The Girls They Left Behind (6 page)

‘Carlisle Crescent? That’s over the railway. You know you’re not supposed to go down there.‘Jess shook them both again. ‘If you don’t stop in your own street, you won’t be allowed out to play at all.’ Frank was right, they were better off in the country. You couldn’t keep track of boys like this, and you couldn’t keep them indoors all the time either, they needed to be out playing, letting off steam.

She saw that Keith had begun to cry, large tears creeping down his cheeks, and even Tim’s lips were wobbling, and she felt suddenly guilty at the way she had yelled at them. Her hands more gentle now, she pulled them close and hugged them tightly.

‘There, it’s all right,’ she muttered. ‘I was just so worried, not knowing where you were and hearing the bombs falling. You mustn’t go so far away again. You must always be close enough to get home, see? Come on now, let’s go back indoors before they come back.’

Subdued now, the three children walked back down the street beside her. Peggy Shaw was still in number 14, making cocoa. She had fed Maureen and put her to bed, and now she went back next door to her own family.

‘And now you two can go to bed as well,’ Jess told the boys. ‘I don’t care if it is before your usual bedtime. Drink your cocoa and scrub that dirt of your faces and then get upstairs.’

Rose, still white-faced and shaking, crept into Frank’s armchair and curled up there. She looked at her mother.

‘I don’t have to go yet, do I? Can’t I stop up till Dad comes home?’

Jess’s heart gave a lurch. Until now, she’d been too worried about the children to give way to her fears about her husband. Now terror flooded back into her heart and she felt sick all over again.

But there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t even go out to look for him.

‘Yes,’ she said, not wanting to wait on her own. ‘You can stop up for a bit. But not too long mind. Your dad might be a bit late tonight.’

The boys went to bed without a word. But Jess and Rose at together, watching the smoke drift slowly across the sky and worrying about Frank.

It was almost ten o’clock when Frank finally arrived home. For three hours he worked in Drayton Road, helping to pull away the rubble that had buried so many of the ARP wardens

and helpers who had been preparing to give aid to others. With his bare hands, he dragged at bricks and laths and plaster, tugging frantically because under all this, somewhere, he could hear a woman’s cries or a man shouting for help. Or perhaps there was someone who couldn’t cry or shout, who was unconscious but still alive, choking in the dust, crushed by a beam of timber or a pile of broken bricks.

Frank was a big man, powerfully built. He took charge of a little group of men who could lift heavy weights, and they moved from place to place over the ruins, shifting what other people couldn’t budge. They needed to take special care because sometimes it was clear that a beam which must be

shifted could bring down a whole wall, or a portion of roof that was still hanging as if by a thread above their heads. And sometimes, although they knew that the person who lay buried beneath could only be saved if the beam was moved, they dared not touch it, for fear of its killing others.

As well as moving rubble, there were bodies to be shifted. The bodies of first-aid workers, men and women who had attended classes since the war was declared, determined to be of use, but had had their lives slashed away before they could attend so much as a cut finger. And they were not neatly laid-out, covered with white sheets, as if they had died in hospital or been tidied up by others more accustomed to such things. Instead, they lay like broken dolls amongst the wreckage, their bodies crushed, their limbs smashed, their eyes open and staring from the mess of raw flesh and blackened blood and bone that had been their faces.

Some of them were not even whole. Their legs had been torn from their bodies, their arms lay draped across upturned tables or tangled with chairs, there was even a head that had been wrenched from its neck and rolled by itself to lie perched on a tottering pile of bloodstained bandages. When Frank first caught sight of it, it seemed to be watching him and he turned away and vomited. And I’ve been in a war before, he thought. How is this going to affect these other people, who never dreamed of such things? How about the boy with the grazed head, that I brought here?

All these fragments must be collected and put together, like some gruesome jigsaw puzzle, and you couldn’t turn your back and say it wasn’t your job. It was everyone’s job.

At last the terrible work was over. Firemen had come and gone, ambulances had taken the injured away to the hospital. The rubble still filled the playground where small children

had played hopscotch and fivestones, and would have to be left until there was time to deal with it. But as far as anyone could tell, there was no one left under the chaos of smashed masonry and torn beams. No one alive, anyway.

Eleven dead. Eleven people who had been fit and healthy but for one reason or another not expected to fight — men too old or too young, women who had been glad to offer their

time. Eleven people who had left their homes that afternoon expecting to be home in time for supper and would never go home again.

‘One of them was the Superintendent,’ Frank told Jess when he finally came in through the front door to find her

sitting doing nothing, with Rose now asleep in his chair. ‘And there was others hurt, some of ‘em aren’t going to live, you could tell that.’ He shuddered a little, thinking of the injuries, things that ought never to happen to human bodies. ‘And all the time I was thinking about you and the kids and wondering what was going on up here. I couldn’t tell where all the explosions were coming from, and no one seemed to know anything. It seemed as if the whole city had been smashed to bits. And the sky was so full of smoke and flames, I thought they’d set light to whatever was left anyway.’

‘I know.’ Jess held him tightly, not caring that his clothes were filthy, that his hair was full of dust and plaster. ‘We could see it from here. Whatever was it? Someone said it was one of the ships in the Yard on fire.’

Frank shook his head. ‘There might’ve been some ships hit, I dunno. But the fire came from the gasholder at Rudmore. A bomb fell right inside. It wasn’t full, one of the firemen who came to Drayton told me that. It could’ve been nasty, all the same, if they hadn’t got it under control so quick.’ He sat down wearily at the table and leant his head on his hands. ‘Thank God you’re all right, Jess. All the way home, I was thinking what it’d be like to turn the corner and see number 14 just a mass of rubble. There’s a whole row in Portchester Road, with hardly a slate left and all their windows out. And houses in Farlington Road they’ll never be able to patch up, almost nothing left of them, bricks and stuff all over the place. And the Blue Anchor’s gone, and half a dozen houses and a garage in Gamble Road. And that’s just around this part of Pompey. God knows what the rest of the city’s like.’

Henry, the big tabby cat, got up from the rag rug and came over to lay a paw on Frank’s knee. Frank reached down and pulled the cat on to his lap and Henry purred and rubbed his

head against the dirty shirt. He had spent the raid crouched

against the wall of the coalshed and had hardly left Jess’s side

since she had come back to the house.

‘Poor old chap,’ Frank said, scratching the hard, furry head. ‘You can’t understand it at all, can you.’

Jess went out to the scullery to make some more cocoa. As she came back into the room, she saw Rose stir and open her eyes. She saw her father and scrambled out of the chair to run to him and bury her face against his chest.

‘Rose Jess remonstrated. ‘Your father’s all dirty still.’

But Frank held his daughter’s head and his big hands

stroked her straight black hair. He looked down at her trembling body and Jess felt her own heart soften at the

expression on his face.

Frank wasn’t a man who was demonstrative towards his

children. He hadn’t had enough of that kind of loving in his own childhood to be able to pass it on. But she knew his heart was tender and that he longed to be able to cuddle them, or even to give them a casual pat, without feeling awkward. And, just occasionally, there were moments when his emotions overcame his reticence and he was able to express them freely and without embarrassment.

This was one of those moments, and Jess felt her eyes fill with tears as she watched her husband and eldest child hold

each other closely. And she felt a sharp poignancy and a deep sadness that it took a war, sometimes, to bring people as close as they ought to be to one another. That eleven people had to die before Frank’s eyes before he could hold his daughter in his arms and stroke her hair.

‘Mind you don’t go too far away, now. I don’t want to have to go looking for you again if there’s another raid.’

Jess looked at her sons with some misgivings. After last night, she was half afraid to let them out, but it was impossible to keep them indoors on such a fine morning.

‘We’ll be all right, Mum.’

Tim and Keith hopped from foot to foot. They had been awake early, gazing out of their bedroom window over the allotments, talking about the raid. It was nothing but a game to them. They hadn’t seen what Frank had seen, nor did Jess want them to see such things.

‘I want them back out in the country,’ she’d said to Frank last night, after Rose had gone to bed. ‘Back out at Bridge End, where they’ll be safe.’

‘We’ll take them on Saturday,’ he agreed. ‘And you can stay there too, at Mrs Greenberry’s.’ But Jess had shaken her head. She’d liked Mrs Greenberry well enough, and loved being in the country, but she’d hated the months away from Frank when she’d gone with the first evacuation. A wife’s place was with her man, and she didn’t intend to leave him again.

Tim and Keith raced up the street, as excited as puppies let off the leash. They stopped near the end of April Grove, where the road widened and there was space for a game of

cricket. Someone had chalked stumps on the blank wall of the end house of March Street.

‘Shall I go back for the bat?’ Keith suggested, but Tim shrugged.

‘Don’t feel like cricket. I want to go exploring.’

Keith looked around. They were near their Auntie Annie’s house here and knew every inch of the three streets. He looked through the fence at the allotments. There were footpaths across them, but the boys weren’t supposed to go there unless they were going to Frank’s allotment, to take him a jug of tea or tell him dinner was ready.

‘There’s Micky,’ he said. ‘And Jimmy Cross and Cyril.’ The three boys came through a hole in the fence and joined

them. Micky was grinning.

‘What happened to you last night? Mummy make you go to bed early?’

Tim flushed. ‘We wanted to listen to the wireless.’ They hadn’t been allowed to, but Micky didn’t have to know that. `D’you want a game of cricket? We could get our bat.’

‘Cricket!’ Micky said scornfully. ‘We’ve got better things to do than play cricket. We’re going down to look at the bombs.’

‘Bombs? You mean there’s still bombs? Ones that haven’t gone off? Bet there’s not.’

‘Bet there are, then. Bet we’ll find some.’ Micky strutted cockily. ‘We’ll get ‘em for souvenirs. My mum says she’ll put ‘em of the mantelpiece if we find any.’

Not unexploded bombs. That’d be dangerous.’

‘Well, ones that have gone off, anyway. And shells and bullets and that. There’ll be all sorts down Drayton Road way. The school got bombed and hundreds of people were killed. We might find bodies.’

Tim wasn’t sure he wanted to find bodies, but the idea of shells and bomb cases was alluring. He hesitated and looked at Keith.

‘We’re not allowed to go right down Drayton Road.’

‘Mummy’s boys,’ Micky sneered. ‘Well, we’re going, ain’t we?’ Cyril and Jimmy nodded. ‘Don’t suppose we’ll have to go that far anyway. There was bombing nearer than that. Bet we’ll find all sorts of stuff.’

He turned away, and the other two boys followed him. Tim and Keith stared after them enviously.

‘I wouldn’t mind finding a few bombs,’ Tim said. `That’d be something to take back to Bridge End. Give that Brian

Collins something to think about!’

‘But we’re not supposed to go out of the street,’ Keith said wistfully.

Tim thought for a moment. ‘We only promised not to go over the railway. Drayton Road’s not over the railway — it’s in the opposite direction. And we don’t have to go all the way. We can always come back if we get fed up.’

Keith hesitated. He glanced back down the street towards number 14. Their mother had gone back indoors and the only person in sight was Mrs Glaister next door, scrubbing her step. She wouldn’t take any notice of them, she never did.

‘Come on,’ Tim said, setting off up March Street. ‘The Germans won’t come this early in the morning. And if we go back to Bridge End tomorrow we’ll never get another chance

to find a bomb of our own.’

Filled with fresh excitement, the two boys scurried up the street and caught up with Micky and his henchmen as they

turned the corner into September Street. There were plenty of people about now, opening up their shops or walking to work. A few stood at bus stops, but there weren’t many buses about. Perhaps they couldn’t get through the bombed streets.

‘There’s whole rows of houses smashed to bits,’ Micky said with relish. ‘I bet some of ‘em are still burning. We could help put ‘em out. We might find a parachute. That’s how they’re going to invade, by parachute. They’ll all come down from the sky, with guns and hand grenades.’

‘They won’t,’ Tim said. ‘They’ll come in ships.’

They crossed over Copnor Road. The two Budds had never been so far away from April Grove without permission. At first they’d been nervous, half expecting to be called back or spotted by someone who knew them and might tell Mum or Dad. But now there was less chance of that and they relaxed and look round eagerly for signs of bomb damage.

By the time they reached Chichester Road, Keith’s short legs were tiring and he was finding it difficult to keep up with