London Pride (46 page)

‘Another two months, that's what I give it,' he was saying. ‘Two months an' it'll be all patched up an' we can get back ter normal.'

‘Get away with you,' John Cooper said. ‘You mean to tell me we'd stand by an' let Hitler run all over Europe?'

‘Jack next door's got his call-up papers,' Gideon said. ‘That don't look like the end of it to me.'

‘We don't know the half of what's going on behind the scenes,' Cyril Brown persisted. ‘There's peace plans all over the shop. The Pope's working on it, an' the Queen of Holland and the King a' the Belgians, an' that feller Roosevelt. Oh no! We'll patch it up. I'd lay money. We don't want ter fight the Germans. We got too much in common.'

‘Like an air force and an army,' Mr Allnutt said wryly. ‘You do talk out the back a' your neck sometimes, Cyril.'

‘Two months,' Cyril said, nodding wisely. ‘You mark my words. April May it'll all be over. You'll see headlines in the paper by May.'

Sure enough there were headlines in the paper. On 10 May the
Evening Standard
declared, ‘Nazis invade Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg: many airports bombed. Allies answer call for aid. RAF planes are in action.'

The phoney war was over and the fighting was about to begin.

The Stuka screamed towards them out of an immaculate blue sky, the shrill note of its engine rising higher and higher as it dived. At the first sound of its approach people on the crowded road had begun to scatter, now they were running pell-mell, scrambling into ditches, falling in panic, their faces distorted with fear, shouting orders, yelling and screaming, here a man pushing his children before him with both hands, there a woman with a baby clutched to her breast, old men stumbling bleary-eyed, dogs barking frantically, soldiers taking cover behind their carriers, families crouched together along the flanks of deserted cars, as the killer plane bore down upon them, its guns spitting fire.

Sid Owen had his rifle at the ready, like the rest of his platoon, but he had to concentrate to hold it steady because fear was making him shake. The plane was nearly overhead. They could see its blunt nose cone, the black crosses on those bent wings, the pilot grinning behind the glass cover of his cockpit, as his guns cut a red swathe through the mass of bodies on the road below him.

‘Fire!' the sergeant yelled into the uproar. But the order was unnecessary. Most of his men were already blazing away, aiming in sheer fury at this huge obscene untouchable target.

Two bombs were falling, twisting in the air as if they were bouncing.

‘Take cover!' the sergeant's voice yelled. But there
wasn't any cover. Only the trailer and the dust of the road. Sid just had time to fling himself to the ground and cover his head with his hands before the first bomb exploded, lifting the earth under his chest and filling his mouth with dust. Then the second, further away, as grit and debris fell in a stinging shower, punching his shoulders, spattering the road, crunching against the roof of a nearby car.

‘Take cover!' Sid said bitterly to the boy lying beside him.

The boy was weeping. ‘Fucking war!' he said. ‘Fucking Stukas! Fucking Frenchies.'

‘You all right, Tommy?'

‘Fucking war,' Tommy wept. But he didn't seem to be bleeding.

Sid got to his feet, surprised by how stiff and tired he felt all of a sudden. The road was full of wreckage and bodies. And it was horribly quiet. Even the dogs weren't barking.

He lit himself a fag and offered one to Tommy. ‘There y'are, Tommy,' he said, “ave a drag.'

‘Ta, mate,' Tommy said, taking the cigarette gratefully, his fingers trembling. He was doing his best to recover although his eyes were bloodshot and swimming with unshed tears. ‘Fucking 'ell, Sid! That was close. I thought I was a goner that time.'

People were moving again, crawling out of the ditches, running to the injured, weeping with grief and shock. There was blood everywhere, pumping out of wounds, seeping into dark pools under fallen bodies, even splashed along the side of their carrier. And the keening of grief was as terrible as the scream of the Stuka. A woman rocked the blood-red body of her baby in her arms, two small children sat beside the dead body of their father, huge-eyed and silent, too stunned to speak, an old man wandered aimlessly among the wreckage picking up shoes, dogs sniffed the corpses, one of the carriers was on fire belching black smoke, a soldier was being sick, leaning against the trunk of a pollarded tree, his face greeny-grey above blood-stained khaki.

‘Let's be havin' yer,' the sergeant said, appearing from behind the carrier. ‘Render assistance, you two.'

‘Where d'yer want us ter start?' Sid asked. How could you render assistance after a massacre?

There was an old woman struggling to right a cart that had been tossed onto its side in the middle of the road.

‘Start with her,' the sergeant said. ‘We can't none of us move till that cart's out the way.'

There was a medical orderly attending to the soldier and some other people trying to staunch a woman's head wounds with her shawl. Two lads were carrying the dead to the side of the road.

Tommy and Sid walked through the scattered bags and bundles to the cart. ‘Leave it to us, gran,' Sid said to the woman. And she stood aside for them, meekly obedient.

‘You ask me,' Tommy said as they heaved the cart onto its wheels, ‘the Dutch had the best idea. Give in. Let the buggers take what they want.'

‘They might want London,' Sid said.

‘They could have it, as far as I'm concerned.'

‘You ain't got kids, Sunshine,' Sid said. ‘It's different when you got kids.'

Ever since he'd arrived in France he'd known the truth of that, in a vague unspoken sort of way. Now, standing here in the bloody aftermath of this attack, the knowledge was certainty. Jerry was cruel and ruthless, and if there was anything he could do to stop them crossing the Channel and attacking Joan and his kids he'd do it. What a bloody good job he'd signed the kids up for evacuation. They were well out of it in the country. ‘It's different when you got kids.'

‘Let's get moving,' the sergeant said.

‘What about
them
, Sarge,' Tommy said, looking at the two dusty bodies by the side of the road.

‘Never mind them,' the sergeant said. ‘Can't do nothing for them, can yer? Right then. Let's be 'aving yer.'

The section began to climb aboard the carrier, and while he waited his turn Sid fished in his pocket for another fag. As he withdrew the packet it dislodged the letter he'd been writing to Joan that morning. Was it really only that morning? It seemed a lifetime.

The crumpled paper drifted down into the dust. ‘BEF
France.' he'd written. ‘My dearest Joan. Quiet today. Lovely weather.'

That's a laugh, he thought, reading the words as he lit his fag. No point in picking the letter up. It was out of date now. He'd write another when he got the time. If he ever got the time. As he climbed into the driver's seat he could hear heavy gunfire to the south and the occasional rattle of machine-gun fire.

‘Fuckin' war,' young Tommy growled, climbing in behind him.

‘Shut yer face, Tommy,' one of the other men said affably. ‘Look on the bright side. Least we ain't bein' bombed for the moment.'

‘Bright side!' Tommy growled again. ‘Retreatin'?'

‘Only tem'pry, lad,' the sergeant corrected. ‘Only tem'pry. Strategic retreat. You keep yer eyes skinned fer Stukas.'

Until that morning they'd been with the rest of 131 Brigade defending the line marked by the River Escaut, part of an army, entrenched behind field-guns with their mess-tents, supplies, petrol and ammunition close at hand, apprehensive because they knew they would soon be in a scrap but feeling vaguely confident that they would win it when it came. The arrival of the German panzers was such a shock they still hadn't recovered from it, all those tanks rolling across the fields in such numbers and at such speed. They'd put up a fight, followed orders, fired endlessly, seemingly in every direction but the right one, but the tanks kept coming and everything was murderously confused. By the time they were given the order to retreat it seemed inevitable.

Since then they'd been travelling, and every single road they'd taken was more crowded than any thoroughfare they'd ever seen, choked with people and grinding with vehicles of every description, many of them in one another's way, none moving in any kind of order, most drivers keeping a fearful watch on the sky above their heads. The muddle had been loud, frantic, chaotic and continual. There were refugees everywhere, streaming along every road, in tatty processions, carrying every kind of luggage, from sacks to attaché cases, whole towns on the move, women carrying their babies in shawls, men with
small children on their backs, kids pushing prams, old women limping along in their dusty black with sticks to support them, families on overloaded carts hauled by straining farm horses, and once, trudging among them, heading in the opposite direction, several straggling columns of French infantrymen, humpbacked under their heavy kit.

The platoon was moving again. Sid began to inch the carrier forward, sounding his horn and shouting, but no one got out of his way, and after struggling for about a hundred yards they were stopped by a broken-down car which had skewed sideways, and together with the crowd that had gathered to get it started again, was completely blocking the road. There was a dispatch rider hurtling through the dust towards them on his motorcycle and he had to stop too. So the sergeant jumped out of the carrier and walked across to see if he knew what was going on.

He had orders for the armoured division at Arras.

‘What's happening?' the sergeant asked.

‘Search me, mate. There's a rumour the Frenchies have folded up an' gone home.'

‘What Frenchies?'

‘Ninth army.'

‘Bloody hell fire!' the sergeant said. ‘On the Meuse?'

‘Yup.'

‘What all of 'em?'

‘So they say.'

‘Bloody hell fire!' the sergeant said again.

The car began to move, swung round until it was facing the right direction, and juddered off leaving a stink of petrol behind it. The dispatch rider purred away at once, driving stylishly through the debris on the road.

‘Now what, Sarge?' Sid asked.

‘Follow-me-leader,' the sergeant suggested. ‘If we still got any leaders.'

‘We got old Churchill now, don't forget,' Sid said. Winston Churchill had taken over as Prime Minister on the day after the German invasion of the Low Countries. And a bloody good job too.

‘Where
are
we, Sarge?' Tommy said.

‘How do I know?' the sergeant joked bitterly. ‘Ask Hitler.'

‘I wish we knew where Daddy is,' Yvonne said to her mother at breakfast-time. She'd examined his last letter carefully several times, because she could read the envelope now, although she'd given up trying to decipher the handwriting on the paper. ‘When do you think you'll have another letter, Mum?'

‘He's in France,' Joan told her, ignoring the question about the letter because she couldn't answer it. She hadn't heard a word from him since he'd written on 10 May, which was the day the Germans invaded Holland and all this started, and ten days ago. He could be anywhere, fighting, injured, even killed. ‘He's fighting the Germans,' she said with more authority than she felt. ‘Hold still while I brush your hair. How d'you manage to get such tangles in it?'

‘When's he coming home?' Norman asked, looking up from his last slice of bread and jam. That was far more important than letters. Dad had said they wasn't to be in London. He'd be ever so cross if he came home and found them here, and then what would happen?

‘Not yet awhile, I don't suppose,' Joan said, glancing at the anxious lines wrinkling the child's forehead and feeling she could give him that much consolation at least. ‘They got a bit a' fighting to do yet.' But it was hard to imagine anyone fighting in this beautiful weather. The little patch of sky she could see through her kitchen window was a gorgeous blue and the sunlight was dappling the entire room with discs of pale bright colour, on the checks of the tablecloth, the plates on the dresser, Norman's grey shirt, his dark hair, gilding his cheek bones and the line of his jaw, touching Yvonne's hair with gold. Oh what a good job she'd got them back home. They were so much better at home. He hardly wet the bed at all now.

‘Tomorrow?' Norman asked. ‘Will he come home tomorrow?'

‘No.'

‘Next week?'

‘Not for months and months,' Joan said. ‘Not till the cold weather comes.' From what the papers and wireless
said it didn't look as though the British army was doing very well. They'd retreated twice now, as far as she could make out, and the Germans always seemed to be advancing.

‘When's that?' Norman persisted.

‘Look at the state a' your neck,' Joan said. ‘I thought I told you to wash behind your ears. Now don't forget Aunty Baby's coming to collect you at four o'clock and take you back to Gran's. Be good kids.'

‘Will Uncle Jim be there?' Yvonne wanted to know. She liked Uncle Jim. He told them funny stories about the things that happened on his RAF camp, and all in his funny way of talking, about ‘kites being pranged' and people being ‘clueless' and ‘clots'. It was smashing.

‘No. You know he won't,' Joan said. ‘He went back ages ago. Where's your coat? You'll need that come this evening.'

Mum had been very good about having the kids after school and giving them tea and everything. It was a real gift when food was rationed and in short supply. And the best of it was that she didn't seem to mind how long they stayed.

‘I like having them,' she said that evening when Joan arrived in Paradise Row late and breathless and apologetic. ‘They can stay as long as they like. They've been helping me get the tea.'