Ruby's War (24 page)

The next morning the fog had lifted, but there were so many ships waiting to dock, that they were told it would be late afternoon by the time their trucks could be loaded.

‘Guess we could have a walk around,' Holt said. ‘Go up town, maybe there's time. Could have a drink and take in the sights. The way things are going with O'Donal, we might not get passes, even at Christmas.'

‘Don't say that. I've promised Sadie, and she's awful low with her arm and everything,' Bo said. ‘Henry says to tell you you're all welcome over Christmas, anytime. Just call by.'

‘I reckon we should tell them we're not goin' out singing and bein' all happy, if they'll not give us passes,' Wes said.

‘We've got to do somethin',' Holt agreed. ‘But that just punishes the folks who've invited us.'

‘Let's have a day off from all that today, guys,' Con said. ‘Come on.'

The four of them wandered through the maze of terraced streets and into the centre of the city. In the daylight, they could see the evidence of the bombing. They lingered, fascinated by the destruction that until recently they'd only seen on newsreels.

‘Let's try here,' Bo said, heading over to a large pub whose ornate marble frontage was pitted, but had a sign on the door that proudly announced: ‘Business as usual'.

The interior gave no hint that the world outside was full of dust and broken buildings: every marble, tiled and wooden surface gleamed. Behind the bar, the handpumps and glasses sparkled and a dance band played cheerfully on the radio. The barmaid – small, dark-haired and with a strange and hard to understand accent – asked what they would like.

Bo, who as always took the lead, made her smile, and as she poured their drinks, she asked where they had come from, and sympathised when he told her about their cold night on the dockside.

‘Next time, come here,' she said. ‘We got rooms. Better than a cold night out there.'

‘It's quiet in here,' Bo said, handing around the pint glasses.

‘Oh, it won't be long before it livens up,' she said. ‘We've been ever so busy. The place is full of British Tommies. Waiting for ships, most of them. Here we are,' she said, as a group of British soldiers crowded through the door. ‘What did I tell you?'

There was little conversation, until they all had drinks,
but then a small, chubby sergeant nodded over to them.

‘That tastes bloody good,' he said with a wink. ‘We've been stuck on a bloody train all night in the middle of nowhere. Bloody fog.'

‘What did I say?' the barmaid laughed. ‘This lot will drink us dry.'

‘You just come off one of the ships?' the sergeant asked.

‘No,' Bo said, answering for all of them, ‘we've come down from further north. We've been here since autumn. Driving. Trucking up and down to the port and the airfields, mostly. Waiting for the stuff to be unloaded.'

‘You been held up by the fog as well?'

‘Yes, since yesterday. You shipping out?'

‘Don't know yet,' the sergeant replied, finishing his first pint at an impressive speed, ‘where we're off to, or when. The city's full of soldiers. We all must be going somewhere.'

‘Could be Africa,' a tall bespectacled private said.

‘I reckon that's it.'

‘They'd have given us tropical gear by now,' another private said, ordering a brandy.

‘Come off it,' the sergeant laughed. ‘We might be hanging round here for days. We'd bloody freeze to death.'

‘There'll be some poor sods wandering about in tropical gear, and then they'll send us out there, instead,' another private grinned cheerfully. ‘Then the other lot will end up goin' up to friggin' Norway or somewhere. Bloody army.'

‘Just had embarkation leave,' the sergeant said. ‘Then we were told this morning we'll be billeted round here until … God knows how long. Anyway, Monty's sorted that lot out, so I don't reckon North Africa's on.'

The barmaid had been right. The pub quickly filled with soldiers waiting for ships, and the landlord, a small man with a club foot who went by the name of Taffy, joined his daughter serving drinks. The four GIs sat at the end of the bar, watching the soldiers' antics and listening to the chatter.

‘Looks like this lot are settled in for a heavy session,' Taffy said to Holt, when he bought their next round. ‘They're making the best of it while they can, and who can blame them?'

‘Is there any place we can buy food?' Holt asked.

‘You could try the British Restaurant round the corner,' he said. ‘It's subsidised, but very tasty from all accounts. I'm clean out of grub, I'm afraid, and more's the pity with all the squaddies in town.'

‘They're not bad places,' the chubby sergeant said. ‘Set them up all over after the bombing, so as folk could get a bite.'

‘That one was set up after we had the May bombing,' the barmaid said. ‘I've heard it's very good.'

‘Is that when all this damage happened round here?' Bo asked.

‘Mostly. Though we've had more than our share. Not that you hear about it on the radio. It's all London on there.'

‘There's a good reason for that,' the sergeant said. ‘They don't want Jerry to know they're hitting our docks.'

‘Over fourteen hundred killed and the cathedral hit,' the girl replied. ‘Bloody Hitler. Come to hit the docks and ships, but he got the houses miles out of town as well.'

The British Restaurant, housed in part of a badly
damaged department store, was packed with soldiers and bombed-out families. The food, potato stew and sponge pudding with a little jam, was basic but filling.

Bo lit a cigarette and glanced around the busy restaurant. One of the customers, a middle-aged black man dressed in smart civilian clothes, was sitting with a white woman of about the same age, wearing a coat with a light-coloured fur collar and a black hat. When he and the other guys walked in, the children had peered at them, but nobody was staring at the couple; they didn't cause much interest. The two old women sitting in the corner might have been whispering about them, but he couldn't be sure. Would it, he wondered, really be possible? Then, as if reading his thoughts, the black guy caught his eye and nodded, as if to say, if that was what he wanted, then yes, it was.

When Con went to collect their cups of tea, he had to wrestle with the teaspoon tied on to the counter with a string.

‘Do people steal them?' he asked the woman in charge of the tea urn.

‘No love, mind you, some might. It's the metal, you see, there's a shortage. Not many spoons around.'

The heavy food had made them all feel reluctant to move. When he'd finished his mug of weak tea, Bo yawned and shook his head.

‘I ain't got Sadie a Christmas present yet. I wanted to get something real special that she'd not expect. I thought I might get somethin' in the city. Somethin' different. But all the shops … well, I don't know.'

‘How about a bottle of Buckie?' Wes said, wincing as
Con landed a sharp kick to his ankle under the table.

‘She don't like strong drink. That stuff's awful powerful. It's not for a lady. I wanted somethin' pretty.'

‘You heard what they said. This place was the main department store, before it was hit,' Wes said. ‘If we could go to the PX like the white—'

‘Well we can't.'

‘George, the guy last night, he told me about this place, a pub. He wrote down the name. You can get anythin', if you've got the money. A guy hangs out there and he'll get you what you want.'

‘A spiv?' Wes asked. ‘How you goin' to find him?'

‘Like I told you, I got the name. George said the guy was called Len and he has this walking stick with a handle like the head of a horse, and when a stranger walks in, if you ask if you can buy him a drink, he knows what you've come for, but he said don't go in a crowd, best to go alone. You guys stay here.'

‘He might not have anythin'.'

‘George said he knew for a fact he's got some French perfume.'

‘I'll come with you,' Holt said.

‘No.'

Ten minutes later Bo was back. Smiling broadly, he dropped a dark-blue box on the table and went to get another cup of tea.

‘I reckon we went to the best pub,' he said, sitting down next to Con. ‘The beer in that place was awful, and a couple of white GIs over at the dartboard looked real mean.'

‘I told you I should have come with you,' Holt said,
inspecting the dark-blue box. ‘How could he get French perfume? You've bin cheated.'

‘No I ain't. It's sealed up, I checked, and I recognise the package. Had a girlfriend use the same.'

‘Bet you don't tell Sadie that,' Wes grinned. ‘It's looted from the bombed store, I bet.'

They retraced their steps out of the city centre, along streets full of grubby children, swinging on lamp posts with lengths of old rope and dragging home-made carts filled with bricks.

‘I thought they'd have been evacuated out,' Holt said, as the children mobbed them for pennies and gum.

‘They'll want to be home for Christmas, now the bombing's stopped,' Bo said.

In the next street there were more signs of bomb damage; some of the houses had been flattened, and all that remained of others was an unsupported wall or the broken carcass of a staircase. Half-bricks lay scattered in the road, and there was a smell of burning wood in the air. Unlike the other streets, this one was empty, except for the black man from the restaurant, his wife and two white GIs. The GIs – both little guys – were pushing him and shouting. Con watched Bo's face and waited. The man was holding two sheets of wood that flapped in his hands as he argued with the soldiers. Bo didn't move, until one of them, a thin, pasty-faced guy, knocked the wood out of the older man's hands and it skittered along the ground.

‘I said for you to step off the sidewalk,' the other GI shouted, pushing his chest up against the black guy. ‘Do you hear?'

It was hard to see why the guy didn't retaliate: he was older, but the GI who was doing the shouting was a little, runty red-haired guy he could have pushed over with one fist.

‘You move out of the way when a white man walks by. Do you hear?'

The woman picked up the wood, grabbed the black man's arm and tried to push by the soldiers, but the pasty one swore and spat at her.

In two strides, Bo was between the couple and the soldiers. He grabbed the pasty guy and punched him. The GI went down so easily, sitting down suddenly in the gutter with his legs out in front of him, that it was clear to Con that he must be drunk. The red-haired guy stared down at his buddy, as if he was finding it hard to understand why he'd suddenly sat down in the road. When he tried to pull his friend to his feet, he fell over himself, and it took both Con and Wes to get the two GIs on their feet again.

‘Back off, buddy,' Holt said. ‘These folk are English.'

‘That don't make it right,' the pasty-faced GI said. ‘This fuckin' country. Come on Louie, let's go. It stinks of blacks round here.'

‘You watch it,' the red-haired GI called, as he and his friend stumbled away. ‘The MPs are around … and …'

The woman was crying, and the black man took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the spit on her coat.

‘We saw the wood on our way into town, and Larry said it was just the sort of stuff he needed. Our little grandson has asked Father Christmas for a fort, you see. And you can't explain to a four-year-old about rationing.
He's expecting his daddy, our son, back for Christmas as well. He's in the Merchant Navy, like Larry was. He's all of a tremble,' she said, taking hold of her husband's hand, ‘and his pills are at home. He's only been out of hospital about a week. We just fancied a walk into town. I must get him back.'

‘I hope it doesn't cause you any trouble,' Larry said, shaking Bo's hand. ‘At one time I could have …'

‘I'm just glad we happened by,' Bo said, as they walked with the couple down to the corner of the street. ‘You folks should report it to your police. We're on our way to the docks,' he said, when they came to the crossroads, ‘but we'll stay here and wait until you're safely on your way.'

‘We don't get much trouble, not round here, anyway,' the woman said. ‘Not the same as if we go outside the area. It's with it being a port. People have settled round here from all over. My family are from Portugal, originally. My dad was a saddle maker. He wasn't keen on Larry at first, but we've been married nearly thirty years. How are you finding it where you are?'

‘Folks are mostly very friendly,' Bo said.

‘Good. Pleased to see you over here, I expect. They think you're all good at singing and dancing, no doubt,' the woman smiled, ‘but they'd not like it if you married their daughters.'

‘Come on, Janey,' her husband said. ‘She's concerned for our youngest, you see. Army, he picked. Didn't want to go to sea … Last letter home, he sounded a bit down, and she's concerned that folk where he is might not be too friendly.'

‘I got a girl and they don't seem—'

‘Not yet,' the woman said, ‘you've not been here long enough, love, but when the novelty wears off …'

Once the couple were out of sight, Con and the others headed back to the trucks, passing the remains of shops and the empty spaces where houses had been. They'd walked a couple of blocks, when a group of five white GIs stepped out from a deserted patch of land and barred their way. Two of them were the guys who had been harassing the couple; the others were bigger, and to Con, they looked meaner and not so drunk. The tallest was about Bo's height, but heavier.

‘Willy here tells me you saw fit to interfere when some old black was getting high and mighty,' he said.

There was no one around. The houses stood open to the chill grey air. Con glanced up and down the street. He thought that the river and the docks must be quite near, because he could smell the sea.