Bless ’Em All Page 6

  ‘So now you are qualified?’ said Rosa’s mother.

  ‘Well, I got me card.’

  The next step was for Rosa to meet Charlie’s parents.

  ‘They’re all right,’ Charlie said. ‘They won’t bother.’

  ‘You don’t want me to meet them. Is that it? Why?’

  ‘My dad goes out most nights.’

  ‘Well tell him to stay in. You don’t want to do this, do you?’

  Charlie groaned. ‘It’s such a fuss. My sister said it would be all right.’

  Rosa was stung. It was as everyone said. Men were only after one thing.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think we’d better forget it. You don’t really want to marry me. You just want –’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do. I do. But … I didn’t think it’d be so cut and dried.’

  They went into a big pub with a big bar. It was rowdy and yet they were isolated in their gloom. Suddenly people started singing and dancing the hokey-cokey, swinging along in lines, singing as though their lives depended on it. Life was to be grabbed for the moment. There was the ever-present threat of invasion, of bombing, of relatives being sent away and never seen again. The anxiety produced an excess of emotion, crying and laughing.

  ‘Come on,’ shouted a wild young woman with sparkling eyes. She grabbed Charlie’s hand and dragged him into the mob of dancers. Rosa watched him, out of his depth, as usual, with no idea how to deal with the situation, just carried along, without really knowing whether it was against his will or not. Was this the man she was going to marry? This wet week, this natural chump, this prime candidate for the awkward squad?

  She got up and extricated him from the row of dancers and dragged him into the street. He was dishevelled, with his shirt spilling out of his trousers, his hair lank with sweat.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You can fix it up with your sister. And that’s it. We’ll see what happens when you come back.’

  6

  ABOMB had dropped in Wimbledon. Why Wimbledon? Tim went out on his bike to see the wreckage. It was just an ordinary terrace-house in an ordinary street. Was it an accident? Did some German plane just unload it as surplus to requirements? There hadn’t been an air raid as such. Just one stray bomb, unloaded in this mindless way. Was it a warning of what was to come? Was it a threat to the civilian population? You thought the war was overseas, but here it was on your doorstep. Were the Germans trying to induce panic? There was nothing special about Wimbledon. There was Hawker’s aircraft factory at Kingston, which was near enough. Was it intended for there? Fortunately the bomb had fallen during the day when everybody was out, so no one had been injured. It was odd. Not quite real. There was a war on, of course, but you didn’t expect it to show up in Wimbledon.

  The bomb fell on a Friday. On Sunday afternoon the street was full of sightseers, who looked at the gap in the row of houses, shivered as though someone had walked over their grave and bought an ice cream from a man on a tricycle and ice box that proclaimed ‘Stop Me and Buy One’. The people who lived in the street stood outside their houses looking puzzled. Why them? Were the Germans trying to hit the railway? Not exactly a major route, just a suburban line.

  There were two policemen outside the house. There didn’t seem much point in guarding a house that wasn’t there any more. The sightseers looked glumly at the ruins, annoyed rather than frightened. It was a shock; uncivilized behaviour. It was, in the phrase, ‘not cricket’. Foreigners – all of them – hadn’t got the British sense of fair play. Well, if they thought they were going to undermine the British backbone with underhand bowling they had another think coming. There was quiet determination in the British. They weren’t going to be pushed around.

  Maurice read about the incident in the Telegraph. Jimmy couldn’t understand it at all. Bombs in London? These bloody Germans were getting above themselves. Somebody would soon put a stop to that. Mrs Bennet’s reaction was to turn all the electricity off. She still didn’t trust electricity. She swore she got a shock every time she touched a switch. Only Miss Tcherny seemed to regard the bomb as within the realm of everyday life. She knew that this was just an overture – not even that, just a tuning up. Bunty Melrose never even heard about it.

  Bunty was on one of her jaunts into the West End when she saw a newspaper placard that proclaimed in large letters ‘Bomb Falls on London’. It worried her. She wanted to ask someone about it. She didn’t feel so secure any longer in her silent world.

  She pulled down her dress. The car was getting near to the club where, bomb or not, she had to be pleasant and accommodating.

  She was sorry that Betty wasn’t with her. She only came the one time, but she had got off with a rich gentleman straight away and never needed to come again. Bunty didn’t want anything serious to happen. She wanted to stay with Tim. He wasn’t much, but she had got used to him. He didn’t ask for much, and although he knew what she was up to he was prepared to turn a blind eye as long as she didn’t rub his nose in it.

  Bunty knew that she only had one chance in life. She was born deaf and dumb, so she had learnt a vocabulary of eye contacts, shrugs and pouts that seemed to get her through. The gentlemen at the club often rattled on at her, and she just smiled and they were happy enough. They didn’t want her to talk, and most of them didn’t know that she couldn’t. She danced with them and they pressed themselves against her as though they were trying to make a waxwork impression. Then it was upstairs where they watched her strip off and then banged away on top of her, going red-faced, pop-eyed and breathless, gradually subsiding into a dead weight. Bunty reckoned that she earned her money. She was concerned occasionally that the gentleman may have overdone it. Sometimes they looked strained and white afterwards, and often had to have a large brandy to get them on their feet again.

  But after they’d performed they were so pleased. You’d have thought they’d done something grand and been honoured by the king. That they had climbed a mountain, won a race or the world heavyweight championship. They were all silly, like young boys boasting, squaring up and drawing attention to their puny muscles. They were invariably fat and pretty ugly, but they were so courteous, so worried that they might have hurt her, which was a joke, because most of them couldn’t summon up the strength to swat a fly. She played along, making them feel strong and powerful. The better they felt the bigger the tip. Bunty didn’t have set fees. She just took what was given. If the gift were paltry, that gentleman wouldn’t be seeing her again. She felt that three or four was enough in any one day. She didn’t want to get sore again.

  That Bernard was there again. There was something about Bernard that Bunty didn’t like. The way his eyes darted about the room, taking in everything and everyone. If a new girl arrived at the club Bernard thought it was his right to try her out first. She had been with him so many times that he had begun to take liberties. He wasn’t polite like the other men. He was brutal in the act and seemed to enjoy hurting her, and he didn’t give much at the end.

  That day Bernard was in a foul temper. He had been after a contract to supply books for the troops overseas, but a crafty bastard upstart with a tuppenny-ha’penny firm had underbid him. As it was a government contract they had to be sealed bids. Bernard wanted to develop his side of the business so he would overtake Maurice. He wanted to increase his turnover, so it would increase his position and power in the business. He wanted to bring his toffee-nosed brother down to his level. Already his Leicester Square run underpinned the general supply side, but Maurice wouldn’t recognize it.

  Bernard stared around the clubroom. The same dreary collection. All worn-out, raddled old whores. The only sign of new talent was when he had brought Maurice in and Maurice had snaffled her from right under his nose. She hadn’t been since. He asked Bunty about her, but the silly cow just smiled and batted her eyes at him as if he had suggested something particularly outrageous. There was something wrong with her, but he couldn’t be sure what it was. She was a bit loopy, he thought, althoug
h that didn’t matter when he got her upstairs. She was all right for all that, never complained, took what she was given.

  The bomb worried Betty May. Things were getting serious. She had never thought of anything disturbing her blissful existence with Stephen, but there was talk of conscription, men being called up for service in the Army, whether they wanted to go or not. She couldn’t bear the thought of that. What would she do, on her own, in a strange city? Would she have enough to live on? She would have to go back to Liverpool. At least she knew people there. But she didn’t want to go back to Liverpool. Of course, she would have to find a job. Not the joke job she had been doing for Maurice Green. Mind you, he had been as good as his word, had met her twice a week and was usually on time. He still said that when she had got enough background knowledge he would take her into his firm.

  She had begun to enjoy these little jaunts, always setting off early so she had time to saunter. She was getting to know the little cobbled alleyways behind Fleet Street, the tiny squares and tiny gardens. She heard the roar and hum of the printing presses, watched men in sports coats and rakish trilbys pushing urgently through glass doors, as though they had some earth-shattering news to impart. If you looked up Farringdon Road you could see Holborn Viaduct, with traffic going across, while traffic went underneath in the opposite direction.

  Then there was High Holborn, a long, wide street with all kinds of specialist shops. There was one that only sold umbrellas, another that sold jokes that you could buy and ‘startle your friends’. There were shops that sold foreign newspapers, one that only sold pipes and tobacco. There was a shop that sold fishing tackle, one that sold bibles and religious books, one that sold lost property, and His Majesty’s Stationery Office, which seemed very stern. If you went right to the end you came to Gamages, a ragbag of a department store that sold an extraordinary range of ill-matched goods. There you could buy all kinds of rough clothing suitable for all kinds of jobs: overalls, dust coats, heavy-duty jackets and oilskin trousers, giant wellington boots, tyres for motor cars and cans of oil, tar, paint, bushy gloves, warm hats that came down over the ears, and yet conjuring tricks, a ventriloquist’s dummy, boxes of fireworks, books of pictures and very unfashionable ladies’ underwear, frocks and coats. Nothing flighty about Gamages.

  She had discovered this area when she had had to meet Maurice Green in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; a square park, populated, it seemed, by smart men and women eating sandwiches that they brought in briefcases or large handbags. It seemed that the most important thing to do in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was not to notice that there was anyone else there, even if they were sitting next to you on the same bench. Everyone surrounded himself or herself in isolation. Those that came alone sat glumly munching, stern or sad-faced, as though only necessity had forced them to be in proximity to all the riff-raff around them. Of course, if they had come in pairs they never stopped talking, and the people near by couldn’t help but listen to the high-pitched stream of invective directed at some other member of the firm where they worked. When it was wet most of them went into the Express Dairy or the ABC.

  To get to Lincoln’s Inn Fields she had to pass the Holborn Empire, a variety theatre, which always had photographs outside showing who was performing that week. The photographs were often faded mementoes of past glories: a brass-faced comedian leering from between a line of leggy chorus girls; a singer looking like she had been transported to a heavenly cloud.

  There were all kinds of life in this strange corner of the city. There was life here, after dark. It didn’t close down when the shops stopped trading. Betty longed to be part of this world. It was exciting, different, like nothing she had encountered elsewhere. There were all kinds here, from the ultra-smart to the downright drab: women in furs, with sleek hair; men who looked like business tycoons, in belted overcoats, bowlers or trilbys. No Liverpool-style cloth caps here. There were many foreign people, in the shops, in the offices. Holborn was not the City or the West End, but it had its own flavour and its own cosmopolitan charm. It didn’t care whether it wasn’t the centre of the metropolis. It was what it was, unpretentious.

  Bunty didn’t want to go with Bernard. He glared at her, and she tried, vainly, to get another partner. But Bernard was insistent, jerking her out of her seat and pushing her towards the door. She was fearful and beseeched with her eyes, but no one was watching. She got to the bottom of the stairs and turned into the vestibule, but Bernard pulled her back, gripping her arm in a vice-like grip. If only she could have cried out. She was being bullied, forced into something for which she had no inclination, and she couldn’t even cry for help.

  At the same time Betty May was sitting in St Paul’s Churchyard, waiting for Maurice. When they met in the churchyard it meant that Maurice was short of time. He arrived looking a bit flustered.

  ‘Sorry if I’m late,’ he said.

  She noticed that he kept looking out across Ludgate Hill. He hadn’t told her where the warehouse was, but she guessed it wasn’t far away, and he was concerned that someone from the firm might see him on this odd, secret tryst. Whatever would he say? ‘I meet this young woman, she’s a married woman, and we talk about books’? She had to admit that even Stephen had begun to get suspicious. ‘But where will it all lead to? What is the point of it all?’ And she had been hard put to find an answer. That is why she had resolved to put that exact point to Maurice this very day. Fifty shillings a week was very nice. It had practically doubled their weekly budget. They had been able to go into the best seats at the cinema and afford a box of chocolates, too.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m here anyway. And you’re paying me to be here.’

  He gave her a strange look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I hope that’s not the only consideration. I mean, I quite enjoy our little meetings.’

  ‘Yes, but is it going anywhere?’ she said, echoing her husband.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, slightly put out.

  ‘I mean, am I going to get a proper job? I like to give good value, to feel I’m earning the money – somehow. I mean, I’ve never seen the place where you work.’

  He seemed surprised. ‘You want to see the warehouse?’ he said. ‘Well, that can soon be arranged.’ He threw a handful of nuts down in front of him, and a flock of pigeons descended on them.

  Betty shivered. ‘It’s cold,’ she said.

  ‘We could go inside,’ said Maurice.

  ‘No,’ she said, with a force that surprised her. She was beginning to feel uneasy about these meetings. It was all right at the start when they talked about books, but things had got beyond that. After all, Maurice was a married man. Would his wife ever believe that they met just to talk? And that she was paid for it? Maurice had never suggested anything more. And yet, she had met him in what was clearly a pick-up place. Was it just that he was taking a long time to get around to it?

  ‘When can I come to your place?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’re doing stocktaking this week, but soon.’

  Maurice wondered whether he had been right to take up this girl, this piece of literary clay. What was he trying to prove? The girl was young with a kind of innocent freshness that aroused a kind of protective gallantry. It was a long time since Maurice had been out with a pretty woman. He enjoyed her ignorance. It made him feel as if he had absorbed so much through his work that to her he was some kind of oracle. She confided in him, about her mundane ambitions for herself and her shop-walker husband. He liked to feel wise and responsible. There was no value in his exchanges with Clare, with his brother and sister. They all thought of him as a dull old stick. What if they could see him now with this young woman, as pretty as paint, who hung on his every word? He would have liked to have had children. It would have been this kind of relationship. Him looking out for them, helping them to avoid the pitfalls, getting them on their feet. Did he want anything more intimate from Betty? It wasn’t in the front of his mind, but it could be in there somewhere. But it would
be ridiculous. He was more than twice her age, and she was married to a man she obviously adored.

  Maurice took out his pocket book and gave Betty one of the firm’s brochures. She seemed pleased.

  ‘I’ll show Stephen,’ she said. Then she looked troubled. ‘Do you think that Stephen will get called up? For the Army, I mean.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Maurice. ‘But it won’t be for long.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Nobody really wants the war. That’s why there hasn’t been much fighting. Just sparring. Sooner or later the politicians are going to come to their senses. I shouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘There was a bomb in Wimbledon.’

  ‘Just a stray. There’s always going to be accidents.’

  Suddenly, as they were sitting in the peaceful and safe ambience of the churchyard, there was the sudden wail of the air-raid siren. Surely they were safe where they were? Nobody would bomb St Paul’s.

  Maurice stood up. ‘I’d better get back. Why don’t you go into the crypt until the all-clear goes? You’ll be perfectly safe there. I’ll have to go to organize the fire watch. In fact, I believe it’s my turn.’

  In the street there was an unnatural hush. Buses and cars, lorries and vans, stood deserted by passengers and drivers. The brewer’s dray, with two patient horses, was standing awkward, half on the pavement and half in the road, with the dray man holding the reins, murmuring to the horses a kind of comforting lullaby.

  Betty went into the cathedral. There was a sea of anxious faces. She didn’t want to go into the crypt. It was cold and spooky down there. She decided to risk it and try to get home, but outside on the steps a policeman and ARP men had formed a chain to keep people in. Suddenly there was a humming in the sky and the sharp rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. Oh God. It was really happening. She needed to find a toilet, she felt faint and her mouth was dry. She wanted to get home. It was only one tiny room, but she felt safe there. There was a muffled thump from somewhere behind the cathedral and the very structure of the ancient building seemed to shake to its foundations, and then the sound of fire-engine bells, clanging out an urgent warning. She got to the top of the steps, but a sudden surge of the crowd drew her into the building. She looked up and saw the inside of the dome. What if all that came crashing down?