The Girls They Left Behind (17 page)

He paused. One or two voices joined in, rather feebly.

‘Ha-ha-ha,

He-he-he,

Little brown jug, don’t I love thee…’

A bomb crashed down outside. It drowned their voices, shook the earth beneath their feet, sent a wave of vibration through their bones. The woman near Tommy screamed and began to cry more loudly.

Tommy put his arm around her shoulders and gripped her tightly against him. He started again.

‘Dear old pals, jolly old pals,

Clinging together in all sorts of weather, Dear old pals, jolly old pals,

Give me the friendship of dear old pals.’

Now others were joining in. As Tommy finished his song, another one started in a far corner. More people were singing, their voices wavery and selfconscious at first, rising to a shout of defiance as the noise increased outside.

‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do? someone sang, and the response came from a dozen throats.

Tm half crazy, all for the love of you?

Another explosion rocked the shelter. The noise of aircraft, ack-ack guns and the screaming whistle of the falling bombs created a pounding cacophony that threatened to burst the eardrums of the people huddled in the shelter, but they kept singing. In every momentary lull, the voices could be heard, straggling on.

‘It won’t be a stylish marriage,

I can’t afford a carriage…’

‘Bloody hell,’ a man near the door said, ‘that was a close one. Something’s copped it.’

‘But you’ll look sweet

Upon the seat

Of a bicycle made for two.’

‘We ‘ad a tandem once,’ the woman in Tommy’s arms snuffled, and he held her closer. ‘But it ain’t safe to go out no more.’

‘Them days’ll come back again, you’ll see.’

The raid continued. The same dread was in every heart what would they see when it was over and they went out into the street? But the songs went on, defiance tempered with desperation and a need to do something together, a communication and reassurance. By the time it was over, those who had dashed into the shelter as strangers were held by a bond of both fear and comfort.

At last the noise diminished. The Raiders Passed signal sounded and those nearest the door peered cautiously out.

‘Blimey.’

‘What is it? What’ve the bastards done?’

‘Only just about flattened us, that’s all.’

Tommy let go of the woman and emerged into the sunlight.

It was misted over now, almost obscured by the smoke of flaming buildings. The pungent smell of burning was in the air.

‘That’s Whitewoods bin hit. Goin’ up like a torch.’

‘There’s a big fire down by the ferry, too. And more in the Yard.’

‘It’s all over the shop. I don’t reckon there’s a building left standing.’

Tommy left them and ran down the street. The furniture warehouse was well alight, flames leaping from the roof. The whole facade was a mass of orange fire and as he watched a great section of wall toppled slowly outwards into the road.

People were screaming and running about, futilely directing stirrup pumps at the blaze, yelling orders to each other.

Others wandered in a daze or slumped against walls.

Tommy did what he could, helping those who were hurt or just plain terrified out of their wits. A fire engine arrived and one of the ARP men who had been rushing about giving orders began to berate the chief.

‘One bloody engine ain’t enough! You can see what it’s like. The whole bloody building’s afire. We needs every engine in Pompey to fight this lot.’

The fire chief shook his hand off angrily. ‘You go on up round Bonfire Corner and tell ‘em that. It’s proper livin’ up to its name, that is. And Queen Street’s nothing but rubble, they’ve got half the engines trying to put that out. And Brickwoods is smashed - that’s next week’s beer down the drain.’

‘Well, what’re we supposed to do ‘ere, then?’ the ARP man demanded pugnaciously. ‘That fire’s goin’ ter spread if it ain’t checked.’

The fire chief turned on him. ‘We do whatever we bloody can, don’t we? It ain’t our fault we ain’t got the appliances.’ He rubbed a blackened hand over his face. His eyes were desperate. ‘The Harbour Station’s going up in flames too.

We ‘aven’t got the men, the streets are blocked, and when we do get there, the bloody mains are burst and we can’t get no water. Oh, what a bleedin’ mess …’

‘The station?’ Tommy stared at him. Portsmouth Harbour Station was a landmark. Everyone who ever went near the ferry knew it. It was built out over the water, so that you could look down from the platforms and see the sea lapping beneath. People came down from London on the train and walked down the platform and straight on to a boat for the Isle of Wight.

‘Incendiary,’ the fireman said, and turned away again. The warehouse was past saving but sparks and flames were settling on the roofs of other buildings. He ran over to the men who were struggling with the hoses.

Down by the harbour, Ted Chapman also was emerging from the blackness of an air-raid shelter. He stared at the salty blue flames and black smoke billowing from the Harbour Station, and broke into a run.

‘Bloody hell, look at that! The whole station’s going up.

The King’

‘They’ll never let us near.’ Sam and Ben stood behind him, staring. Already people were running about like ants at the top of the pontoon, by the station entrance. A couple of makeshift fire engines converted from dustcarts were pulling up and blue-uniformed men leaping off them and unreeling long hoses.

‘It would be low tide,’ Sam said in disgust. There was nothing but mud below the slipway. The pontoon, which floated almost level with the road at high tide, was at the bottom of a steep wooden slope.

Which was probably what had saved the Ferry King. Moored to the pontoon, she was well below the station and out of the reach of the flames which had spread so quickly along the structure, turning the trains into a heap of twisted, melting metal.

She was not out of danger. Shards of burning fabric were falling on her and Ted watched in agony, certain that she would burst into flames at any moment. But the water which was being sprayed now over the burning structure of the station was turned upon the ferryboat too, and the flames sizzled and went out.

The Ferry King had survived to cross the harbour another day.

Gosport had been hit as well. Frank’s brother Howard lived in Gosport and he cycled the twelve miles round the top of the harbour that evening to tell them he and his family were all right. Jess opened the door to him in relief.

‘Thank goodness you weren’t bombed, Howard. Frank wanted to come over to you but the ferry’s not running and I wouldn’t let him go out again without his tea. Was there any damage round you?’

Howard nodded. ‘Chap called Herbert Gadsby, killed. He lived down Oval Gardens. I used to pass the time of day with him.’

Jess gazed at him solemnly. It was the first time any of them had actually known someone who had been killed.

Howard worked at Supermarine, near Southampton. They built Spitfires there and his work was secret, he wouldn’t even talk to Frank about it. But there was still a lot he didn’t know, and the war was as bewildering to him as to anyone else.

‘We don’t know where we are with Stokes Bay these days,’

he said. ‘One day we can go down there, the next they’re putting up barbed wire, old bedsteads, anything to keep it fenced off. And last week they told us.we can go there again!

They don’t seem to know what’s what at all. The Admiralty even requisitioned Lee swimming pool a few weeks ago.

What are they going to do with that, teach sailors to sail model yachts?’

It took some time for the details of the raid to reach the people of Portsmouth, and the next day’s issue of the Evening News was snapped up the moment it appeared on the streets.

Frank came home from work to find Jess reading it with tears in her eyes. He took it from her and spread it on the table, and they read it together.

‘We’ve done well,’ he said. ‘Look at those headlines. Too Hot for Raiders. It was one of the German pilots said that. And here’s another one. English Too Good. They’re almost begging to be taken prisoner, look, this one even brought his hair-oil and shaving tackle with him!’

‘And one of them was a boy of fifteen,‘Jess said. ‘Fifteen!

That’s not much older than our Rose. How can they send children like that to war?’

‘Maybe he pretended to be older. Plenty of lads have done that.’ Frank looked at the paper again. ‘We shot down sixty one planes. Sixty-one. They’ve lost over five hundred now. It can’t go on much longer, Jess.’

‘Why not? Last air-raid we had, you said it was only the beginning.‘Jess shook her head. ‘Look what they’re doing to us. Have you heard about the Eye and Ear Hospital? Look, it says here, well, it doesn’t say it was the Eye and Ear, they don’t print the names, but everyone knows that’s where it was, it says they were just starting a mastoid operation and they went on, right through the raid, even though it was hit. The nurses had to get the patients out to places of safety. Fancy having to drag people out of their hospital beds to go to a shelter! I mean, suppose someone was in traction.’

‘They don’t put you in traction for eyes and ears,’ Frank pointed out, but Jess snapped at him uncharacteristically.

‘It doesn’t have to be the Eye and Ear gets bombed, does it!

It could as easy be the Royal or St Mary’s next time. All I’m saying is Hitler’s got the whole of Europe now to build his planes in, he’s not going to run out in the first five minutes.’

She looked at Frank. ‘He wants to invade us, doesn’t he? He wants us under his heel along with the rest.’

Frank was silent for a moment. He wanted to offer some comfort, but could think of none. Jess was right - Portsmouth had taken a bad knock.

‘Oh, Frank,’ Jess said, and now the tears were on her cheeks. ‘Look at this. That man, the one without any legs, you know, he used to be outside Woolworths selling matches, till it burned down in May. He’s been killed. Sitting in the park in his wheelchair, he was, and got killed by flying fragments.’

She laid down the paper. ‘He lost his legs in the first war. I suppose he couldn’t get into a shelter, not in a wheelchair.’

She stood by the gas stove, waiting for the kettle to boil, thinking of the man with no legs. What sort of a life had he had? Blown up in the first war, probably gassed as well for all she knew, scratching a living by sitting on a little wooden cart on the pavement outside Woolworths, selling matches. He hadn’t been all that old, probably in his fifties. Just a young man when he lost his legs.

It wasn’t only his legs he’d lost, either, she thought. Bert Shaw next door had told her he always bought matches from him and he’d spoken to him quite a few times. The man had told him he’d been engaged to be married when the Great War had broken out, but his sweetheart hadn’t been able to face marrying a man with no legs. He’d had to find somewhere to live, a place in Charlotte Street, not much more than a storage room. It had a low washbasin and a lavatory and someone had fixed him up with an old stove to do his bit of cooking, and the other traders had given him some bits of old carpet to put on the stone floor and a few sticks of furniture, and that was about it. That was how he’d lived for the past twenty years or so.

‘I can’t stop thinking about that poor man,‘Jess said, taking Frank’s tea through to him. ‘His legs, his dreams, his whole life, all just smashed to pieces. And what for? Just so he could crawl about like a beetle all those years and wait to be killed after all.’

‘We’ve been through all this, Jess,’ Frank said. ‘We had to go in and help Poland. You know we did. Just like you had to go and help those evacuee kiddies, remember? You knew it wasn’t right, what was happening to them, and we knew it wasn’t right what Hitler was doing. We didn’t have any choice.’

Maureen, who had been fast asleep in her pram in the front room, began to cry. Jess went in and picked her up. She brought her into the back room and sat at the table, holding her on her knee. Frank looked at her and frowned.

‘It still don’t seem right, you and her being in Portsmouth with all this bombing. I wish you’d go back out to Bridge End.’

‘We’ve been through that, too. I won’t leave you, Frank, and that’s flat. Anyway, I’m not letting Ethel Glaister get her nose through the door again. I know what’d happen, I’d hardly be up the top of the street before she’d be in here with her perm and her smarmy ways and a bit of fruit cake for you to eat. She never has a word to say to me, but I’ve seen her when you’re out in the garden, leaning on the fence and fluttering her eyelashes.’

‘I don’t give her any encouragement,’ Frank protested, and Jess laughed.

‘I know that! But that sort doesn’t need encouragement.

Thinks she’s God’s gift to mankind, that one does, and she’s got worse since George went. I wonder if he knows how she carries on when he’s away.’

‘She doesn’t carry on. Not really. I mean, I’ve never seen her with anyone, and nobody comes to the house.’

‘Well, no, I don’t mean she carries on in that sense - thinks too much of herself. But she’d like to think all the men are after her.’ Jess sniffed. ‘And the way she dresses up, you’d never think she had a husband in the Territorials.’

Frank smiled. He knew just what Jess meant, but it sounded funny all the same. He looked at the baby, who was chewing a crust Jess had given her, and reached out awkwardly to touch her cheek. It felt like a peach under his rough finger.

Frank was never entirely at ease with babies, not even his own. He liked the children better when they got old enough to talk to sensibly and to do things with. He liked showing the boys how to make things with wood or mend broken cups and such. But his life revolved around his family, all the same, and he would have died fighting if anyone had tried to harm them.

That’s what we’re doing, he thought. Fighting for our families. And if Hitler does invade us, I’ll fight to the death for this little scrap, yes, and for the boys and Rose as well. And Jess. Especially for Jess.