I have now.’ She was flushed and beautiful and ought to be kissed. Come on, turn the lights out.
‘Oh yes, you have now.’
‘And I’ve got ten days. Where shall we go tomorrow?’
But she never got the chance to tell him because the lights dimmed.
They spent the next ten days in a trance. Jim visited his mother and his mates from Warrenden’s and took Mr Cooper to the library and went shopping with Lily and Percy, and Peggy went to work as usual, but these things were simply interludes, to be lived through as quickly as possible. The evenings were what counted, when they would walk arm-in-arm through the parks and eat fish and chips together and go to the pictures. The papers were full of the news that Mr Chamberlain had visited Herr Hitler at Berchtesgaden, ‘I had a long talk with Herr Hitler. It was a frank talk, it was a friendly one’, and that he was flying home to discuss the situation with His Majesty’s Government, but neither of them took very much notice. The Premier could go to Berchtesgaden or Bad Godesburg or anywhere else he wished. They were on holiday from wars and crises in a love-drenched world of their own.
When that final Sunday came Peggy cooked the Sunday joint for her family and invited him to share it. So they spent the last hour of his leave sitting side by side at the Furnivall table and so obviously in love that Baby felt quite jealous of them.
‘I suppose you’ll marry him now,’ she said, when Peggy came back from the station without him.
‘We’ve only just started walking out,’ Peggy said. But it came as quite a shock to realize that neither of them had said a word about marriage and that she hadn’t even thought about it. It had been enough just to love him and to know that she was loved in return.
‘Shush,’ Flossie said. ‘Listen to this.’ She was sitting beside the radio with one ear as close to it as she could get it. ‘They’re mobilizing the ARP. Did you know that, Peggy?’
‘What?’ Peggy said, walking across the kitchen to listen too. They couldn’t be. That would mean they thought the war was going to start at any minute.
‘I repeat,’ the announcer was saying, ‘all ARP personnel are to report to their nearest Post or present themselves to their Chief Warden as soon as possible.’
‘Did you hear that, Peggy?’ Mrs Geary called from upstairs.
‘I’m on my way now,’ Peggy said, putting on her hat and coat. But she still couldn’t believe it was serious. Not now, when the sun was shining and Jim loved her.
Even when she’d walked down to the Post, and Mr Goodall had given her a copy of their new duty rosta and told her to consider herself ‘on call’ from that moment on, she still took it calmly.
On Monday evening she listened to the sound of Hitler ranting and raving at the Sports Palace in Berlin and the baying of the crowd, roaring ‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’ and it all seemed stupid and childish. She was sure it would all be resolved in the end without going to war. Mr Chamberlain would see to it.
The next morning she had her first love-letter from Jim and spent the day in a glow of well-being because of it. Even when she saw the placards announcing that the Navy had been mobilized she felt no alarm. The new fighter planes were being built as fast as they could get them off the production line, Jim had said so. And in any case there simply couldn’t be a war. Not really. Not if it came to it. Something could happen.
That night after work she took a tram to Deptford and went to see Joan.
Yvey and Norman were in their pyjamas drinking a late night cup of cocoa.
‘Guess what,’ Yvey said. ‘Daddy’s gone to join the army.’ She was rosy-cheeked in the firelight with a six year old’s gappy teeth and her straight hair neatly brushed and as glossy as a polished cob nut.
‘Has he?’ Peggy said in surprise.
‘Territorials,’ Joan explained. She seemed excited by it, with a brooding sexuality about her that Peggy hadn’t seen since she was courting. ‘Him an’ his pals. Went off three hours ago. What d’you think a’ that?’
Peggy understood that the news should be praised and praised it.
‘Daddy’s going to be a soldier,’ Norman said, lifting his head from his mug. He had a moustache of cocoa over his top lip which he tried to lick clean. ‘He’s going to have a gun, Aunty Peggy. I’m going to see it. Me an’ him made a gingerbread man this afternoon.’
‘An’ me,’ Yvonne said. ‘I made one too.’
‘You ate yours,’ Norman disparaged. ‘I’m never gonna eat mine, Aunty Peggy. I’m gonna keep it for ever and ever.’
He’d been so happy in the bakery that afternoon, down there in the floury heat with Yvey and Dad and all the other bakers. Dad had showed them how to make dough and shape bread and cut out gingerbread men and they’d stood beside him and watched, pink cheeked with heat and pleasure.
‘There y’are,’ he said when the little men were finally cooked, ‘that’s for you to remember me by when I’ve gone for a soldier. One fer you an’ one fer Yvey. Now you can make ’em for me while I’m away, can’t you Norm?’ And he gave the little boy a wink as one man to another. ‘What d’you say ter that?’
They’d both kissed him, the way they always did in the bakery, because somehow or other it was easier to kiss him in the bakery when he was all over flour and his face was red from the ovens.
‘That’s my good kids,’ he’d said proudly, kissing them back. ‘Now run upstairs to yer ma while I’m finishing up.’
And they’d run upstairs and here they were with the precious gingerbread man lying on a plate on the dresser.
‘Couldn’t wait five minutes to enlist, once they’d made their minds up to it,’ Joan said. ‘Hardly ate any of his supper. Rushing off. You never saw such a carry-on.’ He’d looked so handsome, with that rakish daring she remembered so well, bold and bright eyed and cheeky, like he’d been when they first met. She couldn’t wait for him to come home.
‘There won’t be a war,’ Peggy said. ‘Not now. Chamberlain’ll stop it. You’ll see.’
‘They’ve mobilized the fleet,’ Joan said. ‘That’s not so good. Come on you two, time you were abed.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ Peggy insisted as her niece and nephew kissed her goodnight.
And sure enough two days later the Premier flew back to Heston from his third meeting with Hitler, this time in a place called Munich, waving a piece of paper that he said meant ‘Peace with Honour’. Hitler had promised that he had ‘no further territorial claims in Europe’ and that if he were allowed to ‘free the Sudeten Germans’ he would be content.
‘Peace in our Time,’ the newspaper headlines shouted with relief. And the Daily Express even went so far as to claim, ‘Britain will not be involved in a European war this year or next year either.’
‘Bloody fools!’ Mr Cooper said, when he took a rest after the third rendering of the ‘Lambeth Walk’ that Saturday. ‘The Czechs spend millions to build a line of defences against the Nazis all along their Sudeten frontier and we come along and make them give it all away. And who to? The bloody Germans. The self-same bloody Germans it was supposed to keep out. Now there’s nothing to stop the bugger walking straight in and all over them. It’s enough ter make you spit blood.’
‘I thought you didn’t want a war,’ Flossie said.
‘No more I do,’ John Cooper told her. ‘Never have. But this ain’t the way to prevent it. We’ve sold the poor bloody Czechs right down the river.’
‘Not if Mr Hitler keeps his word,’ Mrs Roderick said, sipping her port and lemon.
‘Hitler is a crook,’ Mr Grunewald told them. ‘A thug.’ He knew, more than anyone in the room, how violent the Nazis were. ‘Thugs don’t keep their word.’
But the months went by and things stayed surprisingly quiet.
‘I shan’t get any leave till I’ve completed this course,’ Jim wrote in his next letter, ‘which won’t be till March if I’m any judge. It’s a lifetime. I haven’t kissed you for twelve whole days, I hope you realize. Dear God, twelve whole days and only dreams and memories to keep me going. I shall be a shred of my former self when you see me next.’
‘I shall be glad to see you again even if you are only a shred,’ she wrote back. ‘A shred would be better than nothing. I miss you more than I can say. Very quiet here. Is this Spitfire they’re testing the one you were telling me about?’
In January, while they were still yearningly apart, a Spitfire flew from London to Paris in 41 minutes and at a speed of over 400 miles an hour.
‘That’s our beauty,’ Jim wrote. ‘Ain’t it grand? Now we’ve got two fighters faster and more manoeuvrable than anything Hitler’s got or anything he’s likely to get. First the Hurricane and now the Spitfire. Thank God. You should see the engine, Peg. A masterpiece of engineering. What am I saying? You should see the engine. I don’t want you to see an engine. I want to see you. Still we’re more than half way there now. I shall be home in March. Can’t wait.’
In February the ARP began to distribute shelters for people to dig into their back gardens. They were little more than a hoop of corrugated steel but the Chief Warden said they would withstand anything short of a direct hit. Peggy would have liked to order one for her own family, but you had to have a garden big enough to contain it and the little backyards in Paradise Row were much too small. Somehow or other, during the quiet months of that winter and the growing menace of that early spring, acceptance of this war had been gradually seeping into her mind. The papers were always full of pictures of Hitler and his storm troopers, marching about in their jackboots and those ugly tin hats of theirs. And more and more people were making preparations for air raids. Madame Aimee had cleared the coal from one side of her cellar and taken down stools and deckchairs and a square of lino to stand them on, and her latest idea was to see if she could run the radio from the electric light. And at home Mum and Mrs Geary had taken everything out of the cupboard under the stairs and put it up in the attic, ‘just in case’.
And two days after Jim came home on leave at last, Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia, just as Mr Cooper had predicted. There was no opposition. How could there be? Six days later he was telling Poland he wanted Danzig and the Polish Corridor.
Now everybody in England knew it was just a matter of time.