Joan and the kids had spent the afternoon in Paradise Row sitting round the fire with Baby and Mrs Geary, waiting for Peggy and Jim to come home. The kids had been playing draughts, Joan had been darning socks as well as she could with the cat on her lap, Baby had been painting her nails and Mrs Geary had been knitting a jersey with a complicated cable pattern which involved considerable lip-chewing and counting aloud. They were all annoyed when the sirens went.
‘I thought we’d finished with daylight raids,’ Joan complained as she put up the shutters. ‘Go and sit under the stairs, you two.’
There were three camp stools in the cupboard under the stairs, so Norman and Yvonne did as they were told, taking the draught board with them.
‘It won’t be long,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘One thing about a daylight raid, it’s soon over. Knit one, slip one, pass the slipped stitch – over.’
It wasn’t a long raid, nor a particularly noisy one. There was a lot of ack-ack but they could only hear one or two planes and although there were several explosions they were all far enough away not to be alarming. And after half an hour and several dropped stitches, the all clear went.
‘I don’t think we’ll stay to see Peggy back after all,’ Joan said, gathering the children’s coats and scarves. ‘Not now the raids have started. We’ll cut off home while the going’s good. Give ’em my love. Tell ’em I’ll see ’em tomorrow dinner time.’
Once they were gone, Baby fussed and fidgeted and complained.
‘Peggy ought to be back by now, surely to goodness,’ she said to Mrs Geary. ‘Where d’you think they are? I don’t know why they had to go off on a honeymoon with a war on. I know I wouldn’t.’
‘Nobody asked yer,’ Mrs Geary observed, ‘unless I’ve missed something.’
Baby decided to ignore that. ‘If it wasn’t for this stupid black-out,’ she said, ‘I could look out the window an’ see them coming.’
‘Watched pot never boils,’ Mrs Geary said, concentrating on her knitting.
‘That’s a stupid thing to say,’ Baby said crossly. ‘It has to sooner or later. Stands to reason.’
‘Why don’t you put one on an’ see,’ Mrs Geary suggested.
‘One on what?’
‘One kettle,’ the old lady explained patiently, ‘on the gas. See if it’ll boil. If it does we can have a cup a’ tea. I don’t know about you but I could just go a nice cup a’ tea.’
So the kettle was grudgingly filled, but just as Baby was grumbling round the kitchen complaining that she couldn’t find the tapers, Jim and Peggy came tumbling into the hall, dropped their cases by the hatstand and romped into the back room on a wash of unfamiliar scents and smells, soot from their travel, sea salt on their clothes, garlic from their landlady’s cooking. They looked well-fed and cheerful and very much a couple. Baby was instantly jealous of them.
‘An’ about time too,’ she said.
‘She means, “welcome home”,’ Mrs Geary grinned, setting her knitting aside to kiss them. ‘No need to ask how you got on. Where d’you go?’
They settled by the fire and told her about Brighton, while Baby stood with a taper in her hand looking sour.
‘Sounds a treat,’ Mrs Geary said when they’d finished. ‘Now what?’
‘Jim’s going to find us a nice little flat near the camp,’ Peggy said. ‘Soon as he gets back there. Ain’t that right, Jim?’ Their fantasy was still warm in her mind, sustaining her.
‘Soon as I can,’ Jim said, backing her up. It might be possible. You never knew. Damn it, he’d make it possible.
Baby’s jealousy spilled over into ill-humour. How was she supposed to manage if Peggy was going to live near the camp? Who’d do the shopping? Since Mum died she’d felt more and more vulnerable. There was no one to protect her now and with Jim married into the family things could be jolly difficult. It was all very nice flirting with him when he’d only been the boy next door but he’d gone and changed everything now. ‘This sink’s been stopped up for four days I’d have you know,’ she said.
‘So why didn’t you fix it?’ Jim asked.
‘It ain’t up to me to fix it,’ Baby pouted. ‘I ain’t a plumber.’
‘And Peggy is, I suppose,’ he said. ‘You really are the laziest little toe-rag alive.’
‘Oh lovely!’ Baby bristled. ‘That’s right. Call me names. I should. Just because you married our Peggy that don’t give you the right to …’
There was someone scrabbling at the door, pulling the key through the letter box. The little unexpected sound alerted them all, stopping the row, making Mrs Geary set her knitting aside.
Peggy was on her feet at once and half-way across the room. ‘Hush!’ she ordered. ‘Something’s up.’ As she reached the hall they could hear Joan’s voice and the kids crying.
‘Joan,’ Peggy said. ‘Whatever is it?’
‘We been bombed,’ Joan said as she stepped into the hall. She was ashen faced with shock and her eyes were red-rimmed. ‘Got back to find the shop in half, our flat an’ all. We’re bombed out. We come straight back here. Oh Peg!’
Death flexed cold fingers in their warm house for the second time that month. The honeymoon was over, the quarrel seen for the petty thing it was, war had returned and with it the awful searing memory of their mother’s death, the evenings in the hospital, that numbing funeral.
Norman was sobbing so much he was almost choking. ‘They bombed my gingerbread man,’ he wept. ‘My gingerbread man.’
‘Well at least it wasn’t you,’ Peggy said, stooping to put an arm round his quaking shoulders.
‘Me an’ Dad,’ the little boy sobbed, ‘me an’ Dad made the gingerbread man.’ It was all he had left to remember his father by and now it was gone. ‘Me an’ Dad.’
‘When he comes home I’ll bet you he’ll make another one the first thing he does,’ Peggy comforted.
‘We could a’ been killed,’ Joan wept, hanging on to Yvonne’s hand as Peggy led them all into the back room, ‘all the lot of us. If we’d been there we’d a’ been blown to bits.’ Jim was already setting chairs for them beside the fire, and to her credit Baby had lit the gas at last. ‘We could a’ been killed.’
‘Well thank God you wasn’t,’ Peggy said, chafing her sister’s cold hands, gentling Yvonne and Norman into the chairs, setting their feet on the fender to warm them. ‘Just as well you was here.’
Baby was standing in the kitchen door with the teapot in her hands. She was avid for details. ‘How awful!’ she said. ‘Was it all blown up? Everything?’
Peggy made a warning grimace at her in case it wasn’t the right time to ask questions, but Joan spilled into talk at once. ‘Everything,’ she said, sitting by the fire. ‘Bomb must a’ cut it in half. There’s half the kitchen just hanging there up in the air, all my pots and pans, china on the dresser all broken to bits. You never saw such a mess. An’ the kids’ clothes all over the shop, torn to shreds. We brought what there was. It’s out the front in the pram. The WVS said we was to go to the refuge but I said, “No jolly fear. We’ll go to me sister’s.” I couldn’t be doing with the refuge. You get all sorts up there. Oh God, Peggy, what are we going to do?’
‘Stay here with us if Mrs Geary doesn’t mind,’ Peggy said at once. ‘I’ll look after you.’
‘Why not?’ Mrs Geary. ‘The more the merrier, that’s what I say.’
‘There you are then,’ Peggy said to the kids. ‘You’ll be all right here. We don’t get bombed in Paradise Row.’
‘Really?’ Norman asked, looking up at her. In the warmth of the fire and her good sense he’d stopped crying and was beginning to recover. But there were still doubts. ‘Gran did though, didn’t she?’
‘Poor Gran,’ she said. ‘Yes, she did. Not here though. Not in Paradise Row. I don’t reckon old Hitler knows where we are down here.’ Oh poor dear Mum! It was an awful way to go.
‘Where d’you leave your stuff?’ Jim said to Joan. He’d sensed the return of Peggy’s grief and needed to turn their attention to practical things.
‘Out the front,’ Joan said. ‘I told you. There ain’t much. Just a few bits and bobs really.’
Her old pram was standing outside the door, packed with oddments of linen and clothing, Norman’s teddy bear, bent saucepans, cushions, a bundle of family photographs, and tied across the top of it all, a chest of drawers, miraculously undamaged. It was so heavy it needed their combined efforts to wheel it into the hall where it stood incongruously against the yellow anaglypta.
‘Was there anything else?’ Jim asked.
‘No,’ Joan said sadly. ‘Only this.’
‘I’d go back tomorrow if I was you,’ he advised, ‘in case you’ve missed things. You have to lay claim to your own stuff pretty quick before someone else gets their hands on it.’
‘They wouldn’t, would they?’ Peggy asked.
‘Not much, they wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty a’ tea leaves around. The war ain’t converted ’em, it’s just given ’em more scope.’ That’s right, he thought, talk about thieves and looters. That’s better than dwelling on grief.
‘Did you get your ration books?’ Peggy asked as they walked back to the fire. There were such a lot of things to be attended to when you were bombed out.
‘In me bag,’ Joan said. ‘I always keep ’em with me, just in case.’
‘She’s got her head screwed on, our Joanie,’ Mrs Geary approved, patting Joan’s hand because she looked as though she was going to cry again. Despite Jim’s intervention, memories and grief were still washing all about them, unspoken but all the more potent for that.
‘I’m starving,’ Norman said in his matter-of-fact way. His eyes were quite dry now and there was a little more colour in his face.
‘Time for supper then,’ Peggy said, glad of his rescue. ‘What say we get some fish an’ chips?’
‘I couldn’t eat anything,’ Joan said. ‘I’d be sick. It made my stomach shake seeing it all cut to bits like that.’
‘I could, Aunty Peggy,’ Norman said quickly. ‘You could an’ all, couldn’t you, Yvey?’
And although Yvonne was still quiet and pale, she agreed that she was hungry.
‘That’s settled then,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘You could pop in to the off licence fer some beer, couldn’t you, Peggy? And a bottle a’ Tizer for the kids. My treat. I’d go mesself only these legs are giving me proper gyp tonight.’
It was a ramshackle meal, eaten out of the newspaper in the time-honoured way with pickled onions and lots of salt and vinegar. Joan picked at a few chips and told her bomb story over and over again until she’d made sense of it, and the rest of them ate every last crumb and even licked their fingers afterwards. Then Peggy began to organize them for the night.
‘Time you kids was in bed,’ she said to the children. ‘I’ll clear up all this paper and then we’ll nip upstairs and get the camp-beds down. Better look sharp or we shall have the sirens going in a minute.’ She was a warden again, back home in London, doing the job she’d done all through the war. ‘We’ll put them under the stairs,’ she said to Joan. ‘There’ll just be room.’
Joan was worrying again. ‘We got no night things or nothing,’ she mourned.
‘There’s all Mum’s things in the chest a’ drawers,’ Peggy remembered. ‘Sheets and clothes and underwear and everything.’ She hadn’t had the time or the heart to attend to them. ‘You could use some of them for the time being. Save ’em going to waste.’
‘What would she have thought of all this?’ Joan sighed.
‘Just as well she can’t see it, you ask me,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘I’ll tell you one thing though. She’d be glad to see you make use of her things. She kept ’em lovely. Always so particular she was. You use ’em, gel’.
So Flossie’s sheets were taken from the cupboard and Joan found one of her nightgowns for Yvonne and an old blouse for Norman to wear as a night shirt, which made them all laugh because he looked so comical trailing about in it.
The sirens went as they were making up the beds, but by then their panic and tears were all forgotten, calmed by routine. There was such a comfort in housework and its familiar sensations, Peggy thought, and particularly in a raid, a sheet smoothing under her hands, the automatic neatness of a well-tucked corner, a whacked coal shooting sparks up the chimney to hang like red stars among the soot, the kettle whistling, tea falling fragrant into the cup, the rattle of their spoons and saucers echoed by the rattle of the trams in Church Street, small, comforting signs that life was going on despite the bombs.
‘We’ll play cards,’ she said as the noise of the raid got worse. ‘Take our minds off it.’
Watching her as she put up the card table and dealt the first hand, Jim was torn between pride and irritation. She coped with grief so well now, and her calm was admirable and catching. The kids were actually settling to sleep as though they were sure of safety, the cat was purring, Mrs Geary was unconcernedly drinking tea out of her saucer, even Joan was easing into a better state, and all these things were a direct result of that patient, stubborn courage of hers. But he knew with equal certainty that the self-same doggedness, the self-same sense of responsibility had already moved her away from him and their marriage and all the things they’d been planning together on the way home. And that was painful.
He stayed with them for as long as he could, but the raid was still going on when he had to leave. Peggy walked out into the hall to say goodbye. They stood in the jumble of luggage like a couple of refugees.
‘Goodbye, Tabby eyes,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Write to me.’
‘Every day,’ she promised, kissing him back.
‘You’ll be all right?’
‘I’ll be all right.’
It made him ache to kiss goodbye. Her lips were soft and warm and her skin still smelt of the sea. ‘Oh God!’ he said. ‘This is awful. I can’t leave you.’
‘Go now,’ she urged, pushing him gently towards the door. ‘You don’t want to miss your train.’
But that was just what he did want. Why did the war have to come crashing in to pull them apart just when they were so happy together? This God-awful sodding war.
He travelled back to Hornchurch in a turmoil of conflicting emotions, love, anger, remembered happiness, pride that he’d rescued her from her misery dampened by annoyance that she was back in London and facing danger again, barely satisfied desire growling beneath a most rewardingly gratified compassion.
It was a difficult journey with wreckage on the line halting his train, the Underground running slowly, and the raid going on noisily above it all. It took him so long that he only just got back to camp in time and by then he was so tired and frustrated that sleep was impossible.
He lay in his uncomfortable bed at one end of the hut, listening to the snores and grunts and farts of his companions, and was miserably lonely. Tomorrow, he promised himself, as he turned from side to side for the twentieth time, tomorrow I shall find a flat. He had to, because he couldn’t bear for them to live apart. Not now. Not after being together night and day for nearly a fortnight.
He didn’t, of course, although he stormed into Horn-church the minute he was off duty and scanned the notice boards at every newsagent he could find. There was nothing in the Exchange and Mart either, but he comforted himself that at least he’d made a start.
‘Nothing yet,’ he reported to Peggy when he wrote to her that evening. ‘Still, it’s early days. I shall keep on trying. I miss you so much. All the time day and night. Especially night.’
The next day he took the Underground to Upminster and tried there. And was disappointed again.
‘No, sir,’ one newsagent told him. ‘You won’t find nothing here, and what there is you officers have took. We got a housing shortage.’
And another was quite scathing. ‘Little flat?’ he said. ‘Do me a favour! There’s a war on!’
But Jim continued his search, growing more and more dogged as his hope diminished. There must be something somewhere. One little room, that’s all he wanted. But the longer he searched the more he knew in his bones that it was impossible. He’d known it all along. The camp was full of airmen mooching about in the evenings because they were parted from their wives and they all earned the same money as he did and they’d all rent rooms if there were rooms to rent. It was demoralizing.
He kept his true opinions hidden from Peggy, of course, because there was no point in them both being miserable. ‘Nothing yet but you never know, something might turn up tomorrow.’
But after three weeks of it he was morose with loneliness and disappointment.
It was just as well that Froggy Ferguson was on the camp, for Froggy was his usual cheerful self and full of high spirits.
‘Seen this?’ he said at breakfast one morning.
‘What?’Jim asked.
Froggy pushed a rather battered magazine across the table towards him. It was a copy of the Picture Post, with a cover showing six plump toddlers sitting one behind the other on a slide, and a headline offering ‘A Plan for Britain’.
‘No,’ Jim said, glancing at it. He’d been too busy to read anything, except the Exchange and Mart, and now he was too brassed off. But he made an effort to be interested. ‘Good, is it?’ The Picture Post usually was.
‘A1,’ Froggy said. ‘Just up your street. You ought to read it.’
Jim took the paper, without very much interest, but he didn’t look at it again until late that evening after a long day in the hangars, and by then he was so tired he thought he would just flick through it before he went to sleep. But it turned out be such an absorbing issue that he was still reading it at lights out, and he read on eagerly the next morning, picking up where he’d been obliged to leave off, returning to it at odd moments during the day, digesting it piecemeal, one article at a time, eating the printed word like a man long starved of words and ideas. For what words they were. And what ideas. It even took his mind off his miseries.
The entire magazine had been given over to a consideration of the sort of world that could and should be built when the war was over. It was heady stuff. There was an article on work, that argued that there should be jobs for everyone and that the banks should be controlled by the state; there was one called ‘Social Security’ that urged a minimum wage for all working men and allowances for children and special forms of help from public assistance for people who were off work through no fault of their own because they were sick or unemployed; there were articles on town planning, home design, the use of the land, even leisure, written by none other than JB Priestley; and best of the lot, a marvellous piece called ‘Health for All’ that was written by Julian Huxley, who made it meticulously clear that if we wanted a healthy nation the first thing we had to do was to ensure that everybody in it was properly fed, and that when that was done the next thing was to establish a National Health Service into which every worker would pay week by week while they were fit and earning, like a sort of insurance, and which would then allow anyone to be given the medical treatment they needed free at the time they needed it.
By supper-time Jim felt as if he had been introduced to another world. A world full of people who thought as he did. It was just what he needed, a vision of utopia, an unequivocal call for a better, fairer society, and beneath it all the understanding that this was what they were all fighting for.
That night he wrote a long letter to Peggy telling her all about it. It made a pleasant change from reporting failure. ‘Get a copy,’ he instructed, ‘and see if you don’t agree with it. It’s exactly what I’ve been thinking all my life. Pass it on to old John Cooper when you’ve finished with it, with my regards. He’ll love it. Oh Peggy, it will be such a brave new world when all this is over, a world we can be proud to live in, and we are the ones who will build it. Think of that.’
It took Peggy a great deal longer to read the magazine than it had taken Jim but that was because she had so little spare time. She’d gone back to the wardens’ post on the night after Joan was bombed out, and been welcomed with such obvious relief and pleasure that she felt quite proud of herself. They were such a good team and they worked so well together, no matter how difficult things were. And things were very difficult in those wintry days.
Ever since she’d been bombed out Joan had suffered from terrible nightmares. Baby stuffed ear-plugs in her ears and slept through everything, air raids, weeping, people crashing about in the dark, even the sirens, but Peggy and the kids were woken every time. And if the nights were usually disturbed the days were always overburdened, with running the house, endless queues for shopping and never ending worries about meals and rationing.
Joan tried to help her when she could but little sleep and long hours at the factory left her so exhausted by the end of the day that she was slow and clumsy. And Baby resolutely refused to set her hand to any housework at all. And Jim still hadn’t found them anywhere to live.
‘I shall be glad when this war is over and we can start to build this brave new world,’ she wrote to Jim. ‘It sounds wonderful.’ But it all seemed a long way away, especially in her present state of exhaustion. ‘Perhaps things will be better in the spring. We might have found a flat by then.’
But he knew, as she did not, that the spring and calmer seas would bring a renewed danger of invasion and that Fighter Command was preparing itself for the next onslaught. In that miserable winter of 1941 their brave new world was a consolation but a very distant one. And although he wangled several thirty-six hour passes and cut across London to see her, feeding at her house and sleeping together, oh so happily, in his room at number two, he still couldn’t find them a home of their own.