Tuppence To Spend (31 page)

The Guildhall was gutted. Tommy, Bill and the others had barely reached the ground floor when a high-explosive bomb hit the roof they had been staring at from above and it fell in with a crash that shook the blazing walls. Everyone in the building was on their way out, the Lord Mayor and ARP personnel last. They got through the doors just in time and ran from the ruins, looking back in horror at the inferno behind.

‘Bloody hell,’ Tommy breathed. ‘We could’ve bin toast in there.’

Mr Daley, the Lord Mayor, was standing beside him. Dirty and dishevelled, looking more like a dustman than a lord mayor, he watched grimly as the firefighters arrived with their hoses and began to direct streams of water on to the flames. He turned to Tommy and shouted above the noise of fire, water and yet more aircraft, yet more explosions.

‘You’re ARP. Where from?’

‘Copnor,’ Tommy yelled back. ‘I come down for the lecture.’

The Mayor nodded. ‘You’ll be anxious about your family – better try to make your way back, though I dare say you’ll find plenty to do on the way. God knows what it’s like out there, the whole city seems to be on fire.’

Tommy nodded. ‘My missus will have gone down the shelter. It’s my girl I’m worried about, she went to the pictures …’

The Mayor nodded again and put his hand on Tommy’s
shoulder, giving him a light push. ‘You’re doing a good job. All of you.’ There was a crash from the burning building and they both jumped back. ‘Go on. We haven’t got time to stand here. We’ll be relocating the ARP to Cosham. Good luck!’ He turned away and was lost in a billow of smoke. Tommy stared after him for a second, then looked again at the blazing Guildhall. He turned away, feeling sick at heart.

It took Tommy Vickers the rest of the night to get back home. You just couldn’t do it, he told Freda when he finally stumbled in as daylight broke next morning, revealing a city devastated by the attack. There was too much to do – people buried under rubble, people searching for their families, people hurt and dying. There were fires everywhere, too many for the fire brigades to deal with, you just had to turn to and give a hand. There was a kiddy he’d found, you wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it, with one arm torn clean off his poor little body, yet still staggering about crying out for his mother. There were mothers and fathers screaming for their children, old men and women bewildered and dazed, cats and dogs mad with terror. And around them all the time there were buildings on fire, the sky lit red as blood with the flames, and more and more bombs falling all the time, more and more explosions, more and more of every bloody thing.

‘I wanted to get to the cinema where Eunice was,’ he said, sinking into his chair as Freda put a cup of tea in front of him. ‘I couldn’t get there, Free. I couldn’t get through, the streets was all blocked, there was piles of bricks and big broken planks of wood, and smashed glass … I couldn’t even make out where I was half the time. And people yelling out for help – you couldn’t just walk by. I kept thinking about her, trapped in the one-and-sixes … And when I tried to get home, it was just as bad, every road in the city was closed except for Copnor Road and I didn’t know what was happening up here, you could have been
buried just the same. I tell you what, I never thought I’d find you here in your own kitchen, making tea as if nothing had happened. After all I saw last night, I never thought that.’

‘Well, I am,’ Freda said, putting three spoonfuls of sugar into his cup. They’d both started using saccharin months ago, but saccharin wasn’t any good for shock, not like proper sugar was, and Tommy had had a lot of shocks. ‘I went straight down the shelter when it started and that’s where I stayed. I was frightened all the time about you and our Eunice, but it wasn’t any good me doing anything else, so I stopped there. And thank God, Eunice got back before it got too bad. The picture stopped first thing, when the electricity went, and everyone came out. She was in the shelter with me from eight o’clock, so we were both safe, and I can’t tell you how thankful we were when the All Clear went at last and we could come back indoors again – nearly as glad as when you walked in the door, that’s how!’

Tommy managed a faint grin. ‘Well, I’m glad to know I’m appreciated. And the damage doesn’t seem too bad round this way. I reckon we got off light, in comparison.’

They smiled at each other, deeply grateful to be still alive. But their thankfulness was short-lived. As the flames leapt from Guildhall tower where Tommy had kept watch and the copper plates of the cupola softened and fell away, as the ruins of the shops and offices and homes of the city were revealed in the harsh January daylight, and as Portsmouth began to try to pull itself out of the ashes, so the names of the people who had been killed began to be recovered.

Among them were Tommy’s sister Molly and her husband Ron, who had sat in the Vickers’s living room only a fortnight ago, singing songs. And among them, too, were Kathy Simmons and her baby son, Thomas.

Dan Hodges had spent the night of the Blitz over Portsmouth out on the streets.

As a shipworker with erratic hours, and often out at sea, he hadn’t joined either the Home Guard or the ARP. He served as a fire watcher both at work and when he was at home, where he possessed two large red fire extinguishers and a tin hat, but that amounted to no more than standing outside in the garden keeping an eye out for incendiaries. Nobody, on the night of 10 January could leave it at that.

In any case, he wasn’t even at home when the
Luftwaffe
struck. He was down in the Vosper workshops at Camber dock, finishing work on a new engine which was to be fitted in a fast patrol boat next day. He had just knocked off and, exhausted after a day’s work which had begun at seven that morning, was on his way out of the yard when the siren went and he heard the almost simultaneous roar of the aircraft.

Dan stopped and glanced up. The sky was already a silver web of searchlight beams. High above, caught in the criss-cross of white light, he could see the black shapes of the raiders. There was a burst of anti-aircraft fire from Southsea Common and, immediately following that, a huge, thundering explosion so close that the ground shook and Dan found himself knocked off his feet by a hot, gritty blast that felt like a punch from a giant fist.

He lay for a moment or two, fighting for breath. In the seconds since the siren had begun to wail all hell had broken loose. The sky seemed to be filled with planes and
the city was shaking with repeated explosions. People were running, shouting, screaming, crowding into the street shelters, rushing past with fire extinguishers, uncertain of where to go, some crying in panic, some with set, angry faces.

Dan staggered to his feet. A woman blundered into him and he caught and steadied her. She looked up into his face, her eyes wild. ‘They’ve hit the electricity. Everything’s gone off.’

That must have been the first mighty explosion. The big electricity station, serving the whole of Portsmouth, stood only a few streets away. That meant no lights, no electrical equipment running, no anything. And any gaslights that survived would be put out soon too, he thought grimly. Gas and water mains were fractured regularly in the raids.

‘Where d’you live, missus?’ He had to yell to make himself heard over the noise. Another explosion shook the earth and a crack seemed to open up in the road beneath his feet. He staggered sideways, still clutching the woman.

‘Gosport. I work out Southsea. I was on me way home – I go across the floating bridge.’

The floating bridge was a big, flat-bottomed craft that was pulled across the neck of the harbour on chains. It carried cars, saving them the fifteen-mile journey around the top of the harbour, and although it arrived in Gosport close to the ordinary ferry, its departure point in Portsmouth was in the old part of the city.

‘You’d better get in a shelter,’ Dan bellowed. ‘They might not be working the floating bridge in this.’

‘But I
got
to get home! I got my dad waiting for his tea – he’s in a chair, see, he can’t do nothing much for himself. Mrs Green next door slips in with a bit of dinner for him, but she’ll be down her own shelter.’

‘I expect she’ll look after your dad,’ Dan cut brusquely across her scream. ‘Look, missus, if the ferry ain’t running
there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll have to go in a shelter, unless you want to swim for it.’

‘I’ll go and see,’ she bawled, pulling away from him. ‘I’ll go and see. They might not have stopped it yet—’

She was off, running through the streets. Dan watched her for a second, then turned away. Bombs had been dropping and exploding all over the area. People were still running about, but they were different people now. They were firefighters, police, ARP wardens and Home Guard, arriving in fire engines, vans and old lorries, reeling out hoses, trying to find the fire hydrants in which to plug them, while overhead the planes circled the city, hurling down yet more bombs, killing, injuring, destroying.

Dan turned and raced back into the yard, his exhaustion forgotten. As one of the fire watchers he had a post to go to, ships and workshops to look after. As he reached his post an incendiary dropped at his feet. He leapt back, grabbed the extinguisher and banged the handle down, directing the jet of water at the fire that had already begun to burn. No sooner was it dowsed than another sprang up, then another and another, as incendiaries fell like scalding rain all over the yard. He thrust the extinguisher towards them, using it like a gun, and for a few minutes longer it worked and the fires began to die down. Then it ran out of water.

Dan felt his temper rise, his own personal fire flaring in his breast. He yelled and stamped, almost forgetting the extinguisher in his fury. ‘You bastards!’ he screamed. ‘You bloody, fucking bastards! Set us alight, would you? Well, I’ll be
buggered
if you will. I’ll see you in hell, the lot of you, see you rot in hell for what you done to us. Kill me if you can, kill me if you like, but I’ll take you with me, I’ll take you all with me, you sodding, bloody swine, you – you – you—’

He was standing amidst the flames by now, glaring up at the sky with mad eyes, shaking both fists at the planes that flew uncaring overhead. Tears poured down his cheeks,
scalding the skin as the heat evaporated them, and as yet another incendiary crashed just feet away a flame licked out and caught at the leg of his trousers.

‘Hodges! Hodges, what the hell’s the matter with you?’ Nobby Clark, the foreman, was beside him, beating at the flames, shaking his arm. He picked up another fire extinguisher and shoved it into Dan’s arms. ‘Can’t you see you’re on
fire
? Get
on
with it, for God’s sake. The whole bleeding place is going to go up if we don’t do something.’

‘The bastards,’ he said in a shaking voice, thick with tears. ‘They’re bashing everything to bits. There won’t be nothing left. Why? What’s it all for? What
good
is it going to do?’

‘I dunno, mate, and I ain’t going to stand here talking about it,’ Nobby said curtly. ‘Get that fire extinguisher going again, and when you runs out of water get another one. Or a bucket of sand – anything. We ain’t going to let them get the yard. Them ships have got to go out tomorrow and help win the bloody war, so shut your mouth, Hodges, and just bleeding well
get on with it
.’

He was gone, and Dan looked at the fire extinguisher and then at the flames that were already springing up again all around him. He felt their sudden heat and his mind seemed to click as he realised again what was happening. With a yell, he started the extinguisher and directed it with grim determination, not wildly as he had done before, but concentrating on one fire at a time. That’s one for
you
, Hitler, he muttered savagely as one incendiary after another spluttered and died, that’s one for
you
, Goebbels, and
you
, Rommel, and
you
and
you
and
you
… You’re
not
going to beat us. Do your bloody worst. We’re British, and you’re bloody well
not
going to beat us.

Afterwards, that long and dreadful night was no more than a patchwork of scattered memories. He had been on a lorry, he could remember that, he’d been out at Clarence Pier when that went up, helping to fight the fires, helping
to drag the bodies away. He’d been in streets he’d never known existed – and Dan Hodges would have said he knew Old Pompey like the back of his hand – helping people from their bombed houses, getting them into shelters while the raid continued almost till daylight. He’d staggered into First Aid posts and wardens’ shelters with men and women who were hurt by shrapnel, by flying bricks and glass, by blast, and once or twice he’d been given scalding tea to drink by girls no older than Eunice Vickers next door, dressed in boiler suits and tin hats, weary and pale, yet still with cheerful grins on their dirt-streaked faces.

He came home at last as dawn streaked the sky with a different kind of red. Fires were still burning all over the city and streets were closed or impassable. The flames that were consuming the Guildhall could be seen for miles, leaping high into the sky. There were hoses and firemen everywhere, clambering over great heaps of rubble, and there were people scrambling over the same rubble, tearing at it with their bare hands as they searched for their families, for their friends and neighbours. There were other people, shocked and bewildered, just wandering aimlessly, sometimes calling out a name; or sitting on stones, staring sightlessly into their own nightmares, too stunned to know where or even who they were.

Dan stumbled past. Why he was going home at all he didn’t know. There was nobody there to worry about, nobody he cared for who might need him. If only Nora could be waiting for me …

Nora would not be there and yet he felt that she had been with him; through all that bitter, frenzied night she had been by his side. She hadn’t left him, not really, and he hoped she knew now what he’d never been able to tell her while she lived – that he loved her.

Nora, he thought as he staggered blindly through the ruined city. Oh, Nora …