London Pride (68 page)

Baby made up her mind at once. ‘I'm ever so much better, Mr Dodds,' she said. ‘It was a shock you see, but I'm ever so much better. In fact I was thinking of coming in tomorrow, knowing what a rush Saturday is, only my sisters said I shouldn't.'

‘Monday would be soon enough,' Mr Dodds said. ‘It's just we had to know, you understand.'

‘Of course,' Baby said giving him her sweetest smile. ‘It's ever so good of you to come round.'

She went back to work the next morning, looking pale and withdrawn and wearing her oldest cardigan to ensure that people would feel sorry for her.

From then on she went to work as usual every day, but at home she took to her bed as soon as she'd eaten her supper, declaring that her nerves were ‘in shreds', and she didn't emerge from her room until after she'd been served breakfast there in the morning. At the weekend she stayed in bed from Saturday evening till Monday morning,
listening to her wireless and playing patience, with her hair in curlers and her face covered in cold cream and a bottle of Sanatogen ostentatiously at her elbow.

‘And how long's this going on?' Joan said to Peggy crossly, when a month had passed and she was still playing the invalid.

‘Don't you be cross an' all,' Peggy begged. ‘It's hard enough dealing with her.'

‘Have you told Jim what she's doing?'

‘No,' Peggy admitted. She didn't like to, because she had a feeling he'd been rather less than sympathetic. Everyone was being so horrid about poor Baby. She couldn't help having nerves.

‘Well you should,' Joan said.

‘Give her time,' Peggy said.

‘I know what I'd give her,' Joan said trenchantly. ‘That doctor was right if you ask me.'

It was one o'clock on Tuesday 6 June 1944, and like everyone else in Britain, Peggy and Joan and Mrs Geary were listening to the wireless. John Snagge was reading the news with his usual splendid calm, and on that afternoon his calm was even more admirable than usual for this bulletin was the one they'd all been waiting years to hear. ‘Under the command of General Eisenhower,' he said, ‘Allied naval forces supported by strong air forces began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.'

‘It's started,' Joan said. ‘Thank God for that. It's started at last.'

‘An' about time too,' Mrs Geary said.

But Peggy was thinking of all the men who must have died during the morning while she'd been shopping and doing the washing and on call, not aware of what was happening. She could see them falling, hear their groans and cries, imagine their injuries. ‘Poor devils,' she said. And she thought of Froggy who'd be going over as soon as there was a landing strip, and of Jim, who'd be going too with the Second Tactical Air Force. ‘Poor devils.'

She wasn't supposed to know about any of these things, of course. There were posters everywhere warning of the danger of careless talk, and, letters had been rigorously censored for months. Even Irish workmen had their mail opened, according to Mr Cooper, because there were plenty of Germans in the South of Ireland primed to listen
to gossip. And during the last few months there'd been plenty to gossip about for it was plain to everybody that preparations for the invasion were reaching a climax.

The last time she'd been down to Vine Cottage Peggy had been impressed by the long queues of tanks and armoured vehicles that she'd seen standing nose to tail in every country lane, bulky under their camouflage netting, massively waiting. She was used to the sight and sound of squadrons of American Flying Fortresses passing overhead on their way to bomb the Germans but in recent weeks they'd been roaring past every hour of the day and night and the roads had been choked with military convoys going to and fro in every direction in the most confusing way but with every vehicle clearly marked by the new bold sign of the Combined Armies of Liberation, a simple white star inside a white ring. There was such tension everywhere, such bristling non-stop activity. She and Joan had told one another only yesterday that they couldn't see how any of it could be kept secret no matter how hard anyone tried.

But now D-Day had arrived and they learned with surprise that the greatest secret of all had been kept from almost everybody, and that was the location of the landings. By skilful misinformation the Germans had been persuaded to expect this invasion in the Pas de Calais, and had sent the bulk of their panzer divisions there in readiness. And now the Combined Armies of Liberation were in France at last, on the beaches of Normandy, where they were least expected. And the final battle had begun.

‘Good luck to 'em,' Joan said. ‘It all depends on them now.'

That evening the newspapers trumpeted the good news. ‘Landings Succeed.' ‘Beachheads wider and deeper.' ‘Nazi defences gunned into silence.'

But among the reports from the front Peggy noticed one small paragraph warning about the likelihood of reprisal raids on London and hinting that Hitler had a secret weapon that he might use at any time. And being Peggy she remembered all the rumours about robot bombs and took it seriously.

‘We're not out of the wood yet,' she said to Mr MacFarlane
that evening, ‘are we?'

‘No lassie,' he agreed. ‘Not by a long chalk.'

Froggy Ferguson was sent to France five days after the invasion. They'd been on stand-by since D-Day plus two and it was all such a rush he only just had time for a quick dash to Merston to say goodbye to Megan and little Winnie, who was out in the garden happily making mud-pies when he arrived.

‘Look after yourself,' he said, being brisk about it because it would have been a poor show to break down or weep or anything.

‘You've got to come back, Froggy,' Megan said, blinking back her tears. ‘I'm not sure ‘cos I've only missed a month, but that's not like me, you know, so I think I'm expecting again.'

Emotion caught him by the throat despite himself. Another child, just when he was going to France.

‘Good show,' he said, gulping. ‘You'll look after yourself, won't you. Take the orange juice. That sort of thing. And look after little Winnie.'

‘Oh Froggy,' Megan said flinging her arms round his neck. ‘Please don't get killed. I love you so much.'

‘Me too,' he said holding her close, his face strained and pale. ‘Promise me you'll look after yourself. I can't bear to leave you. You mean everything to me.'

‘Yes, yes, yes. I promise.' Say you love me, Froggy. Say it. I couldn't bear you to go without saying you loved me.

‘I'll be thinking of you,' he said. He was half-way into the driver's seat as if he was eager to be off. Which in a peculiar sort of way he was. The sooner they got stuck into this war and finished it for good and all, the better. And yet going meant leaving her. And leaving her meant he might never see her again.

‘Oh God, Megan, I do love you so,' he said. And started the car.

The long battle continued as the invading armies struggled to get off the beachheads and capture the hinterland, and Froggy's Typhoons were in the thick of it from the moment they arrived. But it wasn't until 12 June that
news broke that the American Airborne Division had captured a town. It was a place called Carenton, and its capture meant that the Allies were on their way to the port of Cherbourg. That night when Peggy and Mr MacFarlane came on duty Mr Goodall had all three evening papers ready for them to read all about it.

There was so much to talk about that at the end of their shift they were still discussing the progress of the campaign, standing outside the Post and watching the sky, not that they expected to see anything in it, but out of force of habit.

Mr MacFarlane was the first to hear the engine. ‘Yon plane's in trouble,' he said.

‘What is it?' Peggy said, for she didn't recognize the sound of the engine. ‘Ours or theirs?'

It was making a very peculiar noise whatever it was. A terrible rattling and clattering.

‘There it is,' Mr Goodall said. ‘It's on fire.'

There was a burning plane heading towards them from the south-east. They could see red flames spurting out of it into the dark sky. But to their amazement it was flying straight. Straight and fast, about 400 mph according to Mr MacFarlane, and very low. Much too low for an enemy aircraft.

They watched as it rattled overhead and flew on towards the river. To Peggy's eyes there was something alien about it, something dark and sinister and unnerving.

‘I don't think that's a plane at all,' she said. ‘On fire and flying straight?'

And the engine suddenly cut out. There was a long pause and then a very loud explosion, much louder and longer than any ordinary high explosive bomb, more like the sound of an exploding bomber fully loaded.

Next day the newspapers reported that a German aircraft had been shot down in the East End. But the wardens were told the truth about it. They had seen the first of Hitler's vengeance weapons, the flying bomb he called VI.

‘God help us all,' Mr MacFarlane said, when he'd read the bulletin. ‘Have we no' had sufficient?'

But it appeared not. For three days there was no further
sign of the robot planes, but then the attack began in earnest, and they were launched against London one after the other.

They looked even more sinister by daylight than they had at night, flying at such speed with flames trailing behind them, black and quick and mindlessly cruel. And as everyone in London soon became aware, the damage they did was much much worse than that of an ordinary bomb. The explosion shattered windows a quarter of a mile away such was the force of the blast. People were blown into the air and hurled against walls and furniture. Some were stabbed by spears of flying glass or injured by the rubble that was flung in every direction, and those directly under the impact of the warhead were literally blown to pieces.

After attending her first horrific incident Peggy came home to tell Joan that she must send the kids out of harm's way the minute she could.

‘Megan would have them, I'll bet,' she said. ‘They'd be company for her and Winnie now Froggy's gone. Why don't we write to Megan?'

For once Joan didn't argue. She'd seen the immediate results of a robot bomb on her way home from work that afternoon, and one of the mangled corpses still lying in the road was a child no bigger than Norman.

So two days later the kids packed their bags and were evacuated to Merston. This time, once they'd been reassured that they weren't going back to that Mr Ray, and that their mother was coming with them all the way, and that she'd come down and visit them every Sunday, honour bright, they went happily enough. And Megan made them very welcome and settled them in with carrot cake and cocoa and showed them their two little camp-beds next to the cot upstairs and told them they could take it in turns to sleep in the double bed with her if they liked.

It was a great relief to Joan and Peggy to have them settled out of harm's way, because by then the flying bombs were coming over virtually all the time, sometimes with little more than a quarter of an hour between one and the next. The old air raid alarm system was very little use
in such circumstances, and there wasn't much point in taking shelter, because, as Mrs Geary pointed out, ‘if you did that you'd be in the shelter all day long and most of the night an' all'. So most Londoners went about their business as usual, except that they kept one ear cocked for the sound of that dreadful engine, and when it got too close they edged towards the nearest cover, ready to fling themselves to the ground or under a table or into a doorway the minute it cut out, for once that happened they only had twelve seconds to protect themselves. But it's exhausting to live on your nerves all the time, and after five years of war and a limited, monotonous diet, very few people had the reserves to cope with it. They did their best to reduce the terror of the bombs by giving them rude names and calling them buzz-bombs or doodle-bugs, but they were whistling in the dark and they knew it.

After a few weeks, Joan and Peggy were ragged with tension and fatigue. There'd been so many dreadful incidents. The United Glass works in Anchor and Hope Lane, the RAF balloon site at Riverway, Merryweather's in Greenwich High Road, where they made fire engines, Highbridge Wharf in Eastney Street, where a 250 ton floating dock was sunk. There was no end to the death and destruction and no matter how many terrible injuries Peggy saw she never got hardened to it. And in the dreadful seconds between the engine cut out and the explosion she was always afraid, convinced as she flung herself to the ground along with everyone else that the bomb was coming straight at
her
.

Only Baby seemed able to cope, and she did it by continuing to play the invalid. While she was at work she listened for the doodle-bugs and took cover when they fell the same as everybody else, but at home she refused to acknowledge their existence. She went straight up to bed the minute she'd had her supper and stayed there until it was time to go to work in the morning. She slept with earplugs in her ears and cold cream on her face and saw nothing wrong in allowing Peggy to wait on her hand and foot.

‘My nerves were bad enough before all this,' she explained to her sisters. ‘Now, well what with the wedding
and now these buzz-bombs it's a wonder I can get to work. You don't know what I'm suffering.'

‘I know what Peggy's suffering,' Joan said angrily to Mrs Geary. ‘She ought to make the nasty little pest get up and do her share of the housework, instead of taking meals up to her the way she does.'

‘No good us saying anything,' Mrs Geary said. ‘Your Peg'll have to think that out for herself. She can be jolly stubborn when she likes.'

Actually Peggy's stubbornness was partly due to fatigue. She simply didn't have the energy to urge Baby into better behaviour, particularly as she knew that any argument was likely to lead to a bout of hysterical weeping. It was easier just to wait on her.