‘My Fred - has anyone seen my Fred?’
Others were scrabbling desperately at piles of rubble.
‘Our Brenda’s down there somewhere; she was under the
stairs and it’s all fell in on top of her. Oh my God, my God, she’ll be killed. We’ve got to get her out! Help me, for God’s sake, help me. Our Brenda’s in there, our Brenda!’
The Scout pushed Judy past them and through a
doorway. The building had been a small church with a
meeting-room at the back. The windows had been shattered
but the glass had been safely caught by the criss-crossing of
brown paper and the thick blackout curtains, and it was
otherwise intact. Judy cast a nervous glance at the remaining
walls, wondering what damage had been done to them
unseen, and if another blast was all that was needed to bring
them tumbling down. But there was nowhere else fit to use,
and already a short, chubby man in an overcoat and dog
collar was setting up trestle tables and brushing dust off
them with his sleeve.
‘I’m WVS,’ Judy said, joining him. ‘Judy Taylor. I’ve
come to set up an Incident Enquiry Centre.’
‘Oh, bless you, it’s so good to see you.’ He grasped her
hand briefly in his. ‘Look, we’ve started to take information
- the wardens are bringing in news all the time. They tell us
which Emergency Centre people have gone to, or which
hospital. Then, as people come in to enquire about their
family and friends, we know where to direct them.’ He
shook his head. ‘All too often, it’s the mortuary, I’m afraid.
Let’s see if we can get an urn of tea on the go; there’s
nothing like a cup of hot sweet tea for shock. Where have
you come from, my dear?’
‘Copnor.’ Judy felt a pang of anxiety, wondering how her
parents and grandmother were faring amongst all the
bombing. The noise now was almost unbearable, each
explosion sending shock waves through the ground and up
through your whole body. Even bombs falling a mile or
more away could be felt - and Portsmouth was a small area,
the island of Portsea on which it was situated only five miles
long and half as wide. Every now and then there was a
duller thud which meant a bomb had landed in one of the
two harbours, sending mud and sea water flying into the air.
Portsdown Hill, to the north, was alight with incendiary
bombs.
However, there was no time for thinking about the
family, or bombs, or anything but the people who were
straggling into the meeting-room, their faces lost and
confused. Another woman had arrived, who seemed to know
the clergyman and to be familiar with the battered tea urn,
so Judy left her to it and sat down at one of the tables,
drawing a sheet of paper towards her.
‘You’ll need to go to the Emergency Centre - there’s one
about half a mile away. If you’re not hurt, you’d best get
into a shelter until the raid’s over, and then go. Give me
your name first, in case anyone comes looking for you …
There’s a First-Aid Post at the infants’ school round the
corner - take him there and they’ll bandage him up and see
if he needs to go to hospital. Give me your name and
address first.’
An air-raid warden pushed past the queue and bent to
speak in her ear. He gave her a scrap of paper, covered with
dirty fingerprints, and Judy read it quickly. She looked at
him in consternation.
‘You think his parents will come in here?’
‘More’n likely, ducks. They’ll be looking for him, see?
Stands to reason, dunnit. You’ll have to tell ‘em.’
Judy bit her lip and looked down again at the scrap of
paper. It bore the details of a child found dead in the street
- a boy of no more than three years old, horribly injured,
who must have run from a bombed house and then been
caught by a second explosion. There was a brief description
- chubby, with fair, curly hair, wearing blue pyjamas and
still clutching a teddy-bear. The body had been taken to the
local morgue.
Tears came to Judy’s eyes but the warden had already
gone, called by a shout from the doorway. The next minute,
someone was standing before her holding out a length of
thick string. The other end was attached to a wire-haired
terrier of some indeterminate breed, leaping and barking
hysterically.
‘Found ‘im wandering about outside, miss. The ARP
man said to bring ‘im in ‘ere.’
Judy glanced helplessly at the clergyman, who nodded
briskly. ‘Put him in the church, my dear. We’ve already got
quite a menagerie in there.’ He turned away to attend to
someone else and Judy took the makeshift lead and dragged
the frantic dog through the door leading into the main
church where, as the minister had said, there were already
several animals including two black cats who leaped up on to
the altar and began spit and hiss furiously.
‘I hope to goodness you don’t all get free and start
fighting,’ Judy muttered, tying the dog to the leg of a pew.
The church was very plain, with little ornamentation, and
she hadn’t even known it was here until this evening. She
found two large cardboard boxes and having - with some
difficulty - caught the two terrified cats, she crammed them
in and then hurried back to the meeting-room where a
queue of people was building up, some wanting to know
where they should go, some desperate to find family or
friends they had lost.
Judy recorded all the new arrivals and checked her list to
see if the missing had already been sent on.
‘Yes, he had a head injury, they took him to the Royal.
No, it didn’t look too bad, really … A black cat? Yes, we’ve
had two brought in. They’re in boxes in the church through
that door, but please be careful not to let any of the other
animals out … The whole family were sent to the
Emergency Centre - yes, they’re all quite safe, not hurt at
all … A little boy?’ She looked up, her heart sinking, and
saw the fear in the face of the woman standing before her.
‘He’s called Bobbie,’ the woman said. Her voice was
rough, her eyes huge and dark, her cheeks drawn with fear.
‘We were in the shelter - next door was hit. I looked out to
see what was going on, and he just slipped past me. He
hated being in the shelter. I couldn’t find him nowhere, and
then another bomb …’ She stopped, the tears running
down her face, and stared at Judy piteously. ‘Has he been
brought in here, miss? Have you seen him?’
Judy swallowed, not knowing how to find the words to tell her. ‘Was - was he wearing blue pyjamas?’ she asked, praying that the woman would say no. But she nodded her
head and with a sick sense of doom, Judy went on. ‘And and
did - does he have fair, curly hair? And - and a teddy
bear?’
‘Yes! Yes, he never goes anywhere without it, screams the
place down if we take it away! Oh, where is he, where’s my
Bobbie?’ the woman cried eagerly, and then her voice faded
to a whisper and she stared at Judy with terror in her eyes. Where is he?’
‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ Judy said wretchedly. ‘It might not
be your little boy — I didn’t see him myself - but the warden
told me there was a little boy like that found a few streets
away …’
‘Where is he? Tell me!’ The woman leaned forward. ‘For
God’s sake! Tell me where my Bobbie is!’
‘It might not be him,’ Judy repeated. ‘But the - the little
boy the warden told me about - they had to take him to the
- the mortuary.’ She bit her lips, angry with herself for
breaking the news so badly, for not being able to find the
right words. ‘I - I’m so sorry. He couldn’t have known
anything about it.’
‘The mortuary? You mean he’s dead?’
Judy nodded miserably, tears filling her eyes. The woman
stared at her. Then she banged her fist on the table. ‘My
Bobbie? Dead!’ She stared wildly at Judy. ‘But he was only three. It was his birthday last week - I made him a cake. He can’t be dead. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. I won’t let him be dead!’ Her voice rose to a shriek and she turned and began
to scream at the queue. ‘I won’t let him be dead! I won’t, I won’t!’
Tm very sorry,’ Judy said, crying almost as much as the
woman herself. ‘It’s terrible. I’m very, very sorry.’
The clergyman came round the table and laid a hand
gently on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Come along, my dear.
Come and sit over here for a few minutes. I’ll bring you a
cup of tea. Then I’ll go with you to see if it is your little boy.
Come along …’
She stared at him, and for a moment Judy was afraid she
was going to hit him. Then her face crumpled, and she
covered it with her hands and began to weep. She allowed
him to lead her into a corner, where she sank on to a chair,
sobbing as if her heart were broken. Which, Judy thought, it
probably was.
She watched them ruefully. Well, a fine job I made of that, I don’t think! she told herself. She groped for a hanky and rubbed her face fiercely, then looked up to see who was
next in the queue.
The raid became known as Portsmouth’s Second Blitz.
Thousands of incendiaries and nearly three hundred high
explosive bombs were dropped on the city. Fourteen
hundred people were made homeless, just under a hundred
killed and over two hundred injured. Had it not been for the
shelters, there would have been many, many more.
Polly and Judy met as they both made their way wearily
along September Street. They stopped for a moment, tears
of thankfulness filling their eyes as they hugged. ‘I’ve been
so worried,’ Polly said, and Judy gave a shaky laugh. ‘I was
just going to say the same thing!’ Their eyes met, and each
knew what the other was thinking. What had been
happening in April Grove?
Stumbling with fatigue, they continued along the street.
The shops were already beginning to open. Mrs Marsh was
polishing the dairy windows, and Alice Brunner was
opening the door of the newsagent’s to take in a pile of
newspapers. She looked tired and unhappy, and Judy
remembered that her husband Heinrich had been interned
as an alien. They said good morning to her and she nodded,
a wavery smile briefly lighting her pale face.
‘It doesn’t look as if there’s been any damage round here,’
Polly said as they turned down October Street. Near the
bottom, the ruin of Kathy Simmons’s house made an ugly
gap between the houses, but apart from a few slates in the
road and a broken window or two, there seemed to be
nothing worse. With a sigh of relief, they turned the corner
at the bottom and saw that number nine was still intact.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Judy said, and nearly ran the last
few steps, eager to be indoors with her family again. With
Polly close behind her, she unlocked the door and went
inside.
Cissie was hurrying along the passage to meet them, her
face drawn.
‘Don’t look like that, Mum,’ Judy said. ‘We’re back safe
and sound.’
‘It’s not that,’ Cissie said, her voice shaking. ‘It’s your
dad. He’s having an asthma attack - a bad one. I think he
needs to go to the hospital.’
Polly took one look at Dick, who was sitting hunched over
the dining table, gasping desperately for breath, then turned
round and went straight down to Peggy Shaw’s house,
where she and Gladys were just crawling into bed. Gladys
put on her clothes and came out again, dashing off through
the streets to fetch the converted baker’s van. Alice had been
out in the scullery making tea, and they all had a quick cup
while they waited. By the time Gladys came back, Judy and
her mother were bending over Dick, trying to get him to
breathe out by pressing on the sides of his chest.
‘Can’t - breathe,’ he wheezed, his eyes filled with panic.
‘Got to - get me - breath. Ahh - ahh - ahh …’
‘You’ve got to breathe out, lovey,’ Cissie urged him,
pressing harder as he tried ineffectually to shake her off.
‘You know that’s what the doctor said. You can’t get any
more breath in, you’ve got to let it out first. Now calm
down, Dick, and try - please, just for me.’
‘Can’t - breathe,’ he wheezed again. ‘Can’t.’ He stared at her
with pleading, terrified eyes and beat feebly on the table
with his hands. ‘Cis!’
‘It’s all right, Dick.’ She spoke calmly, trying to still her
own panic. Dick had had enough attacks over the years for
the family to become accustomed to them, but they were
always frightening. You could see that Dick was afraid he
was never going to be able to breathe again, and when he
was as bad as this Cissie feared that he might be right. She
pressed his chest again, signalling to Judy to do the same
and suddenly Dick began to cough, his thin body torn with
the violence of his retching. A gobbet of dark yellow phlegm
spat out of his mouth and landed on the tablecloth, and they
stared at it in horror. It was tinged with black dust, like soot, and there were streaks of blood in it as well.
‘Dad!‘Judy gasped, and looked wildly round for Polly. ‘Is