A Gathering Storm (24 page)

‘Hurry,’ Mary said, slamming a tin of biscuits into a cupboard, and they ran across the cobblestones to the massive warehouse beyond like two mice, and entered through a small door in its flank. They found themselves in what Beatrice privately called the pit of hell, but which many of its thousands of occupants probably thought of as home.

Beatrice had been driving the canteen round the public air-raid shelters during the Blitz every third night for the previous month, since she’d finished a short period of training for the FANY. There were daytime duties, too, sometimes with the canteen, at other times driving a small ambulance taking patients to and from the First Aid Post where she was based.

She’d taken cover in the Whitechapel warehouse, an unofficial shelter, a number of times now, but she could never get used to its hollow vastness, nor, once her eyes grew used to the gloom, the awe-inspiring sight of the thousands of people quietly waiting in its belly, listening to the crump of the bombs, the cracks and crashes of disintegrating buildings outside. In the low light she could see them now, sprawled amongst their possessions on blankets and mattresses, beneath the lines of arches that stretched in wave after wave beyond her vision. A couple of months ago, out in the Leicestershire countryside, she’d never have been able to picture something like this in her wildest imagination. Already, at eight in the evening, some were asleep. Others passed the time knitting or reading, or simply staring at nothing. A handful of the younger people were playing cards and chatting quietly, but if their games got too loud there was always some angry voice to shush them.

Once, recently, someone had got up a sort of cabaret in a space in the middle, with an accordion player and a girl dancing, but the sombre spirit of this place must have made its disapproval felt, because the performance was desultory, and they packed up after half an hour. Any who walked the aisles to visit the latrines or to visit a friend did so quietly, with head bowed. There was no joking, none of the community singing that took off in other shelters. It was something about the monolithic nature of the building, Beatrice thought – it was like a giant mausoleum that crushed all human hope and laughter. The people had claimed it from its owners as a place of safety, and although it deigned to share its loneliness with them, it was making no concessions.

Mary was sitting against the wall beside Beatrice. With her head tipped back, her perfect profile gleamed palely in the gloom. Her eyes were closed, and with crossed arms she held her great-coat tight around her willowy body against the cold. No one could look at Mary and doubt that she’d been tipped for Deb of the Year only eighteen months back, in a different London. Now look at her, Beatrice thought with an affectionate smile. Modelling Army breeches with soot on her nose and a tin hat hanging off her arm.

Bea’s thoughts moved naturally on to Angelina. She’d met up with her, of course, soon after she’d received that awful letter about Ed, taking a couple of days’ leave from the depot to travel up on the train.

It had been hard, very hard, to walk up the steps to the house in Queen’s Gate and ring the bell, not only because it was now a house of mourning, but because the last time she was here it had been the scene of such anguish for her. That had been only nine months ago, but in so many respects it was a different world. The only thing that hadn’t changed was her feelings for Rafe. The freshness of that terrible moment of realization hit her again as she waited for the door to open. Then it did open and at the sight of Angelina’s grief-stricken face she was swamped not with jealousy but pity.

‘Oh, Bea, thank God you’ve come,’ she said, opening her arms and clinging to Beatrice. Her hair was limp and unwashed, her face blotched from crying. She still smelt faintly of apples. It was the old Angelina. The one she’d grown up with and loved, the one who needed her.

‘Of course I came,’ Beatrice said, hugging her, her own tears starting. ‘Of course. Angie, I’m so sorry. Poor, poor Ed.’

In the drawing room Oenone was standing by one of the windows, watching some children play hopscotch in the street, a vacant expression on her face. Bea went forward hesitantly and said, ‘Mrs Wincanton.’

Angie’s mother turned. ‘Oh, Bea,’ she murmured. ‘So glad you’ve come. Awful, isn’t it awful.’ She kissed her, but her mind was somewhere far away.

‘Mummy, why don’t you come and sit down,’ Angie said, going to her, but her mother waved her away.

‘No, I’m all right,’ she said, and continued to watch the children, a sad smile on her face.

‘I’ll show you the letter, Bea. Mummy, may I?’

‘What, dear?’

‘Show Bea the letter from Wing Commander Lewis?’

Oenone Wincanton gave a shrug.

‘Is she all right?’ Bea whispered. Angie fetched an envelope from the mantelpiece and they sat together on the sofa where she’d seen Angie with Rafe those few months ago.

‘The doctor’s been giving her these dreadful pills. She doesn’t sleep, you see,’ Angie said in a low voice. ‘Daddy’s no help. He’s never here. And no one seems to know what Peter’s up to. Daddy fixed him up running errands for one of his government friends and now he’s been given some desk job.’ Great tears splashed on the envelope.

Bea took it gently from her, withdrew the letter inside and read it. It was a masterly expression of sympathy. The man had known Ed personally. She sensed his own grief and anger at the loss of this brave and beautiful young man.
He gave his life that we might be free
, was his final sentence, and despite her own sorrow her heart lifted. That was what it was all about, selfless love for others. It was what it
had
to be about, or what was the point of it all?

‘I want him back,’ Angie sobbed beside her. ‘I just want him back.’

Bea put her arms round her and held her tight.

Later, she asked carefully, ‘Has there been any word about Rafe?’

‘No, of course not, or I’d have told you,’ Angie said, her voice dull. ‘Nothing.’

Two months after this conversation, there had still been no news. And now, sitting in the gloom next to Mary, listening to the planes and the bombs, Beatrice said a small prayer for him.

An hour passed. There had been no bombs for a while. The gunfire became more sporadic, and soon died out altogether once the throb of aircraft engines had faded.

Mary whispered, ‘Shall we see what it’s like outside?’ and the two of them got up and made their way over to the door.

‘Now then, ladies,’ said the warden guarding the entrance. ‘Where do you think you’re going? We haven’t had the all clear yet.’

‘Open the door, please do,’ Mary begged. ‘They’ve gone, you know they have, and we simply must get on to the next shelter.’

The warden eventually let them out, grumbling about falling masonry and saying that young ladies these days didn’t know what was good for them. Mary thanked him with one of her very dazzling smiles and he grunted and shut the door behind them.

It was a terrible world they passed into, back-lit by fire, the air filled with billowing smoke and dust, through which shouts and screams could be distantly heard. With coats pulled up over their chins and gloved hands protecting their eyes they felt their way out of the little gate, feet crunching on glass, to where the canteen mercifully still stood intact. They stood for a moment, contemplating its thick coating of dust and debris with dismay.

Just then came a cracking and groaning like a tree in a high wind. They looked up in time to see, a few hundred yards away, a building disintegrate in mid-air and tumble into the street.

‘If we’d gone that way a couple of minutes earlier—’ Beatrice started to say.

‘Don’t,’ Mary stopped her. ‘We’ll have to take another road.’ When the latest dust had settled, she opened the passenger door and seized an old towel, with which she started to brush the mess off the windscreen. Then they both climbed aboard and Beatrice fired up the engine.

‘Down to the river, don’t you think, if we can get through?’ She edged the vehicle forward and drove down a side alley, the weak headlights picking out lamp-posts and a pillarbox daubed with white paint. They emerged into a broader highway that they were able to follow for a time, then turned left towards the river. Ahead, a blazing building cast a dancing light.

‘Look out!’ Mary shouted, and Beatrice jammed on the brakes just short of a large crater. They both got out. Beatrice shone her torch down inside it. A taxi had tipped in and lay, wheels presented to the sky, like a large dead insect. The driver’s door was open and though they called, no one seemed to be left inside.

‘We could just about get round here,’ Bea said, strafing the pavement with her torch beam. They returned to the van and she wound down the window to check how close they were to the crater as they mounted the kerb and carefully drove past.

Further up the road they came to a scene of frantic activity. A stretcher was being loaded into an ambulance. Several bodies lay by the roadside, half-covered with blankets. At least one, Beatrice saw with dismay, was a child. Firemen played jets of water on the flames and various people were sifting through rubble. A warden gestured them to go on, and Mary opened her window to speak to him. Somewhere a man was shouting, ‘Mrs Cardew? Mrs Cardew!’ in desperate tones.

They arrived at the next shelter soon after, parked by the entrance and set about heating water and cutting sandwiches. Mary walked back to serve the rescue workers whilst Beatrice served the queue of people from the shelter. Everywhere cement dust was settling on people’s heads and shoulders like snow. Near the entrance to the shelter she glimpsed a pair of dray horses, as stoic as Pip and Wilfrid, eating from nosebags, hardly bothered by the disturbance around.

‘Shall we move on?’

By half-past ten the skies remained quiet and clear, and the queues had gone. Beatrice and Mary packed up their van and drove on to the last shelter on the night’s watch, stopping occasionally to feed emergency teams. Sometimes they’d find a road impassable and Beatrice had to turn the van in the darkness and seek an alternative route. Given the blackout, the fact that there were no street signs, and because bombs had altered the look of everything anyway, it was easy to get lost if you didn’t have a good nose for direction. It was one of the things Beatrice had quickly had to acquire.

There were other things she’d learned too: how to keep calm in an emergency, how to hold herself together and carry on in the midst of terror and carnage – and she’d seen some terrible things. She’d discovered in all this that she had a great desire to help people, and felt a tremendous loyalty to this community who were nightly enduring appalling experiences of death and destruction. When she had time to think about it, which was hardly ever, she looked back on her life at school with amazement. It was such a short time ago, but it was as though she’d been another person then.

Around five o’clock in the morning, while it was still dark, people came to queue for breakfast. It was seven before the two girls left the canteen near the First Aid Post in the Mile End Road, and flagged down a bus to take them home to an ATS hostel in Bloomsbury Here, they stumbled upstairs to the room they shared with two others, already up and out, peeled off their dusty uniform and climbed into their bunks. Beatrice fell asleep instantly and did not even dream.

The following night, she was woken in the small hours, not by an air raid, but by stones rattling on the window. ‘Your turn,’ came Mary’s groan from the lower bunk. Beatrice slid down from her bed, tiptoed downstairs and opened the back door. A small slight figure slipped inside.

‘Thanks, you’re a brick,’ Judy whispered, shivering. She smelt gorgeously of Chanel No. 5 and foreign cigarettes.

‘Good time?’ Beatrice was yawning.

‘Marvellous.’ Judy gave a delicious wiggle as she took off her shoes. ‘Took ages to find a taxi back, though.’

Together, they crept upstairs, determined not to wake Matron.

‘Come with me tonight, Bea, do! Dougie’s bringing some pals.’ Judy, who’d been preening in the mirror, twisted round to show her pretty face lit with excitement. ‘You’ll moulder away if you’re not careful.’

‘I do go out – I went to the pictures last night.’ She’d accompanied Rosemary, the fourth member of their dormitory, who’d declared herself ‘off’ men following a broken romance with a Polish Spitfire pilot.

‘Don’t tell me,
Gone With the Wind
again.’

‘I like
Gone With the Wind.
But no, last night it was
Rebecca.
’ She’d felt dreadfully homesick seeing the Cornish setting.

‘That’s exactly the same thing.’ Judy addressed her reflection as she dragged carmine lipstick across her mouth. ‘You’re happy to watch love affairs on screen but not to find any of the real thing for yourself. What’s the matter with you?’

Beatrice, reading on her bunk, closed the book and sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, swinging herself down. ‘I’ll come, though I don’t imagine I’ll know anybody. What are you doing?’ Judy had thrown open the cupboard door and was rifling through dresses. ‘We have to wear our uniform, Ju.’ Rosemary had recently got into trouble with Matron on this matter and been barred from an evening out. Judy, however, broke every rule in the book, if she could get away with it, and she usually did.

‘This’ll do – catch,’ Judy said, throwing over a long pale-blue dress of her own. ‘You put it on in the nightclub, silly. Hurry up,’ she commanded, ‘and I’ll do your hair, if you like.’

It was nine o’clock when they joined the queue for the nightclub, a large cellar below Leicester Square. Sleet was coming down fast, and once they finally got down the stairs, Beatrice was more than happy to follow Judy through the crowds to the ladies’ powder room. There they changed into their dresses and repaired their make-up. Fair little Judy, in figure-hugging scarlet, stood out from the dowdy navy and khaki of the other girls jostling for space at the mirrors, but Beatrice, too, in her borrowed dress, was subject to the odd approving look.

When they were ready, they pushed their way through to the bar where Judy had spotted her boyfriend ordering drinks. His pleasant, boyish face lit up.