We Five (26 page)

Tom: I spread very little about these days, Miss Higgins. We Children of David try our best to keep our heads down as much as possible. That way Herr Hitler's troops will have a little more trouble finding us when it comes time to cart us all away.

Jane: If Ruth were standing here she'd ask why, with other members of your faith quarantined behind fences in those bloody camps they're talking about—why you don't put on a uniform and join the fight to set them free.

To which Tom replied with a simper: “Oh, it's only your friend
Ruth
who wonders this, is it? Then do be sure to relay my answer to her: ‘Tom Katz is a coward—a “fraidy cat,” as the Yanks say. He takes no pride in it, but it cannot be helped.' Now, enough of this empty jawing. Give us another kiss and be quick about it.”

Which Jane did, enjoying the kiss terribly, though it troubled her that Tom had come to such comfortable terms with all the glaring defects to his character.

And as for Maggie and Jerry, the two had jollied and jousted with one another through most of the evening, each finding in the other one who fancied jesting with a hard edge but a soft wink… until that moment when Jerry Castle stopped winking and beheld his companion for the night with a suddenly predatory eye, this moment arriving without any warning whatsoever.

Of the five couples, only Maggie and Jerry had made no plans for seeing each other under decidedly more intimate circumstances later in the week. Or rather, Maggie and Jerry
might
have made plans, but the chance of this happening was dashed in an instant by Jerry's sledgehammer approach to romantic conquest.

Inside the Hammersmith Palais de Danse (the original name given to this, London's most popular nocturnal gathering spot, by the two enterprising Americans who opened it in 1919), one could almost forget from time to time that there was a war going on, or that London was being subjected to a series of nightly bombings, “the Blitz,” which was originally purposed to tear the heart out of the proud city and destroy the will of its armed forces to keep fighting and its citizens to keep stiffening their collective upper lip. But reminders did abound: not only did the walls and floor of the hall frequently judder and tremble and the nearby air raid sirens sing out in notes discordant with those being produced by the performing dance bands; and not only was the Palais clotted with young men in R.A.F., Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and British Army uniforms, but unfortunately, the refreshments offered up were also sadly indicative of this time of economy and sacrifice. Here at the Hammer-smith Palais could be found the very same restrictions and shortages experienced in other places throughout the kingdom, where people were required to be as creative as possible in the preparation of meals. In the kitchen of the ballroom that meant marge and Marmite sandwiches, and Spam on crisps, and “finger foods,” dominated by the flavor-deficient root vegetables, which all of England was planting and digging up in their backyards and public allotment plots.

Which was why Ruth was disappointed. And hungry. Even more hungry than usual.
And
hardly able to bear the intrusive redolence of the flaky, perfectly browned meat pie that was presently being devoured by the inexplicably well-provisioned middle-aged woman sitting next to her in the shelter.

Ruth wasn't alone.

“You could have at least waited until the rest of us had nodded off,” said the man sitting beside her, “you
cow.
” The last was said under his breath, but the woman heard it nonetheless. Everyone seemed to have heard it. Someone said, “Hear, hear.”

“We'll have no such talk as that,” said the shelter warden reprovingly. He was a lean, pinched-face man in his late sixties, and if he had not been a schoolmaster in his productive younger years, he could certainly have played the part convincingly in pictures.

We Five had been lucky to find seats in the shelter. The air raid siren had gone off just as they were haring off to catch the last train of the night. Assuming there wouldn't be sufficient time to make it on foot to the station, they ducked into a public shelter and found they had a lot of company. Some of those huddled inside had arrived long before the latest cautionary wail and had brought with them blankets and Thermos flasks and decks of cards, intending to spend the whole night there, as many Londoners were doing these days.

Indeed, underground spaces of every size and description and degree of suitability were being converted into public shelters during that deadly autumn. Even tube stations throughout the city—especially those dug deep into the ground—were being commandeered, first without the approval of Underground administrators and later with their full cooperation, and turned into circumstantial safe havens, especially by those who lived in the vulnerable East End and by the thousands of other Londoners who did not trust their own basements and backyard shelters to offer adequate protection.

Carrie looked all about. No one seemed to be carrying a gas mask. After months and months of the “Phoney War,” in which Germany had been thought to be planning a full-scale poisonous gas attack on British civilians, people had started to leave their masks at home. We Five had done just that, concluding that the oblong, fawn-coloured cardboard boxes wouldn't prove too fetching an accessory for a night of sparkle and glamour upon the dance floor.

Carrie had a strong desire to pinch her nose to prevent the foetid assault upon her nostrils which came from the dishevelment of unshod feet and the discourtesy of underwashed bodies. She closed her eyes and vowed to simply endure her travails until the All Clear sounded.

But Jane's spirits remained inflated and gay. “Except for what happened to Maggie,” she said to Molly, who sat next to her, “I'd say the evening was a topping success.”

Molly agreed with a nod whilst rolling her eyes with regard to those near her, none of whom, it seemed upon cursory inspection, came from the Hammersmith Palais ballroom. “I especially like the fine way it all ended up,” she answered sarcastically.

“Better to be here and to be safe, Molly,” retorted Ruth, who sat across from the two, “than to be roaming the streets only to be sliced up by flying bomb shrapnel, or perhaps even more buggery than that: take a direct hit to your person.”

As if on cue, there came the sound of an explosion quite close by. One of the women in the shelter emitted an abortive scream, which elicited a whisper-chorus of “there there”s from the concerned women who sat round her.

Another woman, who sat next to Ruth, turned to her and said severely, “I wish you wouldn't talk that way with the children here.” She pointed to the children of reference. “It frightens them so.”

Ruth was about to observe that it certainly was a topsy-turvy world in which
talking
about bombs should be found more frightening than the actual
sound
of their nearby detonation, when a tweedy old man sitting within earshot said, “If you ask me, that boy and girl should have been sent away from London along with half the other children of the city. This is no place for a child, with them Nazi bombs raining down on us every bloody night.”

Now it was the children's mother's turn to speak. She did so as she embraced her little ones, one on either side: “From what
I've
heard, London is only slightly more dangerous than all them other places the little ones been shipped off to. So why don't you just sod off?”

It was time, once again, for the shelter marshal to intercede: “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a proper and respectful way to speak to one another in such close quarters as this, and I am not hearing it. Has anyone a mouth organ to play or a music hall song to sing—mind, one appropriate for young ears?”

“Oh good God,” muttered Carrie. She kept her eyes squeezed tight and feigned sleep, lest any of her four sisters commit the unpardonable atrocity of informing the other sardines in this tight little underground tin that there was one among them who had a voice to put even Deanna Durbin to shame. Carrie conjured up a picture of Will and the way he had held her during “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” taking care not to squeeze her too tightly. She liked that. It seemed such a contrast to the way the evening had ended for poor Maggie. Carrie peeped at her friend. In the dim lantern light she could almost swear Maggie was crying, but she wasn't close enough to ask her outright, nor would Maggie much fancy it if she did.

Carrie thought of how similarly the two of them had been brought up—each enduring early years with a father who wasn't fit to be a father at all. Although Carrie's dad was still out there, perhaps even going about the business of redeeming his putrid character by offering his showman talents to the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA, to most), and Maggie's father was gone entirely from this earth, both of the young women had been required by circumstance to reside in more recent years in homes in which the bond between mother and daughter was, by necessity, crucially important to the survival of what was left of their attritive families.

But Carrie could not help thinking there was something even more special about how much
she
and
her
mother loved one another. They got on very well together (everyone said so), and was this fact not best demonstrated by Sylvia's willingness to gently nudge her daughter fully fledged from the nest? Carrie could not contain the frisson of bliss that ran through her in this paradoxically unhappy and revolting place. Will Holborne's edges were deckled, his personality gruff, his intellect adequate but far from remarkable; yet there was something that commended him to her heart.

And yet.

First loves are anomalies, they always say. They cannot be completely trusted. Carrie knew this. Each of her sisters would be quick to tell her this. But the feeling of joy that came from knowing—or, in the very least,
guessing
—how Will felt about her was hard to ignore.

Carrie Hale couldn't wait to get home to tell her mother all she was able about the night at the Hammersmith Palais and about the man who made her sing—both from her lips and from her heart. She asked the time and was told it was nearing midnight. There had been one raid already, and then an hour later the All Clear. Now another raid was underway. She could hear it and feel it. She could see the fear imprinted upon the faces of her fellow Londoners, who never got used to it, never stopped wondering if this particular night would be their last. Perhaps if they were lucky, Carrie and her sisters wouldn't have to spend the rest of the night in this terrible place, like rats in a sewer. In the meantime, she would hum her way through this durance vile: “They know you have departed without me and we wonder why, the breeze and I.”

Was Will safe?

You see, she was already worrying about him. When, if there was worrying to be done (and most will tell you that worrying is never productive), it was her mother who should have occupied her deepest, most fretful thoughts.

For at that very moment, in Elmfield Road not far from Balham High Road, a bomb—not one that shatters and rends and pulverizes and deforms, but one that only burns—a diabolical incendiary bomb—fell with a seemingly innocent thud upon the roof of the Hale row house and tumbled down the steeply pitched roof, coming finally to rest upon a loosely tied stack of paper rubbish Mrs. Hale had been gathering for the next paper drive. Its sputtering sparks ignited the paper and then the grass beneath it and within moments the sideboards of the house whilst Carrie's mother slept in the cupboard beneath the stairs, where she and Carrie would always go, having been told that staircases offered the best protection from falling bombs—at least the kind of bombs that destroy on detonative contact. And so the house began to burn as Sylvia slept (for she had just dozed off, having fought sleep for hours in hopes of being awake for Carrie's return) and the family cat, awake and motivated by an instinct for survival, fled through the cat flap in the kitchen door.

It wasn't until the house was nearly engulfed that a fireman fighting a blaze at the end of the lane spotted the curls of smoke coming from inside and rushed over to discover if there was anyone within. What happened to her mother Carrie would not learn for another four and one half hours: she was not dead, but she had been badly burnt in her attempt to escape the house upon waking to the acrid smell of smoke, and by only the most clinical definition could Carrie's mother and best friend in the world be called alive.

The house and nearly everything inside—the musical instruments, the sheet music, the books—were lost.

There was even a biscuit sheet of slightly scorched muffins, freshly baked, waiting for Carrie on the top of the stove, now burnt to a point that even Sylvia Hale had never taken them.

It was two and a half days before Carrie was finally able to make it to the blackened shell which had been the house she shared with her mother. In the meantime Carrie's next-door neighbors, the Prowses, had kept careful watch over what was left of the structure (in addition to giving a temporary home to the now homeless Frisky McWhiskers); Mira Prowse had even pulled a few things from the less-damaged rooms that she felt her friend Carrie might want to have—although everything she'd carried out was either singed or smoke- or water-damaged. Mira's Samaritan salvage operation was not without incident. At one point she was confronted by Ms. Little-john, the neighborhood busybody, who demanded to know “what in God's name” she was up to. Mira's harried response: “What
you
should have been doing yourself, if you were any kind of thoughtful neighbor, you nasty old bitch!”

Since Sunday night when Carrie had been taken off the gaming floor and told by Ms. Colthurst that “oh honey, darlin', something just awful's happened and you need to go straight to the hospital,” Carrie had cried so much that she no longer even resembled herself. Molly insisted on keeping her friend's eyes periodically Visined to get at least some of the redness and puffiness down. Molly had been right by Carrie's side ever since it happened. Carrie's other sisters had also remained in close orbit, but it was Molly who put everything in her life on hold to give around-the-clock attention to her devastated friend.