Somewhere Over England (17 page)

In a dark cool office, sitting behind a dark cool desk, the solicitor read the will, his voice as dry as his lips, and Helen received the rocking horse her father had made for her before he died. The house and all other effects had been bequeathed to her mother’s cousin.

She walked then from the office to the untarmacked lane where her father and Heine and her son had walked, down to the bridge where the stream barely flowed on this hot dry day. She leaned over remembering so much, wondering why the world had gone mad. She rubbed the lichen, dry and crumbling, and felt her father’s hands around her waist, saw Heine’s hands firm and strong throwing the stick, heard her son’s laughter as he peered to see who had won the race, and then she turned and left the bridge. Would she ever come here again?

As the summer grew hotter the hospitals took pilots whose faces had been burnt beyond repair as they fought the Luftwaffe in the skies above the fields of south-eastern England. Still no sticks of bombs fell. Chris did not have to pass the boys because it was not term time and Marian or Mrs Simkins stayed with him while Helen worked.

She thought of evacuation as she walked to the tram, to the shops with her ration book. She thought of it in the evening but who would hold her hank of wool while she wound it into balls, she asked herself as she looked at her seven-year-old son, so big now with the fear gone from his eyes. Who would smile and warm her heart?

At the end of August bombers got through to London, but not over them. Lying in bed, her hands limp at her sides in the heat, Helen feared that the time was close for Chris to go because his safety must be everything, but how could she bear it? And so sleep would not come because she knew that she must cope, as so many other mothers were having to, and so many children.

On Saturday 7 September at five-fifteen Helen was peeling potatoes in the kitchen, watching Chris in the garden, kicking the ball up and down the ash path, missing the potatoes by inches but not the cabbages. She opened the window to shout and then she heard them, droning, rumbling, inexorably following the Thames and then there was the air raid siren, rising, falling, rising, falling and she knew that at last they were coming and her son was down there, playing on the path.

She dropped the knife into the bowl and water splashed up at her, cold, so cold and she could not shout as she saw Chris stop and look and turn to her and then back towards the sound which was everywhere. The siren and the unsynchronised beat of the bombers wrapped around her head but the sun was out; it was Saturday, people were shopping; how could they come? The noise grew louder, and now she moved, reaching for the gas masks, for the bottle of water she kept for the shelter as instructed and then she ran down the stairs, along the path, picking Chris up, her breath hard in her chest and then through the curtain of the Anderson, into the darkness, and still there was noise, nothing but noise and no one to hold her. Heine was not here. She must not moan and cry with the fear she was feeling because her child was frightened too. She must smile and say, ‘It’s fine. It’s fine. We’re in the shelter Daddy built. It’s strong. It’s fine, Chris. It’s fine.’

On and on they came, hundreds, darkening the sky, thundering, and Chris began to cry and so Helen told him of the ravens, telling people to hide until the gods had gone by. But these were not gods, her mind screamed, these are black-crossed monsters and then the thunder of the aeroplanes was overhead and the thud of the ack-ack was louder. The noise was like nothing she had ever heard, pressing into her, tearing her mind from her. Now she pulled Chris’s gas mask up over his chin, his nose, his hair, and then hers, the straps catching at her hair, suffocating her, and the bombs began to fall, screaming, crashing, shaking the ground, and her breath was clouding the mask so that she could not see Chris and she tore hers off so that he could hear her talk, hear her sing to him, as she held him on her knee, leaning over him in case they were hit.

The shelter moved with each juddering crash but at the end
of one hour they were unhurt and the planes were gone and no bombs had fallen near but the docks were ablaze. The all-clear wound on as Helen waved at Mrs Simkins who was crying. Smoke was rising above the docks and there was a smell of destruction in the air which was quite new to her and to her neighbour.

Helen forced herself to walk up the path, leading Chris, calling to Mrs Simkins to come too, because neither of them wished to be alone. It was good to be back in the flat, away from the rising palls of smoke, but inside the ceiling of the kitchen was cracked and plaster lay in the bowl of potato peelings. She picked the knife out of the water. The wooden handle was cold. Fire engines were driving past the flat and ambulances and lorries, then more fire engines, bells clanging, and while Chris watched and counted from the window, calling out to her when they reached ten, Helen tried to scrape the potatoes but her hands shook too much. She boiled them in their jackets and made Mrs Simkins eat with them because Ed was on Warden duty, though neither of them was hungry.

Helen sat watching Chris eating fast, eating theirs too, and Mrs Simkins spoke in bursts and so did Helen and what they said made little sense. The siren went again at seven and the bombers came in ‘V’ formation and they walked to the shelter because Mrs Simkins could not run.

‘I don’t want to die alone,’ she whispered as she sat on the bench looking at Christoph picking at the cork, but not seeing him.

‘We won’t die,’ Helen said against the wail of the siren.

She was right, they did not die, but others did in the two hours when the bombers flew and targeted and dropped their loads which screamed and crashed until darkness fell. When they pushed the curtain aside this time the sky was red and Helen could see the cabbages quite clearly in the light from the burning docks and the smell was everywhere.

The fire engines came again and the ambulances and the lorries for the bodies and they ran along the road towards the greengrocer’s – which was no longer there, just rubble and dust that caught in their throats. Helen turned Chris away as Mr Taylor was dug out, dead, and fire roared up suddenly in what had been his home.

‘So this is war,’ she whispered.

The bombers came again that night, blasting and searing, and at three a.m. a bomb tore and whistled too close and the shelter shook and shrapnel banged on the roof as the ground lifted and dust choked them. The curtain billowed and they felt the blast. Mrs Simkins cried out that they should wear their gas masks but Helen could not bear to breathe in the smell of rubber and Chris screamed and kicked and would not have his put on his face. But Helen could not hear the scream only see the lips pulled back, the fear and rage, because the planes were circling now, their engines drumming, the bombs pounding, drowning out all other sound and she knew that the next one would hit them, but it did not.

Again and again the ground shook and fear became less sharp though it was just as deep because the bombs fell for hours. There was a sourness in Helen’s mouth and her breath was shallow and remained so until the all-clear went at dawn.

They climbed up the steps of the shelter into a dawn which was dust-filled and like no other that Helen had known. There was the smell of burning still heavy on the air, the crackle of fire, the screams of people, but the drumming was gone. At least the drumming was gone, but for how long?

In one hour, while Chris slept on the settee and they waited for the siren yet again, Mr Simkins came to fetch his wife. He was drawn and white and covered in dust but people had used the shelters and that pleased him, he said, as he helped his wife down the stairs and then he stopped and turned, saying quietly, ‘The Hopkins boy has been killed. A direct hit. He was eleven.’

Helen watched as Mrs Simkins seemed somehow much older in a matter of seconds. Her lips were quivering, her head wobbling, and Helen knew that now it was time for Chris to go to safety and she knelt by the settee and laid her head on his, not waiting to see if Mr Simkins and his wife had left.

The train stopped and started throughout the November night and morning but Heine could see nothing of the country they jolted through because the blinds were pinned down but he heard the planes, drumming overhead, coming in waves. He looked at his cards, his matchsticks in a small pile on the cases they had piled up to make a table and smiled when Willi won, but there was little talk. They were listening for bombs to fall and split the train apart, to crash and tear into their bodies.

How many had fallen on Britain since September, Heine wondered. How many on London where Helen still struggled in to work over craters where roads had once been and water spouting from broken mains, round cordons, fire engines, ambulances? And he wished that she too could have moved to Norfolk as Christoph had done.

As the train stopped yet again he put his cards down, shaking his head at Willi and Leopold. The noise of the planes was too loud and Wolfgang threw his hand down too, his face intent as he eased the blind away from the window, levering it from the pins with his pen.

‘They fly high still,’ he said. There was relief in his voice.

They had become complacent, Heine thought, tucked up in their holiday camp by the sea. They had heard the bombers day after day, night after night, but always they were going somewhere else, weren’t they? And now we too are going somewhere else, but we don’t know where, and perhaps we shall feel the judder of the ground which we have only so far had to imagine as we listened to the wireless or read the newspapers or received letters which told us our families were dead.

Not mine yet though. Not mine.

They were travelling up through England to another camp,
the guard had said as they had embarked before daylight in alphabetical order. Leaving the train is forbidden even in the event of a raid, he had continued, so that when the first formation of planes overrode the rattling of the train on the rails, their hands had become too wet with sweat to deal, and Heine hoped that the Nazis who had cheered when Martin Stein had heard that his family had been killed in the first raids felt the same fear.

It was not until midday that they reached the covered station that their guard told them was Liverpool. So they must be bound for the Isle of Man, Heine thought. Their mouths were parched because the water had run out at eight in the morning but there was nothing to drink, just soldiers with bayonets pushing and shouting, herding them into columns, marching them from the train.

Heine fastened his grip on his case, printed with a ‘P’ for prisoner. He did not look at the passers-by who stopped, their faces tired and drawn, darkness dug deep beneath their eyes. He did not turn as they cursed the column; he looked ahead but then he could see the raised hands of the Nazis, their swagger nurtured by their months in safety by the sea, their chants of ‘Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler’ ringing out in rhythm to the march until the guards shouted and thrust their rifles at them.

Now there was just the sound of feet; the clanging of train wagons, the barked orders, the coughs as they reached the landing stage and the grey cold entered their lungs and the dampness from the riverside seeped into their clothes and their bodies. But at least the sky was above them and they could feel the wind in their faces. They marched in step until a floating stage was reached and then they were ordered to stand at ease. Heine looked at the small grey steamer tied to bollards with thick hawsers which dripped wet slime. The river was stained with fuel oil, rainbow splashed in the cold shrouded sunlight.

‘It is the Isle of Man we go to now, so says the guard,’ Willi said, turning to Heine.

‘We will not all fit on that boat?’ Wolfgang asked from behind.

‘He says that there is another coming. They have already taken an earlier load,’ Willi replied, not turning his head but looking towards the boat as the gangway was secured.

Heine was watching the gulls as they wheeled in the wind which licked at the river, and wished that Helen was here, travelling with him, away from the mainland, away from the bombs. He thought of the letter he had received from her and reached into his pocket, feeling it with his cold hands, feeling closer to her because of it, because her hands had also touched it.

He drew it out, reading it again as the wind snatched at it.

My darling,

I have just returned from the station where I saw Christoph leave for Norfolk. He has gone to Joan’s aunt, Laura Manners who moved there to live with her husband many years ago. He is dead and she is lonely and Joan tells me she is kind. I wanted to go with him so much but Mr Aster would not allow me the two days away from work that I would need.

He was so very brave, so very small, and I could hardly bear it but at least he will be safe. Mrs Manners knows that he is partly German but to her it doesn’t matter. She thinks it better though, not to tell the villagers because the vicar’s wife is a ‘patriot’ and there may be others.

Oh, Heine, I miss you so. I miss our son. When will it ever end?

I love you,
Helen.

The siren began then, a penetrating sound which silenced the clamour of voices, the shuffling feet. On and on it went, striking into their shocked silence and then they heard the planes, drumming with that German beat, louder and louder, but they were not allowed to move towards shelter. Instead, as the sky darkened with wave after wave of wide-winged, heavy-bodied, black-crossed planes and the drumming seemed to press the air from Heine’s body, the first of the men clambered up the gangway.

‘Come on, get going. Move it along.’ The guards were shouting but they could not be heard now against the bombs
thudding, bursting, whistling. The ack-ack was stabbing up into the sky and Heine held Willi’s arm, his own shoulders hunched as the stage shook, even though it was not part of the battered earth. He pushed the letter into his pocket, unable to believe the noise.

Soon no sound existed other than the crash of bombs, the crackle of the burning riverside, the explosions of warehouses, the clamour of fire engines and ambulances. No cold air filled their lungs now. It was hot from the flames and their fear.