The Way Ahead (23 page)

‘OK,’ said Daniel, ‘but I’ll do the riding. You sit on the carrier.’

‘Listen, handsome,’ said Patsy, ‘don’t push your luck.’

‘Listen, saucy,’ said Daniel, ‘in this country fellers are still on top. Got it?’

‘No,’ said Patsy, ‘it’s Stone Age stuff, you dope.’

‘Now look here, Topsy—’

‘Patsy.’

‘Well, Patsy, stop answering me back and take note of our customs. Fellers are on top and, accordingly, treat girls kindly. Got it?’

At the other end, Patsy shrieked with laughter.

‘Oh, I like you, Daniel,’ she said, her voice a gurgle.

‘What’s that?’ asked Daniel, failing to interpret the gurgle.

‘You’re cute,’ said Patsy.

‘That’s for kittens, not fellers,’ said Daniel. ‘Right, call for you later and we’ll go by bus. You can’t leave your bike outside the cinema. It’ll get nicked by some bloke with a sister who wants one for Christmas.’

‘But it’s not Christmas,’ said Patsy.

‘In this country,’ said Daniel, ‘Christmas is always coming.’

‘You’ve got some screwy customs,’ said Patsy. ‘Still, OK, Daniel, we’ll bus there and you can sit next to me.’

‘Can’t wait,’ said Daniel.

‘Glad you’re thrilled,’ said Patsy.

The film was a classic, packed with incidents and suspense. It built up to a terrific climax, and Patsy and Daniel enjoyed it immensely.

Summertime meant twilight was only just beginning to give way to dusk when they left the cinema and walked to the bus stop, but because of the blackout dusk would lead to dense darkness. They talked about the film and how good it was. The night was cool, and there was moisture in the air. Along the South Coast rain was coming down, and the forecast for the immediate future was worrying Churchill and General Eisenhower. Weather for the transport of thousands of troops and tons of armour across the Channel needed to be kind, and it had been finally agreed by the Allies that the last day in May ought to offer the kindest conditions. May was being perverse, however.

A bus pulled up almost as soon as Patsy and Daniel arrived at the stop. They boarded with several other people. Patsy buoyantly climbed the stairs to the upper deck, Daniel following. She put herself in the rear seat. Daniel put himself next to her, and warm hips and shoulders made cosy contact.

The bus, its headlights masked, moved off. Daniel looked at Patsy. Patsy looked at him. The upper
deck
was semi-dark, for no lights were on, and the few other passengers had their backs to them.

All the same, Patsy made her apparent reservations known by whispering, ‘No, you can’t, not here.’

‘Can’t what?’ said Daniel.

‘Kiss me,’ she whispered.

‘Is that correct? I mean, I could. What you mean is I mustn’t, don’t you?’

‘Did I say you mustn’t?’ she asked.

‘I said I could,’ murmured Daniel.

‘Well, go on, then.’ Her lips pursed.

‘Patsy, you said not here.’

‘D’you know you’ve got a silly smirk on your face?’

‘You’ve got a cute nose on yours.’

‘Leave my nose out of it,’ said Patsy.

‘Well, it’s not in the way,’ said Daniel, and kissed her. Very nice it was too, her lips fresh and girlish and co-operative.

‘My stars,’ breathed Patsy, ‘you did it.’

‘Well, I said I could and you didn’t say I mustn’t.’

‘It didn’t mean you had to,’ said Patsy.

‘But you told me to go on, then.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Patsy, ‘that was a dare, not an invitation. You’re not going to do it again, are you?’

‘Do I look as if I am?’ whispered Daniel.

‘No, you still look kind of smirky,’ said Patsy.

‘Is it the kind of look you like?’

‘How could anyone like a smirky look?’

Up came the conductor, a clippie, a lively lady of
forty
or so doing her best with the aid of hydrogen peroxide to hang on to the allure of her blonde hair. GIs fell over themselves to get close to English blondes, whether they were twenty-odd or forty-odd, as long as they hadn’t lost control of their figures.

‘Fares, if yer please, me lords and ladies,’ said the clippie, cap worn at a rakish angle. She turned to Daniel and Patsy.

Something happened to Patsy’s skirt. It resulted in a small purse coming to light. She dug into it. Daniel, however, stuck to the custom that as fellers were on top, it was his privilege to stand treat, as he had with the cost of the cinema seats. He pulled coppers from his pocket, and bought two tickets to Danecroft Road. The clippie punched them under the light of a little torch fixed to her dispenser, looked at Patsy, gave Daniel a wink and moved on.

‘Wasn’t it my turn to pay?’ asked Patsy.

‘My grandma’s against that,’ said Daniel. ‘Listen, where did that little purse of yours come from?’

‘Leg of my panties,’ whispered Patsy.

‘D’you mean you keep it in your knickers?’

‘Yuk. You English guys talk funny about a girl’s panties.’

‘Where’s the purse now?’

‘Where it came from.’

‘Well,’ said Daniel, as the clippie returned to the lower deck, ‘I’ve got to admire how you manage it. Never saw a thing.’

Patsy put her lips to his ear.

‘You’re not asking to see, are you?’

‘See what?’

‘Don’t play dumb.’

‘Look, I’ll take your word for it that they’re pretty.’

At that point, the air raid sirens blasted off, warning of the approach of German night raiders.

THE SUDDEN IMPACT
of the sirens on unready ears made passengers jump. Patsy, startled, sat bolt upright. Daniel, tensing, wished he’d got her home first. The bus driver, adhering to air raid regulations, brought his vehicle to a stop.

‘Air raid, air raid!’ yelled the clippie from down below. ‘All orf, all orf!’

‘Bloody hell,’ said one well-dressed top deck passenger, ‘I thought the buggers had given up, but they’re back.’

Daniel thought the same, since London hadn’t suffered any bombing raids for some time.

In fact, Germany had been transferring more squadrons to their hard-pressed Eastern front, where huge Russian armies, backed by countless bombers of their own, were causing certain German generals to curse the day Hider had launched the invasion of the Soviet Union.

‘My stars,’ breathed Patsy, ‘is it really going to happen?’ She and Daniel, with the other top deck passengers, descended and alighted. Lower
deck
passengers were already scurrying off into the night, towards the nearest public shelter as the staccato wail of the sirens continued. The bus, now carrying only the driver and clippie, moved off to make for its depot at top speed.

‘Let’s get across the road,’ said Daniel. ‘We’re a bit far from home, and I know where there’s a private shelter.’

‘Daniel, I don’t mind waiting to see where the bombs are going to drop,’ said Patsy. ‘Well, it’s kind of tingling spooky.’

‘It’ll be kind of tingling blotto if one drops on your head,’ said Daniel, standing on the kerb with her. The warning sirens stopped. ‘And what would your good old Pa say if all that was left of you were your shoes? Or even only one? Come on.’ Darkness had descended, but there was no traffic, and Daniel knew exactly where he was. He took Patsy straight across the road, and edged his way around the remains of a flattened house. They heard the bombers arriving, the heavy drone of Heinkels unmistakable. It was a reminder to Churchill from the
Luftwaffe
chief, Hermann Goering, that he still had an iron fist, even if it was covered with plump flesh.

‘Where are we?’ asked Patsy, holding Daniel’s hand as he skirted the ruins.

‘This is my family’s old house,’ said Daniel. ‘That is, it was. A German bomb blew it to pieces over two years ago. That’s why we’re living with our grandparents. Dad’ll have a rebuilding job done after the war.’

‘Daniel, it really happened, your house got bombed?’ said Patsy, trying to make out exactly what was left of it.

‘Fact,’ said Daniel, peering ahead in his quest for the now overgrown garden. ‘Fortunately, Mum, Dad and Paula were in the shelter. That saved them, and that’s where we’re going now. By the way, Dad’s on standby ARP duty tonight and so is my Uncle Tommy. They’ll have put their helmets on and be out by now, I should think.’

The bombers were swarming, the sky vibrating, the noise merging with muffled booms as the first cascades of high explosives struck. The raid was taking in the inner suburbs, the London boroughs and the City: Ack-ack blazed away, the sky too dark for effective action by RAF night fighters. Daniel brought Patsy carefully down some stone steps into the old Anderson shelter at the front of the garden. The shelter was pitch dark, and there was small-sized rubble underfoot. Patsy was awestruck. The shelter and its dark, damp embrace, the riven night sky, the droning bombers and the knowledge that bombs were actually falling, all contributed to a feeling that Satan was lurking and fiendishly grinning. But Daniel’s hand was warm and firm around her own.

‘Oh, good grief,’ she whispered.

‘They’re getting a lot of this in Germany,’ said Daniel. ‘Day and night.’ Talking, he thought, was better than staying silent. Staying silent was like listening for the bomb that was going to drop on you through the shelter roof. ‘I wonder if it’s making them think building sandcastles is better
than
building an empire, after all? That was Hitler’s idea, y’know, to build a great German empire. Patsy, are you old enough to remember what the Germans said to that?’

‘Wasn’t it something like, “
Sieg Heil
, Oh Mighty
Fuehrer
,”?’ offered Patsy.

‘Sort of “Lead us to it”?’ said Daniel. ‘Grandpa said to me once that people blind enough to worship the devil end up in hell, the devil’s kingdom.’ He grimaced in the darkness. ‘I suppose they’re halfway there now. Should we feel sorry for them, Patsy?’

‘Sorry for them?’ Patsy sounded slightly overwrought. ‘Daniel, at a time like this, we’ve got to feel sorry for people who stood and watched Hitler’s gorillas beating up Jews and smashing their shops? Listen to all that.’ The noise of the bombers was so thunderous and menacing that the shelter seemed absurdly inadequate. ‘I think I’m a coward,’ she said.

‘I know I am,’ said Daniel, and talked about life in the West Country as an evacuee in company with sister Bess and brother Jimmy. They were still there. Patsy said she’d been in the West Country herself, at the boarding-school, but braving a raid here was a lot more real than braving the principal there. It made one realize what this sick war was all about.

They talked on, Patsy giving Daniel something to laugh at now and again, and Daniel giving her cause to giggle. It was a courageous dialogue beneath the deadly threat of the laden sky.

‘Pa and I were caught in an air raid when we were in London Town one evening,’ said Patsy. ‘It was
during
our first week over here. We went down into a deep shelter and never heard a thing, but the raid made Pa send me to that boarding-school well away from London. I hope tonight’s bombs won’t make him send me back, especially now you’re set on taking me to the cinema once a week.’

‘Am I?’ said Daniel. ‘Yes, so I am, and I’ll make a note of it.’

‘I appreciate the offer, Daniel, I really do,’ said Patsy, sharing with him the feeling that talking was good for the beleaguered. The constant droning was oppressive. ‘I like it that we’re friends.’

‘Would you say, in American lingo, that we’re buddies?’ asked Daniel.

‘Sure I would,’ said Patsy, then gave it some thought. ‘Buddies, you said? Like in an army?’

‘No, like you’re a girl and I’m a feller,’ said Daniel.

‘Well, I’m glad you’re not a mail box,’ said Patsy with a little laugh. There might be rolling thunder above them, but there were no bombs dropping in the immediate area. ‘It’s crazy dark in here. Daniel, you’re my first English guy, d’you know that?’

‘I hope your second and third don’t get in a hurry to elbow me out,’ said Daniel.

‘What? Oh, you flathead. Listen, are you going to make a habit of kissing me on buses?’

‘Probably,’ said Daniel. ‘What’s your American custom about that?’

‘I tell my Pa, and my Pa goes round and kills the guy,’ said Patsy.

‘That’s given me second thoughts about your good old Pa,’ said Daniel. He flinched then. Bombs
were
dropping, after all, in the Herne Hill area, not far from them. The harsh crumping noise of each explosion was unmistakable. Moments later, one bomb crashed down at the foot of Denmark Hill. That brought the roar of an explosion savagely to their ears. Darkened houses shivered, and residents crouched deeper inside their shelters. To Patsy and Daniel, the ground seemed to shudder and the shelter to quiver. Patsy clutched at Daniel.

‘Oh, my knees, I’m losing them,’ she gasped, at which point the heavy droning mercifully began to lessen.

Noting the receding thunder, Daniel breathed, ‘Patsy, let’s take a look. If that bomb has smashed some houses, there might be people needing help. Come on, better than staying here and doing nothing.’

‘I’ll be glad to do anything,’ said Patsy, and gritted her teeth as she followed Daniel out of the shelter. He guided her around the remnants of his family’s old house, and as soon as they reached the pavement they saw flames flaring high, way down the hill. That and the receding bombers put determined life into them, and they ran. Daniel, who knew every inch of the hill, its road and its pavement, travelled fast through the darkness, hand in hand with Patsy, whose flying legs put their trust in the sureness of his long limbs. The flames gave them light in a short while, enabling them to increase their pace. Down the hill they went. Houses on each side of the road fell away and they reached the empty stretch close to Ruskin Park. There the road was clear of properties, and there
on
the left, close to the shattered pavement, were the great yellow flames leaping and hissing.

‘Bleedin’ blind Amy,’ gasped Daniel, at one then with his cockney roots. His dad and his Uncle Tommy could still sound off in that way. ‘It’s gas, Patsy. The bomb smashed a gas main.’

They came to a halt before the searing heat scorched them.