The Blitz (3 page)

 

 

Mum sprung something on us today. She's taking Tom and me to see Auntie Mavis down near Tonbridge tomorrow. Yippee! And we're staying till Friday. It's a holiday, or at least something like it.

No beach, but at least we'll be out of smelly Lewisham. (And getting smellier all the time! Now they're letting people keep
pigs
in their back garden and they've put waste bins on the street corners. The idea is we should put all our old food scraps in them to feed the wretched porkers. And when it's as hot as it was yesterday, you don't want to go nearer than half a mile to those bins. They stink to high heaven!)

Shirl's in a right sulk about Tonbridge. She scarcely spoke to me all evening. I think she fancied a few days in the country.

When we were getting ready for bed, I asked her about the bloke who walks her home. She blushed red to her roots. Very satisfactory!

“What's his name?” I asked.

“Mind your own business!” Shirl snapped. Then, because she was clearly dying to tell someone, she gave in. “Oh go on! It's Alec, if you must know. I think he's a bit sweet on me.”

“And you?” I pushed.

“Mind your own business!” she said again. And this time the shutters were down. For the time being. . .

 

 

We caught a bus down to Hither Green and didn't have to wait long for the electric train to Sevenoaks. That was where the fun and games started.

When you get to your destination these days, you have to hope you hear the porter shout “Sevenoaks” or whatever the station is because there aren't any signs. They've all been taken down. Dad says the idea is that if the Germans ever do invade, they won't know where they are. It's the same with road signs.

Luckily that wasn't a worry because our train was only going as far as Sevenoaks. Then we sat and waited for ages for the steam train to take us on to Tonbridge. Tom didn't mind. I can't think why, but he actually likes standing on station platforms watching engines shunting backwards and forwards.

“Flippin' war!” said a man standing next to us. “Gives them all the excuse they need, don't it? Blessed trains don't never run to time now.”

Eventually a train puffed into a platform on the far side of the station. We ran over the footbridge in a panic. No one seemed to know if it was the Tonbridge train, and even when we finally set off, Mum was still a bit nervous, asking the other passengers if we were all going to end up in Hastings.

Inside the trains now there are blinds on every window so it's really dark. It's the blackout again. A brightly lit train would be a sitting target at night I suppose. There are strange blue lamps in all the compartments so that you can just about see, though only so as not to fall over each other.

We were two hours late arriving in Tonbridge, but little Uncle Fred – red cheeks polished and shining under a cheeky hat – was still there waiting for us. With his car.

“We could have caught the bus,” said Mum. “Think of the petrol. You don't want to waste your rations.”

Uncle Fred tapped his nose. “No names, no pack-drill,” he said. “Never a problem with a bit of extra petrol, if you know where to ask.”

Mum pretended to look shocked. Then: “How's Mavis?” she asked. I glanced over at Tom. The way she asked the question, it wasn't just a polite enquiry, she was really concerned. But Tom hadn't noticed anything.

“The old girl's not so well. Not at all,” Uncle Fred answered, and I could have sworn he blinked rather more than he should've.

Of course as soon as we actually saw Auntie Mavis I knew why we'd come to Tonbridge all of a sudden. She seems half the size I remember, and her skin's a sickly kind of yellow colour. This might be a holiday for us, but I'm afraid Mum's visiting her sister for quite another reason.

 

 

When we got a moment to ourselves this morning, I asked Mum about Auntie Mavis. She looked me straight in the eye.

“She's very ill, Edith,” Mum said softly. I always know something's up when she calls me by my full name like that. “We've just got to look after her as much as we can. And Fred. I don't know what he'd do without Mavis.” And she turned away rather too quickly.

In the afternoon Tom and me walked out through the houses into the fields. We climbed up steadily towards a wood, the corn as high as Tom's shoulders on both sides of the path. We were almost level with the trees when we heard the first planes, high and distant. We turned and looked, shading our eyes against the sun.

“There,” said Tom, pointing into the sky. It took me a couple of moments but then I saw them too, a formation of dots dodging the clouds.

“Germans,” Tom added.

“Do you think so? How do you know?” I asked.

“Heinkels! You can tell by the shape, can't you?” he said, like I was just a stupid girl and knew nothing. But he was right, because then there was the sound of more planes coming from behind us over the wood, and as the German bombers came nearly overhead, suddenly the sky above us was full of aircraft zooming up and down, and we began to hear gunfire.

I don't know about Tom, but I was rooted to the spot. I'd never seen or heard anything like it, and it was all so sudden and unexpected. I didn't know whether to run for home, or take shelter in the woods.

“What do we do, Tom?” I asked, though I should have been making the decision myself.

He just shrugged his shoulders. “Stay and watch?” he suggested.

So we did. It seemed like the dogfight went on for hours, but it was probably more like ten minutes. We saw one plane start to smoke as it wheeled away from the pack. Then it seemed to hang and pitch forward, before tumbling over itself into a dive that took it out of sight to the side of a hill. It must have fallen miles away, because there was no sound of its landing, no explosion.

“I hope it was one of theirs,” said Tom, almost enjoying the moment.

“The pilot might be dead,” I replied, not sure what to think.

“Good!” said Tom. “The only good German is a dead. . .”

“Shut up,” I said. “You mustn't say that.”

“Why not?” he asked crossly. “It's true.”

Tom and I don't fall out very often, but after that we walked in silence for a bit. As we crossed the road towards Auntie Mavis and Uncle Fred's house there was shiny metal lying on the concrete.

“Bullets,” said Tom, eyes wide with excitement. He went to pick one of them up.

“Don't you dare,” I shouted. “You might blow your hand off. Stop, Tom. Now!”

He gave me a dirty look, but he did as he was told.

So that's it. Now the war's real. It's happening to us, not just to other people.

 

 

The first thing you notice about living in Tonbridge is how quiet it is. So when the telephone rang in the middle of last night, I almost jumped out of my skin. There's no telephone at Summerfield Road. It's a call box for us if we ever want to talk to Auntie Mavis or Uncle Fred. Telephones in houses are posh, I reckon.

Uncle Fred works near Sevenoaks at somewhere called Fort Halstead. I know he works for the Government, but that's all I know, and Mum says it's probably best not to ask. Uncle Fred's definitely clever. You only have to play him at chess to know that. Dad says he's a boffin, whatever that is.

The telephone hadn't wakened Tom. He was breathing deeply, still fast asleep. I pulled a jumper over my nightie and gently opened the bedroom door. I could hear Uncle Fred talking into the phone down in the hall. I tiptoed across the landing as he said goodbye to whoever was on the other end of the line. As he put the phone down, he turned and saw me at the top of the stairs and it was his turn to jump. There was a strange look on his face, half amused, half worried.

“What's the matter, Uncle Fred?” I whispered, coming down the stairs and sitting on the bottom step.

He looked at me as if he couldn't decide what to say. “It's probably nothing,” he stalled.

“It can't be nothing,” I insisted. “Not in the middle of the night!”

He gave in. “All right. I'm a member of the Home Guard, Edie love,” he whispered back. “And people are always seeing things. Somebody reckons the Germans have landed out Paddock Wood way. It's a load of baloney, of course. It's probably just a poacher, but I'll have to go and make sure. Look, it's more likely to be Martians than Germans, so go back to bed and don't worry.”

I hadn't seen the rifle hidden behind the hat-stand in the hall until then.

Back upstairs, I heard his car drive off, and for the next two hours I lay and shivered, half-expecting a brigade of stormtroopers to smash their way in though the front door. But when he came back, he shut the door behind him so gently and carefully I knew we hadn't been invaded by either Martians or Germans, and I rolled over and went to sleep.

This morning we caught a bus into Tonbridge, and went shopping for Auntie Mavis. When she makes tea it normally comes out a thick dark brown colour. “Strong enough to stand a spoon up in,” Mum says. She must use about five teaspoonfuls. But now they're rationing tea just like they do butter and meat. To get your ration you have to hand in coupons from your ration book. So if we come down again, maybe Auntie Mavis's tea will be drinkable!

If
we come down again! According to Mum what poor Auntie's got is cancer, and the doctors don't give her much chance. What does
that
mean? Months? Weeks?

Poor Mavis. Poor Mum. Whatever does it feel like to know your sister is dying of cancer? It could be me and Shirl!

 

 

At breakfast, while Mum was helping Auntie Mavis make the porridge, I asked my uncle, “What's it like in the Home Guard, Uncle Fred?”

He twinkled at me. “It's all right. Makes me feel young again.”

“Why's that?” I asked.

“Everybody else is older than me, that's why,” he laughed. “And don't look so amazed!” He pulled a face. “All right, maybe I'm exaggerating but there
are
a fair few old codgers in our company. George Chapman must be 65 if he's a day. But we've all got to do our bit, haven't we?”

“What
do
you actually do, then?” piped up Tom.

“Well, they're training us to guard anything strategically important – gun batteries, railways, main roads, all that kind of thing. If Hitler was daft enough to invade, we'd do our best to make life difficult for him.”

“Is it true you've only got broomsticks and pitchforks to fight with?” Tom asked. He hadn't spotted the gun either. I don't think Tom meant to be rude, but that's the way it sounded, and I kicked him hard. I needn't have worried though. Uncle Fred was laughing.

“Not quite. When we first enrolled about four months ago, it's true there weren't many weapons available. But they're working us hard now. We'll even have a machine gun soon!”

“How do you find the time?” I said.

“Oh, it's not so bad. There's plenty of evenings and weekends.” He looked me straight in the eye, and dropped his voice. “Takes my mind off things, to be honest.”

“Have you ever thrown a grenade?” asked Tom enthusiastically.

“Only pretend ones,” said Uncle Fred. “Hope I never have to throw one for real. Still, I was a good cricketer at school! I expect it'd be all right.”

“Do you think it's true the Germans would use poison gas?” I asked. I have bad dreams about the gas. In them I'm always trying to escape from Summerfield Road. However hard I struggle, my legs won't carry me out of the house. I can't see anything and I can't breathe.

“Depends how you look at it,” said Uncle Fred, leaning back in his chair. “On the one hand it's against the rules of war. And on the other hand I wouldn't put anything past that dreadful little man if he found himself in a tight spot.”

Then Mum and Auntie Mavis came into the dining room. Uncle Fred stopped talking, like turning off a tap, and turned and smiled at Auntie as if there wasn't anything to worry about in the whole world.

 

 

Until we got home, I hadn't realized how much I'd missed Summerfield Road. Lewisham isn't so smelly after all! (Well it is, but no worse than Tonbridge. Pigs in the one, cows in the other!)

And it seems ages since we went away, although it's really only five days. It's funny the things you notice for the first time. A pile of sandbags on a street corner here, a roll of barbed wire there. You can't be sure, but you don't think they were there a few days ago. It's as if, week by week, water's building up pressure behind a dam and sooner or later it's going to burst. Does that make sense?

Dad seemed to have survived Shirl looking after him. But the big wide grin on his face when we walked through the front door showed how pleased he was to have us back. He almost swung my mum off her feet and gave her a great big kiss.

“Put me down, Bert,” she said. “Go on with you. Everybody knows it's only the apple pie you miss.”

It's funny to see them like that, and it made me extra sad to think about Auntie Mavis and Uncle Fred.

Chamberlain was glad to have us back too. I hope they've been feeding him properly.

 

 

I was reading Dad's
Kentish Mercury
, catching up on last week's news, and there's something I don't understand.

If Hitler and the Nazis are so bad, like most people say, why are there some people who don't agree?

Apparently there was a Communist demonstration against the war down in Catford on Wednesday. I asked Dad about it and he said the police actually stopped some men who wanted to give the Communists a bloody nose.

“I don't see why,” I said. “They're traitors.”

Dad looked serious for a minute. I thought I'd made him cross, though I didn't know the reason.

“It's what we're fighting for, girl,” he said. “There's no free speech in Germany. If your face doesn't fit, you're for the high jump. That's why our Frank's spending the best years of his life in a dirty God-forsaken hut down at Westerham. And our Maureen, wherever she is up north. Don't ever forget, it doesn't matter what someone's opinions are, they've a right to speak their mind.”

I still don't get it.