London Pride (71 page)

She lay in the terrible darkness breathing in dust and dirt as her heart juddered like a broken engine and her legs began to shake. I'm going into shock she thought, recognizing the signs as her mouth trembled and her belly shook. And she knew there were things you had to do when people went into shock but she couldn't remember what they were. Not that she could have done any of them even if she had remembered, trapped in the darkness. Still at least I'm alive, she told herself, trying to be sensible. I ain't been killed. Now what have I got to do? What do you have to do when you've been bombed? She ought to know that. And she tried to push her brain to remember. But her brain was stuck fast in fear and wouldn't function, no matter how hard she tried.

Please God help me, she prayed frantically. Please God. I can't bear this. And the old prayer from Tillingbourne came automatically into her mind. Give me the strength to endure what has to be endured.

There was a movement beside her in the darkness and a faint rasping sound like panting. She put out her hand instinctively towards the sound and touched fur. Tom, she thought. And alive too, for the fur was warm. Then she remembered the torches and the whistle and knew that they were kept under the pillow and felt about in the darkness to find them, relieved to discover that she could move her right hand even if the left one was still heavy and useless. There were sharp pieces of brick under her fingers, rubbish of all kinds littering the bed clothes. Mind
out in case there's glass. Fumbling to right and left she felt the edge of the pillow and, pushing her fingers underneath it, found a torch. And it was working. Thank God.

In the little beam of light she could see debris all round her. There was a lot of dust and several pieces of plaster and brick that were much too big to have been blown through the mesh, so there must be a hole in the shelter somewhere. She played the torch over the roof above her head and saw that it was crushed down and sloping sideways and had been gashed open at one end. And she realized that she was lucky to be alive and wondered whether she'd been hurt and hadn't noticed yet. Lots of injured people didn't feel the pain of their injuries until quite a long time after the incident, as she knew better than most. But no, her arms and legs were intact and so were her hands and feet, although her shirt was torn and she could feel dampness on one shoulder and there was a smell of blood coming from somewhere. But then the smell of blood was always strong after a direct hit. You smelt it everywhere.

Tom's eyes glinted in the darkness, red as rubies, and she put the torch down so that she could see him without alarming him, and reached out her fingers to stroke him. There was dark blood streaked across the fur on his back, so that could be what she was smelling, but
his
limbs were all intact too, and after a few minutes he crawled towards her, crouched on his belly, and crept into her lap.

It was a great comfort to feel him there. ‘You're all right, Tom,' she said and was horrified by how croaky her voice sounded. She realized that her mouth was still full of dust and grit and she tried to spit it out without frightening the poor cat. ‘They'll get us out soon,' she said to comfort them both.

Then she remembered that Baby had been upstairs doing her hair.

‘Baby!' she croaked. ‘You all right? Baby? Say if you are.'

But there was no answering call and no sign of any movement among the debris even though she scanned it several times with her torch. And after all that effort she didn't have the energy to call again for quite a long time.

She must have hidden away somewhere, she comforted herself. If I've survived, and old Tom, then she'll probably have got through as well. But she wished she'd answer. ‘Baby! Baby! Where are you?'

Then she must have fainted away or fallen asleep for the next thing she was aware of was a loud scraping noise and a choking sensation, the air gritty with dust, and total darkness again. Had she turned out the torch? And where was it? But she hadn't got the energy to search. She knew she ought to shout for help, but she hadn't got the energy for that either. She felt ill and weak.

Am I dying? she wondered. Is this what it feels like when you're dying? Oh Jim, she thought as tears oozed out of her eyes, please come and get me out. She wanted to be in his arms, held tight and safe. But they'd had a row, hadn't they? He'd said she was to choose. She remembered that. And she'd chosen to go on looking after Joan and Baby. How could she have been so silly? Where was Joan? she wondered. She couldn't remember. Had she gone to work? I ought to call to Baby again she thought, but she couldn't make her voice work. She could only think of Jim and that awful row. Choose between us, he'd said. Come away with me, he'd said. Now. She remembered it clearly. And he'd been right. She should have chosen him. She should have gone away with him there and then. Oh how much she wished she had.

Dear God, she prayed, please let me get out of here and I'll go with him wherever he wants. Tomorrow. Today. Right away. Just let me see him again, just once, please dear God. It would be terrible to end with a quarrel. And such a stupid quarrel too. Because she knew now that he'd been right in all the things he'd said. Their love for one another
was
the most important thing. He was more important to her than anyone else in the world. Oh please dear God, let me get out and see him again.

When Jim Boxall stormed out of the house that evening he was in such a fury he hardly knew what he was doing or where he was going. It was still raining, in a heavy pervasive shower, and already growing unpleasantly dark as if the sky was angry too. For sheer unmitigated bloody pig-headedness! To refuse their house, their first, very own house, after all these years, and just when he was going to France. How could she be so bloody stupid? He crashed into the High Street, his face dark with fury. And there was a pub. It was just what he needed. A good strong Scotch. A good strong double Scotch.

He made his entrance so precipitately that he didn't see Ernest and Leslie who were sitting in a corner talking to John Cooper, but they saw him and came across at once to lead him back to their table.

‘Didn't know you were on leave,' Ernest said. ‘Not embarkation, is it?'

He controlled himself with an effort and tried to speak lightly. ‘You don't get embarkation leave in this war,' he said. ‘You just get sent.' And he drank his whisky quickly.

‘How's it going over there?' John Cooper asked. ‘Does anyone know?'

‘According to plan, so they say.' It was still an effort even to be civil. What a state to be in!

‘Terrible battle at Caen,' Leslie said.

‘Yes. It was.' The whisky was warm in his throat, melting his anger at last.

They plied him with more whisky and they talked war and invasion, peace and politics, and presently they were joined by a sailor and his three friends, one of whom was an old hand from Warrenden Brothers and remembered Jim being there ‘in the old days'. There was a piano playing in the snug and some raucous singing by rough London voices. ‘Dear ol' pals, jolly ol' pals'. Yes, he thought as the whisky fuddled his rage, this was what he needed.

The first explosion made him jump ‘Good God!' he said, as the glasses rattled and dust leapt into the air. ‘What was that?'

‘One a' them doodle-bugs,' John Cooper said, shifting in his wheelchair as if the reverberation had made him uncomfortable. ‘Noisy beggars.'

The second sent several men out into the street to see where it had fallen.

‘Looks like Blackheath way,' one said as they returned.

What with the whisky and his anger it didn't occur to Jim that Peggy might be attending either of them. And when his old friends from Warrenden's remarked that it was ‘getting a bit hot round here' and suggested moving on to somewhere else, he said goodbye to John Cooper and the two old fellers and went with them, drunkenly affable.

They spent the rest of the night in an amiable pub-crawl that took them further and further north and west. By chucking out time they were in Thames Street and Jim was decidedly unsteady on his feet.

‘My ol' woman lives round here,' he said, peering into the darkness.

‘Stay the night with her then, I should,' one of his new friends advised.

So he went knocking on his mother's door.

She was already in bed, but she came down pointing a timid torch to see who it was and pulled him into the house at once for fear of showing a light.

‘Yer Dad's asleep,' she warned as they climbed the stairs to her rooms. ‘Best not to wake him.'

‘Can I stay the night?'

‘Looks as if you'd better,' she said. ‘There's only the floor, mind.'

‘Pillow and a blanket,' he said, ‘an' that'll be dandy.'

He slept almost as soon as he'd wrapped himself in the blanket, exhausted by emotion and drink. And he didn't wake until well after eight o'clock the next morning, with a mouth as dry as old leather and a throbbing headache.

There was no sign of his father except for an empty mug and a greasy plate on the table. His mother was riddling the fire. ‘You had a skinful last night, didn'tcher?' she said mildly. ‘Yer Dad said to leave yer.'

‘Got any aspirin?'

She tossed him the little bottle from the mantelpiece, and he caught it and took two tablets as the events of the previous night rushed back into his mind, the row, Peggy's pathetic face, Baby in her frowsy bed, Peggy's pathetic face, the pub crawl, Peggy's pathetic face.

‘How's Peggy?' his mother said, sitting back on her heels.

‘Fine,' he lied, hoping the aspirin would take effect soon. ‘She's fine. It's her birthday tomorrow. I've brought her a present.' And he'd forgotten all about it, shouting at her like that. In the light of that calm morning he was ashamed of the way he'd behaved, all that shouting and going off on a pub crawl and getting drunk. And it wasn't her fault. She was only being herself, trying to do her best, the way she always did. It was that lazy sister of hers. She was the trouble, rolling around in bed all the time. And that thought made him grin rather ruefully, for wasn't he rolling around too and late in the morning? Eight o'clock and still not up.

‘Is that the time?' he said, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I got to be off.'

‘There's tea in the pot,' his mother said.

He was out of the house a quarter of an hour later, and caught a tram by running for it as it moved off. He couldn't wait to get back to Paradise Row and make it up. It was all too bloody silly for words, rowing like that after all these years. They'd live in the house sooner or later. He shouldn't have sprung it on her when she was tired. He hadn't given her a chance to think. And he ought to have gone down to the Post and put things right yesterday
evening instead of getting plastered. Well never mind, he'd go straight to number six and give her the present and make up with her now.

When he turned the corner into Paradise Row he was whistling happily. The shock of what he saw froze the sound on his lips.

‘Christ!' he said aloud. ‘Oh Christ!' Trying to take it in with his brain stunned and none of his senses functioning properly. The street cordoned off, the woodyard gone, and the fence. A crater where the shelter had been. The terrace wrecked. Two houses gone? Three? Whose were they? Was it number six? Impossible to see in the smoke and filth and clouds of dust. ‘Oh Christ!'

There was an elderly policeman on guard by the cordon. ‘Not down here if you please, sir,' he said, looming out of the dust.

‘I live here,' Jim said, stepping over the tape.

The man's expression changed at once. ‘Ah well if that's the case, sir, perhaps you wouldn't mind just seeing the warden. Over there by the rescue truck.'

Jim hadn't noticed the rescue truck, nor the two ambulances standing by at the other end of the road. And even now as he walked towards them they seemed unreal, because this couldn't be happening. She couldn't be bombed. Not Peggy. Oh dear Christ not Peggy! Why weren't they digging? They ought to be digging her out. What was the matter with them all? Why were they just standing about? Didn't they realize she was in the house? Well if they wouldn't do anything, he would. He ran onto the wreckage and began to pull away the bricks with his bare hands, frantic with distress, fear screaming in his head. ‘Peggy!' he called. ‘Peg!'

Someone was beside him, holding him by the arms, and Mr MacFarlane's voice was soothing, ‘It's all right, son. It's all right. Everything's all under control.'

‘It's number six,' he said, eyes staring wildly. ‘Don't you understand? It's number six. Peggy's house.'

‘Aye. We know,' Mr MacFarlane said ‘They'd a Morrison there. She could be in the Morrison. They'll be digging it oot just as soon as ever they can. They've a chimney to bring down first, d'ye see?' And he turned
Jim's body so that he could see the demolition teams and the leaning stack of the chimney lowering over the wreckage.

The Morrison, Jim thought, but that made him remember the tray and their dreadful row. ‘Have you heard her?' he asked, trying to calm himself. ‘Do you know she's there?'

‘No. Not yet. If you'll just come down, eh?'

‘We should be digging,' Jim insisted, still wild with shock and grief. ‘Don't you understand? My Peggy's under that lot. We should be digging her out.'

‘Aye,' Mr Mac said gently. ‘We will. Just as soon as ever we can, but they've to get the chimney down first and they cannae bring the chimney down if we're in the way of it.'

He was so sensible and so calm that Jim saw the sense of it, even through his panic, and allowed himself to be led back to the road. The first shock was beginning to ease. It was possible to think. ‘When did it happen?' he asked. ‘What about Joan and Lily? Had they gone to work?' They ought to have gone to work. With any luck …