Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys (4 page)

‘I’m telling you, son, you’re riding for a fall! Do you know how long they’ll put you away if the dock police catch up with you? It won’t be a piddling few months, I’ll tell you that!’

Her normally placid father rarely raised his voice in anger. If he did, it usually involved Jack, and May always hated it.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad. I’ve got nothing to do with that racket!’ Jack’s voice was defensive, almost dismissive.

Their shouting and their anger set her heart racing and she crept downstairs to peer through the half-open kitchen door. Her mother sat white-faced, looking neither at her husband nor her son, her eyes fixed on the table in front of her.

‘Now that’s a bare-faced lie. I hear things at the docks. How d’you think I feel when my son’s name gets mentioned when they’re talking about lorry loads of stuff going missing?’

Jack jumped out of his chair. ‘I think you should stick up for your bloody son, that’s what I think!’ He stood close to his father, shouting into his face.

‘Oh, you do? Well, how do you explain this then? Your mother found it under your bed.’

Mr Lloyd snatched a black tin from the kitchen mantlepiece and pulled the lid off. As he did so, more ten bob notes than May had ever seen fluttered down on to the kitchen lino.

‘You’ve got no fucking business taking that, it’s for me and Joycie!’ Jack’s voice cracked with anger.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’ her father roared.

May burst through the kitchen door. ‘Dad, don’t!’

She could never bear to see Jack hurt. Ever since she was a child, it had always been the same, and May was the peacemaker. Her father turned away at the sight of her, addressing his son. ‘And you’ve got no business taking what’s not yours.’

But Jack was angrier than May had ever seen him, and he wasn’t ready to back down.

‘You’re a fuckin’ hypocrite, you know that? You’ll take anything Wide’oh gives you, no questions asked!’

Jack looked at May, as if for help. She could see his dilemma. This was the closest he could come to admitting the source of his money, without giving up George. And she could see the injustice of it. He wasn’t guilty of the crime her father was accusing him of but the one he
had
committed, they were all party to.

Into the shocked silence came an insistent sound. They all three turned as one to look at Mrs Lloyd. She was crying.

Jack swiped up the sheaf of banknotes from the floor, stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the front door, setting the thin walls shaking. Her father retreated to the scullery, where she heard him getting ready for his ARP duties. She was left to comfort her mother.

‘He’ll catch his death out there, it’s bitter.’ Her mother wiped tears from her cheek. ‘He’s got no coat on.’

She stroked her mother’s hand, noticing age spots that seemed to have appeared overnight. ‘He don’t feel the cold,’ May said.

*

But the chill in the house was palpable for weeks after, with her father stubbornly refusing to speak to Jack and May ineffectually trying to force a truce between them. Finally, she approached Peggy. She’d persuaded her sister to go to the Trocette Cinema in Tower Bridge Road, to see a matinée of
Gone with the Wind.
It was their second viewing, but May loved the film and besides she felt as if Peggy had been distant of late. She and George had stopped coming every week for Sunday lunch, and May knew it upset her mother. But today May wanted to talk about Jack.

As they walked back towards the Purbrook Estate, May asked her, ‘Peg, did you know our Jack’s been doing jobs for George?’

Peggy looked surprised and, to May’s astonishment, guilty.

‘You
did
know! Peg, what are you thinking of. Don’t you know how much trouble it’s causing at home? Not that they know it’s George he’s getting the money from…’

Peggy wouldn’t look at her. ‘Jack’s got a mind of his own. Anyway, George says it’s only temporary, so Jack can put a bit of money together to get married.’

May snorted. ‘Oh, that’ll be nice, a wedding in Brixton prison. Peg, he’s not a villain, not like your…’ She just stopped herself. ‘I didn’t mean that. It’s just he’s not cut out for it. He’s not careful. He splashes those notes about – I’ve seen him up the Red Cow – and he’ll be the one to come unstuck.’

‘Sorry, May, I can’t stop to chat. I’ve got to get George’s dinner on the table before he comes home.’ Peggy gave May a quick kiss on the cheek and dashed off. With her headscarf on, and the bag over her elbow, May thought she looked the picture of a respectable wife going home to her husband. It was just a pity her husband wasn’t respectable. As she walked slowly back to Southwark Park Road, May reflected on marriage and wondered if it always made you a coward, for what she’d seen in her sister’s face was fear.

She had done her best and failed in her self-appointed role of peacemaker, so that when spring came and Jack’s call-up papers finally did arrive, for May, it was almost a relief. At least in the army he’d be out of Wide’oh’s way. But her feeling of relief lasted only until the day Jack was to report for duty.

As her mother handed Jack some wrapped sandwiches and chocolate for his journey, there were no tears, but her tight-lipped bravery was almost harder for May to bear.

Her father shook Jack’s hand. ‘Good luck, son,’ he said, all their bitter words forgotten as they stood to wave him off down the street.

It seemed that parting had been the only peacemaker Jack and her father would heed. And so her brother left for the war, and afterwards she went upstairs to her bedroom and shed the tears that had been forbidden while he’d still been there. A part of their family had been torn away, and it was as if someone had ripped pages from a favourite book. It just wasn’t the same any more without Jack. Part of them was missing.

***

Emmy pointed out a mobile billboard, mounted on four wheels. It showed Ginger Rogers, the Hollywood star, putting her peachy skin down to Lux soap, and alongside it a street photographer was touting for custom. It was a bright September Saturday afternoon, almost a year to the day since the outbreak of war. May and her two friends were leaving the leather factory and had been discussing the latest shortages, the most pressing of which was shampoo.

‘Let’s get our photo done!’ Emmy said. ‘We need cheering up.’

May put her hand to her hair, which she knew was her greatest vanity.

‘I can’t, Em, my hair’s not been washed for a week!’

‘Well, neither’s mine,’ Emmy said.

‘Come on, girls!’ the photographer called to them. ‘Get your photo taken with Ginger! Send it to your sweethearts in the forces.’

And though May was only too aware she had no sweetheart to send a photograph to, she agreed, guessing it was the nearest she’d ever get to Hollywood glamour. After checking their make-up and assuring each other their hair was fine, the friends linked arms to pose in front of the billboard. Then Emmy got a fit of the giggles, her throaty laugh so infectious it threatened to ruin their sophisticated pose.

‘We’re meant to be looking glamorous, not like schoolgirls!’ Dolly scolded and May bit the inside of her cheek, trying not to squint into the sun. She tilted her chin and attempted a sophisticated smile.

The following Saturday afternoon after work the friends went to the photographer’s to pick up their photographs. Eager to see the results, they stopped to open the envelope in the street.

‘Look at you, May!’ Emmy laughed. ‘You really do look like Ginger Rogers!’

Golden afternoon sunshine bounced off the shiny print as May tilted it for a better view.

‘Do you think so? No, it’s just my hair.’ May now wore her hair shorter, rolled under in a Ginger Rogers pageboy. But it wasn’t just that. The face staring back at her from the photo looked older than her own image of herself. Perhaps it was the touch of make-up as well as the new hairstyle; perhaps it was the wartime diet which had finally rid her face of all trace of puppy fat, accentuating her high cheekbones. The hand colourist had made her large blue eyes a shade too dark, but their expression seemed that of a bolder person than herself. And that surprised her.

Then Dolly groaned. ‘Oh bloody hell, look at that ladder in my stocking – Ginger wouldn’t stand for that!’ And they all laughed.

After they parted and she neared Southwark Park Road, she heard the heart-lurching wail of the sirens. Normally she would have ignored it as she had a hundred times in the past year of ‘phoney war’. But this time it was followed by the throbbing drone of aeroplane engines, lots of them. She froze and looked heavenward, to see skeins of black aircraft, strung out across the sky, all along the line of the Thames. Like menacing migratory birds, staining the innocent blue heavens with endless arrows of destruction, they all pointed in one direction: the docks.

One part of Southwark Park Road was known as the Blue, after an earlier incarnation as Blue Anchor Lane. It was one of Bermondsey’s main shopping streets, and she had just reached the first shops when the world exploded around her. A thunderous booming from ack-ack guns in Southwark Park shook the ground beneath her feet, followed by a red-hot rain of razor-sharp shrapnel. Propelled by cold terror, May ran. She shot from shop doorway to doorway, as an explosion like a muffled volcano was followed by the high tinkling of shattering glass. The blast seemed to have turned off the sun. All its former brightness was veiled now by great blooms of ashen smoke, billowing up from the first targets. She had always been fond of the sunsets in Bermondsey, and often at this time in the early evening, looking westward, beyond the crowded buildings, the sky would be all burnished reds and golds. But now it was in the east that the ruddy light glowed. Surrey Docks, with its tons of stacked timber, was on fire, and the inferno lit the sky with more brilliance than the setting sun.

Her mind a blank with fear, all she could think of was getting home, so she was tempted to ignore the advice on the nagging posters and simply make a run for it. But some instinct checked her flight and instead she looked around for shelter. The railway arch ahead, known as the John Bull Arch, after the pub that stood next to it, was only a little way ahead. The pavements on either side of the road running under the arch had been bricked up at each end to form a public shelter. If she could only reach there, she would be safe. As she approached it, a shrieking incendiary bomb passed close enough to sear her cheek and she darted to one side, making a dash for the Home and Colonial stores. But in spite of the sandbags protecting it, the long front window shattered into a crazy pattern, before tumbling in a thousand shards at her feet. She was frozen to the spot, conscious only that she was covered in razor-sharp glass needles. As she hesitated a figure shot out, grabbing her by the coat collar.

‘Get inside! We’re under the counter!’

‘What are you doing here?’

For the person who’d yanked her through the door was Bill Gilbie.

‘Buying bacon for me mum... and trying to stay alive!’ he said, crouching low as he helped her back behind the shop counter. The shopkeeper and two assistants made room for her and she kneeled beside Bill as the whines and crashes of the bombs increased around them. But the pounding of their own ack-ack guns in nearby Southwark Park was even worse. Each thunderclap from the exploding shells reverberated through her body, so that her own heartbeat was hammering to the rhythm of the guns. Bill must have felt her uncontrollable trembling, for he slipped his arm round her shoulders, steadying her against each successive blast. Finally, she stuck her fingers in her ears to block out the din, but though the sound was muffled, she still felt the shop’s foundations shaking with every round. She closed her eyes to make herself invisible, just as she had when as a child she’d retreated to one of her hidey-holes. But an insistent stabbing pain in her knees demanded her attention, and she looked down to see that she had been kneeling in a pile of broken glass.

Bill noticed too. He brushed away the glass and laid his jacket down.

‘Here, sit on this!’ he shouted, for it was impossible to be heard above ear-splitting whines and crashes. Pain seemed to have banished her habitual shyness and, almost glad of something small and manageable to focus on, she spent the next ten minutes watching as he painstakingly prized out slivers of glass from her knees with his deft, piano player’s fingers. He gently wiped each trickle of blood away with a handkerchief only to reveal yet another shining needle of pain. When at last he was satisfied the wounds were clean, he ripped the hanky in half and bandaged each knee.

‘Better?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Where d’you learn that?’

He smiled. ‘ARP training – you’re my first casualty!’

After what seemed like hours crouching beneath the counter, the barrage finally ceased, and the aerial timpani died away, to be replaced by the roar and crackle of fires and the clanging of fire-engine bells. While the shopkeeper began the task of clearing up, she and Bill emerged through the splintered remains of the door.

Now out in the open, May felt suddenly shy. Bill broke the silence.

‘How come you were so late getting home from work?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you finish at twelve today?’

‘Me and the girls went to pick up our photos.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ he said.

‘What, now?’

He nodded, and though her only thought was to get home, she fished into her bag and pulled out the photo.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think Ginger’s not a patch on you.’ He laughed and then, looking more closely, added, ‘But they’ve made your eyes too dark. Yours are light blue.’

She took the print, pleased, not so much by the compliment as that he had noticed the colour of her eyes.

‘Do you think they’ll come back?’

Bill looked skyward. ‘I think this is just the beginning. They’ll be back tonight.’

‘Really?’

He nodded. ‘I don’t think you should come out to the pub tonight, May. It’s too dangerous.’

He registered her disappointment and added with a laugh, ‘The entertainment won’t be there anyway. I’ll be on fire-watching duty, up on Garner’s roof all night. Come on, I’ll see you home.’