Tuppence To Spend (30 page)

It began at just seven o’clock in the evening. It was a Friday and Eunice had come home early, determined to go to the pictures with her friend Sheila. The family had argued about it all through tea.

‘There hasn’t been a raid over Pompey since just before Christmas. It’s London they’re going for, you know it is.’

‘
And
other places,’ Tommy said. ‘Your mother’s right, we’re bound to get another attack and the longer it goes on, the more likely it is. Those cinemas are death traps.’

‘They always tell you when the siren goes. You can get out if you want to.’

‘Yes, and suppose everyone decided to get out at the same moment?’ Freda demanded. ‘Have you thought about that, Eunice, two or three hundred people all trying to squeeze through half a dozen doors? And suppose there’s a direct hit? Why don’t you ask Sheila round here? We can sit by the fire and have a game of cards.’

‘We don’t
want
a game of cards,’ Eunice said, exasperated. ‘We want to go to the
pictures
! It’s
Rebecca
, with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. It’s ever so romantic and if we don’t go this week we’ll miss it. It’s some Western or other next week.’

‘Nothing wrong with a good Western,’ Tommy declared, getting up from the table. ‘Anyway, it’s gone six o’clock, time I was off on my rounds. What’s it to be? I’ll walk round to Sheila’s with you, if you like, and then see you both back here.’

Eunice looked sulky. ‘I told you, we don’t want to come back here. We’re going to the pictures. Look, I’ll be back by ten o’clock. Nothing’s going to happen before then. We haven’t had a raid since before Christmas.’

Tommy glanced at his wife. ‘Up to you, Free.’

Freda sighed. ‘Well, if you’re that set on it I suppose we can’t stop you. But mind you come straight home afterwards, all right? Your dad’ll come to meet you, won’t you, Tom?’

‘I’ll be outside waiting for you,’ he promised. ‘You can tell Sheila’s dad I’ll see her home as well, save him turning out. It’s a cold night. And I’ll walk round there with you now, like I said. Don’t like you being out on your own in the blackout.’

Eunice gave him a look but said no more. It wasn’t too late for her mum to change her mind and say she couldn’t go to the pictures. She ran upstairs and got her new scarf, the red one her Auntie Molly had knitted her for
Christmas, and came down looking bright-eyed and excited. Freda, looking at her, wondered if she and Sheila were going to meet a couple of boys, but there was nothing she could do about that. The girls were nineteen after all, old enough to start a bit of courting.

‘Come on, then, if you’re coming,’ she said to her father. ‘The picture starts at half past six and we don’t want to be going in halfway through.’

‘That’ll only be the little picture. It doesn’t matter if you miss a bit of that. It’s a Western, isn’t it? Thought you weren’t bothered about Westerns.’

‘I’m bothered about having a good night out,’ Eunice said coldly. ‘And we won’t have that if we only see half the picture and can’t make out what it’s all about. Anyway, I don’t like going in when it’s dark, you can’t see where you’re sitting.’

Tommy wound his own dark blue scarf round his neck and jammed on his air-raid warden’s tin hat. ‘All right then, come on. I’m ready now.’ He bent over Freda in her armchair and gave her a kiss. ‘Now, you mind you get down the shelter straight away if there’s a warning, see. No fussing around saving stuff. Got your bag ready?’

‘Yes, and the tin box with all the papers in. I’ll be all right, Tom. Anyway, I expect our Eunice is right, there won’t be a raid. You go off now and I’ll have some cocoa ready when you get back.’ She picked up her knitting and settled down to listen to the wireless.

It was very quiet after they had gone. There was a music programme on, to be followed by a recording of
Hi Gang
! with Be´be´ Daniels and Ben Lyon, then a concert. It was a shame Eunice hadn’t stopped at home, they could have enjoyed it together, but there, the girl was young and naturally she wanted to be out with her pals. Once again Freda wondered if one of them might be a young man.

I’d better do the washing-up in a minute, she thought, before I get too settled in this chair. She wondered if
London might get another attack tonight. They’d had a nasty raid last night, which must have been horrible for all the poor souls still trying to put things straight after that terrible Blitz at the end of December. And they’d said on the news that Manchester had had a bad raid too. It was awful to think of. Yet folk still seemed to manage to carry on. There’d been pictures in the
Daily Mail
of people scrambling over all sorts of rubble to get to work, and it was the same in Pompey when they’d had those raids before Christmas. The local
Evening News
had pictures of people carrying on as usual, right alongside those of firemen battling against burning buildings.

I hope they don’t come here tonight, she thought, laying down her knitting. Not while our Eunice is out and Tommy on his rounds. She hadn’t forgotten that night when Kathy Simmons’ baby had been born and Tommy with her in the shelter, while Freda herself had been too bad with flu to go and help. She’d been in the Anderson shelter with Eunice, all wrapped up in blankets, listening to the scream of the bombs without any idea that Kathy was screaming too, with the pain of birth. All she’d known was that Tommy was out in it somewhere, perhaps being bombed himself, perhaps buried under some ruined building. She didn’t want to go through that again.

The comedy programme finished and she realised she’d heard barely a word. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was just on seven. Then her heart was gripped with icy fear and she never knew afterwards whether it was because she heard the first note of the wailing air-raid siren, or whether she had some strange, unearthly knowledge that the Germans were on their way, and that death was coming with them.

Tommy left Eunice and Sheila at the cinema and went back to his patrol area, whistling. It was a fine, clear night with a bright moon just coming up, and he glanced at it and felt
his mouth twist. Bombers’ moon, he thought, they’ll be coming over tonight, that’s for certain. He wondered where their target would be.

Tommy had been in a good many air raids now, some during the day and some at night. He’d been down in Old Pompey when Pickfords had been hit, and he’d shepherded a crowd of people into a street shelter and got them singing to keep their spirits up. He’d been in Copnor when St Albans church was hit, and all those houses round about smashed and damaged. And then there’d been the one when little Thomas Simmons had been born.

You never got used to it though, not really. You never knew when this one might have the bomb aimed at your house and when you went out of your front door you never really knew if it would still be there when you got back. But it didn’t do to think that way, you’d go mad. You just took it for granted that you and yours would come through OK, and did your best to help them that needed it. And when you’d done that and found you were still alive, you went home and hoped for the best.

Tommy wasn’t doing his ordinary rounds in Copnor tonight. Along with other wardens, he was due to report to ARP Control in the Guildhall for a lecture on incendiary bombs and to collect orders for a special training session. He walked quickly through the darkened streets to the city centre, keeping a sharp eye open for any flicker of light and shouting the familiar ‘Put that light out!’ whenever he caught a glimpse of one. Those four words had made the ARP wardens more unpopular than any other, he thought, but you had to do it. The Germans might be up there now, too high to be heard, looking down for a clue that might tell them where to drop their bombs. And there were fifth columnists all over the place, so he’d heard, traitors and spies ready to flash a signal. You couldn’t take any chances.

The Guildhall stood, grand and imposing in the growing moonlight, at the top of its broad flight of steps, flanked by
the somnolent lions that no small boy could resist climbing up on. The soft, cold light gleamed on their marble flanks and Tommy felt a sudden desire to climb on them himself, sitting astride the big bodies and pretending he was an emperor of the jungle. He grinned and joined the throng of men entering the Guildhall through the side door.

The Guildhall was Portsmouth’s grandest building. It housed the City Council, ARP Control had its offices there and the Lord Mayor himself had moved in to live there as soon as the war began, saying he wanted to be on the spot when anything happened. It was the nerve centre of the city.

Tommy and the other ARP wardens went into one of the meeting rooms. There was a small stage at one end and rows of chairs facing it. They filed into place, a murmur of voices as they talked to each other about the war, the Blitz on London and whether they would ever be lucky enough to see Pompey football team play again. It seemed a very long time ago since they’d won the FA Cup, only a few months before war broke out.

The siren went only moments after they had settled themselves down. Almost immediately, before anyone had a chance to move, they heard a tremendous explosion and all the lights went out.

There was instant pandemonium.

‘Blimey! What the bloody hell …’ ‘They’ve hit the electricity, must have.’ ‘Isn’t there no emergency lighting? Who’s got a torch?’ A score of lights flickered into action. ‘They must be overhead already. We’d better get out there.’ ‘No, some of you get up to the roof, we’ll need fire watchers.’ ‘Ain’t there any up there already? Don’t say we was all down here, listening to this bleedin’ lecture.’

‘Where was Noah when the lights went out?’ Tommy muttered and gave the answer himself. ‘In the
dark
.’ But there was no time for jokes, and he was already making for the stairs to the top of the tower. If the
Luftwaffe
was
already over the city, men would be required up there to see just where help was most needed and to guard the Guildhall itself from incendiaries. Just one or two of them up there could set the whole place alight.

He emerged on to the narrow parapet, beside the big copper cupola. Here, two hundred feet above the square, he could look right out over the city, stretching north to Copnor and Hilsea, with the dark bulk of Portsdown Hill like a rampart behind them. To the east he could see the dark lines of the streets towards Eastney and Langstone Harbour, to the west was Portsmouth’s own great harbour, filled with shipping, and to the south lay the crowded buildings of Old Portsmouth, and the smart shopping streets and hotels of Southsea. He could see them clearly, even in the blackout. They were lit not by forbidden street lights or careless windows but by fire.

‘Blimey,’ he said to Bill Rogers, who’d followed him up, ‘that’s Palmerston Road, look. Going up like a flaming torch … And that’s the electricity station, they must have hit that first. There won’t be an electric light on in the whole of Pompey. Bloody
hell
, what was
that
?’

‘They’re bombing the whole bloody place,’ the other man said. ‘They’re giving us the Blitz, same as they did London. This is the end of Pompey, Tom. The bloody end.’

The roar of the aircraft drowned any other words. There must be hundreds of them up there, Tommy thought, flinging himself flat as a bomb exploded somewhere close. The sky was a web of silver as searchlights flung their beams towards the stars, and somewhere under the drone of the engines and the thunder of the bombs you could hear the rattle of ack-ack guns from the emplacements at Southsea and on the hill. But what use were they against a raid of this size? They could bring down a few planes, perhaps, but they could never destroy an armada like this.

The bombs rained down. From their vantage point
Tommy and his mate could see the fires springing up all over the city. Palmerston Road was alight from end to end, its shops surely ruined, and barely had this thought crossed his mind than a shower of bombs fell close by. When he raised his head again he saw the stores of Commercial Road – Littlewoods, British Home Stores, the Landport Drapery Bazaar – beginning to blaze. There won’t be a shop left in the place, he thought, and grabbed a fire extinguisher as a stick of incendiary bombs fell on the roof just below him. Blimey, if the Guildhall itself caught alight he’d be fried up here like a sausage on a stick …

When he next looked out from the tower it was to see a blazing inferno at his feet. Everywhere in Portsmouth seemed to be on fire. Tommy, who knew the city like the back of his hand, stared in horror and felt his body grow numb. That must be the Eye and Ear Hospital there. And that, in the other direction, was Clarence Pier. Down Queen Street, that was the Royal Sailor’s Rest, and there in Lake Road the Sally Army citadel. And the old Hippo-drome, that was on fire, surely, and silhouetted by flames he could see the towers and spires of churches, and the ornate frontages of cinemas built during the twenties and thirties, cinemas he’d been in and out of ever since he was a boy …
Cinemas
!

He’d seen Eunice to the cinema himself, her and her friend Sheila, laughing and giggling the way girls do, looking forward to seeing – who was it? – Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in some romantic picture or other. His Eunice …

He turned and glanced north, towards Copnor. Freda would have gone down the shelter as soon as she heard the siren, he was sure she would. But what if there’d been a direct hit? Even Andersons couldn’t survive that. And she was all on her own, as well …

‘Tommy!
Tom
! Look behind you –
look down there
!’ Bill
Rogers’s voice was high with panic. ‘The Guildhall’s on fire – the whole bleeding place is alight! We’ve got to get out!’

Tommy stared down at the main roof. Bill was right. A mass of incendiaries had sprinkled themselves all over the building and were burning fiercely. He could feel their heat on his face. There was nothing anyone could do about it and the fire watchers were evacuating their positions. Bill was already making for the door which led to the tower stairs. Tommy flung one last wild glance around and followed.