The Last Lifeboat, page 6
She walked around the desk and bent down to look through the old telescope, its lens still trained toward the northern sky. What magic he’d taught her as they’d explored the heavens together. She turned to the bookshelves then, running her fingers over the embossed spines of leather-bound medical journals and encyclopaedias, and the novels she’d devoured as a child – Moby Dick, Treasure Island, Swallows and Amazons, The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear, Gulliver’s Travels, Alice in Wonderland – her imagination captivated by stories and rhymes about distant lands and vengeful whales. Those stories had whispered to her of possibility and adventure, but a whisper was all they remained.
As she admired these favourite old books now, her fingers settled on her treasured clothbound edition of David Copperfield. She’d adored the book the first time she’d read it as a young girl, and loved it more with each re-reading. She knew the opening lines by heart. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show … Unlike David Copperfield, Alice had always thought she would prefer to become the hero of someone else’s life; to make a quiet difference to someone she perhaps didn’t even know. But it was the inscription inside the front cover she treasured the most: 25 December 1921, To my darling Alice, Happy Christmas! Be the hero (heroine) of your own life. Always, your Papa x. She’d often thought of the book as her father’s last gift to her, but it wasn’t. The gift of reading, a love of books, was something she would have forever, could take with her, wherever she went. She took the book from the shelf. David Copperfield would be a welcome companion on the unfamiliar journey she was about to embark on.
As she walked from the study, the old floorboards creaking beneath her feet, she thought of her father, and wondered what he would say. He’d always encouraged her to stretch her wings; to try new things, even when she was reluctant and afraid. ‘We are only limited by what we fear, Alice. Fear nothing, and you can do anything!’ She closed the study door behind her, took a deep breath, and prepared to announce her news.
Unsurprisingly, her mother was searingly critical of the whole idea. ‘It sends the entirely wrong message to the enemy, but I can see that your mind is made up, and I suppose it’s better than stamping library books, so there’s no point in my saying anything else about it. Is there?’
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ Walter asked. ‘Or can’t they say?’
‘They’ll only tell us at the last minute. Careless talk costs lives, and all that. I hope I’m on the shorter route, to Canada. Three weeks sailing to Australia sounds like such a long time!’
Alice’s mother tutted. ‘Being choosy already, I see. You do realize there are active U-boats in the Atlantic? A civilian ship was sunk by a torpedo recently. I read about it in the newspaper.’
Kitty gasped dramatically. ‘Goodness, Mother. Is that a hint of concern in your voice?’
‘Don’t be facetious, Kitty.’
‘They’ve given repeated assurances about safety,’ Alice said. ‘Evacuee ships will be under naval escort and will sail in convoy.’ She sounded more convinced than she felt. ‘Anyway, it’s no more dangerous than staying here, waiting for the Luftwaffe to blow us all up, is it?’
There was very little anyone could say to that. Even her mother had nothing to add.
Kitty raised her glass. ‘To the good ship Alice then. And all who sail with her!’
Everyone raised their glass in response. ‘To Alice.’
They continued their meal without mentioning CORB, or evacuation, again. Alice noticed how quiet Kitty was, and when Walter remarked on the beef being ‘good and bloody’ in the middle, Kitty put her hand to her mouth and ran from the room.
‘What on earth’s the matter with her?’ he said. ‘She’s been skittish all day.’
‘Probably the whelks we had for lunch,’ Alice said. ‘I’ll go and check on her.’
She found Kitty with her head down the toilet. She was positively green as Alice passed her some tissues.
‘Better out than in. It’ll be my turn next. Heave ho, me hearties!’
Kitty shook her head.
‘What is it, Kitty? You haven’t been yourself all day.’
Kitty looked at Alice and paused, long enough for the grandfather clock to chime, for their mother to rap on the door and tell them to hurry up, for the dog to bark at the cat. Long enough for Alice to know that whatever Kitty said next was going to be far more serious than eating a bad portion of whelks.
‘I’m expecting, Alice. I’m pregnant.’
For a moment, Alice couldn’t respond. Whatever she’d thought was bothering Kitty, it certainly wasn’t this. ‘Are you sure?’
‘The doctor confirmed it.’
‘Oh, Kitty.’ Alice squeezed her sister’s hand. She didn’t know what else to say. ‘Does he know? The father? Is it …’
Kitty nodded. ‘Terence. He doesn’t know. He’s very high up in the Admiralty, and very married, so he can never know.’
Her words made Alice furious, but now wasn’t the time to discuss the injustice of things always being left to the woman to sort out. ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How far gone are you?’
‘Not exactly sure. I’ve missed two monthlies.’ Kitty threw her arms around Alice and burst into tears. ‘I’m such a bloody idiot.’
‘You’re not an idiot. You’ve got yourself in a bit of trouble, that’s all. And you’re still ever so pretty, even when you cry.’ Alice passed Kitty a handkerchief to wipe away the rivers of mascara streaming down her face. ‘Although, maybe not so pretty after all.’
Kitty broke a watery smile. ‘This is more than a bit of trouble, Alice. Promise you won’t tell Mother. She’ll die from the scandal and shame.’
Alice promised. ‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’
Kitty shook her head. She had no easy answer, no matter how much she considered the options. They both understood how difficult life was for unmarried mothers, shunned by society, and cast aside by their families. But they also knew how dangerous the alternative solution could be.
Their mother knocked on the door. ‘Are you two ever coming out of there?’
‘Yes,’ Alice called back. ‘Kitty has an upset tummy. We’re coming now.’ She straightened Kitty’s hair and helped her look presentable. ‘We’ll talk about it later, but try not to worry.’ She almost echoed their father’s favourite phrase, ‘worse things happen at sea’, but there were few things worse than this.
A weekend of dog walks, picnics, and jazz on the gramophone eventually restored Kitty to something like herself, but she was unusually reflective as Alice walked her back to Whitstable train station, where Kitty was the only civilian passenger on the platform. She boarded the train, pulled down the compartment window and leaned out to kiss Alice on the cheek as the shrill blast of the conductor’s whistle made them both jump.
Alice pressed her hands to Kitty’s. ‘Everything will be all right, Kitty. I promise.’
Kitty returned a thin smile. ‘It won’t. But thank you for pretending.’
As the train pulled away, Alice’s heart sank, because she didn’t know how to make this all right. This was far more serious than Kitty’s usual relationship dilemmas and silly mistakes at work. This wasn’t a problem that could be easily fixed with a well-written letter of apology, or a new dress to lift her mood. Whatever decision Kitty made, there would be difficult weeks and months ahead. Weeks and months when Alice would be further away from her sister than she’d ever been, at precisely the time when she needed her the most.
8
London. 7 September 1940
The first wave of enemy planes arrived over England just after four o’clock on a warm Saturday afternoon. The war had been officially declared a year ago, but still the attack took everyone by surprise.
In Whitstable, on the north-east Kent coast, Alice and her mother watched in horror as a swarm of Messerschmitt aircraft flew in formation across the Channel. In Poplar, in the East End, Ada Fortune was on her way back from the fishmonger when the air-raid siren sounded. She assumed it was another false alarm and hurried home, reluctant to spend hours in a bomb shelter with a bag of mackerel. Kitty was already running late for her four o’clock appointment at a rather grim-looking building in Southwark where she’d been assured that her ‘procedure’ would be carried out safely and discreetly. She hurried past and headed straight to the nearest shelter. In Elm Street, Lily called the children inside.
‘Is it real this time?’ Georgie asked.
‘I’m sure it’s just another false alarm, but we still need to go to the shelter.’
The children were well-rehearsed in air-raid drills. They calmly grabbed their gas masks and shelter bags, and followed Lily to the brick surface shelter that stood in the middle of Elm Street. Lily hated it and was sorry now that she’d watched it being built. Arthur took more care over his sandcastles at Chalkwell Beach.
She stalled at the entrance.
‘Get a move on, Lil. I don’t fancy being target practice.’
Lily stood aside to let Mrs Hopkins go ahead. ‘Sorry, Mrs H. After you.’
Georgie and Arthur followed Mrs Hopkins into the shelter. Lily took a deep breath and stepped inside.
There wasn’t a scrap of space to spare. The children crammed into one of the makeshift bunk beds, along with four other children. Lily squashed herself onto one of the narrow pallet benches at the back.
Mrs Hopkins shoved in beside her. ‘Hope we’re not stuck in here for long. I’ve a casserole in the oven.’
Lily buttoned her coat. Her thoughts were a long way from casseroles.
The atmosphere was stoic and calm. Everyone assumed it was another false alarm and expected to be back home within the hour. People took out knitting, or played card games. Lily sat quietly with her thoughts until the all-clear sounded just after six. Two hours in the shelter was just about tolerable. The residents of Elm Street gathered up their things, emerged into the fading afternoon light and made their way home.
From an upstairs bedroom window at The Beeches on Richmond Hill, Isobel Carr noticed that the sky was glowing a peculiar shade of orange over the East End. She remarked that it looked like one of the gasworks had exploded. Molly was too enraptured by her new doll’s house to take any notice.
Just after blackout at eight that evening, the siren went off again. Lily glanced at the kitchen clock. They’d never had two raids in such close succession. It made her uneasy.
She woke the children, told them to put their coats on over their nightclothes and hurried them outside. Georgie stopped to look up at the searchlights that criss-crossed the sky, almost in time to the rise and fall of the siren. Lily urged her along. War had brought so many new sights and sounds to the children’s lives. She wished it would all go away. Wished it had never started.
Unlike during the earlier raid, the atmosphere in the shelter the second time that day was tense and restless. Some tried to make light of the situation, joking about there being nothing worth bombing in Clapham anyway. Some people slept. Others resumed their knitting or games of cards. The children whispered and giggled. To them it was all a great adventure. Lily sat on the rough wooden bench and stared at the scuff marks on the toes of her shoes. She tried not to think about the thin brick walls that stood between her and the children and Hitler’s bombs.
Hours passed, and still the all-clear didn’t come. Midnight came and went. The nervous residents of Elm Street huddled in the cramped shelter as the bombers came again and again. Too anxious to sleep, Lily flinched at each awful thud and thump as bombs found their targets. Several people wept. Everyone was terrified by these alarming new sounds. Lily desperately needed the loo, but she held it in rather than use the buckets behind the curtain. The smell made her retch, and it was humiliating to spend a penny in front of your neighbours. She counted backwards from a hundred to take her mind off it.
‘Listen to this, Lil.’ Mrs Hopkins was reading the newspaper to pass the time. ‘In the few weeks since the new CORB evacuation scheme opened its doors, some two hundred thousand applications were received for just twenty thousand places.’
‘Two hundred thousand? Surely you mean two thousand?’
‘Definitely says two hundred thousand.’ Mrs Hopkins read out the rest of the article: ‘The head of the CORB programme, Anthony Quinn, MP, earlier confirmed that no further applications will be accepted, and that those who had already submitted the necessary paperwork should expect to hear the outcome in the coming days.’
Lily’s stomach heaved at the thought. She dreaded the snap of the letter box; dreaded learning the outcome of her application. What if they said no? But what if they said yes? Because despite everything, despite everyone’s reassurance that it would be for the best, she still didn’t know if she could put Georgie and Arthur on a ship and send them halfway around the world to live with people she’d never met.
‘You’ll know what to do when the time comes,’ Mrs Hopkins said, as if reading Lily’s thoughts. ‘You’ll know what to do for the best. If you ask me, it was silly of them to plan for so few children to go. Every parent in Britain will wish they’d applied if these bloody bombing raids get any worse.’
As if to emphasize the point, a distant thud of another bomb added a horrifying sense of urgency to the issue of staying or going.
Just after four in the morning, the continuous singular tone of the siren signalled the all-clear. Lily let out a long sigh of relief. She felt as if she’d been holding her breath all night.
‘You’d think they’d have come up with something a bit more cheerful,’ Mrs Hopkins muttered as she gathered up her things. ‘“Land of Hope and Glory”, or “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. That bloody siren is enough to turn your insides funny.’
Arthur yawned as Lily gently woke him and hitched him up onto her hip. ‘Have they gone, Mummy?’
‘Yes, love. They’ve gone.’
Lily clasped Georgie’s hand in hers as they trudged home, the skies over London silent once again. At first glance, Elm Street looked entirely unchanged, but the aftermath of the night’s raids was evident in the tang of cordite that tainted the air, and in the fine particles of brick dust that caught at the back of Lily’s throat and made her cough.
‘Why is the sky orange?’ Georgie asked.
Lily looked up at the strange amber glow from the distant fires. ‘It must be the sunrise, love.’
‘Already? But we haven’t properly been to bed yet.’
As Lily tucked the children in tight beneath their bed covers, she didn’t feel relief in the silence, or in the undamaged houses of Elm Street. She felt only a profound sadness. Something had changed that night, and Lily had a terrible feeling that it was only going to get worse.
She kissed the children’s foreheads, and sat on the end of Arthur’s bed, watching over them both until they were asleep.
For forty-eight hours, Londoners endured heavy bombardment. Each night, the siren went off at eight, just after blackout. Each night, Lily dragged the children from their beds and hurried them into the shelter. Each night, she felt certain their luck was about to run out. She watched for the post each morning, her sense of dread and urgency fuelled by awful headlines in the newspapers. Specific damage and casualties were reported in scant detail, the newspaper editors careful not to give any encouragement to the enemy. BLITZ BOMBING OF LONDON GOES ON ALL NIGHT. Mothers and children among casualties. Damage considerable, but spirits unbroken. Photographs were carefully chosen to portray a sense of community and defiance in the face of death and destruction, but Lily could see the truth for herself. Lives and homes were shattered. People’s spirits were broken. Everyone was exhausted.
Lily hated it all. The wail of the air-raid sirens, the claustrophobic tomb-like compression of the shelter, the sense of sitting there, waiting for the inevitable. Awful stories began to emerge about brick surface shelters collapsing from bomb blast, so that every time Lily went into the Elm Street shelter, she felt as if she was stepping into her own grave.
‘Don’t be sad, Mummy,’ Arthur said as Lily tucked him into bed when they returned after the fourth consecutive night of raids. ‘The bad men always lose.’
To Arthur’s young mind, war was an adventure story in which good always defeated evil. Lily kissed him goodnight and hoped to God he was right.
Within the hour, the siren went off again.
The bombing that night was relentless and seemed ever closer, the impact of the bombs shaking the Elm Street shelter walls. Everyone looked to one another for reassurance, their eyes carrying the same unspoken fear: Will the next one find us?
‘Sounds like that one landed Islington way,’ someone offered.
‘Sounded more like Tooting direction, to me,’ someone else disagreed.
‘Does it bloody matter where they’ve landed,’ Mrs Hopkins snapped, ‘as long as it isn’t on us?’
Again, Elm Street was spared. Neighbouring streets weren’t so lucky.
Later that morning, Mrs Hopkins brought the terrible news that the Ingrams’ house had taken a direct hit, along with several others in the street.
‘Thank goodness they were in the shelter,’ Lily said. ‘Do they have anywhere to stay? Beth can stay with us until they get themselves organized. I’ll pop round later with a few bits.’
Mrs Hopkins reached for Lily’s hand. ‘But that’s the thing, dear. They didn’t go to the shelter last night.’
Lily’s heart filled with dread. ‘What? Why?’
‘Mrs Ingram had heard of one nearby collapsing and crushing everyone inside, so they sat out the raid at home.’ Mrs Hopkins brushed a tear from her cheek. ‘The brick shelter held. The poor things didn’t stand a chance.’
‘No! Oh, Mrs H. No.’ Lily’s hands instinctively covered her mouth as if she didn’t want to share her reaction, didn’t want to make it real. This wasn’t a list of casualties in a newspaper report. These were people she knew well; her daughter’s best friend. Tears fell in steady ribbons down her cheeks as she sat down in disbelief. It was devastating proof, if any were needed, that war was cruel and indiscriminate. Her distress quickly turned to anger, and somewhere within her rage, she found the courage and certainty that had eluded her.
