When Jim Boxall stormed out of the house that evening he was in such a fury he hardly knew what he was doing or where he was going. It was still raining, in a heavy pervasive shower, and already growing unpleasantly dark as if the sky was angry too. For sheer unmitigated bloody pig-headedness! To refuse their house, their first, very own house, after all these years, and just when he was going to France. How could she be so bloody stupid? He crashed into the High Street, his face dark with fury. And there was a pub. It was just what he needed. A good strong Scotch. A good strong double Scotch.
He made his entrance so precipitately that he didn’t see Ernest and Leslie who were sitting in a corner talking to John Cooper, but they saw him and came across at once to lead him back to their table.
‘Didn’t know you were on leave,’ Ernest said. ‘Not embarkation, is it?’
He controlled himself with an effort and tried to speak lightly. ‘You don’t get embarkation leave in this war,’ he said. ‘You just get sent.’ And he drank his whisky quickly.
‘How’s it going over there?’ John Cooper asked. ‘Does anyone know?’
‘According to plan, so they say.’ It was still an effort even to be civil. What a state to be in!
‘Terrible battle at Caen,’ Leslie said.
‘Yes. It was.’ The whisky was warm in his throat, melting his anger at last.
They plied him with more whisky and they talked war and invasion, peace and politics, and presently they were joined by a sailor and his three friends, one of whom was an old hand from Warrenden Brothers and remembered Jim being there ‘in the old days’. There was a piano playing in the snug and some raucous singing by rough London voices. ‘Dear ol’ pals, jolly ol’ pals’. Yes, he thought as the whisky fuddled his rage, this was what he needed.
The first explosion made him jump ‘Good God!’ he said, as the glasses rattled and dust leapt into the air. ‘What was that?’
‘One a’ them doodle-bugs,’ John Cooper said, shifting in his wheelchair as if the reverberation had made him uncomfortable. ‘Noisy beggars.’
The second sent several men out into the street to see where it had fallen.
‘Looks like Blackheath way,’ one said as they returned.
What with the whisky and his anger it didn’t occur to Jim that Peggy might be attending either of them. And when his old friends from Warrenden’s remarked that it was ‘getting a bit hot round here’ and suggested moving on to somewhere else, he said goodbye to John Cooper and the two old fellers and went with them, drunkenly affable.
They spent the rest of the night in an amiable pub-crawl that took them further and further north and west. By chucking out time they were in Thames Street and Jim was decidedly unsteady on his feet.
‘My ol’ woman lives round here,’ he said, peering into the darkness.
‘Stay the night with her then, I should,’ one of his new friends advised.
So he went knocking on his mother’s door.
She was already in bed, but she came down pointing a timid torch to see who it was and pulled him into the house at once for fear of showing a light.
‘Yer Dad’s asleep,’ she warned as they climbed the stairs to her rooms. ‘Best not to wake him.’
‘Can I stay the night?’
‘Looks as if you’d better,’ she said. ‘There’s only the floor, mind.’
‘Pillow and a blanket,’ he said, ‘an’ that’ll be dandy.’
He slept almost as soon as he’d wrapped himself in the blanket, exhausted by emotion and drink. And he didn’t wake until well after eight o’clock the next morning, with a mouth as dry as old leather and a throbbing headache.
There was no sign of his father except for an empty mug and a greasy plate on the table. His mother was riddling the fire. ‘You had a skinful last night, didn’tcher?’ she said mildly. ‘Yer Dad said to leave yer.’
‘Got any aspirin?’
She tossed him the little bottle from the mantelpiece, and he caught it and took two tablets as the events of the previous night rushed back into his mind, the row, Peggy’s pathetic face, Baby in her frowsy bed, Peggy’s pathetic face, the pub crawl, Peggy’s pathetic face.
‘How’s Peggy?’ his mother said, sitting back on her heels.
‘Fine,’ he lied, hoping the aspirin would take effect soon. ‘She’s fine. It’s her birthday tomorrow. I’ve brought her a present.’ And he’d forgotten all about it, shouting at her like that. In the light of that calm morning he was ashamed of the way he’d behaved, all that shouting and going off on a pub crawl and getting drunk. And it wasn’t her fault. She was only being herself, trying to do her best, the way she always did. It was that lazy sister of hers. She was the trouble, rolling around in bed all the time. And that thought made him grin rather ruefully, for wasn’t he rolling around too and late in the morning? Eight o’clock and still not up.
‘Is that the time?’ he said, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I got to be off.’
‘There’s tea in the pot,’ his mother said.
He was out of the house a quarter of an hour later, and caught a tram by running for it as it moved off. He couldn’t wait to get back to Paradise Row and make it up. It was all too bloody silly for words, rowing like that after all these years. They’d live in the house sooner or later. He shouldn’t have sprung it on her when she was tired. He hadn’t given her a chance to think. And he ought to have gone down to the Post and put things right yesterday evening instead of getting plastered. Well never mind, he’d go straight to number six and give her the present and make up with her now.
When he turned the corner into Paradise Row he was whistling happily. The shock of what he saw froze the sound on his lips.
‘Christ!’ he said aloud. ‘Oh Christ!’ Trying to take it in with his brain stunned and none of his senses functioning properly. The street cordoned off, the woodyard gone, and the fence. A crater where the shelter had been. The terrace wrecked. Two houses gone? Three? Whose were they? Was it number six? Impossible to see in the smoke and filth and clouds of dust. ‘Oh Christ!’
There was an elderly policeman on guard by the cordon. ‘Not down here if you please, sir,’ he said, looming out of the dust.
‘I live here,’ Jim said, stepping over the tape.
The man’s expression changed at once. ‘Ah well if that’s the case, sir, perhaps you wouldn’t mind just seeing the warden. Over there by the rescue truck.’
Jim hadn’t noticed the rescue truck, nor the two ambulances standing by at the other end of the road. And even now as he walked towards them they seemed unreal, because this couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be bombed. Not Peggy. Oh dear Christ not Peggy! Why weren’t they digging? They ought to be digging her out. What was the matter with them all? Why were they just standing about? Didn’t they realize she was in the house? Well if they wouldn’t do anything, he would. He ran onto the wreckage and began to pull away the bricks with his bare hands, frantic with distress, fear screaming in his head. ‘Peggy!’ he called. ‘Peg!’
Someone was beside him, holding him by the arms, and Mr MacFarlane’s voice was soothing, ‘It’s all right, son. It’s all right. Everything’s all under control.’
‘It’s number six,’ he said, eyes staring wildly. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s number six. Peggy’s house.’
‘Aye. We know,’ Mr MacFarlane said ‘They’d a Morrison there. She could be in the Morrison. They’ll be digging it oot just as soon as ever they can. They’ve a chimney to bring down first, d’ye see?’ And he turned Jim’s body so that he could see the demolition teams and the leaning stack of the chimney lowering over the wreckage.
The Morrison, Jim thought, but that made him remember the tray and their dreadful row. ‘Have you heard her?’ he asked, trying to calm himself. ‘Do you know she’s there?’
‘No. Not yet. If you’ll just come down, eh?’
‘We should be digging,’ Jim insisted, still wild with shock and grief. ‘Don’t you understand? My Peggy’s under that lot. We should be digging her out.’
‘Aye,’ Mr Mac said gently. ‘We will. Just as soon as ever we can, but they’ve to get the chimney down first and they cannae bring the chimney down if we’re in the way of it.’
He was so sensible and so calm that Jim saw the sense of it, even through his panic, and allowed himself to be led back to the road. The first shock was beginning to ease. It was possible to think. ‘When did it happen?’ he asked. ‘What about Joan and Lily? Had they gone to work?’ They ought to have gone to work. With any luck …
‘Number two’s still standing,’ Mr MacFarlane said. ‘We’re pretty sure your sister and Joan went off to work before it happened. We saw the wee lad in the flats. He was – eh – looking oot the windy just beforehand. We’ve sent a message to the factory just tae be sure.’
But Peggy, Jim grieved. Where was Peggy? Oh God don’t let her be dead. Hurry up with that bloody chimney he urged the demolition team, for Christ’s sake. Don’t just stand there.
Someone was pushing open the door to number eight and an odd grey figure was staggering into the road, calling as she came, ‘I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right.’ Mrs Roderick, covered in dust from head to foot, but still magnificently upright in her supporting corset. ‘I’m all right.’
A nurse sped across the rubble to wrap her in a blanket and Mr MacFarlane headed towards her too. ‘You’re fine,’ he encouraged. ‘You’re right fine. Could you bear to answer a few wee questions?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Roderick said, standing in her blanket like a dusty squaw. ‘I told you. I’m perfectly all right. Hello, Jim.’
‘Did Mr Brown go off to work this morn?’
‘Six o’clock,’ Mrs Roderick said. ‘Regular as clockwork. Nonnie popped out to the shops just before.’ And then without any warning her face crumpled into tears and she began to howl.
‘Go with the nurse,’ Mr MacFarlane said, patting her shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine with the nurse.’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ Mrs Roderick howled as she was led to the ambulance. ‘Perfectly all right. I ought to stay and help. People have been bombed.’
Mr MacFarlane was writing in his notebook. Actually standing in the rubble, writing, as though he was bookkeeping or something. The sight of such mundane clerical activity in such a terrible setting drove Jim to fury again. ‘Can’t that wait?’ he said. ‘Where’s the bloody rescue teams? I thought they were supposed to be the first in action.’
Mr Mac put his book away. ‘They’re working in the shop,’ he said. ‘There were people in the …’
But Jim was already half-way down the road. The shop, of course. She could have popped down to the shop. That’s where she’ll be. And the shop was still standing, barely damaged. There was even some glass left in the windows.
They were carrying a stretcher out with the first casualty as he reached the door. It was Mr Grunewald, pale and bandaged, with his wife grimed and blood-stained but walking beside him holding his hand.
‘How many?’ Jim asked the stretcher bearer.
‘Five,’ the man said, not varying his pace or looking back.
‘Any deaths?’
‘No.’
The third victim was carried out. A woman he’d never seen before. Then a man walking unsteadily and holding a blood-soaked pad to his forehead. Five. Five. Who’s the fifth?
It was Mrs Geary, hobbling and cross, without her glasses, and with a lump as big as a hen’s egg rising on her forehead. ‘Who’s that?’ she said peering at him as he approached.
A nurse followed her out of the shop. ‘Let’s just get you to the ambulance, dear,’ she said.
‘Bugger off,’ the old lady growled. ‘I ain’t going in no ambulance and that’s flat. The bugger’s bombed my house. You just get me a chair. That’s all I want. My legs are giving me gyp.’
There was a line of chairs standing outside the Earl Grey.
‘Let her sit down,’ Jim said to the nurse. ‘She’s a stubborn old thing. It won’t hurt her to wait a little, will it?’
‘She ought to be checked over,’ the nurse dithered. ‘But I suppose it could wait. She’s not as bad as some of the others.’
‘I ain’t deaf neither,’ Mrs Geary said. ‘There’s three gels in my house I’d have you know, young woman. You don’t move me till I know what’s happened to them. And that’s flat. You got a blanket? I’m perishing cold.’
There was a sighing sound in the air above them. ‘Steady!’ a voice called. ‘Easy as she goes. ‘Nother inch, Charlie. Easy! Easy!’ And the broken chimney stack roared into rubble that filled the backyards.
‘Now we shall get them out,’ Jim said to Mrs Geary as he ran to join the rescue. ‘Joan’s all right.’
The rescue teams were quick and very well-organized. Within seconds they had two rescues going at once, one above the ruins of number six, looking for Peggy and Baby, and the other, with less hope, where number four had been, searching for the Allnutts and Mr Cooper. It was laborious work, shifting the rubble and handing it back piece by piece into the street along a willing human chain, but it was done with impressive speed. And naturally Jim was one of the first in the chain, relieved to be taking action at last. Anything rather than that awful standing about, waiting.
As he worked the church clock struck the hour. Could it really be only nine o’clock? It felt much later. Then he was aware that Leslie was working beside him, neat and dapper as ever even with his hands covered in brick dust.
‘It’s Peggy, isn’t it?’ the old man said. ‘We heard it, of course, and then one of our customers told us, so we came straight back. A dreadful business.’
‘Is Ernest here too?’ Jim panted, stopping for a second to wipe the sweat out of his eyes.
‘Two down,’ Leslie said. And sure enough there he was, working with the best, his long white hair stained red with dust. ‘Don’t worry,’ Leslie said. ‘They’re ever so good. They’ll get her out.’
But will she still be alive, Jim thought, under the weight of all this?
‘Hush!’ someone called. And they all stood quite still and looked up hopefully. One of the rescuers was lying face down on the rubble listening.
The silence lasted for a very long time and Jim was quite shocked to hear the trams rattling in the High Street. It was dreadful to think that life was going on just a few yards away as though nothing was the matter.
‘Over here,’ Mr Goodall called into the hush. ‘Over here.’
Jim followed the others, breathless with hope. But it wasn’t Peggy. It was John Cooper’s wheelchair, squashed and ominously bloodstained.
‘Oh God!’ Leslie said at his shoulder. ‘Poor man.’
Mr Goodall was following the blood trail through the wreckage, as the rescuers cleared the way. None of them really had much hope of finding their old friend alive, but even so the sight of his body, crushed and bloodied among the bricks, was an appalling shock.
‘He’ll not have known much about it,’ Ernest said, ‘if that’s any consolation.’ But it wasn’t. It didn’t even numb the pain.
‘Our first death,’ Leslie said sadly.
But Mr Goodall corrected him. ‘Fifth,’ he said. ‘They were all killed in the woodyard, and Mrs Brown was the first one we found when we came in. She was on her way home from the shop. We found her basket, poor woman.’
‘Then pray God it’s the last,’ Ernest said.
‘Amen to that,’ Jim said grimly, thinking of Peggy.
‘If Mr Cooper is …’ Leslie said delicately, trying to prepare them all for worse to come, ‘I doubt if we shall see the Allnutts again.’
Jim straightened his back and looked away from the group round Mr Cooper’s body, struggling not to weep. Dear old Cooper, who’d been such a help to him down in the library, who’d never made a fuss about anything, stuck in that awful wheelchair, playing the piano and watching them all dance. And there was Mr Allnutt walking up the road, large as life, with his work-box in his hand.
At first Jim thought he was seeing things, that it was shock playing tricks on him, but then Ernest looked up and saw him too, and then all three of them were tumbling down the rubble to grab him by the hand. ‘Mr Allnutt! You’re alive. Thank God.’
‘Just popped round the corner to fix some shelves for Mrs Jones,’ Mr Allnutt said. ‘It threw us about a bit I can tell you. What a bit a’ luck the wife’s away.’
‘Away?’ Ernest asked.
‘Gone down to Slough to see young Bertie. Went seven o’clock. What a bit a’ luck.’
They led him down the road to sit beside Mrs Geary. Best not to tell him about John Cooper. Not yet anyway. Let him get over the shock a bit first.
‘Not much left is there, mate?’ Mrs Geary said cheerfully. ‘They got the girls out yet?’
But that horror was still to come. Ten minutes later the rescue team came upon a woman’s arm, stiff and white and without any sign of life.
‘I wouldn’t go up there yet,’ Leslie advised. ‘Not just yet.’ But Jim was already leaping over the rubble.
There was no way of knowing whose arm it was. Not Peggy’s. Please don’t let it be Peggy’s. But if it wasn’t Peggy’s it would have to be somebody else’s. And it sickened him to think that he was wishing somebody else dead in order to keep her alive. But even so, please don’t let it be Peggy’s.
There was somebody calling him from the street. Lily, was it? Lily and Joan standing together still in their aprons and headscarves, their upturned faces pale and anxious. ‘Have they found someone?’
‘Yes,’ he called back. ‘Don’t come up.’
They were more obedient than he’d been, and stood where they were, watching and waiting.
‘You’ll tell us, Jim?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He was irritable with anxiety and fear. They were being so slow, uncovering the body so gently. Please don’t let it be her.
It was Baby, her neck broken, her blonde hair bright among the dust, and the remains of the peroxide bottle still clutched in her hand.
Jim climbed down to tell Joan and Lily. Oddly none of them wept. They stood together, clinging to one another as though they were drowning, but they didn’t weep. It was as if the horror had anaesthetized them.
‘Oh poor Baby!’ Lily said over and over again.
And Joan said, ‘Now it’s only Peggy.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his heart leaden in his chest.
‘We’ll help,’ Lily said. ‘Tell us what we’ve got to do.’
Leslie and Ernest were standing side by side in the rubble. Ernest was trying to mop the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that was now more brick dust than cloth.
‘We ought to tell Mrs Geary,’ Leslie said, looking down to where the old lady was still sitting, wrapped in her blanket, waiting.
‘We’re standing on our house,’ Ernest said sadly, looking at the piles of brick and debris under his feet. ‘There’s a bit of your jardinière over there. Oh God, that poor kid, to die so young.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ Leslie decided. ‘You have a breather.’ And he climbed down the rubble, neat and deft as a cat.
But when he reached the wall of the Earl Grey and Mrs Geary was peering myopically towards him he couldn’t think what to say. Her face looked peculiarly naked without her glasses, naked and vulnerable and lost.
‘Leslie, is it?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve found someone.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s Baby.’
‘Dead?’ the old lady said flatly.
‘Yes.’
‘That bleedin’ Hitler,’ she said fiercely. ‘He ought ter be hung drawn and quartered for this.’
‘Quite right,’ Mr Allnutt said, patting her hand. ‘So he should. An’ that’s what we’ll do to him, an’ all, once we’ve caught the bugger.’
Leslie stood before them uncomfortably, wondering whether he ought to tell Mr Allnutt about Mr Cooper now, but before he could come to any decision, there was a noise behind him and turning he saw that Ernest was scrambling over the wreckage towards them. He had a dark object held against his chest and as he got nearer Leslie and Mr Allnutt could see that it was the parrot’s cage, squashed and dented and with a dust-covered bundle of feathers lying at the bottom of it like a discarded mop.
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Geary said, as he handed it to her, and then, as she managed to focus her eyes, ‘Oh Gawd! It’s my poor old Polly. It’s my poor bird. That bleedin’ Hitler’s killed my Polly.’
And the bundle of feathers stirred, turned its head and opened one round yellow eye to glare at her balefully.
‘Star-news-standard,’ it croaked. ‘Aark!’
‘Well would you believe it!’ Mrs Geary said in wonder and relief. ‘You good old boy. See that, Mr Allnutt? He’s lived through it. He ain’t dead after all. There you are you see, you can survive. There’s hope for our Peggy. You go right on back you two,’ she said to Leslie and Ernest, ‘and you get her out this very minute. Oh, what a good old boy you are, Polly!’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ Ernest assured her, but he spoke without hope. When they found the poor girl she would be – well – like Baby. How could it be otherwise in such destruction?
Mr MacFarlane was calling from the wreckage. He was almost hidden by a pile of bricks but his face was pink with excitement. ‘We’ve found the shelter,’ he said. ‘Over here.’
There was a rush towards him as Leslie and Ernest and Mr Allnutt ran from the Earl Grey and Jim and Joan and Lily climbed up from the street. They could see a pit in the rubble and down at the bottom of it was the top of the Morrison shelter. Was there hope? Was it possible?
‘Quiet everybody!’ Mr Goodall said as they crashed towards him. And when he’d got silence, ‘You call her, Jim.’
And Jim called, leaning over into the little crater so as to put his face as close to the roof of the shelter as he could. ‘Peggy! Peggy! Are you there? Peggy!’
But there was no answer. Not a sound.
‘Try again,’ Mr Goodall said.
‘Peggy! Peg! Say something! Peg!’ He was groaning with the agony of no reply. ‘Peggy, please!’
Joan was beside him, leaning into the pit. ‘Someone get me a stick,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she’s too weak to call. Come on, quick, some of yer. A stick, a pole, something to bang with.’
She was handed a piece of guttering. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Keep quiet.’
And she leant into the pit and knocked on the roof of the shelter, once, twice, three times, the way they’d signalled to one another through the bedroom walls all those years ago in Tillingbourne.
There was no answer.
‘Knock again,’ Jim said.
She knocked again, once, twice, three times. And they listened again, holding their breath, hoping against hope.
And a small faint knocking answered them. Once, twice, three times.
‘She’s there!’ Jim whooped. ‘She’s there.’
‘Get down out of it quick then,’ Mr Goodall said. ‘The sooner we get her out the better.’ She’d been buried for far too long, and time and oxygen were running out.
The three of them stood in the street and watched as the rescue teams hauled away the last obstructions, clearing part of a wall, more and more bricks, and finally revealing a section of the roof, which lay aslant the shelter, crushing one corner. Lifting equipment was hauled into position as they watched, praying and hoping.
‘Once that’s out the way we shall see where she is,’ Mr MacFarlane promised them. ‘Wait a wee while.’
It was for ever, standing in the dust, not daring to hope, hardly daring to breathe, as the rescue teams hauled and dug. Please don’t let her be dead. Let it be her who was knocking.
One of the men was waving. ‘Now,’ Mr MacFarlane said. And he led the way across the rubble.
As Jim climbed he could see that the edge of the Morrison was jutting up from underneath the bricks. It was buckled but intact.
‘Is she there?’ he begged, falling onto his knees among the broken bricks, peering down into the hole they’d made.
There was something in the shelter. He could see a shape, a torn shirt, part of an arm, and the roughened fur of a tabby cat lying under the arm. ‘Peggy!’ he called. ‘Peggy! Are you there?’
They were jacking up the top of the shelter. ‘Peggy! Peggy!’ Lifting out the cat, which hung between its rescuer’s hands, damp and swearing.
‘Let me go down,’ he begged. ‘Please let me get her out.’ Whatever state she was in, dead or alive, he had to be the one to get her out.
They made way for him, glancing at the leader of the rescue team for his agreement. And so he was lowered into the shelter.
She was lying on her side as if she was asleep, and there was blood streaking her shoulder and congealed on her hands. ‘Peggy,’ he said, and he put out his hand fearfully to touch her face. And her face was warm.
‘She’s alive,’ he called. ‘She’s still alive. Thank God.’ And warmth flooded his own face and spread into his chest and down his arms. She was alive.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, exactly as she’d done so many times early in the morning waking to a new day. ‘Jim?’ she said. ‘Oh Jim. Is it you?’
He was lifting her up, holding her in his arms like a baby. Her left arm was hanging limply and her shoulder was out of alignment so something was broken. But she was alive. She would heal. Hands reached into the hole to help them both out. And then he was carrying her into the light of day and the good fresh air.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said weakly. ‘To the house. I should’ve said. You were right.’
‘Hush, hush,’ he soothed, kissing her dusty hair. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Nothing mattered now that she was alive. That was the important thing. ‘Oh Peg, I love you so much.’
She leant her head against his chest as he climbed carefully down the rubble towards the waiting ambulance. ‘I’ll come to the house,’ she said, ‘I mean it. I should’ve said so yesterday. I love you more than anything.’
‘I know,’ he said. And he did know. They both knew. The bomb had stripped them of every emotion except love. ‘Save your strength, my little love,’ he said. ‘First we’ll get you over this. Then we’ll go to the house. I promise. We’ll go as soon as ever we can. Everything’ll be all right. You’ll see. We’ve got a new world to build.’