London Pride
BERYL KINGSTON
During the blitz the first plant to colonize the bombsites was a tall purple-flowered weed called rose-bay willow-herb or the fireweed, but known locally as London Pride. The irony of its rapid and perky appearance in the rubble was much enjoyed, and the plant soon became the symbol of London's resistance to the bombing. It was an excellent symbol, being everything that Londoners were at that time, boldly cheerful, resilient, cocky, undefeated, life-affirming, defiant, courageous and, like all weeds, potent and deeply-rooted.
I dedicate this book to those Londoners.
PROLOGUE
3rd August 1944
âKeep going, you bugger,' the chief warden said. âDon't stop here. We don't want you.' He was standing outside the Wardens' Post by the council flats behind Greenwich Station, squinting up into the shimmer of the early morning sky.
âAye, Mr Goodall, you can say that again,' his fellow warden agreed, squinting in the same direction, as he adjusted the chin strap of his tin helmet. âHave you seen it yet?'
The two men could hear the doodle-bug's horrible tinny rattle somewhere to the south-east of them, phut-phut-phut, like a clapped out motor cycle, grossly amplified. It sounded pretty close but they couldn't see it through the huddle of roofs that hemmed them in.
It was the first flying bomb of the morning and the rescue teams had only just arrived at their post. Now they waited beside their battered rescue truck, checking last minute details and gathering strength and resolution just in case it fell in their patch.
âDid Tom get that ladder fixed, Mr MacFarlane?' the chief warden asked, not taking his eyes from the sky.
âAye, he did.'
âIs Peggy on today?'
âThis afternoon. She was there at both the incidents last night.'
âAh.' Two doodle-bugs had fallen within two hundred yards of each other the previous evening and the reports showed that both rescues had been very difficult. âShe's a good girl our Peggy.'
âThe best,' Mr MacFarlane said. âI'd sooner be rescued by our Peggy than any other person I could think of. Present company excepted of course.'
The courtyards all round the flats were full of people, but none of them were moving. Factory workers sat poised on their bicycles with one foot on the ground, listening and waiting, children off to school with faces newly cleaned stood hand in hand, listening and waiting, women with shopping baskets over their arms and their hair tied up in workaday scarves, scowled at the sky listening and waiting. After two months under fire they all knew what you had to do when you heard a doodle-bug. You stayed close to the nearest cover and you didn't move away until the thing had passed over, just in case the engine suddenly cut out and you had to make a dive for it. Which God forbid! As the noise of this particular doodle-bug grew louder and closer they were all secretly saying the same prayer as the warden. Don't let it fall here. Send it somewhere else.
âCan you see it yet, Mr Goodall?'
A child's voice sang out immediately above their tin helmets. âOver there, Mr Goodall. Look, Mr MacFarlane! There it is!'
There was a little boy actually leaning out of one of the windows on the first floor. Good God! what was he thinking of? If it comes down now he'll be cut to shreds.
âGet in out of it, you silly young fool,' Mr Goodall bellowed.
âThat's young Percy,' a woman said. â'E ain't got the sense 'e was born wiv, that one. Shut the winder, Percy!'
âAnd go in to yer gran,' another woman ordered. âHis ma'll tan his hide for him when she hears.'
But just as the child obeyed and the window clicked shut, the sound of the doodle-bug suddenly stopped.
The courtyards cleared in less than two seconds. The two wardens shepherded half a dozen helter-skelter children before them and retreated inside the first aid post
which was on the ground floor of the flats behind a barrier of sandbags. But despite their speed the explosion began before they had time to crouch. They heard the first crunch quite clearly and then the appalling roar that lifted the floorboards and filled the air with dust and made their bellies shake and their ears feel as though they were swelling and splitting. Two of the children were whimpering and they all had their hands over their ears.
âThat,' Mr MacFarlane said, âwas a wee bitty too close for comfort.'
âAll over,' Mr Goodall said, automatically comforting the children, as the dust drifted past his eyes and all the other now familiar noises began, glass tinkling, falling debris pattering and crashing, somebody screaming. âAnybody hurt?'
One little girl had a nose bleed, which the first aid team would soon attend to, but apart from that they were all OK.
âCome along then, Mr Mac,' he said.
Their bikes were still in the corridor and still upright. They cycled out into the beautiful warmth of the day, to the glass-strewn courtyard and the pall of dust and smoke that always marked the site of an explosion.
âIt's just around the corner,' Mr MacFarlane said.
âWith any luck, it'll've hit the recreation ground,' Mr Goodall hoped, pedalling towards Haddo Street.
But luck was out that morning. The flying bomb had fallen right in the middle of the line of terraced houses called Paradise Row. They set their bikes by the nearest wall and walked into the dust cloud. It was so thick that they could hardly see a thing, not even the ground under their feet.
âIs this not where Peggyâ¦?' Mr MacFarlane asked.
âYes,' Mr Goodall said shortly. There wasn't time for conversation, or speculation, or compassion. They had a job to do, and difficult though it was they would have to do it.
The two men walked through the swirl of dust towards the centre of the explosion, peering to left and right, trying to assess the damage and to work out where they ought to start. There was no sign of the wood yard on the south side
of the street, and as there was so much shattered wood under their feet they felt fairly sure that was where the doodle-bug had fallen. The street shelter that had stood in the middle of the road all through the war had completely disappeared too. They must have walked right through the place where it had been. Now they were clambering about among piles of debris from a house, bricks, planks, plaster, shards of glass and broken furniture, and the chief warden had grown sufficiently accustomed to the dust to be able to see that two of the houses had gone too. There was an ominous fire burning in the rubble, and two other houses were shattered, their roofs gone and their bedroom floors tilted out of true and strewn with wreckage. Although, as the warden noted with his usual automatic accuracy, there was a brass bedstead still intact, covers and all, against one chimney stack.
By now several people were staggering out of the end houses, white-faced and dusty and obviously shocked. But they would have to be attended to later. First there was a message to send to Headquarters and then he had to check his list of occupants and then there would be the victims to rescue. As the dust cleared a little he could see one, a woman in carpet slippers and an apron, lying on her back in the middle of the road, streaked red and black with blood and dirt and so still she was either unconscious or dead. And not far away from her, pulling itself through the rubble by its front paws, was a small dazed tabby cat with two bleeding stumps where its back legs should have been.
âTell 'em serious,' Mr Goodall said, giving Mr MacFarlane his message for HQ. âFour dwellings, one fire.' Sniffing the air. âGas main's fractured.'
âAye!' Mr MacFarlane said and ran off to collect his bike.
The chief warden checked his list. Then he took off his helmet and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. The rescue team were climbing over the debris towards him and there was an old man with a spade in his hand approaching from the other end of the street.
âWhere d'yer want me ter start, Mr Goodall?' he called.
âNumber six,' Mr Goodall said. âPut that cat out of its misery will yer.'
âPoor little beggar,' the old man said. And he crushed its skull neatly with one heavy blow.
The woman in the road was being covered with a sheet.
âThere's a Morrison shelter under this lot,' the warden said, walking carefully into the debris that had been number six. âWe'll start here.'
No, there was no time for compassion, barely time for thought. Just a job to do. But as the rescue team began to call instructions to one another, his submerged anger was thinking as it always did at such times, âWhat did we ever do to deserve this?'
4th August 1921
Peggy Furnivall was so happy when she woke up that morning she felt as though she was going to burst out of her skin.
It was the beginning of August and the beginning of the long school holidays, and the weather was so lovely you could play out every single day. But best of all â oh much the best of all â today was her seventh birthday, and seventh birthdays were special in the Furnivall family because they lived in the Casemates in the Tower of London and Dad was a Yeoman Warder, so when you were seven you were allowed to stay up late to see the Ceremony of the Keys. Imagine that! The Ceremony of the Keys. She was so excited she could have burst out singing.
She didn't of course. She didn't make a sound, for fear of waking her sisters. Big sister Joan, who shared her bed, was twelve and very nearly grown up, and although she was usually all right about most things, if you woke her before she was ready she could get a bit shirty. If you woke Baby it was worse, because she got straight out of her bed and went and told tales to Mum, and when that happened Mum got ever so shirty, and groused about it for ages afterwards. So birthday or not, Peggy got up quietly like the sensible child she was, easing herself from under the covers so as not to disturb Joan and tiptoeing about so as not to wake Baby, who was fast asleep in her truckle bed
with her mouth open and most of her curl papers coming undone.
She washed ever so quietly too, pouring the water from the ewer to the basin over her fingers so as not to splash, and smoothing the soap from her face with a damp flannel so as not to make a sound. It was more difficult to empty the basin quietly into the bucket when she'd finished, but by that time Joan and Baby were beginning to stir, and Dad had gone clumping down the stairs making ever such a noise coughing to âclear his pipes', so she didn't have to be quite so careful. She got dressed in her blue cotton frock, put on a nice clean pinafore, tied her hair back with her new blue ribbon and went downstairs to the kitchen to start her special day.
Dad was in his uniform trousers and his shirt-sleeves, sitting in his chair beside the stove, polishing his boots, and Mum was standing beside him busy with the frying pan, cooking bacon and tomatoes and thick slices of fried bread, and wafting trails of appetizing steam into the warm air of the room.