The Londoners (30 page)

It was a hell everyone coped with in their own way. As a captain in the Home Guard, Albert Jennings diligently instructed all and sundry, even Miss Helliwell and Hettie, in the
art of grenade-throwing, determined that in the event of invasion every single inhabitant of Magnolia Square would make a valiant last stand.

Miss Helliwell was an exceedingly nervous pupil, preferring to aid the war effort by means only she regarded as rational.

‘I’m holding seances and trying to contact both Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson,’ she told Carrie as they stood patiently in a long queue outside the butcher’s in
Blackheath Village. ‘I’m sure that any advice they can give will be invaluable to Mr Churchill.’

‘Maybe,’ Carrie said, not wanting to give her too much encouragement but not wanting to ridicule her either. ‘Problem is, what happens if you do make contact with them and they
do give advice? How are you going to pass it on to the Prime Minister? You’re not exactly on nodding terms with him, are you?’

As the local Air Raid Warden, Mr Nibbs displayed a resolute determination to do his duty. Only the first raid had taken him by surprise and sent him flying down to his Anderson shelter, his
trouser braces dangling wildly. Since then, during night raids, he had toured his district diligently, reporting all incidents, calling up the appropriate rescue services and, if he was first on
the scene, doing his best to rescue the trapped and provide first aid for the injured. During the day, like thousands of other exhausted civilians, he had resumed his daytime occupation, opening
his shop no matter what the circumstances.

Daniel Collins was also fast becoming a local hero. As an Auxiliary Fireman his voluntary job was, perhaps, the most horrendous of all. Day after day and night after night he battled with his
professional and amateur companions against the flames, often not resting for twenty-four or thirty-six hours at a stretch. The danger they faced from collapsing walls and falling brickwork and
poisonous fumes was made worse by the fact that the bulk of their work was undertaken while bombing raids were in progress.

‘The bombers always aim for the fires,’ Hettie would say, squeezed into the public shelter next to Miriam, so fearful for her husband’s safety that her knitting needles would
clatter against each other. ‘Bloody Hitler! May he die from a lingering tumour!’

Mavis, too, risked life and limb daily, delivering messages in and out of heavily bombed areas, much to her son’s admiration and envy.

On the night of 3 November, for the first night since 7 September, there was no German air raid over London.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ one of the middle-aged women who worked in the canteen said to Kate. ‘I slept right through! It’s done me the world of good. I feel sixteen
this morning!’

Though Kate was equally grateful for the undisturbed night, she didn’t feel sixteen. She was now five months pregnant and there were times, after long hours dispensing tea and hot soup,
that her ankles puffed up and her back ached. And it wasn’t only physical discomforts that were dispiriting her.

For many weeks, when she had first begun working at the canteen, she had been known only by her first name. Unlike her neighbours in Blackheath, no-one in Deptford knew that her father was
German and her long plait of flaxen hair was no give-away because, like all the other women in the canteen, she wore her hair coiled up beneath a headscarf tied turban-fashion.

When her pregnancy had begun to show, however, salacious gossip had soon followed. Though Doctor Roberts, whom she now had begun to visit for regular check-ups, and Ellen, had warned her of the
kind of comments she would meet with when it became known that she was pregnant, she had been unprepared for just how coarse and hurtful some of the comments would be. And then her surname had
become known and only one or two of her fellow workers were still speaking civilly to her.

‘You’ll have to take your ration book elsewhere,’ Mr Nibbs said to her brusquely a few days later when, after queuing for an interminable length of time, she
finally reached his grocery counter.

It was an ultimatum that Kate had long anticipated. She had registered her ration book with him before the hideousness of her father’s internment and, as ration books couldn’t be
switched arbitrarily from one shopkeeper to another, it was a situation she had resigned herself to.

She said now, tight-lipped, ‘You are my designated grocer, Mr Nibbs. I would like a packet of tea and my weekly sugar and margarine allowance, please.’

Mr Nibbs placed her ration book squarely on the wooden counter between them. ‘You’ll get nothing from me. Your Jerry friends have blitzed Coventry. Going on for a thousand people
have been killed. You want tea and sugar and margarine, you go somewhere else for it.’

‘Jerry-lover,’ a woman somewhere in the queue behind her said viciously. ‘And she’s pregnant and I don’t see a wedding-ring.’

‘She’s German,’ another voice said authoritatively. ‘Her father’s an internee. I don’t know why she isn’t. I thought all Germans had been
interned.’

Knowing that it would be useless to argue with Mr Nibbs; knowing that at any moment the verbal abuse she was being subjected to might turn to physical abuse, Kate picked up her ration book.

‘I don’t have any German friends,’ she said to Mr Nibbs through lips she could barely move. ‘I’m as loyal a citizen of this country as you are,’ and turning
her back on him she walked out of the shop, past the long queue of muttering women, the words, ‘Shameful hussy’ and ‘No wonder she’s a slut if she’s German’,
echoing in her ears.

The first sight she saw as she stepped out on to the pavement was Carrie, walking down the hill that led from the Heath to the centre of Blackheath Village, Rose toddling along beside her in
leading-reins.

Kate’s first reaction was one of intense thankfulness. At least now she would be able to give vent to her feelings with someone who would be unconditionally supportive. Then she saw the
expression on Carrie’s unusually cheery face.

‘Carrie! Carrie, what on earth has happened? What’s wrong?’

For an unnerving second Carrie didn’t even seem to recognize her. Her eyes, red-rimmed from weeping, were curiously blank.

Rose, a hand-knitted beret pulled low over her ears to protect them from the bitter November cold, her blue, velvet-collared coat buttoned tightly to her throat, said, not understanding the
import of her words, ‘Daddy’s something called a POW and Mummy doesn’t like it.’

‘Dear God!’ Kate immediately forgot all about her fury with Mr Nibbs and the anger and frustration she had felt towards the women in the queue behind her, anger and frustration
common sense had prevented her from giving vent to. ‘Is it true, Carrie?’ she demanded, feeling physically sick. ‘Has Danny been taken prisoner by the Italians?’

Carrie nodded, expression seeping back into her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said, her mental and emotional pain now naked. ‘This arrived an hour or so ago.’

With a gauntletted-gloved hand she withdrew a crumpled telegram from her coat pocket.

Kate took it from her silently, her eyes skimming over the block-typed words.
REGRET TO INFORM YOU . . . YOUR HUSBAND SERGEANT DANIEL COLLINS . . . REPORTED CAPTURED . . .
ENQUIRIES BEING MADE THROUGH INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS . . . ANY FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE IMMEDIATELY COMMUNICATED TO YOU . . . LETTER CONFIRMING THIS TELEGRAM FOLLOWS.

With the telegram still in her hand she put her arms around Carrie, hugging her tight. ‘I’m sorry, Carrie,’ she said, her voice choked with emotion. ‘I’m so
sorry!’

‘Those bloody Eyeties,’ Carrie said indistinctly, tears once again beginning to course down her face. ‘What will they do with him, Kate? He was in Egypt, for Christ’s
sake! Will they keep him there or will they ship him off to Italy? What will they
do
with him?’

It was a question Kate couldn’t even begin to answer. She said, trying to be as comforting as possible, ‘The telegram mentions the Red Cross, Carrie. There are rules for the
treatment of prisoners of war. Articles laid down in the Geneva Convention. The Italians will have to treat him decently and once the Red Cross establishes contact with Danny you’ll be able
to communicate with him through them. You’ll be able to send him letters, maybe even food parcels.’

Carrie stepped out of the circle of Kate’s arms. ‘Maybe,’ she said, a note in her voice so odd that Kate couldn’t tell what the emotion was that lay behind it. ‘But
the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross haven’t done much for the Jews Hitler is rounding up and slaughtering in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Belgium and Holland, have they? And the Italians
are Germany’s ally. If the Germans don’t give a hang about the Geneva Convention you can bet your sweet life that neither will the Eyeties.’

There was an expression in Carrie’s sea-green eyes that Kate had never seen before; an expression that filled her with stupefied disbelief. It was as if Carrie was regarding her as a
stranger; as if she had withdrawn from her utterly.

‘Christina’s right,’ Carrie said bleakly, confirming all Kate’s worst fears. ‘Italians, Germans, they’re all the same. They’re all Fascists. It’s
in their blood.’ And giving Rose a gentle tug on the leading-reins she turned her back and walked away.

Kate couldn’t move. She was paralysed by horror; suffocating in it; drowning in it. Carrie had turned against her. What Christina’s first-hand accounts of Jewish
suffering at the hands of the Nazis had failed to do, Danny’s capture by the Italians had succeeded in doing. Just like Mr Nibbs, Miss Helliwell, Hettie, Miriam, Leah and a host of others,
Carrie now regarded her as a creature set apart; a person to be avoided; a person symbolic of Germany and, as such, symbolic of the cause of all their suffering.

‘Carrie!’ she called out after her, her voice strangling in her throat. ‘
Carrie!
’

Only Rose turned her head, her little face beneath her knitted beret bewildered by both the events that had taken place a little earlier, when the man had knocked at the door with the piece of
paper her grandad had referred to as a telegram, and the frightening tension she now sensed and couldn’t understand.

Carrie’s back remained resolutely set against Kate as she continued to walk swiftly up Tranquil Vale, Rose struggling to keep up with her.

With every fibre of her being Kate wanted to run after Carrie; to seize hold of her; to make her see the needless dreadfulness of what would now happen between them. She couldn’t do so.
Every line of Carrie’s back was so rigid and hostile that she knew the kind of response she would receive if she ran after her. It was a response she couldn’t face. A response she
wouldn’t be able to bear to live with.

As she stood transfixed, scarcely able to believe that what had happened hadn’t been hallucination or nightmare, Charlie Robson heaved himself out of the Three Tuns public house and on to
the broad tree-lined pavement only a few yards away from her.

‘You’ll catch your death of cold standin’ about in this weather, petal,’ he said, hiccupping as he did so.

Queenie bounded down the steps of the pub behind him and made a bee-line for Kate, nearly knocking her off her feet in the exuberance of her greeting.

Kate buried her hand in Queenie’s fur, her throat tight, her eyes overly bright.

Charlie, never excessively observant at the best of times, merely said, ‘Are you goin’ over the ’eath, petal? Because if you are, I’ll come with you. I could do with a
bit o’ company. I never see ’arriet now she’s racketing around in that tin bus she calls an ambulance. Gawd knows what the injured think when they find ’arriet tendin’
’em in her tweed suit and pearls. They must think it’s Queen Elizabeth doin’ her bit for the nation!’

With Queenie’s cold nose nuzzling at her hand, Kate nodded assent to Charlie’s suggestion. Carrie was no longer in sight and a faint sprinkling of snow had begun to fall.

‘It’ll look a treat at Christmas if the snow stays,’ Charlie said as he weaved a little unsteadily at her side and they breasted the hill, looking out from the top corner of
Tranquil Vale across to the chocolate-box prettiness of All Saints’ Church and the frosted expanse of the Heath beyond it. ‘I always like a bit o’ snow at Christmas. It makes it
more festive like.’

‘I don’t think anyone is going to feel very festive this year, Charlie,’ Kate said, not even wanting to think about Christmas or how she would be spending it. ‘Half of
the East End have been bombed out of their homes and the other half are living without water or gas or electricity. How can you make a Christmas dinner if you’ve no gas or electric to cook
with?’

‘How can you make a Christmas puddin’ with food shortages and no dried fruit?’ Charlie asked glumly. ‘’Arriet says Lord Woolton ’as told ’ousewives to
use carrots instead.’ He snorted in derision. ‘Carrots! Who the ’ell wants carrots in their Christmas puddin’?’

Kate, well aware of the Minister of Food’s many suggestions for combatting the increasing food shortages, said not very convincingly, ‘It might not be too bad, Charlie. His
“Woolton Pie” is just about bearable. Or at least it is if you like potatoes.’