Bombs on Aunt Dainty (11 page)

“It won’t do!” she cried. “You’d hate it – you’d be bored stiff!”

“I don’t see why,” said Anna, but Mrs Hammond shook her head.

“Languages,” she cried. “Got no use for them here. You want somewhere like the War Office. Crazy for girls like you – French, German, Hindustani – all that.”

“I’ve tried the War Office,” said Anna, “but they won’t have me.”

Mrs Hammond absent-mindedly tried to unfasten a loop of wool which had wound itself round a button on her tunic. “Why?” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Anna took a deep breath. “I’m not English,” she said.

“Ha! Irish!” cried Mrs Hammond and added reproachfully, “You’ve got green eyes.”

“No,” said Anna, “German.”

“German?”

“German-Jewish. My father is an anti-Nazi writer. We left Germany in 1933 …” She was suddenly sick of explaining, having to justify herself. “My father’s name was on the first black list published by the Nazis,” she said quite loudly. “After we’d escaped from Germany they offered a reward for his capture, dead or alive. I’m hardly likely, therefore, to sabotage the British war effort. But it’s
extraordinary how difficult it is to convince anyone of this.”

There was a pause. Then Mrs Hammond said, “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” said Anna.

“I see,” said Mrs Hammond. She stood up, scattering wool in all directions like a dog shaking water out of its fur. “Well now,” she said. “Why don’t we have a look at what the job consists of?”

She led Anna to some shelves stacked with bulky packets up to the ceiling.

“Wool,” she said.

Then she pointed to a filing cabinet and flicked open a drawer full of record cards.

“Little women,” she said, and as Anna looked puzzled, “They knit. All over the country.”

“I see,” said Anna.

“Send the wool to the little women. Little women knit it up into sweaters, socks, Balaclava helmets, what have you. Send them back to us. We send them to chaps in the Forces who need them. That’s all.”

“I see,” said Anna again.

“Not very difficult, you see,” said Mrs Hammond. “No need for languages – unless of course we sent some to the Free French. Never heard of them being short of woollies, though.” She gestured towards the room with the sewing machines. “Then there’s the old ladies out there. Bit more responsibility.”

“What do they do?” asked Anna.

“Make pyjamas, bandages, all that, for hospitals. They live roundabout and come in. All voluntary, you understand. Have to give them Bovril in the morning and tea and biscuits in the afternoon.”

Anna nodded.

“Fact is,” said Mrs Hammond, “it’s all jolly useful. Found out from my own son in the Air Force – never got any woollies, always cold. And I do need someone to help. Think you could do it?”

“I think so,” said Anna. It was not exactly what she had hoped for, but she liked Mrs Hammond and it was a job. “How …” she stammered, “I mean, how much …?”

Mrs Hammond smote her forehead. “Most important part of the business!” she cried. “I was going to pay three pounds, but reckon you could get more with all those languages. Say three pounds ten a week – that suit you?”

“Oh yes!” cried Anna. “That would be fine.”

“Start on Monday, then,” said Mrs Hammond and added, as she ushered her out, “Look forward to seeing you.”

Anna rode triumphantly down the Vauxhall Bridge Road on one of the clattering trams. It was getting dark and, by the time she had walked to Hyde Park Corner, the stairs leading down to the tube were crowded with people seeking shelter for the night. Quite a few had already spread out their bedding on the platform, and you had to be careful where you stepped. At Holborn there were people sitting on
bunks against the walls as well as on the floor and a woman in green uniform was selling cups of tea from a trolley. At one end a knot of people had gathered round a man with a mouth organ to sing
Roll Out The Barrel
and an old man in a peaked cap called out, “Good night, lovely!” as she passed.

The sirens sounded just as she turned into Bedford Terrace and she raced them to the door of the Hotel Continental, through the lounge and up the stairs, to burst breathlessly into Mama’s room. There was a droning sound, announcing the approach of the bombers.

“Mama!” she cried as the first bomb burst, some distance away, “Mama! I’ve got a job!”

Anna almost did not start her job on the following Monday after all, because something happened.

It was on the Friday. Max had come on one of his rare visits and was staying the night, and though there had not been very much to eat for supper – food rationing was getting stricter – they had sat over it a long time with Max talking about his life as a schoolmaster which he quite enjoyed, and Anna talking about her job.

“The lady is called the Hon. Mrs Hammond,” she said proudly. “She must be related to some kind of a lord. And she’s paying me three pounds ten a week!”

Mama nodded. “For the first time we can look ahead a little.”

Her face was pinker and more relaxed than Anna had seen it for some time. It was partly because Max was there, but also because the November mists had finally arrived and they had been able to sleep in their beds two nights running. Tonight, too, the sky was heavy with clouds and Max who was not used to London had been much impressed with Mama’s careless dismissal of the air-raid warning.

By the time they went to bed it was quite late and Anna fell asleep almost immediately.

She dreamed about the Hon. Mrs Hammond, whose office had inexplicably become entirely filled with wool which Anna and Mrs Hammond were trying to disentangle. Anna had got hold of an end and was trying to see where it led and Mrs Hammond was saying, “You have to follow the sound,” and then Anna noticed that the wool was giving out a curious humming like a swarm of mosquitoes or an aeroplane. She pulled gently at the piece in her hand and the humming turned at once into a violent screeching.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …” she began, but the screeching grew louder and louder and came closer and closer and then it drew her right inside itself and she and Mrs Hammond were flying through the air and there was a shattering crash and she found herself on the floor in a corner of her room at the Hotel Continental.

All round her were fragments of glass from the shattered window – that’s the third lot of windows gone, she thought – and the floor was grey with plaster from the ceiling. I mustn’t cut myself this time, she thought, and felt carefully for her shoes, so as to be able to walk through the broken glass to the door. As she put them on, her hands were shaking – but that’s just shock she thought. There hadn’t really been time to be frightened.

The landing was a mess with a lamp hanging from its socket and plaster all over the floor, and Max and Mama appeared on it almost immediately.

Max was furious. “You said,” he shouted at Mama, “that the Germans wouldn’t come tonight!”

“Well, they didn’t!” cried Mama. “Only just that one!”

“For God’s sake!” Max shouted, pointing to the confusion about them. “Look what he’s done!”

“Well, how was I to know,” cried Mama, “that the one German plane over London tonight would drop a bomb straight on us? I can’t be responsible for every madman who takes to the air in the middle of a fog! It’s easy for you to criticise …”

“For God’s sake,” said Max again. “We might all have been killed!” – and at this the same realisation hit all three of them.

“Papa!” cried Anna and rushed along the passage to his room.

The door was jammed, but there was a scuffling sound inside and after a moment the door was wrenched open and Papa appeared. He was black with dust and there was plaster all over his hair and his pyjamas, but he was all right. Behind him, Anna could see that most of his ceiling had collapsed and that it was only the presence of the heavy wardrobe which had prevented it from crashing down on his bed.

“Are you hurt?” cried Mama, close behind her.

“No,” said Papa, and then they all stood and looked at the wreckage that had been his room.

Papa shook his head sadly. “To think,” he said, “that I’d just tidied up my desk!”
Miraculously, no one was hurt except for cuts and bruises, but the whole hotel was in chaos. There were ceilings down everywhere, the heating no longer worked, and downstairs in the lounge the wind blew through gaps where doorposts and window frames no longer fitted into the walls. The bomb had fallen on the adjoining house, fortunately empty, and luckily it had been a very small bomb. (“You see!” cried Mama, still smarting from Max’s criticism, “I told you it wasn’t a proper one!”) But the damage looked to be beyond repair.

The experts from the Council who came round later thought so too.

“No use trying to fit this place up again,” they told Frau Gruber. “For one thing it wouldn’t be safe. You’d best find somewhere else,” and Frau Gruber nodded, sensibly, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, and you had to look quite closely to notice the twitching of a muscle near her mouth as she said, “It was my livelihood, you know.”

“You’ll get compensation,” said the man from the Council. “Best thing would be if you could find another house.”

“Otherwise we all shall be without a roof on our head,” said the Woodpigeon sadly, and the rest of the guests looked hopefully towards Frau Gruber as though she were capable of producing one out of a hat.

It was curious, thought Anna – ever since the beginning of the blitz everyone had known that this might happen, but
now that it had no one knew what to do. How did one find a new home in a bomb-shattered city?

In the middle of it all Aunt Louise rang up. She was in London for the day and wanted Mama to have lunch with her. When Mama explained what had happened she cried at once, “My dear, you must buy the maharajah’s place!”

Mama said rather tartly that Frau Gruber was looking for a house in London, not a palace in India, but Aunt Louise took no notice.

“I believe,” she said, “that it’s in Putney,” and announced that since the maharajah was with her she would bring him round at once.

“Really,” said Papa when Mama told him, “couldn’t you have stopped her?”

He and Max had been moving his belongings out of the wrecked room into another that was less badly damaged. The hotel had grown very cold and no one had had any sleep since the bomb had fallen. The prospect of having to cope with Aunt Louise on top of everything else seemed too much to be borne.

“You know what Louise is like,” said Mama, and went off to warn Frau Gruber.

When they arrived, the maharajah in his turban and Aunt Louise in a beautiful black fur coat, they looked like visitors from another world, but Frau Gruber received them with no sign of astonishment. Perhaps she felt, since the bomb, that anything could happen.

“You are the first maharajah I have met,” she said in
matter-of-fact tones and led him off to what remained of her office.

“Really, Louise,” said Mama in the freezing lounge, “this is a mad idea of yours. She could never afford the sort of money he’d want.”

“Oh dear, do you think so?” cried Aunt Louise. “And I thought it would be such a help. He really wants to sell the house, you know, because he’s going back to India at last. And he is,” she added, “only quite a
small
maharajah, so it might not be so expensive.”

Then she went on to urge all of them and especially Anna to come down to the country for a rest, but Anna explained about her job and Mama said wearily that they must first find a home, as it was clearly impossible to stay on in the hotel for more than a few days.

“Just when Anna had got settled,” she said. “Why does something always have to go wrong!”

Aunt Louise patted her hand and said, “Don’t worry,” and just then Frau Gruber and the maharajah came back into the lounge smiling.

“Well,” said the maharajah, tucking his hand under Frau Gruber’s arm, “shall we go and have a look at the place?”

“What did I tell you?” cried Aunt Louise, and added quickly, “First we must have lunch.”

They ate at a restaurant which Aunt Louise knew and even had a bottle of wine which made everyone feel more cheerful – in fact Frau Gruber became quite merry – and the maharajah paid the bill. Afterwards Max had to go back to
his school, but the rest of them went to see the house in Aunt Louise’s car.

Anna was surprised to see how far away it was. They seemed to drive past endless rows of little houses all looking the same, until they crossed the Thames to reach a narrow road lined with shops.

The maharajah pointed fondly. “Putney High Street,” he said.

It was a dark afternoon, even though it was nowhere near sunset, and the shops were lit up, which gave the street an almost peace-time look. Anna caught a whiff of frying as they drove past a chip shop, there was a Woolworth’s and a Marks and Spencer’s and people everywhere were doing their weekend shopping. There was far less bomb damage than in the centre of London, and as the car left the high street and drove up a hill flanked by large houses and gardens it began to smell almost like the country.

The maharajah’s house was in a tree-lined side street – very big and spacious with about a dozen bedrooms and surrounded by a neglected garden. For a single person it must have been enormous, but for a hotel or a guest house Anna supposed it would be quite modest. It was empty except for the curtains on the windows and a few forgotten objects – a tall brass vase, a carved stool and astonishingly, a flight of plaster ducks carefully pinned above a mantelpiece.

They walked slowly from room to room in the fading light and the maharajah explained the workings of the
electricity, the blackout arrangements, the hot-water boiler, and every so often Frau Gruber would query something and they would go back and look at it all over again.

“I must say, it all seems very convenient,” she said several times, and then the maharajah would cry, “Wait till you see the kitchen!” – or the scullery, or the second bathroom. All the downstairs rooms were dominated by the wild garden which lay outside the French windows, and when Frau Gruber said, for the third time, “I just want to have another look at the kitchen range,” Papa and Anna left the rest of them to it and went out into the wintry dampness.

Mist was hanging like a sheet in the trees and there were fallen leaves everywhere. They clung to Anna’s feet as she followed Papa along a path which led them to a wooden bench at the edge of what had once been a lawn. Papa wiped the seat with his handkerchief and they sat down.

“It’s a big garden,” said Anna and Papa nodded.

The mist was drifting across the long grass and the bushes, making everything beyond them uncertain, so that it seemed as though there were no end to it. Anna felt suddenly unreal.

“To think …” she said.

“What?” said Papa.

There was a clump of leaves stuck to one of her shoes and she removed it carefully with the other before she answered, “Last night must have been about the closest we’ve been to getting killed.”

“Yes,” said Papa. “If that German airman had dropped his bomb a fraction of a second earlier or later – we wouldn’t be sitting in this garden.”

It was strange, thought Anna. The garden would still be there in the mist, but she would not know about it.

“It’s difficult to imagine,” she said, “everything going on without one.”

Papa nodded. “But it does,” he said. “If we were dead, people would still have breakfast and ride on buses and there would still be birds and trees and children going to school and misty gardens like this one. It’s a kind of comfort.”

“But one would miss it so,” said Anna.

Papa looked at her fondly. “You wouldn’t exist.”

“I know,” said Anna. “But I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine being so dead that I wouldn’t be able to think about it all – the way it looks and smells and feels – and missing it all quite terribly.”

They sat in silence and Anna watched a leaf drift slowly, slowly down from a tree until it settled among the others in the grass.

“For quite a long time last summer,” she said, “I didn’t think we’d live even till now. Did you?”

“No,” said Papa.

“I didn’t see how we could. And it seemed so awful to die before one had even had time to find out what one could do – before one had really had time to try. But now …”

“Now it’s November,” said Papa, “and the invasion hasn’t happened.” He put his hand over hers. “Now,” he said, “I think there’s a chance.”

Then the gravel crunched behind them and Mama appeared through the mist.

“There you are!” she cried. “Louise wants to leave, so as to get out of town before dark. But the maharajah is coming back tomorrow to fix the final details with Frau Gruber. She’s going to take the house. Don’t you think it’s a nice place?”

Anna got up from the seat and Papa followed her.

“We’ve been appreciating it,” he said.

There seemed to be less room in the car on the way back. Anna sat squeezed between Papa and the driver, and it was hot and stuffy. Behind her the maharajah and Frau Gruber were talking about the house, with Mama and Aunt Louise chipping in. As the car crawled through the dusky suburbs, the street names mingled with scraps of conversation into a hypnotic mixture which almost sent her to sleep. Walham Crescent…St Anne’s Villas…Parsons Green Road…“…such a very useful sink,” said Frau Gruber, and Mama replied, “…and in the summer, the garden …”

There was a spatter of rain on the windscreen. She rested her head on Papa’s shoulder, and the grey road and the grey houses sped past.

Everything is going to be different, she thought. I’m going to have a job, and we’ll live in a house in Putney, and
we’ll have enough money to pay the bills, and perhaps we’ll all survive the war and I shall grow up, and then …

But it was too difficult to imagine what would happen then, and probably rather unlucky, too, she thought, with the next air raid not far away, and as the strain of the previous night caught up with her she fell asleep.