The air raid siren went off just as I began to drift into sleep. Cursing and only half awake, I threw on some clothes and picked up the bag I’d learned to keep by the door. I’d lost track of how many nights in a row poor London had been bombed, and some other cities weren’t having more luck. I’d been on ARP duty for the last two nights as well as working at the depot all day and hoped for a good night’s sleep. Not that anyone in London ever got one any more.
I looked out for David as I scurried to the shelter and was disappointed to see he wasn’t on duty. As always, the shelter was packed with people eating, chatting, drinking and trying to rest. I found myself a space and lay down trying to get some sleep ready for a day at the depot. I’d spent ages trying to work out how to discover if anyone was stealing from there, but had had no luck. I tried going amongst the men at different times, going round the site in a different order and anything else I could think of but to no avail. I was always friendly and passed the time of day with them, but if the men knew anything they weren’t saying. Maybe I should find out what pub they went to. People were usually more likely to give away secrets after a few beers. Trouble was, I could hardly go to a pub on my own. Bronwyn would probably never speak to me again after I threw Alun out so I couldn’t ask her. I’d got more friendly with Edith who was still grieving over her missing husband. Maybe she’d like an evening out. I decided to ask her.
My gloomy thoughts were interrupted by a man nearby starting to play a mouth organ. Soon everyone was singing – ‘We’ll Meet Again’, ‘There’ll Always be an England’, ‘Lily of Laguna’ and others. It was just what we needed and took our minds off what was happening outside.
Sleep was a long time coming, and I was just drifting off when the shelter suddenly shook and we heard the dull crump of a bomb dropping. It sounded louder than usual and dust drifted down from the ceiling. I flinched and looked up expecting to see cracks appearing but it all looked solid. Then another crump and another, and another, six in all, all nearby. After each crump there was a second or two’s silence then several people groaned and a couple screamed. A baby nearby began to cry and its mother tried to comfort it.
The women nearest me gave a crooked smile. ‘You been bombed out yet, love?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Yeah, two weeks ago. We’ve still been able to live in what’s left of our house, but we’ve had no water, no electricity or nothing. It’s horrible. Lucky we’ve got good neigh-bours. They’ve been helping us out. Letting us have our weekly bath and things.’
I touched her hand. ‘Do you have anyone you can stay with?’
She bit her lip trying to hold back a tear. ‘Ain’t got no one, dear. They’re all gone. My last brother was killed in a raid a month ago. And me husband here, he’s an only child. Any road, our jobs are here. If we moved out of London we’d have to start all over again and we’re a bit old for that. You got family nearby?’
I thought of my mum and her awful boyfriend safe in Oxford. I decided to write to her again to try to patch things up. ‘My mum lives in Oxford. I’m in the ATS so I’ve been posted here. Have to go where you’re sent.’
Another crump made us flinch. ‘That sounds a bit close for comfort,’ the woman said wrapping herself round with a blanket. ‘Well, better try to get some sleep. Work tomorrow. Goodnight, dear.’ She lay down and closed her eyes.
I slept badly and looked at my watch often. The air was stale and my head felt full of cotton wool. When I judged it was almost dawn I quietly picked up my stuff and headed towards the stairs. Climbing over people without disturbing them took ages. If the bombing was as bad as it sounded during the night, my ARP skills might be needed.
As I walked towards the entrance of the Tube station, the low sun sent weak rays through a cloud of dust. The air was full of smells: dust, fire and destruction. Barrage balloons drifted overhead like giant floating cartoon fish. I had to force my feet up the final few steps, scared of what I would find.
The street I’d left to enter the shelter was gone. Looking at the scene as if it were unreal, I felt my pulse raise until it seemed others around me would hear it. My palms became clammy, and I took a big breath trying to calm myself. I licked my lips and found they were covered with a thin film of dust.
The surrounding houses looked as if they’d been flattened by an angry god. One or two still stood strangely untouched, while others were a heap of rubble or partly demolished. Sad belongings, once loved by their owners, lay amongst bricks, wood and pipes everywhere. Strangely the post box stood intact, standing higher than the chaos round it. Fires still burned here and there and firemen struggled to put out the biggest one further down the street. All around me, people stood and gaped, unable to take in what was in front of their eyes. Some cried, others clutched their children to them glad to be alive. Several hurried off to see if their homes in adjacent streets were still standing.
Noise behind me told me more people were leaving the shelter. I stood aside as they emerged blinking and aghast.
A woman standing near me cried out and staggered. I hurried to help her. ‘All gone,’ she kept repeating, ‘everything gone, what shall we do?’ Two young children clung to her skirts, their eyes wide and their bottom lips trembling.
I stood in front of her and took her hands in mine. ‘Go to see the ARP warden over there,’ I said, looking her in the eye and hoping she could take in what I was saying. ‘He’ll tell you what to do. They have special stations set up for people in your position.’
Her eyes were distant as if reality was too hard to take in and I gently led her over to the warden. He took her by the arm. ‘Sit down here, love, with your kids,’ he said, gesturing to a kerb, ‘give me a minute and I’ll help you get where you need to go.’ He turned and looked at me, ‘You can get off now, sweetheart.’
As he spoke, a man came rushing up to him. ‘My son is in that house there.’ He pointed to a partly demolished house. ‘They hide in the cupboard under the stairs. Help me get them out. Pray we’re not too late.’
While the warden went to get help, I joined the man, whose name was Alfred, and we began the long task of clearing the debris. We had no tools and soon our hands were filthy and torn. It seemed that no matter how much bricks and debris we moved, the deadly pile grew no smaller. Dust flew up from the bricks making us choke, and now and then we’d find a broken glass or other object the bomb had flattened. I found a bracelet and handed it to Alfred, hoping against hope that his daughter-in-law was alive so he could give it back to her.
Others came to help, and I decided to see if my skills could be of use elsewhere. Two houses down I spotted an arm poking up from the rubble. I ran towards it. It was a woman’s arm, and she was wearing a wedding ring and a watch very like one my mother wore. My heart beat fast, surely she couldn’t be alive under the rubble. The arm was all I could see.
I bent down and lifted her arm to feel for a pulse. For a second I couldn’t take in what happened because the arm was too light. Then the horror of reality made me go cold and sweaty. The arm was not attached to her body. Where it had been pulled from her shoulder, a bloody mess of muscles and tendons hung down dripping onto the ground. I gasped and dropped it. It fell with a dull thud on the broken bricks. Trying not to vomit, I turned away and ran over to the ARP warden on duty to tell him what had happened, so stressed I could barely put a sentence together.
‘She’ll be a gonna,’ he said, his face grubby and his expression grim, ‘leave her and see if there’s anyone else you can help. Concentrate on the living.’
I nodded, trying not to bring back the sandwich I’d eaten in the shelter. ‘Where do we send the homeless?’
‘St James’ School on Mortimer Street. A bus will come later to take them somewhere more suitable,’ he said, then turned away as he heard a police car arrive.
I spent half an hour directing people made homeless to the school. It was a difficult task. People were shell-shocked and didn’t respond quickly to instructions. Many wanted to search for their belongings, but fires still burned here and there and many remaining bits of buildings were unsafe. Several times I had to urge people to leave the remains of their home and go to safety. When I gave one woman the address she wiped her face with a dusty hanky. ‘You know it happens, but you don’t believe it’ll happen to you, do you?’
I was soon to understand what she meant.
It took a very long time until me and the other ARP people had done everything we could, and I was so tired I could hardly think straight. I walked towards home two streets away. The way there was still a jumble of bricks, wood, household belongings and paper and I had to look where I trod. The odd small fire from an incendiary bomb still burned bright. So I was concentrating on my safety when I turned the corner to my street. What I saw made me squeeze my eyes shut and put my hand to my forehead. The house where Bronwyn and I had rooms and the one next door were completely flattened. Dust drifted up from the rubble and a bed hung crazily at first floor level where a fragment of floor hung on like a drunk trying to stay upright. My legs felt weak and my brain, already woolly from what had happened, refused to function. It was if my feet had been nailed to the road.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice say, ‘We’re buggered, Lily, absolutely buggered.’
I turned and there was Bronwyn, lovely Bronwyn. I could have kissed her. I fell against her and threw my arms around her, sobbing, my legs feeling as if they were made of rubber. She clung just as hard to me. I tried to speak but my words choked with tears. I’d helped many people made homeless during my short time as an ARP warden, but now I truly understood what their despair felt like. After moving around from England to France and back again, neither Bronwyn nor I had accumulated a lot of stuff, but what we had was important to us. Our clothes, our few ornaments, our books and diaries. All gone. We didn’t even have our uniforms to go to work in.
When our sobs quieted, we walked slowly towards the pile of rubble that had been our home. Our steps dragged, as if by refusing to reach what was left of the building, we could deny reality. Like so many people, we started to search amongst the debris hoping to find something belonging to us. A touchstone to our pasts. After a few minutes Bronwyn found a packet of Players cigarettes and the book she had picked up from another bombed house. A real irony. I found nothing at all belonging to me.
By the time all this had happened it was time to go to work, and we had to decide what to do. ‘Let’s find somewhere for breakfast first,’ I suggested. Half an hour later we were sitting in a cafe eating bacon rolls and struggling to keep our eyes open. We weren’t the only people looking worn out, it seemed most of the table were full of people looking like they could sleep for a month.
‘It’s hard to know what to do first,’ I said, resting my chin on my hand, ‘find out where to get uniforms, go to work or find somewhere to sleep tonight. I was told to send people to St James’ School, I wonder if we should go there.’
Bronwyn wiped a smear of bacon fat from her chin. ‘Why don’t we go to work, then we’d have shown willing even though we’ll be very late. They can decide about the uniform.’ She looked at the sign showing the cafe opening hours. ‘Let’s meet back here at seven o’clock and decide where to sleep. It might be easier to just go to a shelter and find somewhere tomorrow.’
I grinned at her. ‘No dates involving an overnight stay tonight then?’
She raised an eyebrow and side-swiped my arm, nearly spilling my tea.
‘There’s something I need to tell you, Bronwyn.’ I couldn’t look her in the eye.
She looked at me closely. ‘Not being funny or nothing, but you look real guilty whatever it is.’
‘It’s Alun. I threw him out. Forcibly. Probably gave him a bruise or two. He’s been sponging on us too long and to top it all he tried to get handy with me. Very handy. I’d had enough.’
She sat back and folded her arms. I thought she was going to be angry with me, but instead she just laughed out loud. ‘I wish I’d seen that. Couldn’t have done it myself, mind, he’s my brother after all, and if he told our mam I’d never hear the end of it. But I can’t say I blame you.’ She went quiet for a moment. ‘He wasn’t there when the house was bombed, was he?’
‘I don’t think so. You know him, he’s probably shacked up with some girl or another.’