‘We had a lone nuisance raider stooging around earlier this afternoon,’ Norman Riley reported to Connie when they crossed paths at the corner of Park Road.
Norman had just finished a daytime stint as warden at the North Street sector post when he came across her chatting with Lizzie and Pamela ten minutes before the start of their own shifts.
‘Any damage done?’ Connie asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, but it was a close shave. Fritz came in fast and low in broad daylight, aiming for Wilfred Freeman’s grain yard. Luckily, he missed his target. The bombs were jettisoned half a mile out to sea.’
‘I didn’t hear any sirens.’ Lizzie had spent the day helping to rebuild her father’s allotment shed, assisted by her young cousin Arnold and a couple of his Boy Scout pals. They’d used the existing concrete base, a metal window frame and a door salvaged from the Gazette building’s bombsite on College Road, plus odd boards and lengths of timber scrounged from Anderson’s to construct a Heath Robinson affair that would nevertheless be secure enough to store Bert’s gardening tools.
‘No, the cheeky blighter came in under the radar and was gone again before we knew it.’
‘You look worn out,’ Pamela commented. Their fellow volunteer was no spring chicken – probably in his sixties, in fact. Norman slotted in his ARP shifts between working as a maths teacher at St Joseph’s School. Today was Sunday and he was returning home to piles of ink-stained exercise books waiting to be marked. He was the scholarly type: thin and stooping, with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a chalky, creased look about him even in his dark blue Civil Defence uniform.
‘Aren’t we all?’ he commented as he walked on. ‘Still, we carry on as best we can.’
‘Is Tom on duty with you tonight?’ Lizzie asked Connie before they went their separate ways – she to her ambulance depot and Pamela and Connie to the Gas Street post.
Connie nodded. ‘I’ll ask him to do a few hours on the roof at Anderson’s. We need someone up there to keep a lookout for more tip-and-run raiders, given what Norman has just told us.’ The night was clear and calm: ideal weather for a follow-up attack. ‘We’d best get a move on. Oh, and don’t expect me back at Elliot Street later – I’ve arranged to stay over at Tom’s again.’
‘All right, I’ll see you first thing tomorrow.’ Lizzie set off for King Edward Street at a brisk pace. ‘Don’t be late!’ she called over her shoulder.
‘Pot … kettle!’ Connie retaliated with a light laugh. Whenever Lizzie stayed at Bill’s harbour-side cottage she would pull up outside the bakery next morning with a squeal of van brakes and the look of having thrown on her clothes, without taking time even to brush her hair. Connie would already be elbow deep in flour and yeast, mixing the first batch of dough.
Pamela kept pace with Connie as they made their way to Gas Street. She envied the sisters’ ease and their relaxed references to sleeping with their sweethearts: a step that she and Fred had yet to take. Not for lack of wanting to – that much was obvious to both of them – but out of a mixture of propriety, circumstance, shyness, lack of confidence; call it what you will. Perhaps one day soon, she thought to herself as she gave a wistful sigh.
‘I’ll get you and Simon to patrol the docks,’ Connie decided as they came to the familiar sandbagged entrance of the sector post. ‘You can check that the stirrup pumps and Redhill containers are in working order on your way there.’
‘Right you are.’
The Union Jack above the entrance hung limply as they entered the gloom of the old cobblers’ shop to a lingering smell of leather, boot polish and dust. Connie went straight to the pile of paperwork stacked on the counter and got stuck in, while Pamela made a beeline for the storeroom. Gloves, boots, whistle, emergency first-aid supplies, duty-respirator – one by one she reached for the equipment she would need for her shift.
Lizzie looked forward to hearing from Bill about the progress he and Tom had made on their first full day of working on the Annie May. Approaching the ambulance depot from the top of King Edward Street, she let her mind stray to wedding matters. Replies to invitations were coming in thick and fast and the headcount was now up to forty – already too many in Bill’s view. Pamela and Connie had started sewing their dresses – they were ahead of Lizzie in that respect. I must get on with it, she told herself. At this rate I’ll be walking down the aisle in my petticoat! She thought of the yards of crumpled silk still waiting to be transformed into her wedding gown. As for a veil – well, she would adapt the one her mother had worn all those years ago. The precious article, wrapped in tissue paper and kept in a bottom drawer in her father’s bedroom, would be her ‘something old’.
‘Watch out!’
A loud yell interrupted Lizzie’s train of thought. An ambulance had emerged cautiously from the depot and almost collided with a man on a bicycle speeding recklessly down the steep hill. Without any attempt to apply his brakes, the cyclist swerved off the road, crashed into a dustbin and ended up spread-eagled on the pavement. His cap flew off, his jacket fell open and for a few heart-stopping moments he lay motionless.
Lizzie saw Sam Billington jump down from the ambulance and sprint to the man’s aid. But instead of accepting help, the reckless rider leaped to his feet and swung his fists, landing several punches by the time she joined them.
‘Bloody idiot!’ Despite his slight build, the angry man – dark-haired and with a wiry build – forced Sam back against a garden wall. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’
Stronger by far, Sam was able to fight him off. ‘Steady on, Ronnie. I’m sorry – OK?’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Lizzie saw blood pouring from a gash in the man’s forehead. She gave a small start of realization; this was Arthur Butcher’s son, Ron, who had stormed off when his father had sold Annie May.
Ron wiped away the blood with the back of his hand. The sight of it seemed to enrage him further and he swore before lashing out again.
Dodging the blow, Sam picked up the bike and held it in front of him as a shield, but Ron wrenched it from him and flung it to the ground, shattering the headlamp and buckling the front wheel.
‘Stop that.’ Lizzie tried in vain to intervene. She smelled alcohol on Ron’s breath and recalled that he’d made no attempt to brake when he’d seen the ambulance edge out of the yard. In fact, she wondered if he’d been on a kamikaze mission to crash into it head-on, only swerving at the very last second.
Ignoring her plea, Ron used his elbow to shove her away. Blood still poured from the gash on his forehead and now he rushed at Sam, caught him off balance and wrestled him to the ground, so that the two men were caught up in a tangle of twisted handlebars and spinning wheels.
Concerned about the amount of blood, Lizzie ran to the ambulance to fetch a first-aid kit. If Ron was indeed drunk, it would be impossible to talk sense into him – somehow Sam would have to subdue him and Lizzie would be standing by, ready to stem the flow.
‘Calm down, Ronnie!’ Sam extricated himself from the bicycle and managed to pin down his man. ‘I’m going to count to ten – OK? One, two, three …’
‘Get off me!’ Ron kicked and squirmed but Sam held him fast.
‘Four, five, six …’
‘Sam bloody Billington, I’ll get you for this!’
The childish threat brought a grim smile to Lizzie’s lips. Blood streamed down the enraged man’s face and neck, staining the front of his shirt bright scarlet.
‘Seven, eight, nine, ten. Right, that’s it!’ Sam dragged his adversary into a sitting position then shoved him back against the wall, expelling all the air in Ron’s lungs with a loud oof! ‘Are you ready to see sense?’
‘Bloody let go of me, you bugger!’ Ron raised his knee sharply and caught Sam in the groin. Sam keeled over sideways, leaving his opponent free to haul himself to his feet and stagger away. Ron lurched unseeing towards the brick archway leading into the brewery yard and straight into Bill’s arms.
Bill caught him before he collapsed. He’d heard the disturbance from inside the annexe, where he’d signed on for the start of his shift – the clash of what had sounded like a dustbin being tipped over then raised voices – and he’d rushed out to investigate.
‘Ring 999 and fetch the police,’ he told Sam as he supported the injured man. ‘Tell them to meet us at the hospital.’
Still bent double, Sam managed to do what Bill had asked.
‘It’s Ron Butcher,’ Lizzie pointed out.
‘So it is.’ Lowering the semi-conscious man to the ground and placing him on his side, Bill told her to fetch a stretcher so they could carry him into the ambulance double quick. ‘It looks like concussion and he’s lost a lot of blood besides. You’ll have to step on it, Lizzie, and drive like the devil up to the Queen Alexandra. I’ll stay in the back and do what I can for the daft so-and-so.’
No sooner said than Butcher was stretchered into the ambulance and driven away. His bike was damaged beyond repair, lying among the scattered contents of the dustbin – yesterday’s newspaper, potato peelings, a smashed wireless. One bicycle wheel spun silently in the encroaching dusk and Ron’s cap lay some distance away in a pool of his blood.
It was a Dornier Do 17 that did the damage – the ‘flying pencil’ – a light, fast German bomber identifiable by its twin tail fins and engines mounted on the shoulders of the streamlined aircraft. It had outpaced the two outdated Hawker Hurricanes that had pursued it up the north-east coast as far as Kelthorpe. Its pilot jettisoned the last of his bombs on the dockside area, just as Connie had feared.
This time Freeman’s took a direct hit, which made her think that the main objective of the lone raider earlier in the day had been reconnaissance. His information had been passed on to a Luftwaffe command unit and the second raid had taken place in the dead of night. The same tactic as before, coming in low and fast and this time achieving its objective: the main silo in the grain storage yard went up in flames.
Pamela and Simon were at the scene within minutes and took stock of the damage. Simon sprinted back to the sector post to ask Connie to phone in a report to the control centre. Connie established the need for a team of AFS firefighters but held back a request for a rescue team – with luck the yard would have been deserted at the time of the attack. ‘Stand by until further notice,’ she told the switchboard operator who took her call.
At the scene itself, Pamela witnessed the AFS men arrive in their protective gear. Their helmets were covered with oilskin hoods; they wore waterproof leggings and wielded rubber-handled axes as a protection against electrocution. The team of six men pumped thousands of gallons of water out of the estuary to fight the fierce blaze. Not for nothing had Churchill called them ‘heroes with grimy faces’, Pamela thought when she saw them silhouetted against towering orange flames, engulfed at times by the thick black smoke that billowed from the stricken grain store.
It was only when the fire was quenched and Pamela arrived back at Gas Street at the end of her shift that she heard the full story from Connie.
‘The Dornier pilot didn’t make it back to base, if that makes you feel any better,’ she told an exhausted Pamela and Simon. ‘Our boys on the beach scored a direct hit with their anti-aircraft guns and brought him down in flames. Fritz parachuted out and got caught up in the cables of one of the blimps guarding the estuary. Our RNPS boys found him dangling like a puppet on a string.’
The Patrol Service had played their part by cutting down the enemy pilot and carting him off to a POW camp in Lincolnshire.
‘That’s the end of his war, then,’ Simon commented as he signed out.
Pamela waited outside while Connie handed over to the next head warden. It was past midnight and low clouds had blown in off the sea, bringing a cold mist that reduced visibility to a hundred yards. She heard the approach of a car engine before making out the shape of a Bedford van that pulled up at the kerb. Lizzie stepped down from the passenger seat, waved off the ambulance, then joined Pamela as Connie emerged from the post.
‘What a night!’ Lizzie sighed. ‘I’ve spent most of it at the Queen Alexandra, helping to patch up Ron Butcher.’
In pitch darkness, the three girls made their weary way along Gas Street until they reached the bottom of King Edward Street: the parting of their ways. Longing for her bed, Pamela said a swift goodnight while Connie and Lizzie lingered.
‘What happened to Arthur’s son?’ Connie asked.
‘Ron started a fight with Sam Billington and ended up concussed. There was blood everywhere. Bill and I drove him to hospital, then the police got involved. I had to give a witness statement. The police have charged Ron with being drunk and disorderly.’
‘Drunk?’ Connie echoed. She had a vivid recollection of Ron Butcher ripping up rotten planks from the deck of Annie May with his back turned and his dark head lowered, refusing to acknowledge them.
Lizzie nodded. ‘Sam lives in Raby so he’s known Ron from way back. Apparently Ron went off the rails a few months back. No one knows why. This isn’t the first fight he’s been involved in – not by a long chalk.’
‘What went wrong, I wonder?’
Lizzie shrugged. ‘I don’t know and, to be honest, I don’t care.’
She was worn out – it was past midnight and she and Connie had to be at work in the bakery before six o’clock.
‘What does Bill think?’ Connie looked at her watch and stifled a yawn.
‘You know Bill – nothing bothers him. By morning he’ll have forgotten all about it.’
‘Then so should we.’ Connie decided that life was complicated enough without taking on board other people’s problems. ‘We’ve got enough on our plates without worrying about Ron Butcher and that’s a fact.’
At Sunrise, Fred came downstairs early the following morning to a frosty exchange between Edith and Sid. He heard the tail end of an explanation as to why Edith couldn’t buy extra butter unless Sid produced his food coupons, and a sharp retort from the RAF man that he’d left his ration book behind at his base in Norfolk and was he expected to eat dry toast until it arrived in the post?
‘It’s like eating bloody cardboard,’ he complained as Fred entered the breakfast room and Edith hurried off in what could only be described as a huff: her brows were knitted, and the tilt of her head expressed distaste.
‘I’m sure Mrs Carr was only trying to help.’ Fred spooned tea leaves out of the caddy into the brown pot.
‘Help, my backside!’ Reggie cut in. ‘Old sour face won’t lift a finger on our behalf – she looks down her nose at us, full stop. Here, Sid, have some of my butter.’ He offered the scrapings from his plate, ostentatiously pushing it across the table. They were both in Hairy Mary battledress, as they called their heavy woollen outfits, and neither minded their manners as they tore into the toast that Edith had made for them.
Frowning, Fred thought it best to change the subject. ‘Are your airships up and running?’ he enquired, though he already knew the answer since he’d watched a team of RAF engineers inflating the giant balloons on the headland the previous day.
Sid nodded as he scraped the last of Reggie’s butter on to his second slice of toast. ‘Today we have to check the winches by flying the blimps up to a hundred feet then lowering them again.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then we sit around twiddling our thumbs,’ Reggie shot back. ‘Until such time as we get an Alert Yellow.’
‘Then we make ’em ready just in case,’ Sid said, looking bored. ‘If we get an Alert Red we fly ’em up to three or four thousand feet until we get the Alert White when we bed ’em down again.’
‘We could go days without getting an alert,’ Reggie added smugly.
‘Which leaves us at a loose end – fine by me.’
‘And me.’
‘We’ll still be getting paid, eh, Reg?’
‘For lounging about and getting into mischief.’ Reggie gave Fred a sly wink. ‘You catch my meaning?’
Fred made no comment as he stirred the pot. He didn’t regard himself as a snob, but Sid and Reggie’s distinct lack of table manners – eating with their mouths open, slurping their tea – and their lack of respect for Edith got on his nerves, not to mention the memory of the way Reggie had manhandled Pamela on the dance floor on Saturday night. Deciding to skip breakfast, he rapidly swallowed down his tea. ‘I’d best be off,’ he told them when he heard Hugh’s footsteps in the corridor. ‘If I get a move on I’ll be able to get a lift in.’
‘Fancy that,’ Reggie commented as Fred closed the door behind him. Through the window, he watched as Hugh got into his Daimler and started the engine. ‘Our friend is in the boss’s good books.’
Sid saw Fred exchange warm greetings with their landlord before taking his place in the passenger seat. ‘We’d better watch our p’s and q’s,’ he added sarcastically.
‘Sod that,’ Reggie sneered. ‘Personally, I can’t see the attraction of a chap who talks as if he’s got a poker up his arse. “I’m sure Mrs Carr was only trying to help” – nim, nim, nim!’
‘But he’s pulled the wool over our landlord’s eyes, that’s for sure.’
‘So what?’ Reggie scraped back his chair and brushed crumbs from his uniform on to the floor before standing up. ‘I reckon we could still have some fun at Fred’s expense.’
Sid grinned. ‘The fun wouldn’t involve the little green-eyed girl in the lilac dress, by any chance?’
‘Maybe.’ Reggie’s casual response disguised a plan that had been slowly forming since the weekend. It involved putting himself in the right place at the right time combined with lashings of flattery and a soupçon of subterfuge.
‘I bet you a quid she won’t,’ Sid challenged.
‘Won’t what?’
‘Jump into bed with you.’
Reggie laughed then spat on his palm and offered to shake hands. ‘You’re on!’
‘I’ve put in an order for a new Imperial Model 50,’ Pamela informed Sally Hopkins as she showed the junior secretary round the office at the start of her first day at work. She tapped the ancient typewriter on Sally’s desk. ‘You won’t have to put up with this old thing for very long. And here is where we keep the carbon paper. There’s a hole punch, a stapler and a stash of paper clips in the top right-hand drawer of your desk. Envelopes on the left. Files containing unpaid invoices are stored in alphabetical order on the shelf behind you.’
Sally’s eyes followed Pamela’s pointing finger. Carbon paper, hole punch, stapler, paper clips. A tiny slip of a thing with bright red hair and freckles, she soaked up the information like a sponge.
‘I’m not going too fast for you, am I?’ Remembering her own painful introduction to the office, Pamela took care not to replicate Betty Holroyd’s supercilious manner. ‘I know there’s an awful lot to take in.’
Envelopes, files containing invoices. Yes, Sally had felt nervous that morning as she’d got dressed in her smartest clothes – a pale green blouse and straight black skirt with a little kick-pleat at the back. She’d tied back her thick curls with a dark green ribbon and sighed over her recently resoled shoes. Her father’s homespun repair wasn’t up to the standards of a proper cobbler, but Sally had no choice – this was her only pair of black court shoes so they would have to do. She’d covered the short walk from the pub along the dockside to reach the timber yard with a bad case of butterflies in her stomach. Looking lost, she’d been scooped up by foreman Keith Nelson, who had shown her how to register her arrival. Keith was a gruff type with a squat, muscular physique; never one to waste words, he’d jerked a thumb towards the clocking-in machine outside the office building then ambled across the yard, past stacks of imported timber towards the enormous cutting shed.
Pamela had been waiting for Sally in a small reception area on the ground floor of the office block.
Sally’s first impression of her new boss was favourable. Pamela was smiley and smart in a dark blue dress; what’s more she was doing her best to make Sally feel welcome. Tall and slim, with her short hair styled by a proper hairdresser, shapely legs and lovely, soft leather shoes, she seemed confident and poised – everything that Sally wasn’t.
Sally had taken in her surroundings as Pamela led her upstairs and along a corridor past Hugh Anderson’s private office to the small room where the two of them would work. It was Sally’s first job as a secretary and a big step up from serving behind the bar at the Anchor: the pub that her father had run since the year dot. She was the eldest of five, and despite her diminutive size, she’d been mother hen to a brood of siblings in the absence of their mother, who had died shortly after giving birth to the youngest, Rita.
‘So, as I say, your typewriter should be here by the end of the week.’ Pamela had taken to the new junior straight away. She liked Sally’s eagerness and the way she simply nodded her head and got on with things. ‘I’ll set you off with some simple filing work – checking receipts then stamping the files before moving them from the unpaid to the paid section. We break midmorning for elevenses. Dinner is at half twelve – if you like I’ll take you over to the canteen and show you what’s what.’
‘Yes please.’ Sally’s chest swelled with pride to think how far she’d come. Those night classes in typing had paid off handsomely; squeezed in as they were between a dozen other demands on her time and in the face of some scepticism from her dad.
‘I don’t see the point,’ Frank Hopkins had said. ‘What good will learning to type be once you’re wed?’
‘I’m not going to get married, Dad,’ Sally had replied firmly. ‘Not after what I’ve just been through.’ Once bitten, twice shy.
‘You say that now,’ Frank had grumbled, ‘but you never know what’s around the corner.’
His eldest girl had always been a quick learner and had scored top marks in her typing class. She’d just signed up for a shorthand course when she’d spotted the advert in the Gazette: ‘Junior typist wanted at Anderson’s timber yard. No experience necessary.’ She’d applied for the job and hey presto: here she was with her foot on the first rung of the ladder.
Pamela saw that Sally would need a cushion on her chair to bring her up to a comfortable level at her desk. She was amazed by the energy that came off such a little sparrow; the way she darted looks here and there, lifted thick files, flipped them open and firmly stamped them. When it came to half past ten, it was Sally who offered to make the tea and take it through to Hugh’s office, which she did speedily and smoothly. Come half twelve she’d replaced the last file on its shelf and was ready when the klaxon sounded for dinner, waiting for Pamela to show her to the canteen, as promised.
The two girls reached the reception area, where Fred and Harold joined them. They crossed the yard together then tagged on to the end of the queue at the entrance to the canteen, where dozens of men in overalls stood chatting. A couple of crane operators eyed Sally through clouds of cigarette smoke and, recognizing her as the barmaid at their local, invited her to join them in the queue.
‘How’s it going?’ Harold whispered to Pamela with a nod in Sally’s direction.
‘Very well.’
‘She doesn’t seem old enough to be doing this job. Mind you, everyone looks young to me these days.’
‘She may not look it but she’s nineteen.’
‘And you like her?’
‘I do.’ Pamela turned from her father to Fred. ‘You’re quiet,’ she said with a touch of concern. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes – don’t mind me.’ Fred shuffled forward in the queue. Was it the weather that had affected his mood? he wondered. It was a typically grey, cold April day, with a thick mist coming in off the sea and a hint of drizzle in the air. Or was it the muddle that he was currently trying to sort out with Keith Nelson – a discrepancy in the order book that the foreman was being deliberately obtuse about?
No, it was neither of those things. If Fred was honest, it was Reggie Nolan and Sid Donne that had got under his skin – a pair of lazy slackers who were too big for their boots; Reggie, in particular. Resentment of their presence at Sunrise had settled heavily on Fred’s shoulders. It had wormed its way into each task he’d undertaken that morning as he’d tried to balance the books. What was it exactly? Had the RAF men put Fred’s nose out of joint simply by being there? No, again; it was more than that. Ah! Fred had sat with his pencil poised over a column of figures. It all comes down to the way the damned fellow was with Pamela.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ she asked as they edged towards the counter and the smell of mince and onion stew mingled with overcooked cabbage.
Eifersucht. Jealousy – sharp as a knife in the guts. ‘I’m fine,’ Fred grunted. ‘But I’m not hungry. I think I’ll give dinner a miss for once.’