Josie Under Fire (11 page)

“Down you go.” She opened the door to the basement; and as they hurried down the steps Josie heard the approaching bombers: a sound so loud it seemed to fill the air.

Chapter Fourteen

Chelsea Under Fire

“The boys…Peter…” said Aunty Grace. “I do hope they’ve reached shelter…”

“It’s no distance,” said Edith. “They’ll be in the pub – in the cellar. Or the Embankment shelters.”

“Oh, I wish they were here!” her mother said. “I wish they hadn’t gone out.”

Miss Rutherford was on duty that night. She called in, noted who was there, and went off to check the other residents and the shelters in the Embankment Gardens. Mr. and Mrs. Prescott came in, and soon they all heard bombs falling and the sound of the anti-aircraft guns starting up.

“Let’s hope we get off lightly tonight,” said Mr. Prescott.

Aunty Grace no longer felt like playing
Consequences
, so the girls got out the
Blackout!
cards instead. But at a quarter past ten, when the All Clear had still not sounded, Aunty Grace insisted that they go to bed. “You may as well get some sleep while you can,” she said.

They went to the two camp beds furthest from the light, undressed to their petticoats and snuggled down under the blankets. For a while they whispered and listened to the murmur of adult voices, the click of knitting needles, and the distant thunder of guns. Once Mr. Prescott went to look outside, and Josie heard him report that the sky was lit up: crackling and sparkling with anti-aircraft shells; criss-crossed with searchlights; flares dropping slowly all around.

The quiet voices resumed, and Josie fell asleep. Later during the night, she became aware of bombing closer at hand. By then it was dark in the room except for a small circle of light from a torch: her aunt was reading in bed. Edith was asleep, and the Prescotts had gone back to their own half of the basement.

Josie wondered what the time was. It felt late. She pulled the scratchy blanket over her head and slept again.

She was woken by a massive explosion, so close that it must have been almost next door. It shook the building, and she sat up, her heart pounding.

Everyone was awake now, torches switched on, the light revealing startled, frightened faces. Another, even louder, explosion made the room seem to leap and brought plaster showering down on the beds. Josie and Edith both screamed, and Aunty Grace said, “Keep down! Under the blankets!”

Josie could hear timbers creaking. She was terrified that the house would collapse. The bombardment continued, explosions all around, the anti-aircraft guns going nonstop. The house shook and trembled to its foundations.

Edith got out of bed and went to sit with her arms round her mother, and Aunty Grace signalled to Josie to come to her on the other side. They huddled together with a blanket around the three of them. The most frightening thing, Josie thought, was knowing that Aunty Grace was afraid too; not that she said so, but Josie could feel her trembling.

Mrs. Prescott appeared from the next room, a coat over her nightdress, her face eerily lit by the light from her torch. “Are you bearing up? Quite a night, isn’t it?” She spoke lightly, but Josie knew she must be frightened.

“The boys – the Duke of York,” said Aunty Grace. “I wish we knew what was happening out there.”

“Now, don’t worry, my dear.” Mrs. Prescott came and sat nearby. Her husband joined them. They all wanted to be close together while the bombardment was so intense.

Another explosion shook the room, and Josie clung to her aunt, wondering how much more the house could take. They heard a sliding crash as something fell and shattered outside the basement window.

“Roof tiles,” Aunty Grace said. Josie cowered. She expected the ceiling to cave in at any moment. She stuffed her fist in her mouth to try and stop her teeth chattering. If only Ted was here!

There was no more sleep that night. The battle raged for hours, the guns firing, explosions rocking the building, and all the time the roar of bombers overhead. When the bombardment moved further away the girls were persuaded to go back to bed, but Josie slept fitfully, waking whenever the guns reverberated through the building and the timbers creaked. Every so often Edith would ask, “Mummy? What time is it?” And her mother, who seemed always to be awake, would say, “Half past two,” “A quarter past three,” “Four o’clock,” as the hours wore by. In the sealed-up room there was no natural light, but Josie, waking once again, had a sense that it was almost morning when at last they heard the sound of the All Clear.

“Thank God,” said her aunt.

They all began to move. Josie dressed hurriedly. It was cold now in the basement and she put on everything, including her coat.

All five of them went up the steps that led to the Felgates’ flat.

There was broken glass in the hall: the fanlight in the front door had blown in. At the back of the house they saw that the garden was full of debris: wood, a section of fencing, brick rubble. The back door was jammed by some of it.

They returned to the front and opened the door onto a ghostly scene swathed in a rain of brick dust and charred paper. Beyond the Albert Bridge the sun was rising, its light made hazy by the pall of smoke. In the other direction, towards Battersea Bridge, a bomb had exploded in the road a few doors along, blowing in the windows of several houses and leaving a crater surrounded by debris. Grey figures were moving about in the dust. Some of them had formed a human chain to pass buckets of water into houses where the roofs were on fire. Others were sweeping up broken brick and glass, clearing a way through. There was smouldering wreckage in the road from which spurts of flame sprang up; and a choking, acrid smell. They heard a baby crying, the whirr of stirrup pumps, voices calling for more water. A few people wandered helplessly, cut and dazed.

“Girls,” said Aunty Grace, “go and put the kettle on. And Edith – find some lint and bandages: in my emergency box at the bottom of the airing cupboard. Mr. Prescott, I think you should go indoors and rest…”

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Prescott. “There’s work to be done. We can start by fetching more pails.” And he limped away, followed by his wife.

For the next hour Josie and Edith worked harder than they had ever done before. Aunty Grace brought in shocked and injured neighbours, and Josie brewed endless pots of tea while Edith and Mrs. Prescott washed cuts and grazes and covered them with clean cloth. They comforted small children; found toys for them to play with; offered the use of the telephone, the toilet, emergency food and bedding. Mr. Prescott and Aunty Grace filled pail after pail of water and passed it along the chain until all the fires had been extinguished. The house door stood open and people went in and out across the grand marble-paved hall.

The girls heard of a bomb on the Royal Hospital, another on Cheyne Place auxiliary fire station, which was now out of action. And people spoke of something big – a huge explosion in Old Church Street.

“The Duke of York is near there,” Edith said – and Josie thought of Ted and Peter, sheltering in the pub cellar.

But she and Edith stayed at their posts, and so did Aunty Grace, who must have heard the news too.

When all the fires were under control and signs of normality returning, Miss Rutherford appeared in the open front doorway. She was covered in dust from head to foot and swayed on her feet, and she looked, Josie thought, as if she had been struck a great blow.

“Your boys are safe,” she told Aunty Grace – and Josie saw her own relief reflected in her aunt’s face. “They asked me to tell you. They’re helping with the rescue effort.”

“What happened up there?” Aunty Grace asked.

“The Old Church. It’s gone.”

“
Gone?
” Aunty Grace put a hand to her mouth.

“Completely. A landmine. Houses destroyed all around. And five wardens killed in the explosion.”

“People you knew?” Aunty Grace took her arm and guided her to a chair.

“Yes. Not my post – but yes, I knew them.”

Josie went to fetch more tea, putting in extra sugar for shock. She had now become tea-maker-in-chief, dispensing to weary aid workers and shocked and injured neighbours. She had two kettles on the go, and three teapots, and the washing-up was continuous. Edith, meanwhile, although never allowed to use the telephone, turned out to know how, and had made herself useful ringing people’s workplaces and relatives and passing on messages. Both girls had put their newly learned first-aid skills to good use.

“I hear you two have been indispensable,” Miss Rutherford said, when Josie brought her tea and a biscuit.

And Josie realized that they had, and had enjoyed it.

“I made a list,” Edith told Miss Rutherford, “of the names of all the people who came in. In case anyone asks after them.”

“Good work,” said Miss Rutherford.

They left her resting, and went with Aunty Grace to look for Peter and Ted.

At the western end of Chelsea Walk they could see an immense crater. The devastation was so widespread that at first it was difficult to work out what had been there before the bomb struck. Then they realized that it had been the church, several houses in Chelsea Walk and a large part of Old Church Street, which was now completely blocked by rubble. A fragment of brick wall was all that remained of the ancient church.

“It’s so sad – so sad,” said Aunty Grace.

Josie thought of the church where people had gathered for generations – gone for ever. And of those who had died that night.

Some were still trapped. They saw rescue workers bring out the pale, dust-covered body of a woman from one of the damaged houses. It was impossible to tell whether or not she was alive.

A little way off, a gas main was on fire, and small fires were breaking out continually in the smouldering rubble. There were fire engines, cranes and emergency vehicles everywhere; and people, dust-covered and indistinguishable from each other.

But two of the dusty figures were coming towards them, and with a leap of her heart Josie recognized Ted and Peter.

“Ted!” she shouted.

She ran to her brother and he caught her in his arms. Aunty Grace, usually so controlled, astonished Josie by hugging Peter in the street and bursting into tears.

They all began walking back to the house together.

“We’ve been helping the emergency services,” said Peter. “We were first on the scene. When the landmine fell, one wall of the pub blew in, but we managed to get out of the cellar. Someone was trapped in the house next door – two floors had collapsed. Ted managed to reach him – volunteered to lower himself down through a tiny gap between the joists. It could all have caved in at any moment—”

“He makes me sound heroic,” said Ted, “but I wasn’t. I was just the smallest man there. It had to be me.”

“But you did it,” said Peter.

They both looked exhausted under their layers of dust. They talked about the events of the night: the rescues; the deaths; the German parachutist who came down on the Embankment and was taken prisoner. “Young – my age,” Ted said to Josie. “So ordinary-looking. Someone ran up and kicked him, but that man was led away and the police took the German into custody. But the awful thing is, Josie,
I
wanted to hit him; I felt such anger when I thought of all the death and destruction around us. I could have beaten him senseless. It horrified me to know I could feel like that.”

Josie did not know what to say. She took Ted’s hand in sympathy.

“You see, we have to get rid of those feelings,” Ted said. “We have to see that the Germans are victims too – part of their country’s war machine.” He smiled. “He’s safe now – in a police cell.”

Back at the house, the two young men tramped into Aunty Grace’s living room, where the carpet was already white with the dust of many shoes. They flung themselves into easy chairs, lay back, and closed their eyes.

“Tea, I think,” said Aunty Grace.

And Josie went to put the kettle on again.

Chapter Fifteen

Promises

“Miss Rutherford says I have administrative abilities,” said Edith. “She says I’ll go far – perhaps run a business.”