London Pride (72 page)

‘Number two's still standing,' Mr MacFarlane said. ‘We're pretty sure your sister and Joan went off to work before it happened. We saw the wee lad in the flats. He was – eh – looking oot the windy just beforehand. We've sent a message to the factory just tae be sure.'

But Peggy, Jim grieved. Where was Peggy? Oh God don't let her be dead. Hurry up with that bloody chimney he urged the demolition team, for Christ's sake. Don't just stand there.

Someone was pushing open the door to number eight and an odd grey figure was staggering into the road, calling as she came, ‘I'm all right. I'm perfectly all right.' Mrs Roderick, covered in dust from head to foot, but still magnificently upright in her supporting corset. ‘I'm all right.'

A nurse sped across the rubble to wrap her in a blanket and Mr MacFarlane headed towards her too. ‘You're fine,' he encouraged. ‘You're right fine. Could you bear to answer a few wee questions?'

‘Yes, yes,' Mrs Roderick said, standing in her blanket like a dusty squaw. ‘I told you. I'm perfectly all right. Hello, Jim.'

‘Did Mr Brown go off to work this morn?'

‘Six o'clock,' Mrs Roderick said. ‘Regular as clockwork. Nonnie popped out to the shops just before.' And then without any warning her face crumpled into tears and she began to howl.

‘Go with the nurse,' Mr MacFarlane said, patting her shoulder. ‘You'll be fine with the nurse.'

‘I'm perfectly all right,' Mrs Roderick howled as she was led to the ambulance. ‘Perfectly all right. I ought to stay and help. People have been bombed.'

Mr MacFarlane was writing in his notebook. Actually standing in the rubble, writing, as though he was bookkeeping or something. The sight of such mundane clerical activity in such a terrible setting drove Jim to fury again. ‘Can't that wait?' he said. ‘Where's the bloody rescue teams? I thought they were supposed to be the first in action.'

Mr Mac put his book away. ‘They're working in the shop,' he said. ‘There were people in the …'

But Jim was already half-way down the road. The shop, of course. She could have popped down to the shop. That's where she'll be. And the shop was still standing, barely damaged. There was even some glass left in the windows.

They were carrying a stretcher out with the first casualty as he reached the door. It was Mr Grunewald, pale and bandaged, with his wife grimed and blood-stained but walking beside him holding his hand.

‘How many?' Jim asked the stretcher bearer.

‘Five,' the man said, not varying his pace or looking back.

‘Any deaths?'

‘No.'

The third victim was carried out. A woman he'd never seen before. Then a man walking unsteadily and holding a blood-soaked pad to his forehead. Five. Five. Who's the fifth?

It was Mrs Geary, hobbling and cross, without her glasses, and with a lump as big as a hen's egg rising on her forehead. ‘Who's that?' she said peering at him as he approached.

A nurse followed her out of the shop. ‘Let's just get you
to the ambulance, dear,' she said.

‘Bugger off,' the old lady growled. ‘I ain't going in no ambulance and that's flat. The bugger's bombed my house. You just get me a chair. That's all I want. My legs are giving me gyp.'

There was a line of chairs standing outside the Earl Grey.

‘Let her sit down,' Jim said to the nurse. ‘She's a stubborn old thing. It won't hurt her to wait a little, will it?'

‘She ought to be checked over,' the nurse dithered. ‘But I suppose it could wait. She's not as bad as some of the others.'

‘I ain't deaf neither,' Mrs Geary said. ‘There's three gels in my house I'd have you know, young woman. You don't move me till I know what's happened to them. And that's flat. You got a blanket? I'm perishing cold.'

There was a sighing sound in the air above them. ‘Steady!' a voice called. ‘Easy as she goes. ‘Nother inch, Charlie. Easy! Easy!' And the broken chimney stack roared into rubble that filled the backyards.

‘Now we shall get them out,' Jim said to Mrs Geary as he ran to join the rescue. ‘Joan's all right.'

The rescue teams were quick and very well-organized. Within seconds they had two rescues going at once, one above the ruins of number six, looking for Peggy and Baby, and the other, with less hope, where number four had been, searching for the Allnutts and Mr Cooper. It was laborious work, shifting the rubble and handing it back piece by piece into the street along a willing human chain, but it was done with impressive speed. And naturally Jim was one of the first in the chain, relieved to be taking action at last. Anything rather than that awful standing about, waiting.

As he worked the church clock struck the hour. Could it really be only nine o'clock? It felt much later. Then he was aware that Leslie was working beside him, neat and dapper as ever even with his hands covered in brick dust.

‘It's Peggy, isn't it?' the old man said. ‘We heard it, of course, and then one of our customers told us, so we came straight back. A dreadful business.'

‘Is Ernest here too?' Jim panted, stopping for a second
to wipe the sweat out of his eyes.

‘Two down,' Leslie said. And sure enough there he was, working with the best, his long white hair stained red with dust. ‘Don't worry,' Leslie said. ‘They're ever so good. They'll get her out.'

But will she still be alive, Jim thought, under the weight of all this?

‘Hush!' someone called. And they all stood quite still and looked up hopefully. One of the rescuers was lying face down on the rubble listening.

The silence lasted for a very long time and Jim was quite shocked to hear the trams rattling in the High Street. It was dreadful to think that life was going on just a few yards away as though nothing was the matter.

‘Over here,' Mr Goodall called into the hush. ‘Over here.'

Jim followed the others, breathless with hope. But it wasn't Peggy. It was John Cooper's wheelchair, squashed and ominously bloodstained.

‘Oh God!' Leslie said at his shoulder. ‘Poor man.'

Mr Goodall was following the blood trail through the wreckage, as the rescuers cleared the way. None of them really had much hope of finding their old friend alive, but even so the sight of his body, crushed and bloodied among the bricks, was an appalling shock.

‘He'll not have known much about it,' Ernest said, ‘if that's any consolation.' But it wasn't. It didn't even numb the pain.

‘Our first death,' Leslie said sadly.

But Mr Goodall corrected him. ‘Fifth,' he said. ‘They were all killed in the woodyard, and Mrs Brown was the first one we found when we came in. She was on her way home from the shop. We found her basket, poor woman.'

‘Then pray God it's the last,' Ernest said.

‘Amen to that,' Jim said grimly, thinking of Peggy.

‘If Mr Cooper is …' Leslie said delicately, trying to prepare them all for worse to come, ‘I doubt if we shall see the Allnutts again.'

Jim straightened his back and looked away from the group round Mr Cooper's body, struggling not to weep. Dear old Cooper, who'd been such a help to him down in
the library, who'd never made a fuss about anything, stuck in that awful wheelchair, playing the piano and watching them all dance. And there was Mr Allnutt walking up the road, large as life, with his work-box in his hand.

At first Jim thought he was seeing things, that it was shock playing tricks on him, but then Ernest looked up and saw him too, and then all three of them were tumbling down the rubble to grab him by the hand. ‘Mr Allnutt! You're alive. Thank God.'

‘Just popped round the corner to fix some shelves for Mrs Jones,' Mr Allnutt said. ‘It threw us about a bit I can tell you. What a bit a' luck the wife's away.'

‘Away?' Ernest asked.

‘Gone down to Slough to see young Bertie. Went seven o'clock. What a bit a' luck.'

They led him down the road to sit beside Mrs Geary. Best not to tell him about John Cooper. Not yet anyway. Let him get over the shock a bit first.

‘Not much left is there, mate?' Mrs Geary said cheerfully. ‘They got the girls out yet?'

But that horror was still to come. Ten minutes later the rescue team came upon a woman's arm, stiff and white and without any sign of life.

‘I wouldn't go up there yet,' Leslie advised. ‘Not just yet.' But Jim was already leaping over the rubble.

There was no way of knowing whose arm it was. Not Peggy's. Please don't let it be Peggy's. But if it wasn't Peggy's it would have to be somebody else's. And it sickened him to think that he was wishing somebody else dead in order to keep her alive. But even so, please don't let it be Peggy's.

There was somebody calling him from the street. Lily, was it? Lily and Joan standing together still in their aprons and headscarves, their upturned faces pale and anxious. ‘Have they found someone?'

‘Yes,' he called back. ‘Don't come up.'

They were more obedient than he'd been, and stood where they were, watching and waiting.

‘You'll tell us, Jim?'

‘Yes, yes.' He was irritable with anxiety and fear. They
were being so slow, uncovering the body so gently. Please don't let it be her.

It was Baby, her neck broken, her blonde hair bright among the dust, and the remains of the peroxide bottle still clutched in her hand.

Jim climbed down to tell Joan and Lily. Oddly none of them wept. They stood together, clinging to one another as though they were drowning, but they didn't weep. It was as if the horror had anaesthetized them.

‘Oh poor Baby!' Lily said over and over again.

And Joan said, ‘Now it's only Peggy.'

‘Yes,' he said, his heart leaden in his chest.

‘We'll help,' Lily said. ‘Tell us what we've got to do.'

Leslie and Ernest were standing side by side in the rubble. Ernest was trying to mop the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that was now more brick dust than cloth.

‘We ought to tell Mrs Geary,' Leslie said, looking down to where the old lady was still sitting, wrapped in her blanket, waiting.

‘We're standing on our house,' Ernest said sadly, looking at the piles of brick and debris under his feet. ‘There's a bit of your jardinière over there. Oh God, that poor kid, to die so young.'

‘I'll tell her,' Leslie decided. ‘You have a breather.' And he climbed down the rubble, neat and deft as a cat.

But when he reached the wall of the Earl Grey and Mrs Geary was peering myopically towards him he couldn't think what to say. Her face looked peculiarly naked without her glasses, naked and vulnerable and lost.

‘Leslie, is it?' she said.

‘Yes.'

‘You've found someone.'

‘Yes, I'm afraid so. It's Baby.'

‘Dead?' the old lady said flatly.

‘Yes.'

‘That bleedin' Hitler,' she said fiercely. ‘He ought ter be hung drawn and quartered for this.'

‘Quite right,' Mr Allnutt said, patting her hand. ‘So he should. An' that's what we'll do to him, an' all, once we've caught the bugger.'

Leslie stood before them uncomfortably, wondering whether he ought to tell Mr Allnutt about Mr Cooper now, but before he could come to any decision, there was a noise behind him and turning he saw that Ernest was scrambling over the wreckage towards them. He had a dark object held against his chest and as he got nearer Leslie and Mr Allnutt could see that it was the parrot's cage, squashed and dented and with a dust-covered bundle of feathers lying at the bottom of it like a discarded mop.

‘What's that?' Mrs Geary said, as he handed it to her, and then, as she managed to focus her eyes, ‘Oh Gawd! It's my poor old Polly. It's my poor bird. That bleedin' Hitler's killed my Polly.'

And the bundle of feathers stirred, turned its head and opened one round yellow eye to glare at her balefully.

‘Star-news-standard,' it croaked. ‘Aark!'

‘Well would you believe it!' Mrs Geary said in wonder and relief. ‘You good old boy. See that, Mr Allnutt? He's lived through it. He ain't dead after all. There you are you see, you can survive. There's hope for our Peggy. You go right on back you two,' she said to Leslie and Ernest, ‘and you get her out this very minute. Oh, what a good old boy you are, Polly!'

‘We'll do what we can,' Ernest assured her, but he spoke without hope. When they found the poor girl she would be – well – like Baby. How could it be otherwise in such destruction?

Mr MacFarlane was calling from the wreckage. He was almost hidden by a pile of bricks but his face was pink with excitement. ‘We've found the shelter,' he said. ‘Over here.'

There was a rush towards him as Leslie and Ernest and Mr Allnutt ran from the Earl Grey and Jim and Joan and Lily climbed up from the street. They could see a pit in the rubble and down at the bottom of it was the top of the Morrison shelter. Was there hope? Was it possible?

‘Quiet everybody!' Mr Goodall said as they crashed towards him. And when he'd got silence, ‘You call her, Jim.'

And Jim called, leaning over into the little crater so as to
put his face as close to the roof of the shelter as he could. ‘Peggy! Peggy! Are you there? Peggy!'

But there was no answer. Not a sound.

‘Try again,' Mr Goodall said.

‘Peggy! Peg! Say something! Peg!' He was groaning with the agony of no reply. ‘Peggy, please!'

Joan was beside him, leaning into the pit. ‘Someone get me a stick,' she said. ‘Perhaps she's too weak to call. Come on, quick, some of yer. A stick, a pole, something to bang with.'

She was handed a piece of guttering. ‘Now,' she said. ‘Keep quiet.'

And she leant into the pit and knocked on the roof of the shelter, once, twice, three times, the way they'd signalled to one another through the bedroom walls all those years ago in Tillingbourne.