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“There’ll always be an England.”
Sam listened to the villagers singing defiantly as they huddled in the bomb shelter on the village green. He was glad they could still sing after so many years and so many air raids. Singing patriotic songs would keep their spirits up. Singing would take their minds off the damp discomfort of the underground shelter and drown out the sound of German planes droning overhead on their way to bomb London yet again.
He kept his eye on the two teenaged girls. When the air-raid siren had interrupted the dance in the village hall, Carol Elliot had hurried obediently into the shelter, but not Vera. Oh no, not Vera! Vera had tumbled into the shelter at the very last minute, flushed and giggling, and now he saw her slide a packet of tea onto her mother’s lap. He knew that the brown paper packet could only have come from an American soldier she had met at the dance. He was of the opinion that there was only one way for a girl to get gifts from American soldiers.
He knew about soldiers. He’d been a soldier thirty years ago, fighting the “war to end all wars,” and he had the battle scars to prove it. He’d fought alongside Americans, and he’d seen how they were with the girls. French, English, Belgian, it didn’t matter. The British Tommies didn’t stand a chance when the Americans turned on the charm.
He was too old to fight now, but he could still do his bit. His eyes were not as good as they used to be, but his hearing was still sharp. He watched Carol slide along the rough wooden bench until she could whisper in her friend’s ear. Their heads were close together, Carol’s red curls intermingled with Vera’s long dark tresses.
He moved closer. He wasn’t nosy, no one could call him nosy, but it was his duty to know what was going on in the village, and Carol’s whispered questions were very easy to overhear.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Enough,” Vera replied.
Sam could see the shock on Carol’s face.
“How much is enough?” she asked.
“I would have gone all the way,” Vera replied, “but the siren went off. Mr. Ruddle started shining his light into the bushes and telling the Americans to go back to their barrack, and I couldn’t find my knickers.” She giggled. “Soldier boy had them in his pocket. He said he wanted a souvenir.”
“But you’d only just met him,” Carol protested.
“So what?” Vera asked. “He’s from California. He has a house with a swimming pool, and orange trees, and—”
“But Vera ...”
“Don’t ‘But Vera’ me. Listen to them all singing away. There’ll always be an England. I don’t think so. It won’t be the same ever again and I’m not staying here. I already told you, I’m going to get myself an American soldier.”
“Do you even know his name?”
“Of course I do. His name is Nick. All I have to do is get pregnant, and he’ll have to marry me and I can go to California.”
“But what if he gets killed?”
“Then I’ll be a war widow, and I can still go to America if I want to.”
Sam looked at Vera’s happy flushed face. Hitler’s bombers were on their way to destroy what was left of London, and all she could see was opportunity. He’d heard it all before in the last war. He’d seen what happened to the women. There would be no happy ending for Vera.
Vera was still whispering excitedly. “I don’t think I can get pregnant from what we did tonight. It was too cold to lie down on the ground, and I think you have to be lying down. He says he has a pass tomorrow. I’m going to meet him in the bicycle sheds. I think we can do it there.”
Sam shook his head and wondered if he should tell Vera’s mother what he had heard.
Before he could come to a decision, the patriotic singing ended abruptly. Mrs. Rollins, who had been leading them in a strong contralto, stopped singing and began to sob, and everyone fell silent.
Sam looked away from the two girls.
“Keep singing, Mrs. Rollins. We all need to keep our spirits up.”
He was surprised when Elsie Shenton, not known for her kindness, glared at him and wrapped a bony arm around the crying woman.
“She got a telegram,” she said, “today.”
“Oh.”
Sam nodded at Mrs. Rollins. “Sorry to hear that.”
Mrs. Rollins clasped her baby, causing it to give a muffled wail of disapproval. “Poor little mite,” she said. “He’ll never see his father.”
“Taken prisoner?” Sam asked.
Elsie Shenton glared at him again. “No,” she said flatly.
With the singing at an end, Carol’s mother pulled her daughter away from Vera. “I don’t know what you girls are whispering about,” she said, “but you need to be quiet. Try to get some sleep.”
Sam rose stiffly to his feet and decided to risk cracking the door open just a little to let in some fresh air. The shelter was perpetually damp, and ventilated by one small shaft. Several of the now-sleeping babies were adding their own unfortunate deposits to the dank, overcrowded space, not that the mothers could be expected to do anything about it. Sleeping babies, however odorous, were preferable to screaming babies.
Sam breathed in the draft of fresh air and listened for the sound of Hitler’s planes. He could see a flickering glow in the northern sky. The bombers had reached London. It would be a few minutes before they began their return journey. He would be safe in leaving the door open a crack and letting in some air. He extinguished his kerosene lantern and allowed moonlight to filter in through the doorway.
“Blackout won’t help tonight,” he muttered. “London’s a sitting duck in the moonlight.”
“Poor old London,” said a voice from the corner.
“Poor old London,” Sam agreed.
Vera rose to her feet. “I have to get some air,” she said in a panicked voice.
Her mother pulled her back down. “Don’t be daft. Mr. Ruddle can have you arrested for interfering with his duties.”
“I’d like to see him try,” Vera muttered.
Sam kept his ear to the crack in the door. Soon he heard the sound of the German bombers droning through the night sky on their way back from London. He slammed the door and relit the lantern.
He looked around at the people under his charge. All of the children were sleeping, but the adults were awake and staring upward at the corrugated sheeting of the roof. They knew the danger. They knew how vulnerable they were. This was the time when a pilot who had somehow failed to drop his bombs on target would drop them over the south coast before he headed back across the Channel. The pilot would not see the village itself, nestled in a fold of the South Downs, but he would see the open waters of the Channel ahead, and he would jettison his bombs over this last sliver of coastline and hope to damage something, anything, while he still had the chance.
He heard it and felt it; a muffled explosion and a light tremor. A bomb had been dropped some distance away. He saw fear in every face at the first impact. He wanted to say something to relieve the tension, but what could he say? They all knew the score. Four bombs in a stick; how many were left?
The second explosion was still to the north, but closer. A shower of dust fell from the roof and woke Mrs. Rollins’s baby. The baby’s cries were the only sound in the tense silence.
The third impact came in the form of a shuddering blow that shook the shelter. The brick walls bowed inward, overturning the benches and throwing the occupants onto the floor. The roof creaked and sagged, and Sam’s kerosene lantern flickered and died, leaving them in sudden suffocating darkness. No one screamed; not even the baby. Sam held his breath. No explosion!
In the fleeting moment of silence, he heard the fourth explosion somewhere to the south.
His heart was racing. These were his people. He was in charge. Where were the matches? He had to light the lantern. He had to let them see his face and know that he was not afraid. He groped around on the floor and made contact with someone’s leg. A woman, or a girl.
“Matches,” he muttered, continuing to scrabble around on the floor. He realized that everyone was on the floor. The impact had hurled them all from their seats, and they were tangled in a heap in the darkness and damp.
“I have matches.”
He recognized Vera’s voice and inappropriately wondered if she had American matches, not that it would make any difference so long as they worked. He heard a sharp scraping sound and smelt sulfur. The match light flickered for a moment, and he saw Vera beside him. He thrust the lantern toward her.
“Shit,” she muttered as she dropped the match. The scraping sound came again, and this time she was ready. The flare of the kerosene lamp rose from a guttering flame to a fierce orange light, illuminating the terrified faces of the villagers.
“Don’t no one move,” Sam said. It was all he could think to say. He had no other command to give.
The villagers stayed where they were. They were breathing now, in ragged terrified gasps.
Mrs. Rollins was wide-eyed, grasping her baby with fierce desperation. “It hit us,” she whispered.
Murmurs of agreement greeted her statement.
“Four in a stick,” said Sam. “Two to the north, heard them clear as anything.”
“And one to the south,” said Mrs. Shenton.
“And one right on top of us,” whispered Vera.
Sam bit back a curse. In the trenches of his own war, he had been very free with his curses, but cursing had made no difference then, as it would make no difference now.
“Don’t no one move,” he said again.
Of course, it was Vera who challenged him. “Why the hell not?” she asked.
“Ooh, the mouth on that one!” exclaimed Mrs. Shenton.
Vera freed herself from the tangle of arms and legs, and rose shakily to her feet. She stared around with the look of a trapped animal.
Sam’s brain finally began to fit the pieces together. It’s a dud, he thought. It didn’t explode. If it had exploded, we’d all be dead. It’s a dud. It was known to happen. Every now and then, a bomb would fail to explode on impact.
The thought brought no relief. The bomb had failed to explode on impact, but that didn’t mean it was never going to explode. Anything could set it off. Any slight shifting or settling of the earth could bring the detonator contacts together, and there was nothing they could do about it. They were like rats in a trap.
Vera’s voice was steady and, for once, respectful. “Where is it, Mr. Ruddle?”
Ruddle raised his eyebrows and looked toward the door. “Right outside, I think.”
Vera’s mother reached out to grasp her daughter’s arm. The villagers were slowly untangling themselves, moving as a group to huddle against the far wall. Vera was the only one standing, meeting Mr. Ruddle eye to eye. “Open the door, Mr. Ruddle, and take a look.”
Mrs. Shenton’s cracked voice was close to a scream. “No.”
Vera rounded on the older woman. “You can stay here and get blown up if you want to, but I’m not going to stay here with you. We’ve only got Mr. Ruddle’s word for it that it’s right outside. It might not be. It might be farther away. We won’t know if we don’t look.”
“You don’t give the orders around here,” Mrs. Shenton grumbled. “I say we all sit still and wait for help. Don’t let her do it, Sam. She’ll be the death of all of us.”
Mr. Ruddle retrieved the courage of his youth and settled his tin hat firmly on his head. “She’s right,” he said. “We have to know. Now, you all stay back out of the way, and don’t no one make any noise.”
He reached into his pocket for his flashlight. No use worrying about using up the battery; he had to know. His hand shook as he placed it on the door handle, and he winced as the door creaked.
“You be careful,’’ said Mrs. Shenton.
“You be quiet,” Sam rejoined, as he cracked the door open and shone the wavering beam of the flashlight through the gap.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “Don’t no one start screaming, you understand. No one make a sound.”
His trembling grasp offered no resistance as Vera pulled the flashlight from his hand and held it steady.
“Let me,” she said softly, and he thought that there was kindness in her young voice. Together they looked along the beam of light and saw where it reflected on a large metal object at the top of the steps. He saw where the nose cone was buried in the ground and where the fins reached up into the night sky.
“Is it ...?” she asked.
“Aye,” said Sam, “it’s a bomb.”
“Shit,” said Vera, and no one corrected her.
The all-clear siren blared through the quiet air. Sam looked around in surprise as people began to gather their belongings. Foolishness, sheer foolishness; all except for Vera Chapman. She might have a headful of foolish notions about American soldiers, but she was the only one with the sense to stand still.
Sam raised his voice. “Don’t be so blooming daft. No one’s leaving. We can’t go outside. Move back, everyone, back into the corner.”
Mrs. Shenton was the first to point out the obvious. “Fat lot of good that will do. If that there thing goes off, it won’t make no difference where we’re sitting.”
“Just move back out of the way and let me think,” Sam said.
The children were awake now, staring wide-eyed at the adults.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Mrs. Rollins, cradling her baby. “How long are you going to keep us cooped up in here?”
Mrs. Shenton’s voice was cracked and spiteful. “He don’t know what to do. Look at him; he’s white as a sheet. He don’t have no idea what to do.”
“We’ll just wait here,” said Sam, “until someone comes.”
Mrs. Shenton was not to be silenced. “How long do you think that will be? You heard the explosions. There’s other people been hit, or leastways some cows or pigs or something. They’ll all be out there putting that right. No one knows we’re in here.”
“Oh, they’ll realize it soon enough; soon as I don’t report in,” Sam replied, trying to sound confident and hoping that the expression on his face would not betray his words.
“Meantime we just sit here with a bloody great bomb on our doorstep; is that what you want us to do?” Mrs. Shenton snapped.
Sam was not one to approve of ladies using swear words, but he knew that Elsie Shenton had said aloud what no one else wanted to say; there was a bloody great bomb on their doorstep, and no one, including Sam, knew what to do about it.
He felt a hand on his arm. Vera was still standing beside him holding the flashlight. Her calm voice was a welcome reprieve from Elsie Shenton’s panicked complaints.
“Mr. Ruddle,” said Vera, “I think I can get past it.”
“Don’t be daft.”
“Look for yourself.”
Vera, her hand steady as a rock, shone the flashlight through the crack in the door.
“There’s enough room for me to squeeze past it.”
“If you touch it, it will—”
“I’m not going to touch it. I can get past without touching it.”
Vera’s mother rose to her feet. “No, I absolutely forbid it. You are not to go out there, Vera. Come and sit down. We have to wait. Give that light back to Mr. Ruddle. He’s in charge, not you.”
“You’re like a bunch of sheep,” Vera said, her gaze sweeping around the cluttered space. “I’m not going to sit here and wait just because he says I have to. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die trying.”
“What about us?” Mrs. Rollins asked. “Don’t you care what happens to us?”
“Not really!”
Vera flashed a quick smile at Sam and pulled the door open another couple of inches. “Close the door behind me,” she said as she slipped through the crack.