Octavia's War (16 page)

Spring was a long time coming that year. It was as if the trees were shrinking into themselves, as if their trunks had grown tough-skinned against so much brutality and their blossom had been blighted by the dust of so much destruction and the fury of so many fires. Even the songbirds were subdued, their calls delicate and hesitant. We have broken the natural exuberance of the season, Octavia thought. There is too much death. And she set herself to think what could be done about it. We will paint this spring, she decided, to remind ourselves that it's coming and we'll fill our classrooms with the colour of it, and celebrate it in poetry and song in every way we can. We mustn't let this war defeat us.

But it was a difficult time no matter what she tried to do about it. There was a battle going on in North Africa between the British and the Italians, which didn't make sense to her because they seemed to be fighting over a few hundred miles of desert. The newspapers were full of it, with stories of how the Italians were surrendering in droves to the ‘Aussies' and there were newsreel pictures of long columns of Italian prisoners, with the occasional Australian soldier to guard them, trudging through the sand waving at the cameras. It was all a little unreal. Hitler's campaigns on the other hand
were as swift and ruthless as ever. In April, when the lilac was just beginning to put out a few delicate buds in Octavia's rented garden, he launched a massive invasion of Yugoslavia, entering the country simultaneously from Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, and at the end of the month he invaded Greece, drove out the British army and marched in triumph through Athens. There didn't seem to be anything anyone could do to stop him, although the RAF, as Flight Lieutenant Mark Meriton reported to his father, ‘did their darnedest'.

Tommy Meriton drove down to Woking every other weekend to see Lizzie, once with Mark, who caused much head turning when he stepped out of the car in the Downview drive. Tommy and his children were beginning to establish some sort of family pattern and although Lizzie was always much too quiet, he felt she was glad to see him. At home in Wimbledon he was lonely and taciturn, in Woking he did what he could to cheer his little girl, in the Foreign Office he worked. Sometimes he wished he could visit Tavy for an hour or two – she was the one person who would understand what he was feeling – but it didn't seem proper without Elizabeth and in any case she had quite enough to do without him imposing on her.

It wasn't until May, when there was another massive air raid on the City of London, that anything was to change and then it was because of Lizzie's anxiety.

The 10
^th
of May was one of the coldest May nights on record and, once again, there was a low tide on the Thames and a bombers' moon of terrifying brightness. All the German bombers had to do that night was to follow the white ribbon of the Thames until they reached the familiar basins of the docks. Once they were above their first target, they dropped
incendiary bombs in such numbers that the warehouses were rapidly set ablaze. Then, guided by moonlight and their own fires, they turned their attention to Central London and the mainline railway stations which they bombed with high explosives. The attack went on all night and the bombers came over in continuous waves, returning to their bases in Northern France simply to refuel and then setting out again.

It wasn't long before the fires stretched from Romford to Hammersmith, east to west, and from Hampstead to Norwood, north to south. The City had never withstood such a long, concentrated attack nor seen so much damage. Seven Wren churches were gutted, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and the Chamber of the House of Commons were on fire, and seven hundred gas mains were fractured and burning like torches to light the way for their tormentors. Hospitals were hit too, just when they were most needed. St Thomas's Hospital was very badly damaged and so was the Greycoat Hospital. And of course, hundreds of factories were destroyed and thousands of homes. Everything was on an apocalyptic scale. The LCC had over twelve hundred fire engines in use that night but they were overwhelmed by the number of fires and the lack of water and radioed for help to the outlying suburbs, who sent another seven hundred and fifty engines to assist as soon as they could. Even they weren't enough and the fires continued to spread. Cast-iron water mains cracked in the heat, six of the city's telephone exchanges were out of action, all the main railway stations were closed, every bridge across the Thames was blocked and so were over eight thousand streets. By the early hours of the morning seven hundred acres of London were on fire, and some of the fires went on burning for eleven days and nights. It was the worst raid anyone had ever seen.

News of the scale of it percolated slowly, for the papers played it down and so did the wireless. But the next day, people all over London could see the fires and smell the sugar that was still burning in the docks, and all day long small scraps of charred paper fell on them like an ominous black snowfall. And the sun was red.

‘We've had the most dreadful raid,' Dora said, when she finally managed to phone her mother. ‘They hit the docks. It's been raining bits of black paper all day.'

Emmeline wasn't interested in bits of black paper. ‘Are you all right?' she said.

‘Yes,' Dora told her, serious about it for once. ‘I'm fine. It was all in the docks and the City. Our AFS boys went up to help. They said it was a nightmare. The City was on fire from one end to the other.'

Lizzie didn't hear about it until the following morning, when one of her old school friends sent her a letter with a graphic description of the height of the flames and the extent of the fire. She'd been working in the City ever since she left school and had seen it all when she tried to get into her office.
I walked over London Bridge because the Tubes were shut
, she wrote,
but then I couldn't get any further because all the roads were covered in debris and blocked off and lots of places were still on fire. I've never seen anything like it. The wardens told us to go home because we couldn't do any work in that mess, so we did
. Lizzie noticed that she didn't say anything about how many people had been killed and injured but there must have been hundreds in a raid like that. What if Pa…?

No, no, he simply mustn't. Suddenly, she needed to hear his voice, to know he was all right. Oh Pa, she thought, as she ran down the road towards the phone box, dear, dear Pa. Don't you be killed too. I couldn't bear it. By the time she reached
the box her fingers were sticky with sweat and it took her a few fumbling minutes before she could get her pennies into the slot. And then the number rang and rang and nobody answered.

Oh come on! Come on! she thought. Somebody pick it up. There must be someone there. Mrs Dunnaway, if nobody else. But the ringing tone stopped and was replaced by that awful long burring noise that meant the phone had gone dead. She struggled to keep control of herself, pressed button B for the return of her coins and dialled again. And exactly the same thing happened. He's been killed, she thought. He's dead and they've sent for Mrs Dunnaway to identify his body. It's like my mother all over again. I can't bear it.

She stood in the nasty smelly coffin of a box, breathing in other people's stale cigarette smoke, trying to think what to do. She was still thinking frantically when a woman in a headscarf came and stood outside the box and looked at her in a nasty pointed way.

She struggled to open the door, stepped out of the fug, muttered ‘Sorry' and ran back the way she'd come. What was she going to do? Oh, for heaven's sake, what was she going to do? He could be dead and she couldn't think of anything.

And there was Smithie, wheeling that old bike of hers round the side of the house with its basket heaped with books, just as it always was, dear old Smithie, with her fuzzy hair and her tatty old scarf and those scuffed shoes. She'd know. She ran towards her, calling, ‘Miss Smith! Miss Smith!'

Octavia propped her bike against the wall. One glance at Lizzie's face told her this was serious. ‘What is it?' she said.

Lizzie was incoherent. ‘There's been…' she said, weeping. ‘It's Pa. He could be… Amber sent me a letter. She said it was…awful. I can't get through and I've tried and tried. What am I going to do?'

Octavia understood that it was to do with the raid. ‘Come with me,' she said. And as they walked into the building she went on, speaking calmly, ‘It's about the raid on London, isn't it? I've been talking to Mr Chivers about it. A very bad one, so he says.'

‘Yes. Yes,' Lizzie sobbed. ‘I've tried to…phone. I couldn't get… There wasn't…'

‘The telephone exchanges were hit,' Octavia told her. ‘That's probably why you couldn't get through. Don't worry. We'll try again from my office.'

They'd reached the door and there was Miss Henry hard at work at the desk, looking up with her little foxy face all concerned. She stood up at once and put the kettle on when Octavia signalled to her. Then she waited with her arm round Lizzie's shoulder and cuddled her while Octavia dialled Tommy's home number.

Even from the other side of the little room, Lizzie could hear Mrs Dunnaway's gruff voice, confirming the number. Oh thank God, at least
she's
there. And if she's there she'll know if there's anything. Oh please don't let there be anything.

‘It's Miss Smith, Mrs Dunnaway,' Octavia said, ‘from Roehampton Secondary School. Is Major Meriton at home?'

‘No, ma'am. He hasn't got back from work yet – if he ever got there. We had a bad raid the night before yesterday you see and everything's topsy turvy.'

‘But he's well?'

‘Oh yes, he's fine. We didn't have any bombs here, I'm glad to say. He went out this morning to see if he could get into the City – he couldn't get through yesterday – anyway he hasn't come back so I presume he did. He should be home by five o'clock. Or six maybe. Depending. Like I said, everything's topsy-turvy.'

‘Perhaps you could ask him to ring me when he gets back,' Octavia said. ‘He has my home number. It's not urgent but Lizzie's been worried about him.'

The assurance was given at once. ‘Of course.'

‘There you are,' Octavia said to Lizzie. ‘He's quite all right and he'll ring you tonight as soon as he gets in. Have your supper and then come over. You've got your bike, haven't you?'

In fact Tommy did rather better than make a phone call. He turned up on Octavia's doorstep a mere five minutes after Lizzie had cycled into the drive.

It was an extraordinary evening. Lizzie was so relieved so see him that she wept and fell into his arms as soon as he entered the hall, and when they were all gathered in a circle round Emmeline's necessary fire, she sat by his side as if she'd been glued there. Nothing was said about the raid, of course, they were all too deliberately busy talking about other things, like what was happening at school and how late the spring was, and what it was like to live in the country, which was ‘smashing' according to Maggie and Barbara, and how ridiculously small the rations were. ‘Next time,' Tommy promised, ‘I shall come bearing gifts.' They were so easy with one another and so happy to be together that when Octavia produced the last two bottles of her father's champagne, chill from the cellar, and Emmeline brought out the cake tin to reveal half a fruit cake, no less, the evening became a celebration. Even the three little'uns had a sip of champagne and got giggly, and the cake was devoured to the last crumb. Soon, they were all laughing and remembering old times, which was wonderfully comforting, even though Janet found some of it baffling. Eleven o'clock struck and they were still sitting round the fire and still talking.

‘I must be off,' Tommy said looking at his watch, ‘or I shall never wake up in the morning and Mrs D will have to come upstairs and whack me with the poker.'

‘Oh Pa,' Lizzie said. ‘You're so funny. And I thought you were dead.'

‘Well, I'm not, as you see,' he said, hugging her. ‘I live a charmed life, don't I, Tavy.'

‘I think he was a cat in a previous existence,' Octavia said.

He kissed them all goodbye at the door, little'uns, Janet and all. ‘It's been a lovely evening,' he said. ‘We must do it again. My treat though next time, Emmeline.'

Then he drove Lizzie back to Downview, gave her one last cuddle and went home singing. It was the first time he'd done such a thing since Elizabeth died.

From then on he visited them every other week and, true to his promise, he always arrived with a hamper. ‘It's like Christmas,' Emmeline said when she opened the first one, and he winked at Octavia and grinned at Lizzie and said he was very glad to hear it. But it wasn't Christmas. It was spring, at last, and the weather was as warm as their mood. Best of all, there had been no air raids since that last awful raid on the City and they were beginning to hope that the Blitz was over.

Dora said she didn't know what to do with herself now that everything had gone quiet. ‘I mean,' she said when she phoned Emmeline, ‘there's nothing going on in the office. Who wants to buy a house in London these days? Even if we had any to sell. I wonder he doesn't close down and have done with it.'

‘How about coming down here for a few days?' Emmeline suggested. ‘Would he let you? We haven't seen you for ages.'

‘What would I do about the rations?'

‘Get a temporary card,' Emmeline said. ‘That's what the servicemen do. But you don't have to worry. We've got our own private source of supply.'

So the family grew even bigger and the ‘Tommy parties' even more cheerful. Now it wasn't just food and drink but dancing to Octavia's famous gramophone. And when news came through that the Germans had invaded Russia, which meant that they wouldn't be invading England, they had a Saturday night party that went on into the small hours. So late in fact that Emmeline told Tommy he was to sleep on the sofa instead of driving back in the blackout, and made him up a bed there and then to settle the matter.