The Girls They Left Behind (19 page)

‘… a tart,’ Ethel mouthed. ‘Ever since they came here …

bringing sailors back from the pub … supposed to be working in a hotel at nights. Hotel! We all know what that means … disgusting, it is… got a baby now, and not a clue who its father is, I’ll be bound… And that Micky, just left to run wild … ought to be a law …’

Her whisper slunk about the room like a dank miasma, feeling its way into corners, hanging in the air. It was like a web, Kathy thought, a dirty cobweb that clung to her face and that she wanted to brush away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, getting up. ‘I’ll have to go soon. The girls are having lessons up Deniston Street and I’ll have to go and fetch them.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Ethel offered. ‘I’d like a nice walk. And we can arrange for you to come over to me one afternoon. Or the pictures. We could go to the pictures together. Henry Fonda’s on at the Odeon this week, in The Grapes of Wrath, we could go and see that. Or there’s Bing Crosby at the Rex.

What d’you fancy?’

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to go to the pictures,’ Kathy said shortly. ‘I don’t have time. And it’s uncomfortable sitting in the seats, the way I am.’

‘Oh, well, yes, I suppose it is. Well, shopping, then. We could go shopping down North End. Or Commercial Road.

C&A are advertising some lovely new coats for autumn, all in the newest colours. There’s a nice alpaca for four and a half guineas. I’m looking for a new coat, before they put clothes on ration - they’re talking about it, you know. You could help me choose.’

‘No, thanks,’ Kathy said. ‘And I’ll have to get ready to go now. I can’t go up to fetch the kids looking like this. She ushered Ethel to the door. ‘It was nice of you to come. I daresay I’ll see you in the street, to say hello.’

‘Oh,’ Ethel began as she was pushed gently out on to the step again. ‘But we haven’t arranged -‘ There was a decisive click and she turned in astonishment to find the door closed firmly behind her. ‘But - but -‘ She stared at it for a moment,

as if expecting it to open again and Kathy appear, all smiles, in her best clothes, but there was silence from within. And when she rattled at the letter-box and pushed it open to peer inside, there was no sign that there was anyone at home at all.

‘ Well!’ Ethel exclaimed. ‘Well, did you ever see anything so rude? And after I’d been so nice to her, too. Telling her things, inviting her to tea, suggesting she might like to come to the pictures with me or do some shopping!’ She turned and saw Granny Kinch sitting in her doorway, watching her with beady black eyes. Oh, it was just too much!

With a toss of her head, she marched away up October Street. Where she was going, she had no idea, but she wasn’t going to walk past Granny Kinch and give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d been as good as turned out of number 16.

And she certainly wouldn’t be calling on Kathy Simmons again. Say hello in the street? she thought furiously. Why, I wouldn’t say hello to her in my gravel

For boys like Micky Baxter, Jimmy Cross and Cyril Nash, the raids were a huge adventure. Out in the streets from early morning until dark, they seldom went into a shelter when the siren sounded. Instead, they crouched beside a wall, gazing up at the sky, watching the planes zoom low over the city and cheering whenever one was shot down.

‘Dirty Jerry bastards,’ Micky said with relish as they watched a Heinkel spinning out of control into Langstone Harbour. It seemed to screw itself a hole in the water with its nose and a great spray of flame and water rose like a volcanic eruption into the air. ‘Serves ‘im right. I ‘ope ‘e was burnt alive.’

‘Well, he’s dead anyway.’ They flinched and shut their eyes as a bomb fell a few streets away. The crash ricocheted around them. ‘Coo, look at that smoke. Once they’re gone we’ll go an’ look for souvenirs again, shall we?’

‘Souvenirs!’ Micky sneered. ‘We can get better’n that.

Let’s go round the shops. You know people don’t lock up proper when the siren goes. We can get some good stuff.’

Jimmy and Cyril looked at each other. Micky was already on probation for walking into a jeweller’s shop brandishing a

gun left over from the last war. Jimmy’s dad said he’d been lucky not to get sent to Borstal.

‘Come on,’ Micky urged. ‘Who’s going to see us? They’re all down the shelters like rabbits in a burrow. I bet that wireless shop along Copnor Road’s open. He’s got some good torches in there.’ He set off, keeping close to the wall as the bombs rained down on the city.

One of Cyril’s dreams was to own a really good torch. A black rubber one. They could go out at night then - it was all right as long as you kept out of the air-raid warden’s way. And explore some more of the cellars they’d found in bombed houses.

They came to the wireless shop. To their disgust, the door was locked. Cyril gazed through the window and saw that there were indeed two rubber torches on display.

‘I bet if you broke the window nobody’d hear us,’ he said.

‘Not with all this noise going on.’ The bombs were exploding further down in the city, but the noise reverberated around the streets. ‘Anyway, they’d just think it was blast.’

Jimmy hesitated, but Micky nodded eagerly.

‘You’re right. We don’t have to worry about locks. Come on.’ He picked up a stone, glanced quickly up and down the street, and smashed it against the glass. The dusty display inside was showered with fragments, and Cyril reached through and grabbed one of the torches.

‘It’s a smasher.’ He moved the switch. ‘Shit! There’s no batteries.’

Micky had his hand on the other torch, but as he closed his fingers around it they heard a yell from the street and turned sharply. Micky, jerking his hand out of the broken window, gave a yelp of pain.

‘Oy! You boys! What you up to?’ An air-raid warden was advancing on them, waving threateningly. ‘You oughter be in the shelter.’

‘Run,’ Micky muttered, but the other two were already away.

Micky raced after them and they dodged round a corner and into the maze of alleyways that ran between the side streets.

Half scared, half giggling, they came to a halt against a garden wall, crouching as a bomb exploded closer at hand.

‘Fat old fool,’ Micky jeered. ‘He’ll never catch us.’

‘He might know us, though,‘Jimmy said a little anxiously.

‘Nah. He’s not from round our street. So long as we don’t go down that way for a bit. Anyway, they got more to think about than a broken window.’ He gazed up at the sky, at the aircraft still swooping overhead, some German, some British.

He could see gunfire spattering against the sides of the planes, the flare as shells burst in the air. Flames and smoke were rising from several places in Portsmouth, and the sound of explosions and the rattle of guns were deafening.

‘Smashing,’ he breathed, thinking scornfully of all the people who were cowering in their shelters and missing the glory of it all. ‘Smashing …’

The Germans had named Tuesday, 13 August, Adlertag. It meant Eagle Day and was to have been the day when the Luftwaffe would blow the RAF from the skies and the invasion begin. But the British had other ideas.

For the rest of the week, the sirens sounded daily, sometimes more than once, as wave after wave of German bombers flew across the sky. Bad weather gave some respite on Wednesday, but there were still thirty-one German planes reported destroyed in Saturday’s Evening News, and the resumption of heavy bombing on Thursday brought the Germans a hundred and eighty losses. The total for the week was estimated at four hundred and ninety-two, bringing the total for the war so far at almost a thousand.

A thousand planes, and each with two or three young men inside, either killed or captured. Several came down in fields north of Portsdown Hill, and there were photographs in the paper showing pub landlords or farmers who had been first on the scene, grinning over their prize.

The following week the newspapers carried a report of Mr Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons. Standing with his head slightly lowered, looking as always like a bull about to charge, he had praised the RAF for its heroism.

‘The gratitude of every home in our island… goes out to the British airmen who are turning the tide of the war,’ he declared, his mellifluous tones rolling around the chamber. ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes, day after day… Our people are united and resolved as they have never been before. Death and ruin have become small things, compared with shame and defeat.’

Four days later, the raiders came again. It was a Saturday afternoon and Betty Chapman and her sister Olive had decided to go to the pictures with the two Shaw sisters.

Robert Preston and Dorothy Lamour were in Typhoon at the Odeon and Diane Shaw, who was just sixteen, declared herself to be in love with Robert Preston.

‘I’ve seen it twice already,’ she said as the four girls walked down Stubbington Avenue together. ‘He’s gorgeous! I wish I could meet him.’

‘He’d never even look at you,’ Gladys told her with sisterly bluntness. ‘I like Dorothy Lamour, I think she’s really glamorous. I reckon I could look a bit like her, if I did my hair the same way.’

‘Go on,’ Diane said, getting her own back, ‘you’ve been trying to look like Norma Shearer for the past twelve months.

I haven’t noticed it’s got you any more boyfriends.’

‘Who says I want boyfriends?’ Gladys tossed her head. ‘I can get plenty, if I want them. I just haven’t fancied anyone lately. Too much bother.’

‘I bet she wouldn’t say that if your brother was home on leave,’ Diane said to Betty, and Gladys blushed.

‘Shut up, Di. Colin and me are just friends.’

‘Is that why you write to him practically every day?’

‘I don’t! Not every day. But a boy wants a bit of news from home when he’s away at sea. It doesn’t mean anything.’

Betty gave Gladys’s arm a squeeze. She knew that Gladys had been carrying a torch for Colin for the past couple of years. But just writing to a boy didn’t have to mean you were his girlfriend. Didn’t she write regularly to Gladys’s brother Bob, even though she was secretly engaged to Graham?

‘Are you looking forward to being a Land Girl?’ Gladys asked her now.

Betty nodded. ‘I think it’ll be smashing. Specially in this

weather. Just imagine being out in the fields, hay-making, while all the rest of you are slaving away in offices and shops.’

‘And just imagine it in freezing rain, when all the rest of us are cosy and warm indoors,’ Olive said. ‘Rather you than me!’

‘Well, at least you’ll be away from the bombs,’ Diane observed. ‘I’m getting fed up with these raids. Down the shelter half the time - boring.’

‘Boring! I’m too scared to be bored,’ Olive said. ‘It makes me shudder every time I hear that awful siren, the noise seems to go right down my back. And listening to the planes coming over, and the bombs, ugh, it’s horrible.’

‘Well, let’s forget the war for this afternoon.’ They were almost at the cinema now, and Gladys began to fish in her bag for money. ‘Which seats shall we go in?’

‘Upstairs,’ Betty suggested, but Diane shook her head.

‘I haven’t got enough money. It’s the nine pennies for me.’

They bought their tickets and went in. The lights had not yet been lowered and they stood for a moment by the first few rows of seats, debating which to go into. The audience was small - there would be more at the evening show - and there was plenty of room.

‘Go on, our Di,’ Gladys urged. ‘Make up your mind, they’ll be starting any minute.’

Diane led the way into the fourth row and immediately passed round a bag of toffees. Chewing comfortably, the four girls looked up at the screen and sighed in happy anticipation as the heavy curtains changed colour under the dimming lights and then slowly drew apart.

The advertisements came first, then the News. They watched as a clipped voice described the scenes that were being shown - news of the war, with pictures of soldiers setting up camp, grinning and waving at the camera, smiling and busy women setting up canteens, evacuated children playing in fields. There were also a few shots of soldiers who had come back from Dunkirk in June, looking tired but cheerful. It was extolled as a victorious rescue.

‘Victorious!’ Olive muttered. ‘We were chased off the beaches, that’s what. I wish they wouldn’t show this. I came here to forget about the war for a couple of hours.’

The News was over at last and the big film began. Diane passed her toffees along again and they settled down to enjoy the story. Once or twice Gladys touched her hair, imagining it done the way Dorothy Lamour did hers, and Diane dreamed that she was in Robert Preston’s arms. Olive wondered if Derek might get some leave soon, the 698 had been moved to Wiltshire, to stand by when repairs were needed to the runways at Boscombe Down, and Betty thought about Graham and wondered yet again if she should have let him make love to her that last night. If Mum hadn’t insisted on playing cards all evening, she might easily have done so. But then if she had, she might have been sitting here now worrying about a baby, and that was something she could do without.

There was Bob Shaw too. Olive told her she was wrong to write to another boy when she was going steady with Graham, but she and Bob had known each other all their lives, they’d played in the street together and learned to swim in Langstone Harbour. It didn’t do any harm to write to him, surely, but did it mean she wasn’t really in love with Graham after all?

The film continued. Dorothy Lamour swayed seductively on screen and was adored by every man in the audience. The women sighed over Robert Preston and for a little while the war was, indeed, forgotten.

And then, at just twenty minutes past four, the siren began to sound.

There was a general groan. People began to get up, hesitated, half sat down again. A few scrambled along to the ends of the rows of seats and hurried up the aisle. On screen, Dorothy Lamour and Robert Preston drifted into each other’s arms and the four girls looked at each other.