‘Now you make good an’ sure you send the kids off,’ Sid Owen said, hoisting his kitbag onto his shoulder. ‘The minute they’re sent for, you send ’em.’
‘Yes, well all right,’ Joan said unwillingly.
‘Never mind yes well all right,’ Sid said. ‘You do it. You want to go, don’t yer, kids?’
Yvonne and Norman stood dubiously before him on the kitchen hearth-rug. Neither of them wanted to be ‘sent off’ but they couldn’t say so, partly because they weren’t quite sure what being ‘sent off’ really meant, but mostly because he was so dead set on it whatever it was. Breakfast was over and another peculiar day had begun and things had a way of happening whether or not you wanted them to. So Yvonne said, ‘Yes, Dad’, and tried to sound as though she meant it.
‘Good gel,’ he approved, buttoning his fags into the breast pocket of his tunic. ‘You got yer bags packed aintcher?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Righto then, give us a kiss. Be good kids. Do as yer mum says when I’m gone.’
‘Couldn’t we just wait an’ see before we send them?’ Joan tried. The thought of this evacuation was making her feel sick.
He wouldn’t even allow the suggestion. ‘Don’t start that again,’ he warned. ‘You’ve give your word, so let’s have no more of it. If I say they’re to go, that’s it, they’re to go. You don’t want ’em here to be bombed, do yer? OK, then. You send ’em. If I come home an’ find ’em still here you’ll know about it.’ He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, ticking the tinny seconds away. ‘Time I was off. Look after yourself, old girl.’
It was all unreal, Joan thought. Just when they were happy together again he’d got to go to Salisbury Plain as if he was a proper soldier. And the kids had got to be evacuated. It was more than she could bear to think about.
‘Give us a kiss then,’ he instructed, daring her with those bold dark eyes. And when she kissed him briefly, ‘Gaw dearie me. Is that the best you can do?’
She kissed him again, more passionately this time, but the passion made her feel how wrong this was, all of it. Ever since he’d joined the territorials he’d been such a rewarding, insistent lover, quite his old dashing self again. They’d been really contented with one another, hardly rowing at all, and now they were going to be parted, and he’d be sent off to France, she knew it in her bones, and then what would happen to them?
‘Remember what you promised,’ he said, heading for the door. ‘You’re to send ’em. No turning back, eh?’
There’s no turning back for any of us now, Joan thought bleakly as she listened to his boots descending the stairs. ‘Come to the window,’ she said to Yvey and Norman, ‘and we’ll wave him goodbye.’
It was Friday, the first day of September 1939, and the news was grim. The British and German governments had been exchanging notes for more than a week, while the German army massed all along the Polish frontier, and at dawn that morning German troops had finally carried out their long-threatened invasion. In England the army and navy were mobilized. Every window in London was hung with black-out curtains of one kind or another, and many of them had been crisscrossed with brown paper too as a precaution against flying glass, because everyone knew the air raids would start as soon as war was declared. That was always the pattern. There were gangs of council workmen in the streets busily painting white patches along the kerbs and white lines around the base of everything and anything protruding from the pavement, like trees and telephone boxes and pillar boxes, and there were sandbags heaped against the windows of every building in the High Street. Some of the local schools had been evacuated already and the rest were waiting to be called. It was a very vain hope indeed to say, ‘It might not come to it.’
Yvonne and Norman’s school rang the bell to announce their evacuation half an hour after their father left. And while it was still ringing, a boy on a bicycle came pedalling furiously up the High Street to augment the summons by knocking on doors.
He was in a most enjoyable and dramatic hurry, powering along the middle of the street with his body bent forward urgently over the handlebars. He barely allowed himself time to stop when he rang the doorbells. He simply stood astride the bike and knocked and rang. And at every house his doleful message was the same.
‘They’re going, missus! They’re going!’
All along his route sash-cord windows were creaked open, anxious faces appeared to acknowledge him.
But Joan was quicker than he was. She’d sped down the stairs and opened the side door before he had time to take his finger from the bell.
‘Where to?’ she panted. ‘Where they going?’
‘New Cross Gate,’ the boy called back to her, already on his way to the next shop. ‘They’re going missus!’
It was as though he was crying the end of the world.
‘Get yer bags,’ Joan said briskly. ‘You got a clean hanky, Norman? There’s a bar a’ chocolate each. Put it in your pockets. Better go to the lavvy just to be on the safe side.’
‘I don’t want to go to the lavvy,’ Norman protested as she pushed him towards the bathroom door. ‘Can I take my gingerbread man?’
‘Try,’ she urged him. ‘See if you can squeeze some out. Then you can take your gingerbread man. Where’s yer gasmasks?’
She jollied them all along, being cheerful as much to keep her own spirits up as to help them. The street was full of mothers and children running down towards the school.
‘Where are we going?’ Norman asked as they jogged along.
‘To the country,’ Joan said, trying to encourage them. ‘You know, where it’s all fields and there are cows and sheep and chickens. You’ll like that, won’t you?’
‘No,’ the little boy said stoutly. ‘I shan’t. Why can’t we stay here with you?’
‘It won’t be for long,’ Joan said. ‘You’ll soon be back, you’ll see.’
‘How soon?’ Yvey asked. She was very near tears, her bottom lip trembling.
‘No time at all,’ Joan said.
‘A week?’ They were very near the school gate. She could see the teachers walking about and the kids forming lines like they did to march in of a morning.
‘Run in quick,’ Joan said. ‘Mustn’t keep them waiting. Make sure you don’t get parted, Yvey. You keep tight hold of Yvonne’s hand won’t you, Norman?’ The anguish of this parting was tearing at her throat. ‘Go on. Quick.’
They kissed her hurriedly and ran into the playground, and for a few seconds they were lost to sight in the crowd of small figures trotting and running to the assembly point. Then she could see them both standing in line, and one of the teachers was checking the labels they had pinned to their coats and opening their gasmask cases presumably to see that the gasmasks were inside.
‘You going home, Mrs Owen?’ her next-door neighbour asked.
‘No fear,’ she said. ‘I’m going with them as far as ever I can. I’d go all the way if only they’d let me.’
It seemed a very long time before the lines were all in order and the headmaster blew his whistle for silence. From the pavement the little crowd of mums couldn’t hear what he was saying to their children, but presently one of the teachers came out of the building with a banner on which a big letter T was painted. She handed it to two of the older boys at the head of the first line and after a last minute glance at her anxious pupils, she led the crocodile out of the gate.
There was no sound in the street at all except for the tread of all those little boots and shoes. Not a child spoke, not even when they passed their mothers. They crossed the road meekly, clutching their luggage, with their gasmasks bumping against their legs. Some of the boys had remembered to wear their school caps and some of the girls wore berets, but most of them were bareheaded, neatly brushed and combed like Yvonne or tousle-headed like her brother. They looked very young and very small and horribly vulnerable walking obediently away in the summer sunshine.
Their mothers followed along behind them, uncertain but determined, and the crocodile straggled through the streets to New Cross Gate and up the incline to the entrance, where they had to wait while the school before them was led down to the platforms. The entrance was blocked with children and they could hear the trains steaming below them.
‘Now!’ the headmaster called and the crocodile shuffled forward, small pale faces looking anxiously over laden shoulders for one last glimpse of their mothers, small pale hands waving unnaturally like flowers in a storm-force wind. They crossed the entrance hall far too quickly and began the descent of the steps. Joan watched with anguish as her two little ones gradually disappeared, first their luggage, then their hunched shoulders, then their two poor little strained faces, then their pretty heads, until all she could see of them was their waving fingers, Norman’s still clutching his gingerbread man. It was as though they were being torn into strips and removed from her piece by piece. And all round her mothers were keening to their children with one voice. ‘Goodbye darling! Goodbye! Goodbye! Oh my darling!’ Then they were gone.
Joan found that she was weeping without control, the tears brimming out of her eyes so fast that she could hardly see, and her neighbour was crying too, sobbing aloud. The two of them hung on to each other for support until another crocodile arrived and nudged them out of the way.
‘Come home an’ have a cup a’ tea,’ Joan suggested.
‘I’m supposed ter be at work,’ her neighbour said, but she accepted the tea just the same. ‘You need company at a time like this.’ Over in Madame Aimee’s High Class Haberdashery, the Chief Warden was talking seriously to Peggy and Mr MacFarlane.
‘Once the balloon goes up,’ he was saying, ‘we shall need a lot more full-timers. I thought of you two straight away.’
‘Aye, well, you could have our Peggy I dare say,’ said Mr MacFarlane. ‘I’ve no wish tae lose the girrrl, but as you say … As to mysel’, who’d keep the shop if I were to agree to ’t?’
‘Madame Aimee?’ Charlie Goodall suggested.
‘Aye well, mebbe,’ Mr MacFarlane said doubtfully. ‘We’ll see.’
‘Start tomorrow,’ the Chief Warden said to Peggy. ‘Eight o’clock at the flats.’
‘Yes,’ Peggy agreed quietly. It was only to be expected. Somebody would have to look after the black-out, and sound the alarms, and be on duty when the air raids began. But she was only giving him part of her attention, because she was thinking of Yvey and Norman and wondering where they were and how they were getting on. The Greenwich streets had been full of departing children all morning, so they must have gone.
Yvonne was sitting in the middle of a six-seater compartment that was now accommodating eleven children and a teacher. She had her coat wrapped tightly round her knees and she was thinking what an awful journey it was. Katy Burnett had eaten her sandwiches as soon as the train pulled out of the station, even though Sir said she wasn’t to, and then, of course, she started sicking up. She would. Sir held her head out of the window but the sick blew back inside and went all over everything, and everybody yelled and said Yuk! and Ergh! and tried to clean themselves up with their hankies. And then Norman said he felt sick too and Sir held him out of the window and such a long way out that Yvonne was terrified a train would come along and knock his head off the way Mum had always said it would.
Being reminded of her mother was the most painful thing about the journey. While she could talk to her friends and tell Norman off and read her comic, she was more or less all right, but thinking of Mum made her want to cry. Sir tried to make them sing and they did sing, for quite a long time. ‘Whistle while you work, Adolf Hitler is a twerp’ and ‘Run rabbit run’, but they didn’t know all the words and Sir had to keep stopping to hold people out of the window so it wasn’t a success.
But at last, after hours and hours and hours the train chuffed to a halt, brakes squealing, and they were all allowed out of their stinking compartment and found themselves standing on a wooden platform right out in the country.
Sir said they were to stand in a line while the train emptied and then he’d go and see what was what. So they stood in the sunshine, clutching their luggage, and waited. Yvonne was glad that she and Norman had suitcases, because some of the kids only had brown paper parcels and they were all coming undone.
‘This way,’ Sir said. ‘They’ve got us a coach.’
It was a jolly old-fashioned coach, with tiny little windows and scratchy seats and it bounced along the road as though it was made of rubber, throwing them all from side to side and jolting them into the air. But fortunately it didn’t have to go far. After rattling them along between hedges it suddenly stopped alongside a wooden hut. There were two women in green uniform standing on the step and they came down at once and bustled all the kids into the hut and told them they could eat their dinner if they wanted to.
‘Please Miss,’ Yvonne asked, as politely as she could, ‘Please, Miss, where are we?’
‘You’re in Sussex, my dear,’ the woman said. ‘Eat your sandwiches up nicely and then you’ll be taken to your new homes.’
So they ate their sandwiches as nicely as they could when they were sitting on the floor, and Norman said he was thirsty, and Katy Burnett said she wanted to go to the lavvy. And they waited.
Presently people began to arrive, peering in through the door at them as if they were animals in a zoo. And after a while a woman walked into the hut, strolled about, looked them all over, and said, ‘Two strong boys’ as though she was ordering two pounds of sugar. And two of the big boys were told to stand up and go with her. The next lady said she wanted, ‘A clean little girl.’ And after her five or six women came in together and there was quite a bustle of movement and leave-taking.
‘You won’t let me go on my own, will you Yvey?’ Norman asked, his little round face puckered with anxiety.
‘Course not,’ Yvonne assured him, even though she had no idea how such a thing was to be done.
‘These are just the ones,’ Sir said coming to stand beside them. ‘Yvonne is a very good needlewoman, aren’t you, Yvonne?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Yvonne agreed, her heart thumping most unpleasantly. There was an ugly man standing with Sir and he was looking straight at her and Norman. Oh a horribly ugly man, a great fat lumpy man with a face like one of those bloodhound dogs, with a long fleshy nose and watery green eyes and great big yellow false teeth.
‘This is Mr Ray,’ Sir said. ‘He’s going to take you home.’
‘Back to London?’ Norman said hopefully.
Mr Ray cleared his throat by coughing in a bubbling sort of way. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said to Norman. Then he turned to the lady with the list. ‘I don’t think I want the boy. He’s a bit on the small side. ’Aven’t you got another gel?’
‘He’ll grow,’ the lady promised. ‘Brother and sister you know. Less trouble. She’ll look after him, won’t you, um?’
Yvonne assured them both that she would, of course she would. And Norman clung to her hand and scuffed his shoes along the floor.
‘Oh all right then,’ Mr Ray said. ‘Come on.’
So they picked up their cases and followed him, walking several paces behind him as that felt safer and seemed to be what he wanted. They went past several tatty cottages, one roofed in straw which was really amazing, and a church which seemed to be hiding behind a lot of trees and then on downhill for quite a long way until they came to a glass-fronted shop standing all by itself at a bend in the road.
There was nothing in the window except a white urn full of flowers standing on a shelf covered with a black-out curtain, but there was an explanatory sign above the window that said ‘W Ray Undertakers and Funeral Directors.’
‘Here we are,’ Mr Ray said, and he led them round the side of the shop and through an open door into a very dark passageway. ‘I’m back, Mother,’ he called. ‘Any messages?’
‘No,’ a voice said. ‘It’s been as quiet as the grave.’ And then it laughed in a gloating sort of way and Mr Ray laughed too as he led them into a dark room where a long thin lady was sitting sewing a piece of bright pink satin.
If Mr Ray was bad, Mrs Ray was worse. She was tall and straight-spined and formidable, with thin grey hair, small pale eyes and a nose like a spoon. And she didn’t like either of the children one little bit. They knew instinctively. And they were right, as children usually are in such circumstances.
The Rays had married late in life and had consequently avoided the nuisance of having children. They had taken over the funeral parlour from Mr Ray’s father after his own demise, and were known locally as ‘Rays the Dead’, but in a village as small as Myrtlebury there was too little trade for them to make ‘a living out of dying’ as they jokingly put it. For as they frequently told one another, ‘If people don’t die in the natural course of events we can hardly go round killing them off to make business.’ So when the government announced that people in the reception areas for evacuation would be paid eight shillings and sixpence a week for every evacuee they took into their homes, Mrs Ray saw at once that this was an excellent way to supplement their income.
‘They won’t eat much, Father,’ she promised. ‘I’ll see to that. If you get us two girls they can earn their keep and help with the sewing.’
She wasn’t too pleased to see that one of her proposed little girls was a five-year-old boy.
‘Land sakes,’ she said, setting aside the pink satin, ‘What’ve you gone and brought us a boy for, Father? Boys are nothing but trouble. You’ll have to get him changed.’
‘I don’t want to be changed,’ Norman said, hanging on to Yve for dear life.
Mrs Ray swept across the room and whacked him round the ear. ‘You speak when you’re spoken to,’ she said. ‘Nobody asked you.’
Norman began to cry and Yvonne made faces at him to stop and shook his hand where it was hidden in the folds of her coat, because these two ugly grown-ups were cross enough without making them worse.
‘Stop snivelling,’ Mrs Ray ordered. ‘Now you’re here I suppose I’d better show you where you’re to sleep. But don’t go making yourselves too much at home, that’s all.’
The room she showed them into was a small back bedroom furnished with a small square of carpet grown grey with age, a chipped jug and wash basin, a chamber pot and an iron bedstead on which was a very stained mattress, two pillows without pillow cases and a folded pile of dark brown blankets. There were no curtains at the window and the gaslight didn’t look as though it had been lit for ages.
‘Bedtime is six o’clock,’ Mrs Ray said patting one of the stains on the mattress ticking. ‘I shall serve supper at five sharp, not a minute before or after. If you’re not back by five sharp, I shall clear the table and you’ll have to go without. Breakfast at seven, this room to be cleared by eight, supper at five. You can go where you please between times just so long as you understand you’re not to hang around the house. Church on Sundays of course. We’ve got to keep in with the church in our line of business. Is that clear?’
The two children stood stupefied before her. Neither of them had understood a word she was saying but they didn’t admit it, because one whacking was enough.
‘Yes, Miss,’ Yvonne said, squeezing Norman’s hand to encourage him to say yes too.
‘Off you go then,’ Mrs Ray said, pushing them towards the stairs. ‘Back at five.’
So they wandered out of the house and into the lane as that was what she seemed to want them to do. It was a lovely summer’s afternoon. The sky was blue and there were birds singing in all the trees.
‘I’m ever so thirsty,’ Norman said.
‘There’s a tap over there,’ Yvonne noticed. ‘In amongst those funny looking trees. Look Norm, they’re growing apples. There’s little apples all over those trees.’
So they climbed through the hedge and drank at the tap and picked one or two of the biggest apples from the trees. But they were very sour and hard to chew, and after a while they gave up trying to eat them.
‘If we sleep in that room where are we s’posed to hang our clothes?’ Norman asked. Mum had been most particular that they should hang up their clothes when they arrived.
‘We’ll keep ’em in the cases,’ Yvonne decided. ‘We might not be here very long.’ And she offered up a silent prayer to her Maker. Please God don’t let us be here very long. ‘Least we can sleep together. That’s good, ain’t it?’
‘How are we going to know when to go back for supper?’ Norman worried again.
‘We’ll sit up here and watch the house,’ Yve said sensibly. ‘Perhaps she’ll look out for us, like Mum does.’
But as they discovered later, there was a clock somewhere that struck the hours, so they were able to walk past that horrible urn full of flowers and into the back door on the very stroke of five.
Supper was sardines with bread and margarine which neither of them enjoyed at all. Mrs Ray stood guard over them as they ate, and immediately their plates were empty she sent them out to the lavvy and marched them into the front parlour. There was a pile of pink satin on the table and a box full of cheap cotton wool beside it.
‘That’s your sewing,’ she said to Yvonne. ‘I’ve pinned the seams together. All you’ve got to do is sew them up. Neat stitches if you please. And you,’ turning to Norman, ‘you can stuff the finished ones. Not too full. There’s no need for extravagance.’
The two children worked for more than an hour while Mrs Ray sat on the opposite side of the table and cut out more shapes from a roll of blue satin she took from the cupboard. Nobody spoke and there was no sound in the room except the click of her scissors, the tick of the clock and the rasp of the cotton thread as Yvonne pulled it gingerly through the satin, trying hard not to buckle the cloth or mark it with her fingers.
But at last the clock struck seven.
‘That’s enough for one evening,’ Mrs Ray said, removing the cloth from Yvonne’s hands and putting the lid on the box of cotton wool. ‘Bed.’
And with that she marched them upstairs to the attic. It was already growing dark and the room smelt damp and unwelcoming.
Neither of them got much sleep, for by then they were so homesick that they spent most of the night in tears.
‘I don’t want to stay here, Yvey,’ Norman whispered over and over again. ‘I want to go home.’
‘So do I,’ Yvonne said, crying with him. She’d been brave all day and now she simply couldn’t go on being brave any longer. ‘Oh so do I.’
Back in Deptford Joan had spent a wakeful night too, wondering where they were and how they were and missing them with a perpetual yearning ache in her belly that no thoughts could ease. At daybreak she gave up trying to sleep and got up to begin her first day without them. Perhaps a good scrub round would make her feel better. Housework was usually a cure for most of her miseries. But it was no help to her that Saturday. By mid-morning her two rooms were spotless and she was still full of anxious energy. That afternoon she washed the curtains and cleaned the windows and turned out the kitchen cupboards, lining them all with fresh newspaper. But the misery remained and next morning when she’d washed up her solitary cup and saucer there was nothing left for her to do. She put on her hat and coat and took a tram to Greenwich.
Paradise Row wasn’t itself either, although it took her a little while to work out what was different about it. She was used to the street shelter now, large though it was, a great flat-roofed ugly brick-built box blocking the middle of the roadway, and she’d grown accustomed to the sight of black curtains edging the windows, because there was black-out everywhere. No, what was new that morning was the emptiness of the street and the awful silence. And that was because there were no kids about.
‘Come on in, lovey,’ Mum said as she opened the door. ‘Did they go off all right?’
‘Bloody war!’ Joan said, breaking down as soon as the door was closed behind her. ‘I don’t see why we got to have our kids sent away from us just for a pack a’ bloody foreigners. We should keep out of it. Bloody war!’
‘You have a good cuss,’ Mrs Geary advised, hobbling down the stairs towards her. ‘Do you a power a’ good. No good keeping it in.’
The parrot was cussing fluently above their heads. Now and at last it was possible to give full vent to her feelings and to swear and cry for as long as she needed to.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Baby offered when the worst was over. ‘Nice cup a’ tea.’
‘That’s right,’ Mum said walking Joan into the kitchen. ‘Nice cup a’ tea, an’ then you can stay to dinner, eh. They’ll be all right, you’ll see. I’ll bet they’re having the time a’ their lives in the country. Think how you used to enjoy it at Tillingbourne when you was little.’
Peggy had a sudden seering recollection of the slaughter of the pig, but she shrugged it away quickly. This was no time for such thoughts. ‘I’d better put on some more potatoes,’ she said smiling at her sister. ‘I’m on duty at two o’clock.’
‘On a Sunday?’ Joan said.
‘It’s being full-time,’ Mum explained, basting the joint. ‘She has to work all sorts of hours now.’
‘I’m sorry I swore,’ Joan said. ‘It’s just I miss them so. It’s so quiet.’
‘The O’Donavans went yesterday afternoon,’ Baby said, as if that explained the lack of noise.
‘What, evacuated?’ Joan asked.
‘Back to Ireland,’ Mrs Geary told her. ‘All the lot of ’em. Sold up every mortal thing they possessed so she was telling me, an’ even then they only just scraped up the fares. God knows how they’ll make out now!’
‘So how many kids have we got left in the street now?’ Joan asked.
‘Only Percy,’ Peggy told her. ‘Lily could’ve gone with him only she wouldn’t leave Arthur. She said she couldn’t bear for them all to be split up.’
‘I know how she feels,’ Joan said.
‘Mr Chamberlain’s speaking at eleven o’clock don’t forget,’ Mrs Geary said quickly, changing the subject before Joan could get upset again.
‘Put the wireless on,’ Flossie said to Baby, who was standing near the sideboard where the radio stood.
So they had light music while they drank their tea and washed the cups and saucers and set about peeling the vegetables. And by the time the announcer introduced the Prime Minister just before eleven fifteen they were all feeling much easier and happier. Big Ben struck the quarter and the weary reedy voice of their leader spoke to them across the air waves.
‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street,’ he said. ‘This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
‘Oh God!’ Baby said. ‘Just when I’ve had my hair permed.’
‘Well that’s it I suppose,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘We can’t say we didn’t know it was coming.’
‘Now what?’ Joan said to Peggy. ‘What happens next?’
What happened next was a series of public announcements. The blowing of whistles and the blaring of horns were now forbidden ‘as these could be confused with air raid warnings’, theatres and cinemas were to be closed down ‘to minimize the chances of a large crowd being killed by a single bomb’.
‘Oh lovely!’ Mrs Geary said.
‘Now,’ the wireless went on, ‘an announcement about food.’
But the announcement didn’t come. There was a long silence in which they could hear papers being shuffled about and somebody whispering. Then the National Anthem began to play. It hadn’t got further than ‘God save our gracious king’, when the air raid sirens began to wail, rising from a low growling note into an anguished howl and then descending and rising again, and again, and again.
‘Oh my dear good God,’ Flossie said, jumping up. ‘They’re here already. Quick! What shall we do? Oh my God, whatever shall we do?’
Peggy put on her tin hat and assumed command. ‘Take your coats,’ she said, trying to sound calm even though she didn’t feel it. ‘Go straight to the shelter,’ She was half-way to the door.
‘Quick!’
‘What about Polly?’ Mrs Geary said. ‘I can’t leave Polly.’
‘I’ll bring him if there’s time,’ Peggy promised.
And to everyone’s surprise, she did, but only after she’d shepherded all the inhabitants of the street into their damp brick fastness in the middle of the road. Mr and Mrs Grunewald came under protest and Nonnie Brown refused to enter at all unless she could bring her gin bottle with her, and John Cooper had to be carried bodily into the shelter by Mr Allnutt and Mr Brown because his wheelchair was too wide to push through the entrance.
It was dark, dank and smelly inside, and the slatted seats were damp to the touch.
‘We shall all be killed!’ Flossie moaned over and over again. ‘I can feel it in my bones. My nerves’ll never stand this you know. I shall be a nervous wreck.’
Leslie was weeping.
‘Oh do shut up,’ Ernest said, frowning at him. ‘You make matters worse with all that boohoo.’
‘Shut up yourself,’ Leslie said. ‘You don’t know how I feel.’
‘Try some gin, darling,’ Nonnie Brown said drunkenly, waving the bottle at him.
‘Let’s have a song,’ Peggy suggested, trying to remember the advice she’d been given in all those ARP lectures.
‘Song?’ Leslie said. ‘You must be joking!’
‘Bloody, bloody, bloody bugger!’ the parrot squawked. ‘Aark! Sod that! Aark! Aark!’
‘Oh Christ,’ John Cooper said to Mrs Geary, almost laughing, ‘that bloody bird of yours!’ and then they all began to laugh, in peals of hysterical guffaws that were almost sobs. Even young Percy joined in, clinging round his mother’s neck but giggling weakly. And the parrot shrieked at them all above the din.
They were making so much noise that at first they missed the rising note of the all clear.
‘Blimey!’ Mr Allnutt said. ‘Twenty minutes. That was quick.’
They stumbled out into the summer sunshine. There was no sign of an air raid anywhere as far as they could see, no dead bodies, no bombed buildings, no smoke, only a strong smell of burning potatoes.
Leslie gave a shriek and rushed into number five. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ he yelled to Ernest. ‘Dinner’ll be ruined I hope you realize.’
‘Oh yes, of course. It’s always my fault,’ Ernest said following him. ‘Everything’s always my fault. I started this war I don’t think.’
‘Well really,’ Mrs Roderick said with icy disapproval, ‘What a way to go on. Here we all are in danger of our lives and they carry on like that. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I’m glad some of us manage to control ourselves.’
The Furnivalls walked back into their house at Mrs Geary’s pace.
‘I wonder where they went,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘Must’a gone somewhere. That stands ter reason and they ain’t come here.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Flossie said. ‘We don’t want ’em. My nerves couldn’t stand it.’
‘Now what?’ Baby asked.
‘Dinner first, while it’s hot,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘Then I suppose we shall all have to wait and see.’
As she followed her family back into the house, Peggy was secretly rather pleased by the way she’d acted. It was true that they hadn’t been in any real danger, but none of them had known that at the time. She’d done all the right things in the right order, despite her fear, and nobody had panicked. It was quite a feather in her cap. She didn’t say anything about it, of course, because she didn’t want to brag, but it was rewarding just the same.
‘I shall have to get a job,’ Joan said to her as they were eating dinner. ‘I can’t stand this waiting about, and if we’re going to have air raids it’ll give me something to think about.’
She started work at a local munitions factory the following morning. But they all had a lot of waiting about to do before any munitions were to be used in action.