London Pride (53 page)

‘What d'you think?' one asked him.

‘We're in for a busy day,' he answered.

By eight o'clock, when they were breakfasted and ready for action, the sky was as blue as summer and there was a covering of low white cumulus cloud. At nine the buzz went round that the first German planes had been sighted over the coast. Jim's ground crew were impatient to get started so the planes were soon checked and fuelled and armed, but then nothing much happened, although the atmosphere crackled with tension. Their pilots sat around outside the hut waiting, the phones crackled occasional messages, cards were played, pipes were smoked, the dogs retreated into the shadow.

When the call finally came to scramble it was as if they'd all been sitting on springs. The flight was in the air in minutes, heading south towards the Thames and the fields of Kent.

From that moment on there was so much happening that none of them had any time for anything else except the job in hand. Occasionally one of the crew would look up to where the battle was weaving white paisley patterns against the blue sky, at the red sparks of distant machine-gun fire, at Dorniers little more than black dots at the head of their long con trails, flying in formation, lozenge, square, arrowhead, but breaking under attack from plunging Hurricanes and Spitfires, at black smoke billowing from a stricken plane as it howled downwards, at the roar and wreckage of explosions. But for most of the time their attention was fully occupied with their own planes and their pilots. Flights went up at regular intervals and flights returned, their own three safe and ecstatic with victory.

‘How many, sir?' Jim asked the first of his pilots to return.

‘Two. Possible third. Jock got one. Bloody good show.'

The news of the battle filtered through to the ground crews. There were 300 Dorniers in the attack with a full complement of escorting Messerschmitts, and the RAF was causing havoc in their close packed formations. By midday the returning flights were claiming that Jerry had turned tail, by twelve thirty the skies were clear and the
first attack was over.

There was just time for the pilots to be debriefed, eat and catch a quick nap while their planes were checked, repaired, refuelled and rearmed. At two o'clock the Dorniers returned and battle was resumed. This second attack seemed to be both quicker and longer than the first, because by then they were all so keyed up that time, energies and actions had all extended beyond their normal bounds. Tales of amazing gunfights began to spread and were relished between flights; Goering had thrown everything he had into this fight, two planes from their squadron were down but only one of the pilots had bought it, the other had been seen ditching in the Channel, the Germans had lost sixty aircraft, seventy, ninety, over a hundred. Now they watched the sky whenever they could because they knew that this battle was bigger than any they'd seen to date. And at the end of the afternoon when the remaining Dorniers droned back towards the Channel, they were all sure that they had been part of a decisive victory.

Just how decisive was revealed by the nine o'clock news that night which reported that 185 German aircraft had been shot down, and that two battles had been won that day, one by Fighter and the other, less publicized, by Bomber Command, who had been attacking the German invasion fleet for weeks and now knew, at last, that it couldn't be used that year. Whatever happened in the weeks ahead the Germans couldn't invade until the spring. The weather, the tides and the RAF were all against them.

Next morning the newspapers were all full of praise for ‘the gallant victors of this decisive battle'. ‘185 shot down,' the headlines blazed, ‘Greatest day for RAF'. But it was Winston Churchill, broadcasting to the nation, who said what everyone was thinking, his famous voice growling across the air, gravelly and indomitable, his words so splendid that no one who heard them would ever forget them.

‘The gratitude of every home in our Island,' he said, ‘in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen,
who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.'

‘Quite right too,' Jim wrote to Peggy, ‘but don't imagine it's over. They'll go on attacking us and they'll go on bombing London and the other provincial cities, we've only stopped the invasion. Still at least things will ease a little now. You never know I might get a thirty-six hour pass.'

He came home on just such a pass three weeks later.

As soon as she knew he was coming Peggy asked the Chief Warden if she could have a thirty-six hour pass from her duties too.

‘Don't see any reason why not,' Mr Goodall said. ‘We're well staffed at present and now they've stopped their daylight raids we're not quite so hard pressed. God knows you've earned it. Just don't go off and get married just yet awhile that's all. I couldn't afford to lose you now, not even to the RAF.'

‘I won't do that,' Peggy assured him. ‘I promise.' But oh it would be good to be with Jim again.

She was shocked to see how much he had changed. He looked older and tougher, with lines on his face that hadn't been there the last time she saw him, his nose more obviously broken and worry lines etched across his forehead and between those dark eyebrows. But she was so proud of him. So very proud. Her airman in his admirable uniform. And he made love to her more tenderly than he'd ever done.

‘My lovely Tabby eyes,' he said. ‘I've missed you so much.'

She turned in his arms to look into his eyes. ‘I can't believe you're here,' she said. ‘It feels like years since we was last in this bed. I can't believe it's true.'

‘Have I got to show you it is?' he laughed at her. ‘All over again?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Not yet. Unless you want to.'

But he was already lighting their two cigarettes.

‘We're so delicate,' she said, running her fingers along
his forearm. ‘Human beings I mean. You can tear our flesh open with a little thing like a matchstick we're so delicate and yet we go and invent bombs. It don't make sense.'

‘No gloomy thoughts,' he said pretending to scold. ‘We ain't got time to waste being morbid. What shall we do tomorrow?'

‘This?' she suggested.

‘As well as this.'

‘What say we go dancing? I ain't been dancing for an age. Not since that day in Croydon.'

‘That reminds me,' he said. ‘Froggy came down with me this time. Staying with his sister. We could make a foursome.'

‘A foursome?'

‘You an' me an' Froggy an' Megan.'

‘Is that still going on?'

‘Seems to be. He writes to her every week.'

‘Imagine,' she said, surprised by the news. ‘It can't be love. He ain't her type. But I'm glad she sees him. Well all right then. Make it a foursome.'

So the next afternoon they took a tram and a bus to Croydon to call on Froggy and all four of them went dancing. Peggy was impressed to see how easy Froggy and Megan were with one another and began to wonder whether there might not be something in it after all. And when the dance was over, she and Jim spent their last two hours at the pictures, cuddled together in the back row. It was really very miserable to have to say goodbye after such a happy time. She was quite dispirited on the way to the station, although she tried not to show it.

‘Flower to cheer the pretty lady,' Jim said, imitating the flower sellers' husky street cry, and turning she saw that he was picking a tall pink weed from the bomb site beside them.

‘Wear it to remember me by,' he said, sliding the stem into her buttonhole.

‘Thirty-six hours is such a short time,' she said, as he put his arms round her.

‘I'll be back,' he promised. ‘Soon as ever I can. Give us a kiss.'

She was still wearing the weed when she got home after seeing him off. Mum had just popped down to the shops according to Mrs Geary who was happily installed in the best armchair with Tom on her lap.

Baby was arranging her hair in front of the mirror. ‘What on earth's that in your coat?' she said, turning up her nose at it. ‘It looks like a weed.'

‘ 'Tis a weed,' Mrs Geary told her. ‘That's the fireweed.'

‘It's growing everywhere,' Peggy said. ‘On all the bomb sites. Some places are quite pink with it. Jim picked it for me. I think it's pretty.' The little pink flowers with their purple sepals were delicate against the rough cloth of her coat.

‘We used to call it London Pride when I was a girl,' Mrs Geary remembered.

‘What a perfect name,' Peggy said, thinking how appropriate it was. ‘London Pride and here it is growing on all the bomb sites.' I shall write and tell him what a perfect gift it is.

There were lots of other Londoners who knew the name of the weed too and soon the splendid irony of its appearance was being celebrated in pubs all over the city. And just before Jim was due home on his second thirty-six hour pass, Noel Coward broadcast a new song he'd written in its honour.

Flossie and Mrs Geary were most impressed. ‘Never thought much a' the man up to now,' Mrs Geary confessed. ‘It's that awful la-di-da voice of his. Puts you off. But he's bang to rights about this, an' no mistake.'

‘London Pride,' the gentleman sang in his odd clipped drawl,

‘has been handed down to us,

London Pride is a flower that's free.

London Pride means our own dear town to us,

And our pride it forever shall be.

Every blitz our resistance stiffening

From the Ritz to the Anchor and Crown.

Nothing ever can break or hide

The pride of London town.'

‘Perfect,' Flossie said with tears in her eyes.

The wireless was a great comfort to them during the blitz. They listened to the news religiously every night and morning because you could depend on the BBC to tell you the truth no matter what it was. But there were all sorts of other wonderful programmes too. Gracie Fields singing so beautifully. And Vera Lynn. JB Priestley with his postscripts after the nine o'clock news on Sunday,
In Town Tonight
on Saturday and
Hi Gang
and
Henry Hall's Guest Night
and
Sandy Macpherson at the Cinema Organ
. They even gave household hints, which Mrs Roderick said ought to be called ‘How to cook meals with no food.'

‘How we shall make out with Christmas coming I do not know,' she said. And even when supplies of currants and sultanas and dried fruit suddenly appeared in Mr Grunewald's shop she was not appeased. ‘It won't be the same,' she said darkly. ‘It won't be the same at all.'

And it was true. It was hard to imagine Christmas among the bombs.

‘But I suppose we'd better make an effort,' Flossie said, ‘for the kiddies anyway. They must've had a pretty rotten time last year down with those nasty old gravediggers.' She always referred to the Rays as gravediggers. Undertakers sounded altogether too respectable for such unpleasant characters. ‘I'll see if I can get a little chicken. You'd like that wouldn't you, kids?'

‘We'll go halves,' Joan offered at once. ‘Hang the expense eh, Mum?'

‘We could have Lily and Percy and all of them for tea,' Flossie said. ‘Do him good to have a day with other kiddies, poor little man. Is Jim getting leave?'

‘I doubt it,' Peggy said, yearning to see him again.

‘Oh well,' Flossie said busily, ‘if he does one more won't make any odds. I wish I could have made a proper cake, like in the old days.'

‘What day is Christmas?' Baby wanted to know.

‘Wednesday,' Flossie told her. ‘Why?'

‘So Boxing Day's Thursday. We shan't get to the pictures that week then, shall we?'

‘No,' Flossie said, ‘I suppose we won't. Never mind. We'll go Sunday.'

‘I don't like Sunday pictures,' Baby complained. ‘They're all oldies.'

‘Some of those old pictures are jolly good,' her mother said easily. ‘I like them.'

‘Well I don't,' Baby said pouting.

‘I wonder if we shall have a raid Christmas Day,' Mrs Geary said, diverting them before Baby could get nasty.

‘Oh I do hope not,' Flossie said. ‘They ought to stop over Christmas, surely to goodness.'

‘Nasty lot them Jerries,' Mrs Geary said darkly. ‘Wouldn't put it past 'em to come over.'

But they didn't come over, at least not on Christmas Day, and the Furnivall family had a well-deserved and peaceful feast, with a cake of sorts, even if it wasn't iced, and a pudding that was really quite good, and even four handmade table decorations, that Yvonne and Norman had coloured in at school, Father Christmas, a reindeer, a lop-sided snowman and Winston Churchill in a purple siren suit, cigar and all.

Jim didn't get leave but that was hardly to be expected and Peggy knew he would be home again in the new year. Meantime she had a letter in her pocket, a cat on her lap, a good meal in her belly, and no air raid. And that, after a hundred and nine night raids, was luxury enough.

Flossie Furnivall had bought clothes for all her family that Christmas, pretty blouses for the three girls, trousers for Norman and a nice warm skirt for Yvonne, and on a sudden impulse she had treated herself to a new pair of shoes. Her old ones were worn into such a state that the cobbler said he simply couldn't patch them up any longer. So she'd splashed out and bought herself a lovely new pair, brown brogues with a broad-patterned tongue and bold patterning all round the sides.

‘Very nice,' Mrs Roderick said when she came to call that Sunday night. ‘And a new hat too. I gather you had a good Christmas. You are the swell.'