Tuppence To Spend (29 page)

‘It is,’ Tommy returned cheerfully. ‘Been celebrating in the pub, then?’

‘If that’s what you call it.’ Dan Hodges put his hand through the letter box and drew out the key on its long string. With some difficulty he fitted it into the lock and turned it.

Tommy, opening his own door to let Kathy and the girls go in first, felt suddenly sorry for him. ‘Why don’t you come in with us and have a cuppa?’ he suggested. ‘It’s Christmas. No time to be on your own.’

Dan turned and looked at him, and Tommy remembered a little guiltily that it was partly through his doing that Dan was alone this Christmas. If he hadn’t gone down to the billeting office … But he’d done right, he told himself. It had been no place for Sammy either. The nipper was better off in the countryside.

‘No thanks,’ Dan said. ‘I’ve been working all this week. I need to get some sleep.’

He went indoors and shut the door. Tommy looked at it for a moment, then shrugged and went into his own house. He wasn’t all that sorry Dan had refused and he knew Freda wouldn’t have been best pleased, though she would never have said so, not on Christmas Day, but he still felt sorry for the man. It wasn’t much of a Christmas, half of it spent in the pub and half on your own in an empty house.

He went inside to draw the curtains and put up the blackout. All the other houses in April Grove and March and October Streets were doing the same, so that when night fell there was no light showing at all. Yet nobody walking along them could have been in any doubt that it
was Christmas, for from almost every darkened window you could hear the sound of music, singing and laughter. Everyone was determined to enjoy themselves. Everyone was determined to prove that even Hitler and his war were powerless to prevent that.

For Dan Hodges the sounds brought an even more piercing loneliness. As he let himself into his cold and empty house, a house with no wife and no sons, with no smell of cooking, no sputtering gaslight or crackling fire, he felt his loss sweep over him in a giant wave of hopelessness and yearning. Maybe it was poor, maybe the furniture was shabby and the floor dirty, maybe it was the sort of home Annie Chapman or Freda Vickers would turn up their noses at, but with Nora and the boys there it had been home just the same. And they might have argued and shouted at each other at times – well, he’d been the one to do most of the shouting, he acknowledged ruefully – but they’d been a family for all that. And all families argued sometimes. They’d stayed together, that was the important thing, they’d looked out for each other. Bugger it, he thought as he slumped into the broken armchair and stared with hopeless eyes at the empty fireplace, they’d
loved
each other.

And now it was all gone. Gordon sent away to that approved school, his apprenticeship gone down the drain. Sammy, out in the country, learning different ways, forgetting his dad. And Nora – his Nora – dead.

Nora, gone for ever. And nothing for him to do but work, work like a slave on the ships that Vosper’s built and maintained. Work till he was dog-tired, too exhausted to stand, because it was only that way that he could put it all out of his mind for a while.

That’s what he’d been doing today, Christmas Day. He knew that Tommy Vickers thought he’d been in the pub, he knew he looked drunk, but he hadn’t touched a drop all day. He’d been working on a new patrol boat, getting it
ready to be handed over to the Navy, and the job still wasn’t finished. He’d have stuck at it longer only the foreman had told him to go home. Liable to make mistakes, that’s what he’d said. Go home and get a bit of kip, come back in the morning.

Dan got up and looked at the mantelpiece. There was just one card there, from Sammy, a card he’d obviously made himself. It had a crayoned picture on it of shepherds on a rocky mountain, apparently dipping their sheep in a tin bath, while all around them the skies were criss-crossed with searchlights. What could have been a parachutist with his head on fire was hovering above them.

I suppose it’s meant to be an angel, he thought, taking it from the mantelpiece and examining it. Poor little sod, he’s got all mixed up with the war as well. He don’t hardly know what it’s all about, any of it.

Dan would have liked to have Sammy home, or to have gone out to Bridge End to see him, but how could he do that, when he was out at sea half the time, going out to repair engines and keep the ships on the go? Before the war it hadn’t mattered, you knew when you’d get back. Now, you never knew – you never even knew if you
would
get back. A mate of his had been killed only a week or so ago by a German plane strafing the ship he was on out in the Channel.

Sammy was better off without him, anyway. He’d never managed to be much of a father. Even Gordon, in the approved school, was better off without him. Best leave them where they were, both of them.

He looked at the card again, his fingers moving over the upturned faces of the shepherds and the struggling sheep. Funny, the more you looked at it, the more lifelike it seemed. You could see those sheep were struggling, somehow. The nipper’d got quite a knack.

He put the card back and sank into his chair again. Through the party wall he could hear sudden bursts of
laughter from the Vickers family. Had other people in too, by the sound of it, probably Ron Weeks, and his wife and boy, Clifford, and there was that young woman from October Street and her youngsters. They were singing now, singing at the tops of their voices, loud enough for the whole street to hear them. He buried his face in his hands, but the sound still reached his ears.

‘Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kitbag, and Smile, Smile, Smile …’

There wasn’t a kitbag big enough to pack Dan Hodges’ troubles in. And he couldn’t remember when he had last felt like smiling.

The respite didn’t last long.

It was as if the Germans had spent Christmas loading their planes with the biggest cargo of bombs yet. The day after Boxing Day they were back, hurling destruction on London. The newspapers were filled again with pictures of burning buildings and shattered streets. Big Ben itself had been damaged, and there were countless reports of lucky escapes and unlucky encounters. A man escaped unhurt while his wife and friends were killed beside him. A cat was released from a crushed dustbin. A woman dug her baby and badly injured husband from the debris of their home. Others, buried under mounds of rubble, cried out for help until their desperate rescuers managed to dig them out, or until their cries faded and stopped.

The rescuers were still at work when the Germans struck again, with the worst raid yet. The bombing went on for three hours and fires raged through the streets until it seemed as if the entire city must be in flames.

‘Look at that, Tommy,’ Freda said, staring in horror at the pictures in the
Sketch
. ‘They say it was a deliberate attempt to set fire to the city. There’s been seven churches destroyed and God knows how many other buildings ruined. They’re calling it the Second Great Fire of London. It’s dreadful.’

‘It is, love, but look at this picture on the front of the
Daily Mail
.’ Tommy held out his paper. It was the most dramatic photograph of all – the dome of St Paul’s rising clear of a huge cloud of smoke and lit by the flames that
burned all around. ‘It’s like one of those old paintings you see, with God looking down out of the clouds. I reckon he was looking after his own there, don’t you?’ He looked at the photograph again. ‘It sort of gives you heart, somehow, thinking that even with all that bombing a place like St Paul’s can get through without being damaged.’

‘He didn’t look after the other seven churches, though, did he?’ Freda said in a shaking voice. ‘Nor all those other buildings. It’s dreadful. It’s
wicked
. All those poor people … And it’ll be our turn next, Tommy, here in Portsmouth. We must have had getting on for thirty raids already, but we’ve not had anything as bad as that yet. But we will – they’ll do the same to us, see if they don’t. They won’t be satisfied until every town in England is flattened.’

Tommy put his arm round her. As he did so, they heard the slam of the front door of number 2 and looked at each other.

‘That’s Dan Hodges going up the pub again,’ Freda said. ‘I saw him coming home dinner time, he was so drunk he could hardly walk. And there’s people getting killed fighting to save the skin of men like him, Tommy. It’s not fair. It just isn’t fair.’

Dan wasn’t going to the pub. He had a couple of days off from Vosper’s in lieu of all the overtime he’d done up till Christmas and he was entitled to his relaxation. But relaxing was something he just couldn’t do these days and sitting in the pub on his own, drinking himself senseless, made him feel worse instead of better.

He was going back to work. He didn’t have to go, not till the next day, but he couldn’t stand being alone in the house any more. At least when he was at work he could feel he was doing something. At least he could feel there was some sense in his being alive.

The Blitz didn’t end with that massive raid. It went on and on, with new raids every night, on Bristol, Liverpool and
Manchester as well as other cities and London itself. It seemed that the enemy was determined to hammer the country into the ground, and the New Year opened to a dread that all the courage in the world could not quite dispel.

‘We’re giving as good we get,’ Tommy said to Freda as they sat in their shelter at the bottom of the garden. The siren went every night now, for Portsmouth lay close to the path of the bombers, wherever they were headed, and you never knew when it might be Pompey’s turn. Some people refused to go down to the shelter, saying that if a bomb had your name on it, it would find you no matter where you were. Tommy scorned that. He didn’t believe in bombs ‘having your name on them’ and he wanted his wife and daughter safe in the shelter while he went on his rounds, firewatching and making sure there were no lights showing.

‘Our boys are over there, bombing them just the same way,’ he went on. ‘The RAF are giving them what for. Blasting their cities to bits, they are.’

‘Good thing too,’ Eunice said, but Freda shook her head. She had brought her shopping bag down as usual, filled with all the things the family might want during the night, and now she took out her knitting and examined it to see if she’d finished on a purl or a plain row before putting it away. There was a flask of cocoa in there as well and a few broken biscuits in a paper bag. Broken biscuits were a bargain, sold cheaply, and you never knew what sort you’d get. In this lot, she knew, there were two custard creams.

She began to knit, still thinking of the German women who were probably doing just the same, sitting in shelters and knitting as they waited to be bombed. ‘I know they’re the enemy, but it doesn’t seem right all the same. I mean, we’re killing kiddies and old people just like they are. I thought wars were supposed to be between
armies
.’

‘Everyone’s in the army now,’ Tommy said. ‘In a
manner of speaking, I mean. The Home Front, they’re calling us, you know that.’

‘Anyway,’ Eunice said, ‘those old people you’re so sorry for, they probably killed our boys in the first war and have been egging Hitler on ever since. And the children, they’ll grow up to be just as bad. I think it’s right what people say – the only good German’s a
dead
German.’

Freda said nothing. She didn’t want them arguing down in the shelter, when they might be blown to bits at any moment. All the same, it
didn’t
seem right, bombing kiddies, no matter who they were. And what about Heinz Brunner who used to run the newspaper shop in September Street? He’d lived there with his wife Alice for years, everyone knew him and a nicer, kinder man you couldn’t wish to meet. He was almost certainly dead now, first interned and then torpedoed on his way to Canada, so perhaps Eunice would consider him a ‘good’ German at last. But he always had been good and Alice – who wouldn’t believe he was dead – was just fading away without him.

‘A lot of people are trekking out over the hill every night,’ Eunice went on. ‘My friend at work’s got an auntie at Denmead and she goes there straight from work. She only goes home at weekends now. Her mum goes back in the daytime, of course,’ she added.

Freda nodded. ‘I know. And they’re talking about digging tunnels under Portsdown Hill, so that people can shelter there like they do in the underground stations in London.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t fancy it much myself. It seems awful, somehow, hiding away in caves. At least we’ve got this place a bit cosy and we’re only a few yards from the back door.’ She looked around at the bunks and the camp bed, and the old rag rug she’d put on the floor. There were a few pictures on the walls too, cut out of
Picture Post
magazines and stuck to the curve of the corrugated iron, and there was a soft light cast by the hurricane lamp. It was
a hole at the bottom of the garden all the same and it was cold and cramped, and far from being ideal, but she still thought it was a lot better than being in a tunnel under the hill.

‘Bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has legged it,’ Tommy said. ‘You know what the council’s like, it’ll take them a good couple of years to talk about tunnels, let alone dig them. How long do they think it’s going to go on for, for goodness sake? It’s now we need them, not in 1943.’

‘Maybe they think we’ll still need them in 1943,’ Freda said sadly.

Eunice gave a scornful laugh. ‘1943! There’ll be nothing left to bomb by then, if they go on at this rate. The war’s never going to last that long. Someone’ll have to win before then.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Tommy said. ‘The last one went on for four years, remember. Anyway, they’ve got to make plans, haven’t they?’

Freda started a purl row. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s going to be over for a long time. If you ask me, they’re just getting into their stride. And I can’t believe we won’t get another dose ourselves. All these other places being blitzed – it’s bound to be Pompey’s turn again soon.’

It came only a few days later, on 10 January. And, just as they had feared, the raid that blasted the city apart that night was every bit as bad as those on London.