‘Coo-ee, young Edie!’ Mrs Holdsworthy called. ‘You ain’t ’alf took a long time with that shopping.’ She’d been keeping watch at the window ever since Mr Topham told her the good news, and as soon as she saw Edie and Joan coming along the street she pulled up the sash-cord and leant out, both hands on the window sill and her face beaming. ‘They’ve opened up the Tube for us, duck. What did I tell you?’
Edie was tired that morning. She’d had a bad night, what with the raid and everything and her shopping basket was dragging her arm down and Joanie was grizzling enough to try the patience of a saint, but she looked up at her neighbour and smiled at the good news. ‘Thank God for that,’ she said. ‘High time they saw sense. Perhaps that’ll stop my mum being on at me. When can we use it?’
‘Tonight, so Mr Topham says. I’m gettin’ me things together.’
Edie gave her daughter’s hand a shake. ‘Stop that row, Joanie,’ she said. ‘We’re home now. You don’t have to go on. I can’t hear your aunty talk.’ And when the child sniffed and stopped she looked up to question her neighbour again. ‘What can we take?’
‘He didn’t say,’ Mrs Holdsworthy told her. ‘Just it was going to be kept open for us. Bedding I reckon, don’t you. An’ me flask. We shall need that. Cup a’ tea.’
It’ll be cold sleeping on the platform, Edie thought, as she put her key in the lock. I wonder if I’ve still got those old sleeping bags me and Arthur used to have. They’d be just the thing. Couple a’ pillows.
There’d been an air raid every night for the last three weeks and she was heartily sick of them, hating the sound of those awful bombers overhead and the thud, thud, thud of the ackack, hating the fear that griped her stomach every time the sirens went and the fear she saw on her children’s faces when the noise got too bad, hating everything about it. ‘There you are, Joanie,’ she said, as she took off her daughter’s coat and hung it on the hook in the hall, ‘we’re not going to hear any more nasty raids ever again. We’re going somewhere safe, right away from them.’
‘And Barbara and our Maggie,’ Joan said.
‘’Course. We wouldn’t leave them behind, now, would we? Come on we’re going to find some sleeping bags.’
‘What’s a sleepin’ bag?’ Joan wanted to know, but her mother was already standing on a chair in her bedroom, searching through the bedding on the top shelf of the wardrobe.
Just as Edie had feared, it was cold on the platform and the concrete floor was extremely hard to lie on, but she didn’t care. For the first time since this awful Blitz began she felt safe, cocooned in the familiar sulphur-smelling darkness of the underground, surrounded by her sleeping children – and what a relief to see them fast asleep for once – with neighbours nearby to talk to and, most important of all, completely cut off from the horror of what was happening in the sky above the battered streets.
‘Best thing they ever done,’ she said to Mrs Holdsworthy, sipping her welcome mug of tea, ‘opening up like this. They should ha’ done it weeks ago. I shall bring a couple a’ blankets down tomorrow. Pad these bags out a bit. Wait till I tell my Arthur. He’s been worrying himself silly since this started. Now I can tell him he’s not to worry no more. Best thing they ever done.’
Emmeline was relieved to hear her daughter’s news too, although she still thought she ought to come back to Guildford and be really safe. There were occasional raids during the day and she could easily get caught in one of them – after all she couldn’t stay in the underground day and night – and although the newspapers didn’t say much about casualties, she knew very well that ever so many people were being killed and injured.
Octavia knew that better than most, for she and Maggie were coping with the terrible grief of girls who had lost their mothers or fathers or older brothers. There had been six of them since the start of the Blitz and each one seemed to be harder to comfort than the last. The most recent had been little Iris, who’d come to Lizzie’s attic room before morning school began the previous day, weeping so terribly she could hardly speak and saying between gasping sobs that she wanted to go home.
By this time Lizzie could guess what had happened and knew exactly what to do. She found a handkerchief and dried Iris’s eyes, then she put her arms round her and held her until she’d recovered enough to tell her what was the matter, the words gulped out between sobs. ‘It’s Mum. My – aunty – wrote to me. She’s been – bombed.’
So it’s bad, Lizzie thought, but she didn’t press to be told any more. She simply took Iris’s hand and led her down the back stairs to Maggie Henry’s office. ‘We’ll go and see Matron,’ she said. ‘She’ll know what to do. She’s ever so good.’
Maggie Henry opened the door as soon as Lizzie knocked. She’d dealt with so much grief over the past few weeks her senses went into full alert at every knock. ‘Tea,’ she said to Lizzie as she led the little girl to the sofa. ‘Three cups. When did you hear, Iris?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. My aunty wrote to me.’
So she’s been grieving all night on her own, poor little thing, Maggie thought. ‘And it was bad, wasn’t it?’ she said.
‘Oh, Miss Henry,’ Iris cried. ‘She’s dead.’
‘You cry, darling,’ Maggie said, cuddling her. ‘Cry all you want. It’s a terrible thing. The worst.’ And as Iris wept against her shoulder she began to rearrange the child’s day. ‘Take a look at the timetable,’ she said to Lizzie, ‘and see who’s teaching her first lesson.’
The tea was made and drunk, the timetable was consulted, and Lizzie went off to find Iris’s teacher and let her know what had happened, leaving Miss Henry to look after everything else. As she left the room Iris turned her poor little blotched face towards her and thanked her. It was all she could do not to burst into tears before she could get out of the room. She wept all the way to the classroom, torn with a dreadful aching pity. Poor Iris. What has she ever done to deserve this? It isn’t fair!
The autumn term continued and so did the bombing. Bad news soon became a part of the school’s life.
‘We shall need an extra special Christmas this year to lift our spirits,’ Octavia said, when the staff gathered at her house at the end of October for their regular weekly meeting. ‘Perhaps we ought to start considering it. I hope the sixth form are doing their play.’
‘It’s already written so they tell me,’ Morag Gordon reported. ‘It’s going to be Snow White in Woking.’
That provoked smiles all round the room.
‘Thank God for the sixth form,’ Octavia said.
‘Are we going ahead with the music festival?’ Jenny Jones asked. She’d had a festival planned since the end of the summer term, soloists, choirs, even the venue. The local Boys Grammar School was going to let them use their hall. ‘I mean, do we think it’s – um – suitable?’
‘I don’t know about the rest of you but I think it isn’t just suitable, it’s a necessity,’ Octavia said. ‘We need as many good things as we can cram into our lives.’
There was a murmur of agreement.
‘Only the thing is,’ Jenny said, ‘the thing is, Iris was going to be one of our soloists, you see, and I wondered… I mean, I don’t want to put pressure on her or anything now she’s… I don’t really know what to do for the best.’
‘Let her make the choice,’ Morag advised, flicking ash from her cigarette. ‘If she feels she’s up to it, it could be the best thing for her.’
‘I think we ought to have a school party at Downview,’ Helen Staples said. ‘It would be a squash but I don’t think they’d mind. Could be fun.’
‘An excellent idea,’ Octavia said and teased, ‘Are you volunteering to arrange it?’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Helen said. ‘With a bit of help.’
Help was instantly forthcoming – from Alice Genevra, who offered to be Phillida’s assistant and make the decorations, and Sarah Fletcher, who said she’d do the catering, and Elizabeth Fennimore, who said she would cost it and order all the things they needed ‘within reason, of course’.
Not for the first time, Octavia thought what a good team they were. They take everything in their stride, she thought, and they never complain, no matter what this war flings at them. ‘Thank you very much, all of you,’ she said to them, ‘I don’t know how this school would manage without you.’ And she grinned at them and quoted one of their favourite hymns. ‘“He who would valiant be, ’gainst all disaster.” Only, of course, it should be she in your case. Don’t you think so Jenny?’
‘It’s us to a T,’ Jenny said, blushing but pleased to be given such praise. That was what was so nice about old Smithie. She knew how to thank you.
Darkness descended on them earlier every day, the dormitories were cold, far too many girls had chilblains and head colds and Matron Maggie was kept busy with Wintergreen ointment and Vick. The first fogs of November swathed the town in a miserable dampness. The rations were reduced. And the Blitz went on, night after night. It was, as Tommy Meriton had predicted, a rough time.
Despite all the difficulties of the job she was doing, Dora Erskine was really quite pleased with herself. When the Blitz began and she first started edging her ambulance through the darkened streets, she was afraid she would hit a wall or a pillar box or run someone over, but she was surprised by how quickly she grew accustomed to the lack of light, even on nights when there was no moon and it seemed pitch black. It was partly because she knew how important it was to reach her casualties as quickly as she could and partly because she knew the roads so well, having walked through them by day. As the nights passed, she saw some terrible injuries but there was even a good side to that. It wasn’t that she’d grown hardened to seeing people in pain and bleeding, it was because the familiarity of it made her philosophical. ‘I’ve seen it all now,’ she would say wearily at the end of her shift, and she would think, I’ve seen it and I haven’t panicked. Before very long she became a steadying presence in the stink and darkness, someone who was totally dependable and always calm, the way she’d been taught to be.
‘It’s all right,’ she would say, in her firm voice. ‘We’re here. We’ve got you. You’re all right.’ And she would light a cigarette and put it between her casualty’s dust-caked lips and smile encouragement at them, even if their injuries were making her ache with pity. It was dreadful when the body lifted from the wreckage turned out to be a child or, even worse, was dead, but she even got used to that after a time.
‘Bloody war!’ she would say. ‘I hope they put that bloody Goering up against a wall when all this is over and blow his bloody brains out. Bloody monster.’ She’d never sworn so much in her life.
‘Our Dora’s a giddy marvel,’ they said at the ARP post, and she took it as the compliment it was.
But it wasn’t a job she could do night after night without a break and she was glad when she got time off, especially when she could persuade Edie and the kids to come to Balham and visit her.
‘I don’t see much of you what with one thing and another,’ she wrote to Edie at the end of a particularly bad week. ‘How about coming over this Saturday?’
It was such a good afternoon and the sisters enjoyed every chattering minute of it, remembering old times, drinking endless cups of tea, eating Dora’s special scones, playing Pit by the fire the way they’d done when they were children. Outside their blacked-out windows, the November dusk cast its sooty pall over the High Street and people walked home as fast as they could with their coat collars turned up and their hands in their pockets for warmth, but inside the flat they were too cosy and happy together to notice how late it was getting. When the clock struck six, it made Edie jump.
‘Oh, my good God,’ she said. ‘Look at the time, Dora. We shall have to be getting back or the sirens’ll go. Come on you three. Chop, chop. Get your hats and coats. We’re late.’
‘Why don’t you go on the Tube?’ Dora said. ‘That’d be quicker.’
But Edie decided they’d go on the tram the way they always did. ‘We’re used to it, Dotty. It’s the way we go.’
It was a mistake, for the air raid sirens began to howl as they were passing Tooting Broadway and by the time they reached Colliers Wood it was completely dark and the raid had begun. As they stood on the platform of the tram, waiting to get off, they could hear the laboured drone of the German bombers overhead and ack-ack firing somewhere close by, ferdum, fer-dum, fer-dum.
‘I don’t think we’ll go back home tonight,’ Edie decided. ‘We’ll stay on the tram and go straight to the Tube.’
‘What about our pillows?’ Barbara objected. ‘What’ll we sleep on if we haven’t got our pillows?’
‘You can use me,’ Edie said. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘What, all of us?’ Maggie said. ‘You’ll be squashed.’
‘I can be squashed for one night,’ Edie told her. ‘Don’t make that face. Better to have no pillow than a lump of shrapnel sticking in your head. Come on. We’re here.’
They climbed down from the tram and ran across the dark road as quickly as they could, dodging the traffic. All three children were panting when they reached the Tube station but none of them minded. They were safe. That was what mattered. Nothing could hurt them once they were underground.
The platform was already crowded and noisy, as mothers tried to settle their children for the night and people gossiped with their neighbours. Mrs Holdsworthy was sitting with her back against the wall putting in her hair curlers. ‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘I thought you wasn’t coming. There’s tea in the flask if you want some. Where’ve you been?’
‘We’ve come without our pillows,’ Barbara told her.
‘’Ave yer, duck?’ Mrs Holdsworthy said. ‘Well, never mind. You can have a lend a’ mine if you like. You’ll ’ave ter keep your ’ead still or I shall spike you with me curlers.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Barbara said, much impressed. ‘Would you?’
‘Oh, I’m a devil with me curlers.’
‘I’ll make a pillow of my coat,’ Edie said, and did. ‘Now let’s have you settled.’
‘We don’t have to go to sleep yet,’ Maggie said. ‘We’ve only just got here. It’s not time.’
‘It’s past time,’ Edie said firmly, ‘as well you know, so yes, you do.’ It was chilly without her coat and she was beginning to wonder whether she ought to have risked it and gone home for the things they needed. The girls were warm enough all bundled up in their coats and scarves but it would be hard sleeping on the platform without the sleeping bags and blankets to protect them.
It was a long difficult night. Edie turned and fidgeted and couldn’t get comfortable no matter what position she tried and the children were as restless as she was. All three of them woke one after the other and had to be escorted into the tunnel so that they could have a wee and then took ages to settle again. Their immediate neighbour was snoring and so deeply asleep that even when Edie gave her a good hard poke she didn’t stir, and there seemed to be people coming and going all night long. It’s because we’re not sleeping, Edie thought. They probably do this every night only we sleep through it and don’t notice it.
She was really glad when the first train came through and people began to stir and make ready for the day. ‘Come on you lot,’ she said to her three girls. Now that the night was over, they were fast asleep rolled together in her coat and they looked really comfortable. It seemed a pity to wake them but they couldn’t stay there now that the trains were running. ‘Six o’clock. Wake up. Let’s get home and have a nice wash. You look like gypsies.’
‘I’ll follow you down,’ Mrs Holdsworthy said. ‘Must do me hair. See you later gels.’
It had been a bad raid. Edie could tell that the minute she stepped out into the morning darkness. The air was full of the smell of bombed houses, that horrible combination of brick dust and gas and shit that she knew so well and found so appalling. And there was shrapnel all over the place and shards of broken glass glinting on the pavement.
‘Mind where you’re putting your feet,’ she warned. ‘There’s a lot of glass. Hold onto my hand, Joanie, there’s a good girl. I don’t want you running off. And you two hold on tight to one another.’
‘That’s Mr Perkins’ paper shop,’ Maggie said, and stopped to take a closer look. Only half the shop was still standing and there was a great pile of rubble where the rest of it ought to have been and lots of men digging and a very strong smell of gas. ‘Look, Mum, Mr Perkins been bombed.’
‘Yes,’ Edie said shortly. ‘Come on. They won’t want us in the way if they’ve got all this to clear up. I thought you wanted to get home.’
They trailed along beside her looking back at the wreckage, wide-eyed and serious. She gave their hands a tug to get them to walk more quickly because she didn’t want them to see someone being dug out. That wouldn’t do at all. ‘Cup of tea,’ she said, ‘and then a nice wash.’ And she turned the corner into Wycliffe Road.
Even in the poor light of a bombed dawn, she could see that there was rubble all over the road. Oh my God, she thought, it must be one of the neighbours. As they got closer to it, she saw that it was actually a long trail of broken bricks that led to a great jagged pile of bricks and planks and rubble. It looked as if it had just spilt out onto the pavement and it had obviously come from somewhere very near her house. Very, very near. Almost… Then she was stopped by a moment of disbelief and horror, too shocked to move on. Oh dear God, it was right where their house was. No, she corrected herself, not where their house was, where their house had been. She stood quite still holding her two youngest children firmly by the hand, stunned and staring. There was nothing left if it. Not a single brick. It was just a great gaping hole. Their home, where they were going to have a nice cup of tea and a nice wash. Oh my dear, good God! What am I going to do?
The girls were stunned too. They didn’t cry and they didn’t move and they didn’t speak. They just stood where they were, holding her hand and staring. She knew she ought to say something to comfort them, poor little things, but her mind was stuck and she couldn’t think of anything. This was my home, she thought. My lovely home. And there’s nothing left of it.
She was aware that there was somebody standing beside her and looked round to see Mr Topham. At first she thought he looked like a ghost in that dreadful darkness but then she realised that he was covered in dust, his dark suit smeared all down the front, and his shoes so white it looked as though he’d been walking through flour. Even his moustache was dusty, poor man, and he looked so drawn that for a moment she barely recognised him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Direct hit, I’m afraid. We’ve had a right night of it. What a blessing you was in the Tube. Was Mrs Holdsworthy with you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking back at the hole that had been her home. Where had everything gone? It couldn’t just have disappeared, all the sheets and the pillow cases and the cooker and her nice clock and everything. Then she saw that half of Arthur’s chair was sticking out of the pile, covered in dust, and that two of her best cups were lying next to the legs all chipped and filthy. Bloody Hitler, she thought, doing this to me.
‘I’ll just make my report,’ Mr Topham said, ‘and let them know you’re OK. Be back in a jiffy.’
Barbara was pulling at her mother’s sleeve and whispering urgently. ‘Mummy, mummy. What are we going to do?’
She gave herself a shake and took a decision. ‘We’re going to catch a train and go to your Aunt Tavy’s,’ she said.
Octavia and Emmeline had overslept that morning and were sitting by the kitchen fire swathed in their dressing gowns gathering their thoughts before they began the day. It was Sunday so there was no rush.
‘The nice thing about Sunday,’ Emmeline said, ‘is having time for an extra cup of tea with your feet on the fender.’ And then, just as she settled her cup into its saucer, the doorbell rang.
‘I’ll go,’ Octavia said. ‘It’s bound to be for me.’ Janet was upstairs cleaning the bathroom and there was no point in calling her down just to answer the door. ‘I’ll get it, Janet,’ she called from the hall.
The surprise of seeing Edie and her children on the doorstep quickly turned to shock when she realised what a dishevelled state they were in, their hair unbrushed, their faces filthy dirty, with no luggage.
‘We’ve been bombed out, Aunt,’ Edie said. Her voice was totally without emotion, as though she was speaking in a dream. ‘It’s all gone.’
Octavia was mentally checking them over, looking for signs of blood or injury and relieved not to find any. ‘Never mind,’ she said, comforting at once and by instinct. ‘You’re here now.’ And she took the nearest child by the arm and led her into the house, calling over her shoulder for Emmeline. ‘Em! It’s Edie.’
Emmeline came out of the kitchen in a rush, took one look and ran towards them. ‘Oh my dear, good God!’ she said. ‘What’s happened to you? Are you all right?’
‘They’ve been bombed out,’ Octavia told her calmly, ‘but they’re all right. They haven’t been hurt. Have you? No, I thought not. And I’ll bet you haven’t had any breakfast either.’
‘We came straight here,’ Edie said, still stony-faced.
‘Quite right,’ Octavia said, and turned to the girls. ‘Let’s get you into the kitchen and see what you could fancy,’ she said. ‘And then we must get you into a bath, mustn’t we, Em?’
To her considerable relief, Em took her cue and led the children into the kitchen. ‘Nice pot of tea,’ she said. ‘And then I’ll rustle up some nice boiled eggs and soldiers. How would that be? Would you like a boiled egg, Joanie?’
And at that Edie began to cry, her whole body shaken by tearing sobs, on and on and on. Emmeline let go of Barbara’s hand and turned her full attention to her daughter. She put her arms round her, kissed her and held her, murmuring to her as though she was a child. ‘Never mind my little lovely. I’ve got you. You’re all right now. Never you mind. We’ll look after you.’
Octavia left them to it. There were other things that had to be attended to and she was already thinking about them. People who’d been bombed out got special ration cards and allowances to help them with the things they needed, like food and clothes. They couldn’t live in the same clothes for long so the sooner she saw about that the better. Now who would know? The WVS probably. What was the name of that nice woman who helped us when we first arrived? We must have a record of it somewhere. Maggie would have it. And she took the phone off the hook.
Maggie was having a bit of a lie-in too that morning. It had been a difficult week. But she got up at once when the phone rang and walked quickly across the room to answer it.
‘You don’t happen to have the name and address of that nice WVS woman, do you?’ Octavia said. ‘The one who gave us the list of all the billets when we first got down’
‘I can’t remember it off hand,’ Maggie said, ‘but I know where it is. Hold on a tick and I’ll get it for you.’
Thank God for our Maggie, Octavia thought. Now what else has got to be done? She reached for a pencil and began to make notes on the telephone pad. Clothes. Make list. Where to buy? Primary schools. London or local? Beds and bedding. Chertsey Road? What a good job we’ve got those two rooms in the attic. Inform ARP at Colliers Wood. Register ration books. Library tickets.
* * *
After the shock of their arrival, Edie and the girls settled in extremely quickly. By the time the children had all been put in a warm bath and made presentable, Janet had given the attic rooms a quick brush and polish and made up the double bed for them. ‘Now you have a nice little rest,’ Emmeline said, tucking them under the clean sheets, ‘and when you wake up you shall have dinner with us and then you’ve all feel much better.’ Privately, she was worrying about how little food she’d got in the cupboard and thinking what a nuisance it was that it was Sunday and she couldn’t go shopping, but it was a minor worry, she would soon work something out. The great thing was that they hadn’t been hurt.
‘Sleep tight, my ducks,’ she said as she left the room. ‘You’re with me now.’