The Girls They Left Behind (57 page)

But whores didn’t go to the pictures with you either and sit holding hands, and when you left them they forgot you. They didn’t write to you and wait for you and talk about getting married. They didn’t care.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, starting to get up. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come round here. I’d better go. Tell your mum thanks but ‘

‘Here, hold on,’ Gladys said. She grasped his sleeve and pulled him down beside her again. ‘You asked me a question.

Don’t you want to know my answer?’ She looked into his flushed, freckled face and smiled. ‘I’ll come to the pictures with you, Ginger Philpotts,’ she said. ‘And you can forget all that malarkey about not trying anything on. I might be a decent girl, but I’m not made of stone!’

Graham turned to look at her in surprise, and she laughed, leaned towards him and kissed him full on the mouth.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Thanks for asking me. No -‘ as he moved to slide his arms around her - ‘that’s all for now. It’s teatime.’

She felt in his pocket and found a handkerchief. She wiped his lips with it and handed it back to him. It was red with lipstick.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Sleep with it under your pillow tonight, Ginger. Shall I tell you what I think?’

He nodded, still dazed, uncertain but elated.

‘This war’s going to get worse,’ Gladys said, her voice suddenly serious. ‘You’ve seen the raids just like I have.

People getting buried, blown up, killed. It could be us next time. We’ve got to take every chance we can of having a bit of fun. That’s what I think.’

Derek and Olive Harker had not been able to be together much more after the momentous day when the King and Queen had come to Portsmouth. Once again the Unit had been moved, this time to Warminster where they were to build hutted camps. It seemed that their brief period of action in France was to be their only journey abroad. Olive was deeply thankful, but for Derek and Bob Shaw it was frustrating. They were soldiers. They ought to be fighting.

Even George Glaister, who was glad enough not to have to go and fight, was irked by the mundane jobs he had to do. He had enough trouble with Ethel as it was, without having to confess that his Army career was turning out to be not much different from being a plumber’s mate. He’d been looking forward to writing home letters that spoke of gunfire and trenches and ‘going over the top’, without stopping to think that these were images he had gleaned from stories about the Great War of 1914-18, and that those conditions were far more cruel and savage than any he was likely to endure on the plains of Wiltshire.

‘It’s just a rest cure, that’s all that is,’ Ethel said scornfully.

‘Going for a soldier! They saw you coming, knew you wouldn’t be any good with a gun in your hands, so they gave you a bloody monkey-wrench instead. Just the right tool for you, and all.’

‘Well, at least it gets me out of your way,’ George retorted.

‘The way your face drops every time I come home, you’d obviously rather I never came at all. I suppose you’d be happy if I was sent overseas and got blown up.’

‘Don’t be stupid! I don’t want to be a widow, do I?’ Ethel tossed her head. ‘If you can’t talk better sense than that, you’d be better off not talking at all.’

She stalked out to the greenhouse George had built by roofing in the yard outside the kitchen. Through the door, she could see Frank Budd working in his garden. She watched as Jess came down to say something to him and saw Frank put his hand on her shoulder.

What he saw in that mouse of a woman, Ethel had no idea.

Irritated and jealous, she turned and went back into the house to harangue George again.

‘I’ve found one! I’ve found a bomb!’

The boys were in the cellar, eating cold sausages which Micky had filched from his grandmother’s larder. The dimness was lit by a paraffin lamp they had stolen from an air-raid shelter. It stood on the rickety table, close to Jimmy’s bomb. Around them, on the floor, was scattered the booty they had gleaned from their forays into other bombed houses, or from their own swift raids when the siren had sounded.

Micky looked up from his sausage. He and Jimmy had arrived first and when Cyril tumbled in ten minutes later, his normally pale face was flushed with excitement.

‘Where? Where is it? You sure it’s a bomb? I bet it’s not.’

‘It is.’ Cyril stopped his capering and stared with shining eyes at Micky. He had never dreamed that he would be the lucky one. The other two boys were older than he, and Micky was the leader, it had been taken for granted that the next bomb would be his. ‘It’s a whopper. It’s huge.’

‘Where is it?‘Jimmy was playing with an old mouth organ.

It had been rusty and full of dust when he found it, but he’d cleaned it out and oiled it and now he could play tunes on it.

He was practising Run, Rabbit, Run.

‘Down Powerscourt Road. Where the first bombs fell last July.’

‘Last July!’ Go on, there can’t be no more bombs there, they cleared all them houses out.’

‘There are,’ Cyril said stubbornly. ‘I found One. It’s down in a cellar, like this one, only it’s all full of dirt and stuff. I went down to see if there was anything there and I saw it sticking out. It just wants digging out, that’s all. I’m going to take my mum’s coal-shovel down.’

‘Well, it can’t be a time bomb,’ Micky said. ‘It’d have gone off by now. It must be a dud.’

‘It’s a good bomb, anyway. It’s bigger’n Jimmy’s.’

‘How much bigger?‘Jimmy demanded jealously.

‘Twice as big. Three times as big.’

Micky scowled. The other two were arguing now over the sizes of their bombs and the likelihood of their exploding. He felt his leadership slipping away and spoke loudly.

‘We’ll go down and look at it. We’re not digging it out this morning.’

‘Why not?’ There was a belligerence in Cyril’s voice that had never been there before. His large brown eyes met Micky’s challengingly. He grabbed a sausage and stuffed it into his mouth.

‘Because we’d be seen, stupid. There’s people all over the place, they’d never let us carry a bomb through the streets in broad daylight. It’ll have to be at night.’

‘I’m not allowed out at night,’ Cyril objected through a mouthful of sausage.

‘You’ll have to get out. Or it won’t be your bomb.’

‘It is my bomb. I found it.’

‘Finding ain’t everything,’ Micky said grandly. ‘It’s gettin’

it out and gettin’ it back to the den that counts.’

‘It’s my bomb. You don’t know where it is.’

‘We can find it. You told us.’

‘You don’t know exactly. You’ll never find it without me.

And I won’t tell you unless you say it’s my bomb. I can dig it out on my own. Or I’ll keep it there and have that for my den.’

The three boys stared at each other. Cyril stopped chewing. Jimmy laid down his mouth organ. Micky glowered.

‘This is my gang. If you go off, Jimmy’ll stay with me. You can’t have a den without a gang. You won’t be able to come back here. An’ if we catch you, we’ll torture you.’ He put on his most fearsome expression, and Cyril flinched. ‘We don’t even know for sure it is a bomb. I bet it’s not really. Anyway, it’s only a tiddler, I bet.’

‘AH right, we’ll go and look at it now.’ Cyril got up and made for the steps, then turned back and snatched up another sausage. ‘You’ll see.’

They ran through the streets. Some were untouched by the raids, others ruined. Boarded up windows had graffiti chalked on them, or the new addresses of their occupants.

One had a sign that read ‘We still live here’. But mostly, the only occupants were a few scrawny cats or stray dogs with their ribs showing.

Cyril led them along the back alleys and through a broken fence into a scruffy garden. There had once been a lawn and flowerbeds, but all were overgrown now with weeds and scrub grass. The house had been bombed. The roof was torn away and every window had been smashed.

Under the back window there was a hole. Cyril ducked into it and scrambled down. He flashed the torch he had stolen around the walls.

‘Coo,‘Jimmy breathed, gazing at the damp walls and slimy floor. ‘It’s smashing.’

‘Go on,’ Micky said disparagingly, ‘there’s loads of places like this. It ain’t nothing special.’

‘They don’t all have bombs, though.’ Cyril shone his torch into a comer. ‘See?’

The bomb had fallen nose-down, slicing a path for itself through the rubble wall, and come to rest a foot or so above the basement floor. It was about two feet long. Its sides were half buried and streaked with rust.

‘It is a bomb,‘Jimmy whispered in awe.

‘It’s a beauty, isn’t it,’ Cyril said proudly. He reached out a finger and touched it tentatively, then stroked it as gently as if it were a kitten. Jimmy backed away slightly, his eyes goggling.

‘It looks live to me.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Micky said loudly. ‘How can a bomb look live? Anyway, it can’t be, it’d have gone off by now. It musta bin there months.’

‘Why don’t we tell the warden?‘Jimmy suggested. ‘They’re giving rewards for bombs. The Mayor said so at that party in the Guildhall.’

‘That was for putting out incendiaries, and they only give it to the first one. Catch them paying out for every one! Anyway, if we told a warden he’d just pretend he’d found it hisself.

This is our bomb.’

‘My bomb,’ Cyril corrected him.

‘It’s ours if we dig it out and take it back to the den. It’s ours if you want to stay in our gang.’ But it was time to give Cyril a little praise. ‘It’s a smasher. You done well.’

Cyril looked pleased. ‘Shall we dig it out then?’

‘Yeah, but not now. We’ll come back tonight. We’ll bring the paraffin lamp and torches and spades or shovels. We’d better bring some grub as well.’ He gazed at the bomb, wishing again that he had been the one to find it. ‘We’d better be careful in case it is still live.’

They turned to go, creeping warily out of the hole in case anyone saw them. But there was no one about in the trampled gardens or the smelly alleyway and they ran swiftly home through the streets.

‘Tonight,’ Micky said as they parted. ‘We’ll go and get it out tonight.’

That night, the exhausted city suffered its third heavy blitz.

Thrusting away his fears, Ted Chapman went straight up to the little turret from which his son Colin had fired arrows at the neighbours’ cats, and which was now so good a lookout post, while Annie hurried up the road to the school. Frank Budd saw his wife and daughters into the shelter and then climbed over the fence on to the allotment with his stirrup pump. Tommy Vickers started on his rounds, looking into each Anderson shelter in the three streets to make sure that everyone was present, or accounted for. And Peggy, Gladys and Diane Shaw ran to join Annie Chapman.

‘Looks like another bad ‘un,’ Annie commented as they arrived panting at the school gates. Already bombs were whistling down and could be heard exploding in different parts of the city. ‘I can tell you, I’m sick of this. If I had Hitler here I’d knock his block off’

‘Not till after I’d finished with him, you wouldn’t.’ Peggy marched in to register with the superintendent. ‘You get that um on the go, Annie - we’ll be glad of summat hot later on.

It’s going to be a long night.’

Gladys had been hoping to see Graham that evening. She signed her name in the book and went out to her ambulance.

It was looking battle-scarred and weary, almost leaning against the school wall, and seemed to heave itself to its feet with a sigh as she started to swing the crank-handle. It’s as tired as I am, she thought, and no wonder. We’ve been on duty together through half a dozen raids in the past fortnight.

It’s had punctures by the score from broken glass and nails and God knows what lying about in the road, it’s had its headlamps smashed, not that you can see much with most of the glass blacked out, it’s lost its horn that nobody can hear for the noise of bombs and ack-ack, and I’m tired of having to scrub it clean of blood every morning. And Mum’s just as exhausted, riding in the back with the casualties night after bloody night when she ought to be sitting safe at home by the fire, listening to Arthur Askey and Tommy Handley, or down the Hippodrome laughing at Elsie and Doris Waters.

But there wasn’t a Hippodrome any more. And at this rate there wouldn’t be much of a Portsmouth. And as long as Hitler kept sending his planes over, so they’d have to turn out to fight him with whatever weapons they had. And if a battered old van, done up as an ambulance, was her way of fighting, she’d bloody well fight. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Adolf!

Back and forth she drove, from one raging fire to another, from the town railway station and the main post office, both damaged by the blast which destroyed the big Maddens Hotel, to the inferno of Mcllroys, yet another of Portsmouth’s big department stores. She’d been shopping there herself only a few hours ago … All along the way there were bombs falling all about her, debris flying from their blasts, shrapnel raining from the sky. The pitted sides of the van were dented further by red-hot metal, sharp and jagged as a saw, and half a brick came through her windscreen like a cannonball, landing on the seat only inches from her thigh. Swearing, she snatched up the cushion Peggy sat on when she rode in the front, and thrust it through the shattered glass, brushing the fragments impatiently away. The night air blew cold on her face and she shrugged angrily when a warden waved at her to stop. She could still see to drive, couldn’t she?

Anger drove her that night. She had been angry from the beginning, when she was torn away from the fireside to go out yet again. She had been angry to see the flares, as red as the fury which consumed her. She’d even been angry to see her poor little van, looking so woebegone and weary, and the destruction of its windscreen was the last straw. From now on, her feelings about the war and Hitler had condensed into one intense spot of white-hot fury. He was hurting her van!

Well, she would show him.

‘Gladys,’ her mother remonstrated. ‘Let up a bit, girl.

You’re like a mad thing. Take a coupla minutes off for a cupper tea.’

‘Tea? I haven’t got time for tea.’ Gladys was fidgeting, impatient to be off again. ‘There’s bombs coming down everywhere. People are getting hurt. We’ve got to be out there, helping ‘