The Girl With No Name (10 page)

‘If they do, me duck, they’ll get a bloody nose,’ he replied stoutly. ‘You heard what Winston said last night, didn’t you? We got our boys out, and some of them Frenchies and Belgies, too. We live to fight another day, but I reckon we’ll all be in the front line now.’

Dan was right. The war had come to them, all of them. France surrendered and Hitler turned his attention to Britain. He was determined to break the morale of the English before he invaded and the Nazis took over the country as they were doing everywhere else. What Mr Churchill was to describe as the Battle of Britain was on and the long-expected air raids began as the Luftwaffe filled the skies. The RAF flew unending sorties against the waves of bombers who had come to drop death and destruction on the airfields, trying to gain supremacy in the air by destroying the RAF on the ground. Time and again the marauders were driven back from the coasts and chased out to sea, and Hitler’s plan to destroy the RAF and take supremacy in the sky failed. It was then that he turned his attention to the cities, determined to undermine the morale of the general population with continual night-time raids and, as Dan had predicted, everyone became part of the front line.

The first wave of bombers descended on London at the end of June. The air raid sirens rent the air at about one in the morning. Lisa awoke with a jolt as the wail of the siren continued, warning everyone to go to the shelters.

Naomi hurried into Lisa’s room. ‘Come on,’ she said briskly. ‘Bring your gas mask and down to the cellar.’ She waited as Lisa put her dressing gown on over her pyjamas and then took her hand and together they went downstairs to the kitchen.

‘It’ll be all right, me duck,’ Dan assured her as she paused in fear at the top of the steps. ‘I’ve lit the candles, it won’t be dark.’

Taking her hand, he led Lisa down into the cellar where the candles he’d lighted gave a warm glow to the cramped space. Naomi stayed up in the kitchen just long enough to boil a kettle and fill a vacuum flask.

‘I’ll make us some cocoa,’ she said, as she came down with the hot water, a bottle of milk and a tin of cocoa. ‘We’ll have a midnight feast.’

Together they sat in the candlelit room and drank cocoa and ate biscuits from the tin. They heard nothing from above, no drone of planes or blast of bombs.

‘P’raps they saw them off before they got here,’ suggested Dan.

At last the all-clear sounded and the little family went upstairs again.

‘You’re a brave girl, Lisa,’ Dan said. ‘Not easy for you down there, I know, but you got spunk and you coped.’

‘Spunk?’ queried Lisa.

‘Courage,’ said Dan giving her a hug. ‘You’re a brave girl.’

There were no more raids on London for several weeks, but the dogfights continued over the English Channel, and the coastal towns and the Channel Islands were badly bombed. Every morning Lisa woke with relief that they hadn’t had to spend another night in the cellar. At school they had air raid drills which she hated, but Hitler seemed to be leaving London alone for now.

London, however, had long ago made its preparations for the onslaught it knew must come. Air raid warden posts were strengthened, wardens trained. So far most of their duties had been to patrol the streets, but now they knew they would soon be put to a far greater test. Sand and water were stored at strategic places ready to deal with incendiary bombs before the fire should take hold. Volunteers manned the first aid posts. Anti-aircraft placements lay sandbagged, concealed under camouflage netting; searchlights deployed ready to scour the night skies for enemy planes, pinning them in a shaft of light as targets for the gunners.

‘How do the planes find where to come in the dark?’ wondered Lisa.

‘All the buggers will have to do is follow the Thames,’ Dan replied. ‘Simply follow the river and there we are.’

‘Daniel!’ Naomi scolded. ‘Language!’ She turned to Lisa. ‘Don’t use that word,’ she warned, ‘it’s very rude.’

‘D’you know what “buggers” is?’ Lisa asked Harry, when he met her from school a few days later.

‘Buggers?’ Harry shook his head.

‘It’s very rude,’ Lisa told him.

‘Then I’ll find out,’ he promised.

They were walking back towards Kemble Street and when they reached the corner outside the Duke of Wellington, they paused. Harry never went nearer to Lisa’s home and as they were about to part Mary came hurrying out of the pub, almost cannoning into them.

‘Lisa!’ she cried in surprise. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you.’ She then looked at Harry with interest. ‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘who’s this?’

Harry returned her look but said nothing, leaving Lisa to say in some confusion, ‘Oh, just a friend from school. Bye, Harry, see you tomorrow.’

Harry took the hint and with a brief, ‘Bye, Lisa,’ turned and sauntered away.

Mary watched him go, undeceived. Clearly Harry was no school boy, but for the moment she said nothing more than, ‘Had a good day?’

‘Yes,’ Lisa replied, pleased that Mary asked no more questions. ‘We read a book,
Great Expectations
. It is difficult for me, but I like very much.’

‘Dickens? No, he’s not easy! Well done, Lisa.’

‘There is an old lady who wears her wedding gown,’ Lisa explained. ‘It is a little strange, but a good story, I think.’

Later that evening Mary slipped away from the pub and went to see Naomi. It was late and Lisa had gone to bed. Dan was out with the volunteer firemen and Naomi was dozing in her chair.

‘Who’s the lad that Lisa’s going round with?’ Mary asked when they were settled with a pot of tea between them.

Naomi looked up, startled. ‘What lad?’

‘I saw them together today,’ Mary said. ‘Lisa said he’s a friend from school, but I don’t think he is. He looked too old and he was pretty scruffy. There was something about him... I don’t know what, really, just something I didn’t quite trust. She said his name was Harry.’

‘She’s never mentioned anyone called Harry,’ said Naomi. ‘She don’t seem to have many friends at all, just Hilda Lang. She goes round there quite a lot.’

‘Are you sure that’s where she goes? She wasn’t there that time she got lost.’

‘She wasn’t with this Harry either,’ pointed out Naomi, ‘she was on her own.’

‘She was on her own when Dan found her.’

They left the subject there, but Naomi gave it great thought when Mary had gone and decided to tackle Lisa about the mystery boy.

‘We need to know who she’s going about with,’ she said to Dan. ‘This boy doesn’t sound very suitable and she’s only just fourteen.’

The next morning Naomi said casually, ‘Lisa, don’t forget any of your friends from school are welcome here if you want to ask them.’

Knowing what was behind the suggestion, Lisa reddened, but she said, ‘Thank you, Aunt Naomi, I’ll ask Hilda today.’

‘I wasn’t just thinking of Hilda,’ Naomi said, ‘I thought there might be someone else.’

Lisa smiled and, taking the bull by the horns, answered, ‘Did Aunt Mary tell you she saw me with Harry? He’s just a boy from school. He lives this way somewhere and sometimes we walk home together. I don’t want him to come home here.’

Naomi found herself smiling at Lisa’s easy use of the word ‘home’. She loved the fact that Lisa regarded their home as hers. So, she asked nothing further about Harry.

It was during the summer holidays that the Luftwaffe finally turned their attention to London. The sirens wailed the alarm on several August nights and occasionally during the day.

One day when Lisa was supposed to be round at Hilda’s house for the day, she left early and met up with Harry. Together they went to Petticoat Lane market, wandering through the narrow streets crowded with all the people out to find a bargain. Lisa hadn’t liked being in such a large and pushy crowd, but Harry, in his element among the market stalls, took her hand and led her from stall to stall, fingering the clothes, peering at the strange array of goods offered for sale, listening to the patter of the stallholders.

Lisa suddenly realised they had stayed too long and said, ‘Harry, it’s late, I got to go.’

‘Shall we go up west again on Saturday?’ Harry suggested as they left the market and headed back to Kemble Street.

‘You mean tomorrow?’

‘No, I got to work tomorrow. Next week. I got money this time.’

‘Wonder where from?’ murmured Lisa.

‘Come on, Lisa, let’s do it. We did it before.’

‘Yes, and I got into real trouble for it.’

‘Did you?’ Harry didn’t sound particularly interested. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘You didn’t ask,’ snapped Lisa.

‘Say you’re going round Hilda’s.’

‘It’s not that easy, Harry.’

‘I’ll wait for you in the park, Saturday. Next Saturday, right?’ He seemed to take her acquiescence for granted and, with a wave of his hand and a quick ‘See you then,’ he was gone.

Lisa scurried through the streets knowing she was late and that Aunt Naomi would be worried. The trouble was, Aunt Naomi always worried and it seemed to Lisa that she was often the cause. When she’d said as much to Hilda one day she’d been overheard by Hilda’s mother.

‘Of course she worries about you,’ Esther scolded. ‘She’s looking after you for your parents. It’s a big responsibility.’

‘I haven’t got any parents,’ Lisa said flatly. ‘They’re dead.’

‘No, Lisa,’ Esther said more gently. ‘You don’t know that for sure and you must never give up hope. My parents are in Berlin and I haven’t heard from them either, but we have to remember that they can’t write to us from Germany, can they? We have to keep hoping.’

Lisa had been keeping a tiny flame of hope alive in her heart, but Harry thought she was silly.

‘You have to accept that they’re gone, Lisa,’ he said. ‘Same as mine have.’

‘I know you’re right,’ she said. But, secretly, she still harboured the hope.

As she hurried home now the air was suddenly rent by the swooping wail of the air raid siren, the normal afternoon sounds of the streets drowned in its agonised howl. For a moment Lisa paused, peering up into the August sky. Silver barrage balloons swung in the breeze, tugging at their tethers, bulbous grey whales shifting against the clear blue of the sky, but there were no planes in sight. Was it a false alarm? she wondered. Perhaps it was, for although they happened occasionally, daylight raids were rare. But then she heard, through the wailing of the siren, the distant sound of anti-aircraft fire and the faint but insistent drone of engines, planes as yet unseen but roaring relentlessly as they homed in on their target. People were hurrying to the public shelter at the end of the street, but nothing would have induced Lisa to join them and take refuge there. Being shut in, especially with a crowd of other people, was her worst nightmare. She wasn’t far from home. She’d have to go down into the cellar; that was bad enough, but better than the public shelter. As she turned into the little street with its flat-faced terraced houses opening directly on to the pavement, she saw Aunt Naomi, standing at the front door of sixty-five, looking anxiously up and down the road. Catching sight of Lisa, she waved at her frantically, shrieking her name, though her voice was lost in the sound of the siren, and Lisa began running again.

‘Where have you been, Lisa?’ Naomi cried as she pulled her indoors. ‘You’re late! You could have been caught in the street!’ Her fear made her angry and she said, ‘Go down to the cellar.’

Lisa opened the cellar door but waited at the top of the stone steps, listening to the continuing wail of the siren outside and wondering where Uncle Dan was, wishing he was there with them.

Aunt Naomi snatched the kettle off the hob and filled a vacuum flask with hot water. ‘Come on, Lisa,’ she said, ‘we must go down,’ and she led the way into the comparative safety of the underground room. Naomi usually had time to fill her thermos, as she had today, and she kept some of the precious tea ration in a small jar, so that they could have a hot drink.

Lisa and Naomi sat in the candlelit cellar listening to the drone of aircraft overhead, the boom of the anti-aircraft battery in the park not three streets away and the crump and thud of falling bombs. The house seemed to be shaking above them and they held hands for mutual comfort.

Lisa wondered if Harry had got back to the hostel before the raid. She knew they had a shelter there, so he should be all right. Naomi was worrying about Dan. He was out with his taxi when the siren had gone off and a surprise daylight raid like this would have caught him, like so many others, unawares.

One very loud explosion made the whole house shake and groan above them, and they clutched each other in terror at the sounds of destruction nearby. ‘That one was close,’ cried Naomi. ‘Oh God, I hope Dan’s all right.’

‘He’ll have taken shelter somewhere.’ Lisa tried to sound reassuring, but her own fear made her voice shaky. She hoped he was safe, as well.

It was more than an hour and a half before the all-clear sounded and Lisa and Naomi could emerge into the kitchen. Naomi looked in dismay at the broken glass on the kitchen floor. The window sagged inwards, still criss-crossed with strips of black tape as a defence against bomb blast, but the tumblers which had been on the draining board and two vases at either end of the mantelpiece lay in smithereens on the lino. The front door had been blown open and hung askew on one bent hinge.

Outside there was the sound of shouting, voices echoing down the street as people came out of shelters to view the damage the Luftwaffe had left in its wake. There was immediate activity further along the road and Naomi and Lisa went outside to see what had happened.

‘Oh, God,’ Naomi cried, rushing down the street in distress, ‘the Duke’s been hit.’ Lisa followed her to join the crowd gathering outside the pub. There was a crater in the road and the roof of the Duke of Wellington hung unsupported over a collapsed wall.

Leon Hardman, the air raid warden, had taken charge and was urging people to stand back and stay clear. ‘That roof could come down at any moment,’ he shouted. ‘Keep right back.’ Even as he shouted, a shower of tiles clattered down, smashing on the pavement below, and everyone drew back, looking up anxiously at the crumbling roof.