The Londoners (50 page)

She looked up into his tense, narrow, high cheek-boned face. The wife of Group Captain Lance Merton wouldn’t receive slights or snubs from anyone, she would be socially and financially
secure, her lifestyle very similar to that which it would have been if she had married Toby. Even more importantly, her relationship with Joss Harvey would be amicable. Matthew wouldn’t grow
up enduring the misery of knowing he was the cause of battles between them. They would be, to all outward purposes at least, a united family.

It was a tempting prospect. A handsome husband. Social status. Financial security. She put her hands against his chest and said quietly, ‘I can’t marry you, Lance. I’m not in
love with you.’

His jaw tightened. ‘You might find out differently if only you stopped grieving . . .’

‘I have stopped grieving,’ she said starkly, ‘or at least I’ve stopped grieving in the way that you mean.’

‘Then why . . .’ he began, impatience edging his voice.

‘I’m in love with someone else.’

For a second his eyes remained blank and then shock flared through them, followed swiftly by disbelief.

‘And I’m having a baby,’ she said, wanting him to be in no doubt at all as to her full commitment to another man.

There was no mistaking her sincerity and the disbelief in his eyes vanished.

‘You’re pregnant?’ He dropped his hands from her shoulders as if he had been burned.
‘Pregnant?’

He couldn’t have sounded more incredulous if she had said she had leprosy.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly as he stepped abruptly away from her. ‘Leon doesn’t know yet, but when he next has leave . . .’

She was about to say that when Leon next had leave they would be getting married but before she was able to Lance said:

‘
Leon?
What kind of a name is that, for Christ’s sake?’

Kate’s eyes held his. She knew instinctively the kind of reaction she would meet with if she told him Leon was part West Indian and she knew also why it was she had never been able to
become really close to him.

She said, indifferent to his reaction, ‘Leon is a very popular West Indian name.’

‘West Indian?
West Indian?
’ He looked as if he had been slapped hard across the face. ‘Dear Christ! I treat you like the Virgin Mary because I believe you’re
still grieving for Toby and all the time you’re consorting with a . . . a . . .’

He couldn’t bring himself to even say the word.

As she saw the revulsion in his eyes she knew they were never going to have a civil conversation again and that it was the end of their always unsatisfactory relationship; never lovers, not even
true friends.

‘He’s a sailor,’ she said, knowing that she was making a dire situation worse and not caring, ‘and he used to be my lodger . . .’

‘Jesus!’ He looked as if he were going to be sick. ‘You kept me at arm’s length and all the time you were laughing behind my back, behaving like a whore with a black
seaman! And I wanted to marry you!’

His nostrils were pinched and white, his eyes blazing. ‘Did you behave like this behind Toby’s back, too? Is Matthew Toby’s child or is he the offspring of another so-called
lodger? A Ukrainian, perhaps? Or a Pole?’

Oddly, she felt no anger towards him. Only pity.

‘Goodbye, Lance,’ she said quietly. ‘Please take your chocolates with you.’

With something that sounded like a half-strangled sob, he snatched the gold-paper-packaged box from the kitchen table and turned on his heel, slamming the door behind him so viciously that it
rocked on its hinges.

Only when the front door had also slammed did she realize she was trembling. She sat down in the rocking-chair. In a minute, when she was quite sure his car was no longer in Magnolia Square, she
would go down to Miriam’s and see if Carrie was home.

‘You’re out of luck,’ Miriam said cheerfully, inviting her in. ‘Everyone else is at ’ome, bar Carrie and Albert, ’ave you come to take Daisy
’ome? Because if you ’ave, she won’t want to go. She’s upstairs with Rose, playing with the doll’s ’ouse.’

‘I’ll leave her here for a little longer then,’ Kate said, still bemused that, thanks to Nellie Miller’s propaganda work on her behalf, she was again a welcome guest at
the Jennings’.

‘Ma’s just made some bagels,’ Miriam said, and Kate noticed that Miriam’s own beefy red arms were dusted with flour, ‘come into the kitchen and ’ave
one.’

They had barely moved half a dozen steps down the clutter-filled passage-way when the air raid sirens wailed into life.

‘Bugger,’ Miriam said graphically, side-stepping a wooden clothes-horse heavy with freshly ironed laundry. ‘It’s another of them bloomin’ “nuisance”
raids. Two planes at the most. If it wasn’t for the kids I wouldn’t bother traipsing down to the shelter.’

Kate sympathized. Though a daylight ‘nuisance’ raid wasn’t as inconvenient as a night one, when it meant deciding whether or not to leave a warm bed for the nearest shelter, it
was exceedingly annoying. Most Londoners now took them in their stride, refusing to give the pilots of the planes the satisfaction of being the cause of widespread disruption. Like Miriam, Kate
would have liked to have ignored the sirens but, like Miriam, she felt too responsible for the children to be able to do so.

‘I’ll go upstairs and bring Rose and Daisy down,’ she said to Miriam. ‘Where have we to go? The Anderson or the public?’

‘’Ardly anyone goes to the public any more for a “nuisance”. I’ll get Ma and Christina to keep us company in the Anderson. We can take some bagels with
us.’

Kate ran up the stairs, calling, ‘Rose! Daisy! Can’t you hear the sirens? Come on, we’re going down the shelter!’

‘And what about Hector?’ Daisy asked anxiously as she and Rose tumbled out of the bedroom Rose shared with Carrie. ‘Where’s Hector? He doesn’t like the sirens,
Auntie Kate. He won’t be happy on his own. Can we go and get Hector?’

‘No,’ Kate said firmly, shooing her and Rose downstairs. ‘It will only be one or two planes and they’ll have gone away in a few minutes. Hector will be fine. He’ll
get under the kitchen table and most likely fall asleep.’

‘Bonzo never falls asleep,’ Rose said as Kate hurried her through the kitchen and out into the back garden. ‘And he always wears a tin hat. Grandma bought one specially for
’im and Grandad painted ’is name on it in white paint.’

As the two children scampered down the concrete steps into the shelter, Kate could hear the approach of planes. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the unusually bright February sun. As
Miriam had predicted there were only two of them, their intention not so much to cause damage by bombing as to cause widespread disruption by obliging vast numbers of London factory workers to down
tools and head for the nearest shelter.

Kate ducked her head down and entered the Anderson. The ack-ack guns on the Heath had already opened up on the invading planes and with a little luck would bring one, or even both of them,
down.

‘And if they do bring one of the
momzers
down, where will it fall, my life?’ Leah Singer was asking practically. ‘Better they don’t hit one than they fall out of
the sky on top of us!’

It was the first time Kate had ever been in the Jennings’ shelter. Albert had fitted it out with a couple of bunk-beds, a deck-chair, a large rag rug and a storm-lantern and there was a
beer crate from The Swan with half a dozen bottles in, most of them empty.

‘Sit down,
bubbelah
,’ Leah said, shifting up a little so that Kate could sit beside her and Christina on the bottom bunkbed. ‘Why do the
schleppers
always fly
over our heads? Why can’t they fly over the heads of the rich instead?’

‘They do, Ma,’ Miriam said, pulling a well-worn jacket on over her sleeveless flower-patterned overall. ‘In the last proper raid Bromley didn’t ’alf cop
it.’

‘Not like the East End,’ Leah persisted, lifting Bonzo on to her knee. ‘No-one’s copped it like the East Enders.’

The two planes sounded to be heading directly for Magnolia Square.

‘I can’t understand why the ack-ack guns don’t bring ’em down,’ Miriam muttered, hugging her arms across her ample chest. ‘And will you two stop jumping up
and down on that top bunk, Rose and Daisy? You’re making so much racket I keep thinking we’ve been ’it!’

‘Will Albert be all right?’ Christina asked suddenly. ‘You don’t think the planes will strafe the High Street, do you?’

There was no way of knowing and no-one replied.

‘At least Beryl and Jenny will be in the school shelter,’ Miriam shouted as the droning engines above them caused the walls of the shelter to vibrate. ‘And so will Billy, if he
’asn’t scarpered off for the arternoon. The trouble with Billy is that . . .’

It was a sentence she never finished.

There was a screaming, whooshing sound, as if all the air around them was being sucked up into the sky and then a blast so tremendous that none of them thought they would survive it. The earth
buckled and ruptured beneath their feet, an avalanche of flying masonry and timber and tiles thundered down on top of the Anderson’s steel roof. Kate was plucked from the bunk-bed and thrown
bodily into the steel-grooved wall opposite. She could feel blood, hot and sticky, streaming down her face and when she opened her mouth to scream Daisy’s name, she choked on smoke and
cordite fumes.

‘We’ve been ’it! We’ve been ’it!’
Miriam was screaming unnecessarily, proving that she was at least alive.

There were other screams. Rose’s and Daisy’s. But they were screams of terror, not pain.

From outside came the roar and crackle of flame. ‘The ’ouse is gone,’ Miriam was sobbing, picking herself up from where she had been thrown. ‘Oh, what am I goin’ to
tell Albert! What’s Albert goin’ to say?’

Kate pushed herself away from the still rocking wall of the shelter. Miraculously Rose and Daisy were still on the top bunk-bed, clinging to each other hysterically.
‘I’m here,
darling. I’m here,’
she shouted reassuringly, reaching up to lift Daisy down to the ground.

As she did so, the earth juddered.

‘I’ve got Rose,’ Christina said in a voice of remarkable calm. ‘Let’s get out of here! Quick!’

‘Oy vey! Oh veh! Oh veh!’
Leah moaned, clutching a half-stunned Bonzo to her chest. ‘All through the Blitz he wears his helmet and today, when he needed it, I left it
behind!’

As they stumbled out into the fresh air their first reaction was disbelief at finding that Miriam was wrong and that the house was still standing, their second all-engulfing horror at the scene
only a few doors away.

The entire two upper storeys had collapsed and flames were shooting up through the right-hand side of the wreckage from the ground floor.

‘Oh dear God!’ Kate whispered, letting go of Daisy, so great was her shock. ‘It’s the Misses Helliwells’ house!’

Without another word, she and Christina broke into a run. Somewhere in the distance fire-engine bells were clanging. As she and Christina ran and scrambled over the debris that had once been a
neat and tidy pathway, Kate was aware of other people running in the same direction, but she and Christina were the first on the scene.

Masonry and exposed wooden joists shivered and settled amid huge clouds of rising dust. The fire was gaining hold, feeding on crushed furniture and doors. Where the Misses Helliwells’
sitting-room had been was a cascade of bricks and smashed roof-tiles and, somewhere buried beneath it, the Morrison shelter.

With smoke stinging their eyes, Christina and Kate began clawing at the rubble, hurling it away from above where they judged the Morrison to be. The flames were roaring nearer and still the fire
engine had not screeched to a halt.

‘I’m with you, girls!’ Mr Nibbs panted, seizing the corner of a crushed brass bedstead and dragging it from the debris with almost superhuman strength.

The fire was scorching them as they dug and clawed with lacerated hands. Dimly, Kate was aware that the fire engine had arrived. She could hear Daniel Collins’ voice. Hear the blessed hiss
of water.

‘The gas pipes may be leaking!’
a male voice shouted.
‘There may be an explosion! Get those girls to a place of safety!’

There was a spitting sound and as Kate ignored the warning and heaved a jagged corner of ceiling moulding to one side a demented animal, fur on end, sprang from what had very nearly been its
tomb and leapt past her shoulders.

‘Faust!’ Kate gasped to Christina. ‘They always took him with them into the Morrison. They must be directly beneath us!’

Male hands had come to their aid, but despite the arrival of the firemen, the fire was still crackling and roaring closer and closer.

‘There’s a gap here!’ Daniel Collins shouted to his fellow auxiliary firemen. ‘We need someone thin to worm a way down! The old ladies are elderly and one of them’s
a cripple, they’re not going to be able to scramble out unaided!’

‘I’m thinner than any man,’ Kate said swiftly, beating out a shower of sparks that had landed on her dress.

‘You’re not thinner than me,’ Christina said, pushing a way past her. ‘And I’m not pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’ Daniel Collins eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘If you’re pregnant, Kate Voigt, you shouldn’t be risking life and limb on a bomb site! There could
be a gas explosion any minute, either that or the whole bloody lot could cave in!’

‘Oh,
helloooo!
’ a frail voice called faintly over the din of rescue-workers and the menacing roar and crackle of flames.
‘Oh, can anyone hear me? Is anyone
there?’

‘Hold on tight, Miss Helliwell!’ Daniel shouted down into the ink-black gap between broken joists and brick-work. ‘We’re going to have you and your sister out in a
jiffy.’

‘That’s if the sister’s alive,’ a fireman said pessimistically. ‘She always looked as if a puff of wind would be enough to finish her off, let alone one of
Hitler’s ruddy bombs.’

No-one paid him any heed. Despite Kate’s protests, Christina was squeezing herself down into the narrow gap they had uncovered.