All Fall Down (2 page)

‘And what should we do?' George tried to rouse Hettie. The first signs of total war, the barrage balloons, rose silently over the grey slate roofs. ‘Let them walk all over us?'

‘But are we sure he's as bad as they say?'

‘Worse, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Who, Hitler?' Annie considered the rights and wrongs. ‘Have you seen them Sieg Heiling?' The newsreels in the cinemas gave a graphic picture of marching armies. ‘Maurice says it's very bad for the Jews.' Flickering black and white films showed a small man with a dark moustache, rousing the rabble to a frenzy of saluting and chanting. Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.

Hettie drew a deep breath. ‘What will Amy and Sadie do with the kids, do you think?'

‘That's the ticket.' George knew she was pulling round if she could start to think of others. ‘It'll be up to them. A lot have already been evacuated.'

‘I can't think what Sadie will do without the boys.'

‘Who says it'll come to that?' Annie shook herself, got up and straightened her skirt. ‘You never know, now that we've stood up
to him and shown him we mean business, maybe it'll knock some sense into him.' Poland was one thing; even Austria and Czechoslovakia, but Britain was another. Hitler would have to sit up and take notice now.

‘And what about Meggie? Will she go too?' Over the last few days, Hettie had watched the women and children in their school gaberdines, little cardboard suitcases in hand, troop off towards the muster points, ready for shipping onto trains at Paddington. She imagined a thousand tearful farewells.

‘Let's wait and see,' George advised, giving silent Ernie a cheerful pat on the shoulder.

Suddenly into the silence of Duke Street came an ear-splitting wail. It rose from a deep groan, gained volume, whined overhead, penetrating the courts and alleys, putting an end to that eerie suspension of activity in the heart of London's East End.

‘Air raid!' Amy, in the flat above the ironmongers' shop, shot a horrified glance at Rob. ‘Shelter!' She turned to Bobby. ‘Double-quick.'

Bobby looked to his father.

‘You heard.' Rob limped to the door and handed him and Amy their gas masks. Once more, the whine of shells, their thud into soft earth the second before they exploded flashed through his mind.

‘You and all.' As she slung the string around Bobby's neck and bundled him out of the door onto the landing, she turned back. ‘Please, Rob!'

‘You seen my fags?' He searched the mantelpiece and paused to rummage in a drawer.

‘Rob!' The siren wailed on and on.

‘Hold your horses.' People were running in the street towards the community shelter in Nelson Gardens, where a deep trench had been dug, covered with corrugated sheeting and earth, big enough to hold hundreds of people. No one round here had a garden with their own Anderson shelter; it was all tenements and
courts. The nearest underground station, Borough, was too far to reach in time. ‘I can't go till I got my fags.'

Amy rushed back into the room. The cigarettes were on the shelf by the wireless. ‘Here.' She flung them at him.

‘You go ahead.' Shoving them in his pocket, he pushed her on. Bobby was already waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

‘No.'

‘Yes. You know why.' He couldn't run fast with his artificial leg. He had to hobble sideways down the stairs.

‘But, Rob.' Amy held onto Bobby by the arm. He resisted. Outside the door, men, women and children fled towards the shelter, hatless, without jackets or cardigans, some in their stockinged feet. The planes could come, the bombs drop any second.

‘Go, will you!' He clung to the bannister and cursed.

‘You'll come quick as you can?'

He nodded. ‘I'll see you down there.'

Amy dragged Bobby to the street to be caught up in the rush of feet, the wail of the siren. She had never in her life felt so frightened; sick in her stomach, heart pounding as she kept her eyes to the ground and tried to close her ears to the drone of aeroplane engines, the thud and crash of German bombs in the streets she'd known and felt safe in all her life. Now a terrifying jumble of noises and the sound of panicking feet echoed down Union Street under the clear blue sky.

‘Well, at least we're in the final.' Tommy O'Hagan drew long and hard on one of Rob Parsons' Woodbines. In the dim light of the underground shelter watchful feces lined the benches and bunks, the men in waistcoats and caps, some in overalls, fresh from digging their allotments. Women hovered over their kids, wiped smudged feces with the corners of their aprons, smacked a bare leg, buttoned a cardigan.

‘How come?' Tommy's youngest brother, Jimmie, who lived with Tommy and his wife, Dorothy, was puzzled by the sporting phrase.

‘Well, Hitler knocked out the Austrians, didn't he? And the Sizzeks. Now the Poles. He beat the lot. I reckon that puts us in the final,
don't it?' Tommy cut the crisis down to size. ‘Did you get to the match yesterday, Rob? The real one, the one that counts.'

Rob shook his head. ‘I was out earning a crust.'

That was another thing. War meant blackout. Blackout would keep people at home instead of hailing a taxi and going up the West End on a Friday night. It might even involve petrol rationing and then where would he and Walter end up? Out of business, that's where. The years of the Depression had kept their taxi business small and run on a hand-to-mouth basis. Early dreams of making good with a fleet of new cars and a team of drivers had faded. They got by, that was all. And as Rob had sunk into middle age he'd grown gaunt and sour; lost his spark was how Amy put it.

‘You ain't nothing to write home about neither,' he reminded her.

‘Tough, 'cos I'm all you've got.' She always held her own.

‘Ted Drake scored four,' Tommy was telling him. ‘There was twenty thousand through the gates. Great game.'

‘Make the most of it.' Rob had heard through Walter that they planned to turn the stadium at Highbury into an ARP centre the minute war broke out and that would be the end of Saturday football for the foreseeable future. ‘They say the whole team will volunteer and how many of them will come back in one piece?'

‘Cheerful Charlie, ain't he?' Tommy was put off his stride. Nevertheless he winked at Jimmie.

‘You'll see,' Rob warned. He wandered off to brood in a corner. ‘Not in these trousiz.' Tommy shrugged.

‘Archibald, certainly not!' Jimmie slung in his own wireless phrase. He shadow-boxed with his older brother. He was a skinny kid just like Tommy had been, in baggy grey flannel trousers and Fair Isle pullover, his grey shirt collar torn and frayed.

‘For crying out loud,' Dorothy O'Hagan drawled. She sat, or rather perched nearby, on the ARP warden's table, legs crossed, wedge-heeled shoe dangling from her free foot. Her face, lost behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, was heavily made up. ‘Can‘t you two put a sock in it?'

‘And sit around like you with a face, as long as a wet weekend?'

‘Better than getting yourselves chucked out.'

‘You won't chuck us out, will you, George?' Tommy offered the landlord, who was doubling as warden in his tin hat and official armband, one of his own cigarettes, a Churchmans.

‘Try me.' George grinned at Jimmie. ‘How do you fancy joining Walter on fire-watch up-there?'

‘Righto!' Jimmie would have been off like a shot if George hadn't restrained him.

Hettie raised a warning eyebrow and glanced at a worried-looking Sadie. They'd managed to get Bertie, Geoff and Meggie down the shelter without too much fuss, thanks in part to poor Ernie, who had it clearly in his head what to do if the siren went off. He was to find the boys at number 32 and march them promptly to Nelson Gardens. Though simple-minded, Ernie could be relied on to look after the boys, while Sadie and Meggie gathered clothes and blankets, turned off the gas inside the house and followed. It left Walter free to carry out his fire-watching duties and mop up stragglers or strangers caught off home turf. This was the theory and it had gone like clockwork on this fateful September midday. Still, Sadie looked worn down with anxiety.

‘He'll be all right, you'll see.' Hettie went and sat with her. ‘Your Walter's like a cat with nine lives.'

Sadie shivered. ‘I don't know, Ett. It makes you feel like putting your head in the gas oven.'

‘And what good would that do?'

‘Save Hitler a job, that's all.' Annie sat nearby, green felt hat pinned firmly to her head, black jacket, bought as mourning wear for her husband, Duke, ten years before, buttoned tight under her chin. She sniffed and straightened her already straight back. ‘In the last war they used to say Arthur Ogden kept an old sword on the mantelpiece, just in case. He was going to slash any Jerry that came in.' Arthur, like Duke, was long gone, though his wife, Dolly, still soldiered on. ‘Ain't that right?' Annie called across to her.

‘Not a word of truth in it.' Dolly gave a hearty laugh. ‘God rest his soul, he spent the whole time propping up the bar at your place, Annie, telling everyone what a hero he was.'

There was a decent pause in his memory, then George answered the ring on the telephone on his table. When he came off, it was to announce the all-clear. ‘False alarm,' he told them. ‘You can all go home.'

‘About bleeding time.' They shuffled into the daylight, relieved and grumbling, threatening to bring their crosswords, their knitting, the latest Dashiell Hammett thriller next time.

‘Let's hope there won't be one,' someone said without conviction.

‘This Hitler, he was a painter and decorator wasn't he?' mused her neighbour, a heavy woman in a flowered overall. ‘So's my old man . . . They're all the same . . .' Hitler, husband – what could you expect?

Hettie watched the frown ease from Sadie's face. She squeezed her hand. ‘Ernie's got those boys of yours licked into shape.'

They watched as their brother, a kind of gentle giant with his stiff, forward-sloping, wide-legged walk, marched Bertie and Geoff into the fresh air. They went like lambs.

‘Come on, Ma.' Meggie swished by in a flurry of forget-me-not blue, slim waist shown off by a wide white belt, slim legs and ankles seen to advantage in her soft white leather sandals. ‘Else they'll shut the door and forget all about us.' She, Jimmie and Bobby went out into the autumn sunshine.

Sadie, Hettie and Annie followed more slowly. The world was the same; Nelson Gardens, Union Street, Duke Street with the new W. H. Smiths, Woolworths and Co-op. Yet it was all changed. The barrage balloons drifted overhead. A poster on a billboard told them they could be sure of Shell, next to one showing a horrible gas mask with the slogan, ‘Hitler Will Send No Warning.' Three Nuns was a tobacco of curious cut, and the government drummed home their message in a picture of a smiling girl with a ribbon in her hair and a younger, gap-toothed brother, ‘Mothers, Send Them out of London – Give them a chance of greater safety and health.'

Sadie stopped short beneath this poster, outside Tommy O'Hagan's smart shop selling wallpaper and household paints. The smiling girl troubled her.

‘I'd rather be bombed in my own home any day than live that
awful country life,' Annie said, chin up, eyes glittering. Then she relented. ‘Mind, it's not the same for everyone, I grant you that.' She would sorely miss her step-grandchildren, but she would back any decision Sadie made, or Amy, for that matter. ‘I'm only saying I went to Hove last Whit and I couldn't get home quick enough.'

Hettie smiled. ‘Talk to Walter,' she said to Sadie. ‘Between you, you'll decide what's best.'

Throughout that day, with the wireless playing solemn music, East Enders made their final preparations for war.

At The Duke, George Mann took timber and nails and made blackout frames for all the pub windows according to instructions issued by the government. He made do with brown paper pinned across the frames until they could buy up a job lot of black calico from Amy's haberdashery stall. There'd been a run on any kind of heavy material the week before. In a surge of public spiritedness Hettie posted up First Aid Briefs on the inside doors of both public and lounge bars. She read one out to Ernie, who was busy with mop and bucket on the front step.

‘Got that, Ern?'

‘Tell me it again.' Methodical with his mop, he went into every nook and cranny.

‘It says to read the instructions carefully several times and to carry a copy in your pocket or bag.' There'd be no point in this as far as Ernie was concerned. She wanted to get it into his head and make it stick. ‘You have to keep calm if you find anyone injured after one of these air raids. You've to carry clean handkerchiefs. It says to be prepared to see severe wounds.' She paused as Ernie's mop stopped short. He hated the sight of blood; always had, ever since Daisy O'Hagan's terrible murder years before. His mind would go blank and he would shut out the reality. This was one of Hettie's main worries about how the family would cope in the months to come; what if Ernie got caught in an air raid and panicked? ‘Never you mind,' she said gently. ‘You just get yourself to Nelson Gardens quick as you can.'

Ernie's mop began to move to and fro over the patterned tiles
in the hallway. ‘To the shelter with Bertie and Geoff,' he reminded himself.

‘If they're still in the Court, yes. You fetch them and make sure they're safe.'

‘Why, where else will they be?' He tried to cover the alarm in his voice.

‘We don't know yet, Ern. Sadie and Walter might send them to the country.'

He took this in as Annie came downstairs and eyed the first aid instructions. ‘Bleeding morbid!' she said through clenched teeth, though she herself had just spent half an hour packing away valuables in a tin chest that she could be sure wouldn't burn in a fire, should the worst come to the worst. On the top she'd laid a photograph of Duke in a silver frame and she'd promised his fading image that she'd do her best to keep the old place going, through thick and thin, to keep the family together and not let anyone go under; not Sadie who was filled with dread for the kiddies, nor poor Ernie, nor Rob, nor Hettie, nor Frances down in Walworth, nor Jess up in Manchester with Maurice, Grace and little Mo.