at her again and, as the train slowed down, leaned out to
open the door. ‘I hope you find your kiddy OK,’ he said,
‘and good luck. Don’t get bombed out again, will you!’
Polly laughed and stepped down on to the platform. ‘I’ll
try not to. Goodbye, and thank you for the things you’ve
said. It’s nice to be appreciated.’
‘Oh, you are, love,’ he said, and his eyes met hers again.
‘You don’t have to worry about that. You really are.’
The train set off again with a loud snort from the engine,
and Polly stood on the platform waving as it steamed off
along the track. It rounded a bend and disappeared from
sight and she let her arm drop with a sigh. A nice man, she
thought. The sort of man you could feel comfortable with.
A pity she would never see him again.
All the same, he’d more than made up for the old porter’s
cantankerousness, and the station clock told her that she had
an hour and a half before the Portsmouth train was due.
Sylvie’s billet was in a farmhouse only ten minutes’ walk
away. She would be just coming back from school now, and
certain to be there. With a leap of excitement in her heart,
Polly turned to walk briskly out of the station, and forgot
about the man in the fawn greatcoat, with the warm dark
eyes and the corrugated forehead.
‘So I had over an hour with her,’ Polly told the family later
when she finally arrived back at April Grove. ‘It was lovely
- she was so excited to see me. And the people she’s billeted
with, Mr and Mrs Sutton, they couldn’t be nicer. They’ve
got two other evacuees there too, a brother and sister; the
boy’s Sylvie’s age and the girl’s a bit older. Jenny and Brian, they’re called. They were all playing Ludo when I got
there.’
‘I didn’t know there were other children there,’ Cissie
said. ‘Sylvie’s never mentioned them in her letters.’
‘Well, you know Sylvie’s letters, they’re not much more
than Dear Mummy, I hope you’re well, I’m well, I hope
Granny’s well…’ Polly said, laughing. ‘After all, she can’t write all that much. But these two haven’t been there long.
They were sent out after the Blitz, apparently, like Stella
and Muriel,’
‘And d’you think they’ll settle in all right?’ Judy asked.
She’d spent most of the day trying to sort out other hasty
evacuations. ‘We’ve had complaints from a few people.
Some of the parents think their children aren’t being looked
after properly and some of the country hosts say the
children are so badly behaved they can’t put up with them.
Mostly ones from Rudmore and areas like that,’ she added.
‘Everyone knows what a slum Rudmore is,’ Alice
remarked. ‘Though they’re the salt of the earth just the
same. And I dare say there’s a few from Old Portsmouth
too, with backsides hanging out of their trousers and no
shoes. Look at the Hodges family who came here just before
the war started. They lived in a pub in Old Portsmouth, so
Tommy Vickers told me, and didn’t have a penny to bless themselves with. Mr Hodges works down the Camber dock,
steady enough work but you know what the pay’s like. And
that boy of theirs, the older one - Gordon - you could see
from the start he’d be a troublemaker. Got mixed up
straight away with Micky Baxter, and now he’s in an
approved school for pinching stuff from an antique shop.
You remember that, don’t you? Caused a real rumpus in
April Grove.’
‘Don’t understand why they didn’t send Micky away too,’
Dick said. ‘He was in it just as much as the older one.
Wasn’t there a younger boy, too?’
Alice nodded. ‘Sammy. He’s not a bad little chap, helped
his mum a lot before she died. Mr Hodges couldn’t manage
at all after that, left the kiddy on his own for two or three
days at a time. If it hadn’t been for Freda Vickers giving him
his dinners I don’t know what would have happened.
Anyway, Tommy went down the billeting offices in the end
and they took Sammy out to Bridge End, where the other
youngsters went.’
‘It looks a nice village,’ Polly said. ‘The vicar’s a real
gentleman, a bit odd but you expect that of a vicar, don’t
you, and his housekeeper Mrs Mudge is a proper motherly
soul. Stella and Muriel’ll be all right there.’
They were just finishing up the tea left in the pot when
the familiar wail of the siren rose in the air. It had sounded
almost every night since the Blitz, but the raids hadn’t been
as bad as on that terrible night. All the same, you couldn’t
take chances and there was a hasty gathering up of coats,
blankets and the tin box that contained all the important
household papers — insurances, birth certificates and so on and within five minutes they were all in the Anderson
shelter at the bottom of the garden, huddling on the bunks
Dick and Terry had fitted there. Dick lit the hurricane lamp
and they all looked at each other and shrugged.
‘Might as well have a game of cards,’ Cissie said, but Polly shook her head.
‘I’m going down to the Emergency Centre. I said I would,
if there was a raid. What about you, Judy?’
Judy nodded. Like Polly, she was still wearing her WVS
uniform. ‘You’ll be all right here, won’t you, Mum? You’ve
got Dad and Gran with you.’
‘I’m not worried about us,’ Cissie said anxiously. ‘It’s
you, going through the streets in the blackout, in the middle
of a raid. Surely they can’t expect you to do that?’
‘Someone’s got to, Mum,’ Judy said. ‘We were glad
enough of the Centre when we got bombed out. Anyway, if
we go quickly we’ll be there before the planes come - and
they might not even be coming here, this time.’
There had been alarms almost every night since the big
raid, and a few bombs dropped on the city and its outskirts,
but there had never been as much damage again, and
nobody had been hurt. More often, the planes went over on
their way to London or some other city. You still had to take
shelter, just in case, but Portsmouth people were beginning
to hope they’d had their share.
‘I feel sorry, leaving Cissie like that,’ Polly remarked as
they groped their way through the pitch-black streets. ‘She’s
always been a bit nervous, but we’ve got to do our bit.’ She
grabbed Judy’s arm as they heard the first drone of enemy
aircraft approaching. ‘Oh Lord - here they come!’
They flattened themselves against a wall, staring up at the
sky. It was criss-crossed with the long swords of the
searchlights, and now and then the dark shape of a plane,
high above, was caught in the shining white beam.
Immediately, a rattle of ack-ack fire would break out from
one or more of the gun emplacements around the city — on
Southsea Common, or the slopes of Portsdown Hill - and
once the two women saw a burst of orange as a plane was
hit, and the streak of flame like a ribbon as it fell to earth.
‘Suppose it fell on buildings?’ Judy whispered, but she
knew that the gun crews couldn’t think of that. It was too important to destroy the plane and its deadly cargo, for if it
were allowed to go on its way, many more buildings might
be demolished and people killed.
‘Come on,’ Polly murmured, giving her arm a little tug.
‘We’re not far away from the Centre now. Let’s get there as
quickly as we can.’
The Centre was an old church, and its crypt was being
used as a shelter. Polly and Judy reached it safely and
scrambled down the steps. The basement was already
crowded with people, and there were a few hurricane lamps
set about, lighting their faces eerily. At the far end someone
had set up a long trestle table, and a WVS volunteer was
busy with a large steaming urn.
‘You can spread this bread with margarine and fish paste,’
she directed the two newcomers. ‘We’re not expecting too
much trouble tonight, but you never know. Here, aren’t you
Alice Thomas’s girls? You know me — Mrs Chapman, from
the bottom of October Street.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Polly started to slice the bread. ‘The
house with the turret. How’s your Olive now?’
‘Oh, not so bad, considering. She’s still cut up about
losing the baby, of course, but she’s not letting it get her
down. Gone back to work at Derek’s dad’s place, just like
before.’
They worked busily, making cocoa and sandwiches. A lot
of the people there had no shelters - in some streets,
because of the way the water mains and sewers were laid, it
was impossible to dig the hole needed for an Anderson, so
those who lived there had to go to street shelters or Centres
like this. Mostly, they brought their own food and drink
with them, but there had to be plenty on tap for anyone who
was bombed out, or brought in as casualties. There were
First-Aid workers too, and ARP wardens popping in and
out to bring news, glad of a hot drink and a ‘wad’, so one
too
way and another they were kept busy enough even if there
were no bombs.
Peggy Shaw, who lived next door to Jess Budd, joined
them and began talking about her daughter Gladys, who
drove an ambulance. ‘Well, a bread-van, to be honest,
converted. She’s on standby all the time in air raids. And it’s not just driving, neither. She got a kiddy out of a ruined
cellar in the Blitz, saved her life, she did. Dug some poor
boy out of a pile of rubble, took I don’t know how many to
hospital, and then came home for a wash, changed her
clothes and went straight off to work.’
Peggy shook her head. ‘I had to hand it to her, I did
really.’
‘But you must have been worried to death,’ Annie said
‘knowing she was out in all that bombing.’
Peggy laughed. ‘Worried? I was out there with her! And I
can tell you this, there was no time for worrying no more
than you had when you were sorting out all the people who
got bombed out.’ She picked up a fresh loaf and held it
against her chest as she sliced it. ‘Anyway, there’s no use
worrying, is there? If a bomb’s got your name on it, it’ll find you, wherever you are. That’s what I think. Doesn’t matter
whether you’re down the air-raid shelter or standing on top
of the Guildhall like Tommy Vickers was that night. If it’s
got your name on it, it’ll find you.’
Polly glanced up as a plane snarled overhead. There had
been several explosions already, and the roar of aircraft had
been increasing. The rattle of ack-ack fire came from
Portsdown Hill. ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but it
seems to me it’s getting worse.’
They all lifted their heads and listened for a moment.
There were obviously a lot of planes overhead, their nasal
snarl unmistakable as German craft. At that moment, a
tremendous explosion rocked the hall, and Judy put out a
hand involuntarily to Polly’s arm. They looked at each
other.
‘You’re right,’ Annie Chapman said grimly. ‘This is
going to be a bad one. It’ll be more than cocoa and hot soup
we’ll be needing before it’s over. Here come the first ones
now, look.’
People had begun to straggle into the hall. There were
already plenty who had come in for shelter when the siren
had first sounded, but these were men and women, and
children too, who looked frightened and bewildered. Some
were covered with dust and others were injured, limping or
holding their arms, or with blood running down their faces
and staining their clothes. Polly, who had just finished a
First-Aid course, went over at once to take charge.
. ‘She’s as good as my Gladys,’ Peggy said, watching her.
‘Hey-up, what’s happening now?’
The door burst open and one of the Rover Scouts, the
older members of the Boy Scouts who ran messages between
the Centres, came panting in.
‘They want someone to go and open an Incident Centre
in Portsea,’ he told them. ‘It’s bad down there - any amount
of places bombed. People all over the place, don’t know
what to do. A copper sent me on my bike to fetch someone
to take charge.’ He looked from Annie to Judy. ‘Come on!’
‘All right, young man, no need to get so aeriated,’ Annie
said severely. She started to take off her apron. ‘I’d better go.’
‘No, I will. I can run faster.’ Judy was pulling on her coat
and hat as she spoke. She looked at the boy. ‘Or I’ll ride
your bike, and you can do the running.’
‘But it’s got a crossbar!’
‘So what? Think I can’t manage it? I’ve been riding my
brother’s bike since I was ten years old.’ She hustled him
out of the church and grabbed the handlebars of his bike,
hoisting up her skirt to cock her leg over the bar. ‘Which
way?’
Portsea was, as the Scout had said, badly bombed. The
streets presented the now familiar sight of ruined houses,
rubble-blocked roads, fire engines and ambulances - and pathetic knots of people huddled together in shocked
bewilderment, or wandering in a daze, calling out for family
members or friends.
‘Joanie! Where’s our Joanie?’