London (167 page)

Soon he could hear the thud and boom of the high-explosive bombs crashing down. They sounded closer than they had last night, and sure enough a few minutes later, the telephone rang with the first request.

“It’s the City. A serious fire near Ludgate. Off you go, lads.”

There were two categories of big fire. The largest of all would be an entire block: this was termed a conflagration. A serious fire was the other category, but would still require over thirty pumps, which meant that AFS taxi-trailers from all over London would be converging to help the handful of proper fire-engines of the regular service.

Charlie’s team crossed the river at Vauxhall Bridge, made their way along past the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall and into the Strand. St Clement Danes flashed by. Then they found themselves joining a line of similar vehicles crawling down past the newspaper offices that lined Fleet Street, towards the church of St Bride’s.

It was quite a sight. A single high-explosive bomb, Charlie guessed, must have struck, ripping out the guts of two houses. But a cluster of magnesium fire bombs had also fallen and it was these that were really doing the damage. Though in themselves the fire bombs were not very fearsome – they burned like a large roman candle firework and you could actually kick them away or put them out – they often lodged somewhere practically inaccessible and before the firemen could get to them, the fire had frequently taken hold. In this case, half a dozen houses were already blazing furiously. The last house in the row had not yet caught, but there was an incendiary on the roof.

“Lines!” the officer in charge was calling. “More lines!”

They were close enough to the river to run hose lines straight down to its waters and pump from there. Already a dozen hoses were in operation.

“Come on,” said Charlie, “let’s go up there.” While the others started undoing the ladder, he and the senior man on the team ran up the narrow staircase. They could hear a crackling sound coming from the next house, but the walls were quite thick and they knew that if the fire came through underneath them they could move along the roof, or have a ladder run up to them.

Once on the roof, they saw the incendiary easily enough. It was lodged up beside the chimney. “Here,” said Charlie. “I could get that with a grappling hook.” He started climbing up towards it. His foot went through once, but he managed to grab a hold on the chimney to steady himself. “Lovely view!” he shouted, and, at a signal from his companion that the coast was clear, he took aim, swung, and knocked the fire bomb clean off the roof into the street below.

They had just neared the bottom of the stairs when they noticed the smell. For a second they looked at each other in surprise, then Charlie’s companion grabbed the stair rail. “I feel dizzy!” he cried, and Charlie had to catch hold of him. Charlie grinned. “Here,” he hissed, “get a grip on yourself and come with me.” They descended the stairs until they came to the cellars which, like many in this part of London, ran along under several houses. As they entered, they could see that the ground floor of the neighbouring house was burning. Falling embers would start a conflagration in the cellar at any moment. The dizzying smell was almost overpowering, but its cause was now obvious. “Alcohol,” said Charlie.

The ground floor of the next door house was a liquor store; the fumes were from the broken bottles. They could be heard popping and exploding above and soon the same thing would start down in the cellar where the crates were stored.

“No way we can save this lot,” his companion whispered.

“No,” said Charlie, “but look at that.” On the floor, not twenty feet away, was an open crate full of miniature bottles. Neither man spoke as they moved towards it.

A fireman’s boot stretched well up his leg and had a large top. It was amazing how many miniatures would fit in there. A bit of floor fell in near them, but they took no notice until they had finished.

“Charlie,” the other whispered, “you have all the luck!”

Helen drove through Moorgate. It seemed astonishing that even when there was an inferno in one street, the next could be pitch dark. Twice they had to stop to negotiate around a bomb crater. On the second occasion, they had only just seen it in time. There were just two of them in the ambulance – a sturdy old van with faint markings on its sides. It might have seemed a little primitive, but it carried a stretcher and a full complement of first aid materials, which was a great improvement on the situation some months before when she had been asked to drive her own little Morris and to find scissors and bandages for herself.

There was a lull in the bombing. Though a few searchlights stalked the sky, the drone of the bombers had died away. The quiet would certainly not last. Although the Spitfires were out there searching for prey, most of the bombers were not only getting through but were returning to base, reloading and coming back for a second run.

The tenement block came into sight. A single fire appliance was hosing down the corner where a bomb had neatly taken down a section of wall, leaving the interior exposed like a child’s dolls’ house. The firemen had brought an old lady out and laid her on a blanket to await the ambulance. It only took Helen a moment to ascertain that one of her legs was badly broken. The pain must have been considerable. But the old woman’s response to it all was not unusual.

“I’m sorry, dear, to give you all this trouble.” She tried to smile. “Should have gone to the shelter, shouldn’t I?”

Helen strapped the old woman’s leg to a splint and was just moving her on to the stretcher when she saw a fireman look up and heard the drone of the next wave of bombers approaching.

“Better hurry, Miss,” he said.

She bent down to pick up one end of the stretcher and then realized that the old woman was trying urgently to say something to her. Patiently she leaned over her.

“Please, dear, if I’m going to hospital,” the old woman pleaded, “I just realized. Could you help me? I forgot. . . .”

Helen did not need to let her finish.

“Your teeth.”

It was always the same. They always wanted their false teeth. They had nearly always been left on the mantelpiece. The blast had always blown them somewhere else. And, if she possibly could, she always went in to look for them. Keeping their teeth was the one little bit of dignity they still had. “Besides, with the war on, you never know when you’ll get some more,” an old man had once pointed out to her.

“What floor?” she sighed.

“Raid’s beginning,” the fireman called.

“A bomb never hits the same place twice,” she said calmly, though she knew there was no reason why it shouldn’t.

As the drone turned into a roar, and the barrage erupted above her, Helen walked through the door into the tenement building.

The premonition that had been troubling Violet was not of a definite kind. She had not seen a vision of Helen lying dead, or injured, it was more general: a sense that something important – she could not exactly say what – was coming to an end. When Helen had gone out for her walk and she had been sitting in her chair, she had closed her eyes and suddenly heard a sound, quite sharp, as though someone had abruptly closed a book. She told herself it was nothing, but she suspected that as people came close to some great watershed in their lives they might become a little psychic. After Helen had left that evening, the feeling had grown stronger.

Only after the first raid of the night had passed did it occur to her that it might be her own life rather than Helen’s which was about to be snapped shut. There had only been a few bombs on Belgravia, presumably aimed at Buckingham Palace, but of course it was possible. She wondered whether she should try to do anything about it. She sighed to herself. She was over seventy. Did she really have the energy?

It couldn’t have been the corned beef since that had never been touched, but, whatever it was, by midnight Auxiliary Fireman Clark was in no state to go out. Crew number three, therefore, was a man short.

When the news came through that the Bull Brewery had been hit, the station officer looked round for an extra man. He had always hesitated to use the older men like the Flemings. As both were in their sixties, they really belonged in the Home Guard and, in fact, though neither of them knew it, they were only there because he felt Herbert’s performances at the piano were good for morale. Just now, however, he was a man short and faced with a conflagration. Thoughtfully, he looked at Percy.

“I suppose,” he said, “you wouldn’t like to go along?”

“Come on, Percy!” the others cried. “It’s a chance to get in the brewery. We’ll have a party!”

“All right, then,” he said. “I’ll go.”

Now it was really coming down on every side. Incendiaries were falling, both magnesium and oil ones. Again and again, Charlie heard the scream and the awful thump of a high-explosive bomb. One fell in Blackfriars, another somewhere near the Guildhall. Above, the sky was full of starbursts as though they were witnessing a huge firework display put on by madmen. The roars, cracks and bangs were deafening.

They had been sent up to St Bartholomew’s after Ludgate. On their way there, they had passed the high dome of the Old Bailey criminal court whose elegant figure of Justice holding the scales had presided over this quarter of the City for the last thirty years. Thinking of the illicit bottles in their boots, Charlie and his mate grinned at each other as they passed her.

The St Bartholomew’s fire proved to be small and quickly dealt with. But they were not left idle: within minutes a dispatch rider told them to go over behind St Paul’s. An office building between Watling Street and St Mary-le-Bow had caught fire. A dozen other appliances were hastening towards it.

Just as they were leaving, Charlie, who was driving, caught sight of something gleaming as white as an angel, drifting slowly towards them over the dome of the Old Bailey.

“Hello,” he murmured. “We’re in luck again.”

Of all the agents of destruction dropped from the skies during the Blitz, perhaps the most devastating were the landmines. Drifting quietly down attached to a parachute, the landmine would strike the ground without burrowing into it and then detonate. One of them could easily wipe out half a street of small houses. The casualties they caused were terrible. Yet as these angels of death drifted down people were frequently seen running not away, but towards them.

The reason was the parachute. It was made of silk. If you could keep far enough away from the mine to avoid the blast, but then rush in quickly before anyone else, you could cut yourself a good piece of the silk parachute. They made up very nicely into shirts and dresses.

Luck was indeed on Charlie’s side that night. While they took cover, the landmine obligingly landed in the open space of Smithfield where it made a large hole in the ground, but did no other serious damage. Within three minutes the parachute had disappeared into the back of the converted taxi, and Charlie and his men went off to risk their lives again.

Maisie could never sleep until the All Clear was sounded at dawn. And though she did not like to admit it, she wished now that she had stayed the night at Jenny’s.

Just after one in the morning she slipped out of her house and began to walk up to the crest of the ridge. Even if Jenny were asleep, she knew that the front door would not be locked. As she reached the top, where the road led down towards Gipsy Hill, she paused.

Below her London was pulsating with molten red light, as if some vast geological change had taken place and the whole shallow bowl had transformed itself into the mouth of a volcano.

Just then, a wave of enemy planes started to drone over high above her. She was not worried, however: they were undoubtedly bound for the centre. An anti-aircraft gun spluttered into life too late and she was just about to turn down towards Jenny’s when she became aware of a buzzing, whining sound.

Fighters. At first, she could hardly see the profile of the half-dozen planes as they swooped in the black night sky, but she could see the tiny flashes from their guns. The Messerschmitts swarmed up like angry hornets from the enemy convoy. Over Dulwich, on towards Clapham and the river, the planes looped, wheeled and spat death at each other in the darkness. It was, in its way, rather thrilling.

She watched them fly over towards Vauxhall; then it seemed to her that two planes – or perhaps there were more – had detached themselves from the rest, and were heading back over Crystal Palace. They wheeled directly over her only a few hundred feet up, fragmentary shapes against the reddened sky, soaring high into the night, rushing down again, flattening off just above her and then wheeling eastwards.

Where were they now? She gazed up, fascinated, her small red mouth forming into a little circle as she stared into the sky where men were battling for their lives. Without even realizing what she was doing, she waved her arms and cried out: “Come on! Get him! You can do it.”

But now another wave of bombers was coming over the high ridge. The anti-aircraft guns erupted into a frenzy. She craned her neck and spun round to look for the fighters. Would they return? The whole sky was flashing. She never saw or felt the sudden hail of shrapnel that crashed into the back of her head and caused it to explode like a little cherry.

When it got as hot as this, Charlie knew you had to keep your face down in front of the fire. The heat all around was so great that he had reluctantly taken the bottles of spirits out of his boots and dumped them in a pot-hole for fear they might burst and catch fire.

The main danger, apart from falling masonry, was the cinders. The burning dust could get into your eyes all too easily and cause painful burns. He’d already been treated for this twice. Charlie Dogget might not be averse to a bit of harmless looting, but once he was on the job there wasn’t a braver firefighter in London. Only after he had been going non-stop, high up a ladder, right at the face of the fire for half an hour did the fire officer in charge order him to take a break.

There were hoses running down the lane from St Mary-le-Bow. Charlie followed them and then turned left, towards the corner of Cheapside, opposite the end of St Paul’s. He was grateful to feel a little cool breeze on his face. Though he was not supposed to, he took his helmet off to cool his head. At the corner, a large crater was all that was left of two buildings that had been destroyed the night before. It was nearly twenty feet deep. Settling himself on some rubble that remained by the rim, he took a few deep breaths and sat quietly, gazing westward at St Paul’s.