The Girl on the Beach Read online

  Julie delayed going to the Anderson shelter until she could hear the planes going over and left it the minute the all-clear sounded. If it hadn’t been for keeping George safe she would not have gone anywhere near it. With the door shut it was more like the prison cupboard of her childhood than a place of refuge. But the raids were getting nearer. Croydon, Dulwich, Richmond and Kensington had been hit. She had heard the drone of aeroplanes, the distant crump of explosions and the boom of the ack-ack guns as she crouched in the bottom of the shelter, holding George close to her chest and uttering soothing noises so that he wouldn’t be frightened and also to help herself overcome her claustrophobia. Coming out after the all-clear, she was relieved to find her house still standing. There were fires in the distance but most of them seemed to be north of the river, and during the day she heard tales of how people had been killed or had lucky escapes, or had been bombed out and were camping out in reception centres waiting to be found somewhere to live. She knew it could not be long before Southwark and Bermondsey had a visit from the Luftwaffe.

  As soon as Rosie had gone, Julie tipped all her money out on the table and counted it carefully. Where had it all gone? There was not enough there to pay the rent and nothing at all in the jar reserved for repaying Miss Paterson’s loan. She could not go back to her for more. She sat looking at the little pile for a long time, but nothing could make it bigger. Putting it all back in the rent jar, she fetched George from his cot where he had been having his afternoon nap, put him in his pushchair and set off to visit her parents-in-law.

  As usual, Hilda made a great fuss of George and found a custard cream for him. ‘How is it over your way?’ she asked Julie, referring to the bombing.

  ‘Nothing too near, so far.’

  ‘It won’t last.’ She filled a kettle and put it on the stove, lit the gas under it and set out a teapot, cups and saucers and milk in a jug.

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘Chalfont’s is moving the factory.’

  ‘Moving it? How can you move a factory?’

  Hilda laughed. ‘The same way you move a house. They’re taking over a pram factory in Hertfordshire. Production must be kept up and it won’t be if the place is bombed. We’re going to rent a house nearby.’

  ‘You mean you’re leaving London?’ In spite of her wariness of her mother-in-law, this piece of news dismayed Julie.

  ‘Yes, lock, stock, and barrel. I suggest you and George come too. You can live with us.’

  Julie’s dismay deepened. ‘But I can’t leave my home.’

  ‘Don’t be so stubborn, Julie. It’s better to lose your home than your life and it’s not fair on George to put him through it. I’m sure that’s what Harry would want you to do.’

  ‘Has he asked you to persuade me?’ Harry had been urging her in almost every letter to go to the country.

  Hilda hesitated. ‘Well, he did mention it. I’m sure he’s said the same thing to you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But I want to have his home there when he comes back.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but suppose there’s no home. And no wife and son either.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that, please.’

  ‘Then come to Letchworth with us. Millie and Dorothy are coming.’

  ‘What about Ian?’

  ‘He has to stay in London, naturally, but he’ll come down to see them whenever he can.’ She paused, as Julie hesitated. ‘Think about it, Julie, and let us know. We’ll help you with the move.’

  ‘All right, I’ll think about it.’

  All the way back from Islington to Bermondsey she turned over in her mind the pros and cons of a move. It would mean she would not have to go into the dreaded Anderson shelter, a great plus as far as she was concerned. Could she and Hilda get on in the same house and would Hilda take over her life and dictate how George was looked after? When Harry came home, they would have no privacy. And she would miss Rosie, but on the other hand, if the factory was moving, Rosie would go too. It began to look very much as if she were going to say yes.

  One thing she could not do was ask her in-laws for money, and Miss Paterson would have to be paid. She had to pass a pawnbroker’s shop on the way home and decided to turn in there. She had nothing to pawn but her wedding ring, but as soon as her next allowance was due she could get it back. No one need ever know what she had done. She came out of the shop feeling naked without the ring, though it had not been on her finger long enough to make a lasting impression. She felt dreadful about it and almost went back into the shop to redeem it straight away but the five pounds she had in her purse was needed urgently. ‘Forgive me, Harry,’ she murmured. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t love you and don’t want to be married to you anymore. I’ll get it back, I promise.’

  Chapter Four

  Harry was off duty, sitting on his bed writing to Julie, when Tim Harrison strolled in to the barracks. He was grinning from ear to ear. ‘We’re off home,’ he said.

  Harry looked up from telling Julie how much he missed her and stared at his friend. ‘Home?’

  ‘Yes, back to Blighty.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I saw the order. We entrain tomorrow after the passing-out parade and sail on the seventh.’

  ‘That’s less than a week away.’

  ‘So it is. Now, at last, we might see some action.’

  ‘I don’t know about action, I can’t wait to see my wife and son again. Presumably we’ll get some leave.’

  ‘There’ll be hell to pay if we don’t.’

  Harry dashed off the rest of his letter, telling Julie he would see her soon, then sealed it and took it to the postbox, which was in the HQ building right next to the orders board. There it was in black and white: instructions to fall in with all kit on 3rd September at 0800 hours. He was going home!

  He had enjoyed his sojourn in Canada, where everyone was so friendly and treated them all like heroes, though they hadn’t seen any action yet, except a few minor scrapes and damage in the course of training. Now he was a fully fledged wireless operator. It hadn’t been his first choice, because he wanted to be a fighter pilot, but there were always more volunteers for that than any other and he had been told, because of his peacetime work with radio, he would do more good in that capacity. He knew it was no good arguing, so he had acquiesced and was passing out with top grades.

  Now, at last, he was going home to a war-torn country and his beloved wife and child. In twelve days’ time – four on a train, seven on board ship and one to get leave and go home – he would see them both again. George would have grown a lot. He wondered if he would remember him or if he would have to get to know the little chap all over again. As for Julie, he could not wait to hold her in his arms again and tell her how much he loved her and wanted her safe. He would be able to persuade her himself that she must leave London and go with Chalfont’s to Letchworth. His mother had told him about the proposed move in her last letter and offered to have Julie and George to live with them. Knowing Julie, he thought she might baulk at that, but perhaps while he was on leave he could find somewhere for her to live independently nearby. More than anything he wanted her and George safe.

  London was experiencing a heatwave that first Saturday in September. George was uncomfortable, hot and grizzly. After dinner, Julie stood his bath in the garden and filled it with cold water and, leaving nothing on him but a little pair of shorts, she sat him in it. Kneeling beside him she splashed the water over him. He was chuckling happily when Rosie arrived.

  ‘I envy him,’ she said, kneeling down on the other side of the bath to kiss him. ‘He looks so cool and happy.’

  ‘Yes, but I ought to take him out. I have to go and see Miss Paterson.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave him with me? I’ll play with him a bit and take him out later and give him his tea. You’ll be quicker on your own.’

  This was certainly true. It would take a crisis of epic proportions to persuade her to manhandle a
pushchair and a heavy toddler onto the Underground and so she always used the bus, which took a lot longer. ‘I suppose I could,’ she said slowly. ‘Are you sure you can manage him?’

  ‘Of course I can, silly. He loves his Auntie Rosie, don’t you, my pet? And I’ve got some jam in my bag. He shall have bread and butter and jam for his tea. Go on. He’ll come to no harm, I promise you.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  She dashed indoors to put on a cardigan, grabbed her bag and gas mask and went back into the garden. Both George and Rosie were shrieking with laughter. She decided not to interrupt them to say goodbye, which might upset him, and crept away.

  She was with Miss Paterson at four o’clock when the siren wailed. ‘Drat it!’ Grace said, putting down her teacup and standing up. ‘I’ll have to go on duty. You had better go in the shelter.’

  ‘No, I must get back to George.’ She rose and picked up her handbag and gas mask.

  ‘Is that wise? You never know—’

  ‘I’ll be all right on the Underground.’ Much as she hated the close atmosphere of the Underground, not only was it quicker, it was safer and there would be other people about, which would help her overcome her claustrophobia.

  They parted at the door and Julie hurried to the Tube station. The streets were full of people hurrying to shelters or, like her, making for the Underground. There was no panic; some had become very blasé about that banshee wail and thought of it more of a nuisance than anything.

  It was when she came above ground at the Elephant and Castle she realised this was something more than a nuisance raid. The sky was thick with aeroplanes and bombs were dropping everywhere, screaming earthwards, shaking the ground beneath her feet and shattering windows. Like most Londoners, she had come to recognise the different types of bomb: high explosives were fitted with fins and their dreadful screaming as they came down was terrifying, while the incendiaries started fires wherever they landed and were usually put out by fire-watchers using stirrup pumps.

  Already there were buildings on fire near the docks, close enough for her to feel their warmth, and a shard of glass from a window just missed her as she ran along the pavement, praying that Rosie had taken George into the shelter and they were both safe.

  ‘Hey, miss, where are you off to?’

  She looked up to find herself confronted by a warden. ‘Home. My friend is looking after my baby and I must get back to them.’

  ‘They will have gone into a shelter. Best take shelter yourself. It’s a bad one this one, not safe to be out in the open.’

  ‘But my baby—’

  ‘You won’t be much good to a baby if you get yourself killed, will you?’ He took her arm in a firm grip. ‘Come along, I’ll take you to the Linsey Street shelter.’ He would brook no argument and hustled her along to the shelter constructed under the railway arch. ‘You can go home when the all-clear goes.’

  He saw her into the shelter and left her there. The place was crowded, noisy and stuffy. There were whole families obviously occupying their own particular seats, women sitting knitting, others breastfeeding babies, old men pretending they weren’t afraid and children running about everywhere. One man was standing on a box trying to organise a sing-song, but the response was half-hearted and he gave up. Julie had to wend her way, stepping over legs, bags, boxes and bedding to find a seat on a bench. She sat on its edge wishing she had never let the warden persuade her into it. It was every bit as bad as the Anderson shelter, but added to her rising panic, which set her heart racing and made her want to scream to get out, was the desperate need to get home. She strained her ears for the all-clear, but all she could hear was the drone of aeroplanes, the high-pitched whistle of high explosives and the heavy crump as they hit the ground. She could feel the earth shaking and lumps of plaster came off the underside of the arch and rained down on everyone. Children were sobbing and screaming, people were being sick and the heat was stifling. She could see nothing, except those closest to her, and not even those when the electric lights suddenly went out. She was too terrified even to scream.

  ‘Damn,’ one of the women said in the sudden silence that followed. ‘I’ve gone and dropped a stitch.’

  ‘And I’ve dropped my false teeth,’ said one of the men, which raised a half-hearted laugh. It was cut short by the terrifying scream of a high explosive which had every one of them holding their breath. They never heard it land.

  ‘Damn those Huns,’ Rosie said. She was in Julie’s kitchen heating some milk for George’s tea. He had been hauled reluctantly out of the water, been dried and dressed and compensated for the loss of his pool with bread and jam. ‘I had better take you to the shelter.’ She turned off the gas and carried him out to the Anderson shelter. The sky was thick with German planes and she could see the bombs as they left the aircraft, hurtling downwards one after the other. Already dockside buildings were on fire with flames shooting high into the sky. Fire engines were tearing along the road, bells ringing. ‘It looks like a bad one. I hope your mum is not out in it.’

  She went down the steps into the shelter and settled down in one of the deckchairs with George on her lap, where she began crooning to him, trying to drown out the frightening sound of explosions and the debris rattling on the corrugated iron of the roof. It was too close for comfort but she had to stick it out until the all-clear went, praying that Julie was safely sheltering somewhere.

  Just before they left Canada, Harry and his colleagues had heard news on the Canadian wireless of severe raids on the London Docks and that there had been substantial damage and loss of life, but the report gave no details. It would not do to let the enemy know the extent of the damage, nor deflate the public’s morale. That didn’t stop the rumours of dreadful carnage as half of London burnt and its citizens fled in terror to the surrounding countryside. He hoped the tales were exaggerated but it didn’t stop him worrying. Where had Julie been at the time? Had she left London with his parents as he had urged her to do? Or was she still in Bermondsey? If there was a letter in the post telling him she had moved, he had left before he could receive it, which resulted in a miserable seven-day crossing, every minute of which was torture. He could not eat and could not sleep for thinking of her in the Anderson shelter she hated so much.

  Looking about him as they docked in Liverpool on the afternoon of Friday the thirteenth, he saw evidence of raids, ruined buildings, glassless windows, craters in the road. If London was anything like Liverpool, it was bad. His thoughts were with Julie and not on where he would be taken on leaving the ship. Harrogate, he had heard, and after that a posting to an operational squadron.

  ‘Anyone here got folks in London?’ their group captain asked them as they assembled ready to disembark. Several men put up their hands. ‘Right, you can fall out and go home. Report to Harrogate seven days from now.’

  They did not need telling twice. They collected their passes, ran down the gangplank, grabbed a taxi and were taken at speed to the station where they boarded the first train going south.

  It was packed with troops and civilians, many of whom had horror tales to tell about the raids, which might or might not have been true, of bits of bodies being found in strange places like roofs and people being burnt out of all recognition, which did not make him feel any easier, though there were also stories of miraculous escapes when people had been brought out alive from seemingly impossible situations. He tried to block the conversation out and listened instead to the wheels repeating ‘Julie, George, Julie, George’ over and over again. His comrades were in the same state as he was and they had little to say.

  The train seemed to be going at the pace of a snail and spent hours in sidings while armaments trains rattled by and it did not arrive in Euston until the following morning. He was out before it had come to a stop and running for the barrier.

  The devastation in Southwark and Bermondsey was unbelievable. There were huge craters where once houses had stood and they were half full of water. A whol
e side of one road had collapsed. The railway arch over Linsey Road had gone; factories had been destroyed and wisps of smoke drifted up from the ruins. There was an acrid smell of burning tar, leather, fermenting beer and glue from the bombed factories which caught in his throat. Nearer home, two adjacent houses had lost their whole front walls, revealing the interiors: beds perched precariously on the edge of upper floors, dressing tables with smashed mirrors, curtains snagged on broken window frames, and downstairs the crushed furniture was covered in rubble from above. Harry wondered if the occupants had survived as he rushed on towards his own home.

  At the corner, he came to a sudden stop. Where his house and garden had been was a gaping hole. He stood staring at it, unable to take in what his eyes were telling him. The home which he and Julie had cared for and loved was gone; there was nothing there but a hole in the ground and a heap of rubble and broken glass. Numb with shock, it was a moment before he could ask himself what had happened to his wife and son. He clambered over the debris, some of which he recognised as their broken furniture. The gas cooker lay on its side, its door lying open. A battered saucepan lay beside it. The Anderson shelter was no more than a twist of metal and the rockery he had so painstakingly built was under a heap of rubble. He bent to move some of it. It was almost as if he were searching for his loved ones in the ruins, and yet if he had stopped to think he would have known they could not be there. His foot struck the garden gnome lying on its side; the tip of its pointed hat was broken off and one of its arms was missing but, covered in dust as it was, it was still grinning happily. He picked it up.

  ‘Looking for someone, Sergeant?’

  He whipped round to see a warden approaching him. ‘Yes, my wife and baby son. They lived here. Do you know where they’ve gone?’

  ‘Would you be meaning Mrs Walker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’