The Girls They Left Behind (3 page)

sound died away at last, everyone turned their eyes to the sky to see the approaching aircraft.

There was a moment’s silence and then the street erupted

into action. Families poured from houses into their gardens, making for the shelters. Firewatchers hurried out, dragging heavy stirrup-pumps and still fastening on tin helmets. An air-raid warden cycled past, intent on reaching his post, never noticing the children. There was a tumult of shouting, of panic, of orders yelled and frightened screams. And then, again, silence as the shelters were reached and closed.

The boys huddled together by the wall. They could hear the faint throb of the planes as they neared the coast. They looked at each other, their faces pale, eyes wide.

‘What shall we do?’ Tim muttered. ‘We ought to be in shelters too.’ They all knew what they should be doing. They had rehearsed it often enough. But their rehearsals had always been on the assumption that they would be close to a shelter — either their own, at home, or in their own street or at school. Here, they were on alien territory, in a street where they were not supposed to be playing, and they would as soon have thought of going into someone else’s shelter as they would have thought of walking uninvited into the house.

He noticed that somehow the Indians had come across the

road and joined them. The catapults dangled from their hands. It didn’t seem to matter now that they’d been cheating. Martin Baker was looking white and scared but Cyril Nash’s eyes were bright. And Jimmy, although within a hundred yards of his own home, was making no effort to run for shelter.

‘They’re coming,’ he breathed, his voice wobbly with excitement. ‘I can hear ‘em now. Listen. Look!’

The boys craned their necks. Away to the south, where Southsea Common met the sea, they could see a black cloud of aircraft, like starlings gathering for their evening roost. They approached steadily, their engines snarling, and as they came over the city itself, Tim saw the first of the bombs begin to fall.

They dropped like black eggs from the belly of the aircraft

and tumbled slowly towards the earth. He stared at them,

fascinated. His eyes watched as they descended, falling through the network of balloons that floated above the city, falling towards the ships in the harbour, falling towards the Dockyard where his father worked, falling, falling, falling …

The explosion shook the ground under his feet and

thundered through the air in great waves of brutal sound that

battered against his ears and tore at his body. Almost before it hit him, he flung himself to the ground, and the six boys huddled together on the pavement while the first air-raid of the war stormed over Portsmouth.

Jess Budd stood at the front door of number 14, April Grove, holding her baby daughter Maureen in her arms, and watched her sons scamper along the street. She looked up at the blue sky and shivered. For a moment, she was almost inclined to call them back, but before she could raise her voice Peggy Shaw opened her front door and came out to stand beside her.

‘Making the most of the fine evenings,’ she remarked. ‘What’re you going to do about your kids, Jess? Are they going back to the country?’

‘Oh, yes. We only had them home for the wedding. Rose wanted to be bridesmaid, and we had to give our Olive a day to remember — she’s got precious little else. But Frank says there’s going to be bad raids soon and the children have got to be out of it.’

‘And are you going too?’

Jess shook her head firmly. ‘I’m stopping here. I had enough of being away all through the winter. And Frank needs his wife to look after him.’ She looked down at Maureen, who was wriggling in an effort to get down, and set her down to toddle on the pavement. ‘I know it means keeping the baby at home too, but there’s nothing we can do about that.’

‘Well, I won’t say I shan’t be glad to have you back next door,’ Peggy commented. ‘It felt really queer All those months, without you about. And the street’s like a morgue without Tim and Keith and the other kids playing out there. I’ll be sorry to see them go. Mind, I wouldn’t moan if it was Micky Baxter. The mischief that boy gets up to, you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Maybe when the raids start Nancy’ll change her mind and

send him off after all.’ Jess looked up again at the evening sky. It was still blue, with only a faint flush of apricot to show that the sun was beginning to go down. It was good that the weather had been fine these past few weeks, so that Frank could get over to the allotment and work in the fresh air. It blew all the dust of the Dockyard boiler-shop out of his lungs and he always looked a bit happier when he came home with a basket full of gooseberries or blackcurrants or vegetables that

he’d grown himself. ‘You just can’t believe there’s people out there killing each other,’ she said. ‘Bits of boys like your Bob and our Colin, climbing into aeroplanes and coming over to drop bombs on people they’ve never ever seen. And our lads—’

Her words were drowned by the shriek of the siren. Maureen began to scream in panic and Jess bent and scooped her up in her arms, holding her close. She looked at Peggy Shaw, her face white.

‘Is it another false alarm?’

don’t know.’ Peggy stared at her. ‘We ought to go down the shelter, just in case . .

‘But the boys — Tim and Keith. They’re out playing somewhere. And Rose — she went up to the Brunners ‘She’ll go in their shelter then.’

Jess bit her lip in a torment of indecision. ‘I’ll have to go out and find the boys. Can you take the baby for me, Peg?’

People were coming out into the street, looking fearfully at the sky, asking each other if it was real. They heard the throb of aeroplanes.

‘That’s not our lads!’ They had grown used to the sound of British aircraft, but this was different. There was a snarl in the sound, a menace as if a vicious dog was growling deep in its throat. Jess caught her breath.

‘That’s it! They’re here. Oh, Peg—’

‘Down the air-raid shelter, quick,’ Peggy said. ‘There’s no time to waste. I can hear the guns. Quick, Jess.’

‘But the boys — Rose — Frank … they’re out there

somewhere — I can’t just—’

‘You can’t go looking for ‘em, either.’ Peggy’s hand was on her arm, pulling her back through the door. ‘Jess, you can’t go out in the streets, you’ll just have to hope they’ve got the sense to make for shelter. They know what to do, we’ve all practised it enough, goodness knows. But you’ve got Maureen to think of.’ She hustled Jess to the back door and they stared at the sky again. It was still clear, still cloudless, but now the blue had taken on a hard, sinister sheen and they could hear the snarl of approaching aircraft. Suddenly, the barrage balloons seemed a weak and flimsy defence against the advancing wave of destruction.

‘Quick, Jess,’ Peggy urged again, but Jess shook her head and broke away.

‘You go. Take the baby. But I’ve got to find the boys. I can’t leave them out there . .

She hurried back through the house, her breath coming in quick, frightened gasps, and out into the street. The aircraft were visible now, like a cloud of black starlings high above the balloons. Her body ached with terror. She ran across to the corner by Mrs Seddon’s shop, staring up October Street.

Peggy was behind her again, Maureen still crying in her arms.

‘They’re coming,’ she panted. ‘Jess, you’ve got to come down the shelter. The boys must have gone in with someone else. They’re not here — you can see that. Someone’ll be looking after them. Jess, for God’s sake, come back . .

Jess took one more frantic look up the deserted street. The throb of the planes was closer. In a few seconds they would be overhead. The bombs would begin to fall.

‘They must be up the alley.’ She dashed to the end of April Grove, where the boys had scampered on their hunt for the Indians, but it was empty. Everyone had run for cover.

Despairing and guilty, she turned and Peggy hustled her through the little house, leaving the doors open as she went. The two women pelted down the garden path and dived into the Anderson shelter. Panting, half sobbing, they squatted on the low benches that Frank had fitted against the walls, and stared at each other. The baby wailed in Peggy’s arms, and Jess took her back and cradled her against her breast.

‘Oh, Peg—’ she began, but the rest of her words were lost in the explosion of the first bombs.

In Portchester Road, Kathy Simmons had just finished giving her children their supper when the siren went.

Stella and Muriel pulled faces. ‘Do we have to go down the shelter, Mum? It’ll only be another false alarm.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Kathy said sharply, although she would have liked to ignore it herself. ‘One of these days it’s going to be real, and then what would we do? Anyway, we’ve got to keep practising, you don’t know how quick the planes can—’

She stopped, suddenly aware of a throaty grumble from the sky. Hardly believing her ears, she went to the back door. The sound was closer. She felt a wave of fear, and the baby inside her seemed to jerk as if he felt it too.

‘Quick!’ she snapped, snatching up the box that contained all the family birth certificates and other papers too important to be lost. ‘Come on, Stella — leave that — get down there as fast as you can.’

‘But my dolly — I’ve left her upstairs.’ Muriel’s voice began to rise in a wail but Kathy grabbed her arm.

‘There isn’t time for that — she’ll be all right — come on when I tell you!’ The garden path had never seemed so long. She hurried the girls down it and into the Anderson shelter Mike had dug out before he went away. The drone was coming closer, it sounded almost overhead although with her last frightened glance before she ducked through the low doorway, she could see only a cloud of black freckles in the sky, like swarming ants. Oh God, she thought, they’re really coming, we’re going to be bombed, and Mike not here and our baby boy not even born … She folded her arms across her stomach and bowed her head, shutting her eyes tightly as if by doing so she could shut out the terrifying reality.

But reality would not be shut out. She heard the first bomb fall, and was forced to open her eyes and pull her two little girls into her arms, to try to give them the comfort she so desperately needed herself. And as if that first bomb were a signal, others began to fall, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters, so that the explosions seemed to merge together in one massive blast. As the shock waves ran through the earth, shuddering beneath Kathy’s feet, the corrugated iron of the Anderson shelter rattled in her ears. The girls screamed and she clutched them to her convulsively, feeling the unborn baby tremble again in her womb. Be still, she begged it silently, be quiet. You’re too small to kick like that, you’ve only just quickened. But the fluttering movements continued, as if her own fear communicated itself to the tiny, developing life, and would not let it rest.

The detonations continued, deafening her. Surely the planes must be directly overhead. How safe was an Anderson? She’d heard that no shelter could survive a direct hit. The thunder of the bombs threatened to burst her eardrums, shatter her skull. Nobody had ever told her an air-raid would be like this.

In the worst moment of all, it was as if the air inside the dimly-lit Anderson turned into vapour, as if she could see it shimmer all around. The iron of the walls wrinkled, almost as if they cringed in pain. The earth floor split into a thousand tiny cracks. And the noise was no longer noise. It had becomes something greater, something that took her whole body and shook it without mercy, as a tiger might take and shake its prey until it was senseless.

Dimly, Kathy was aware that she was screaming, although she could hear no sound of her voice. She could feel the vibrations in the children’s bodies and knew that they too were crying with terror. She wanted to comfort them, but had no power over her own fear. It swamped her, leaving her no strength for anything else.

For a long time, after the sound of the last plane had faded, the three of them lay still on the splintered floor. The turmoil of the raid still sounded in their ears and it was only gradually that the silence crept back. At last they heard the tentative note of the Raiders Passed signal, and Kathy lifted her head.

‘They’ve gone,’ she whispered, and crawled to the steps that led up into the open air.

What she saw then was no surprise. She had known, from that first terrifying explosion, that the bombs were falling dangerously close. She had known that she and the two little girls would have no home to go back to.

But she was still not prepared for the sight of the house she

and Mike had loved so much, shattered and gaping like a smashed tooth. Still shaking, she dragged herself out of the shelter and gripped the distorted iron to pull herself upright, staring in misery and despair.

The house was a mess of torn brickwork and splintered

wood. There was nothing at all left of the roof, and the upstairs rooms were totally demolished. Downstairs, all she could see was ruin — smashed furniture, ornaments and knick-knacks scattered and broken, a curtain still half hanging from a crooked rail, filthy with dust.

The two girls scrambled out and stood beside her, still sobbing.

‘My dolly,’ Muriel whispered. ‘My dolly . .

Frank Budd had just left the Dockyard when the siren

sounded.

Carrying his leather-bound lunchbox, he walked through Unicorn Gate and turned to go along Flathouse Road

towards the Royal Hospital. From there, he would make his way through the maze of narrow side streets towards

Kingston and Copnor.

Sometimes he took the bus, but it was too hot this evening to be cooped up on a crowded bus, and it was ten hours since he’d tasted any air other than the steamy heat of the boiler shop. With no overtime tonight, for the first time in weeks, he could afford to walk. Jess wouldn’t be expecting him till seven and there would still be time to spend a few hours over on his allotment in the fresh air and evening sunshine. There was plenty to be done — hoeing and weeding, and perhaps some soft fruit to pick, if Jess hadn’t had time to get over there herself during the afternoon.