She stood discreetly away as Boyes said, ‘Here, this is my address. If you ever want—’
She stuck the piece of paper in her blouse pocket. ‘You’re a real card, you are!’ But her eyes were suddenly warm, vulnerable. ‘Maybe. We’ll see, eh?’
The two girls hurried away towards a camouflaged lorry where some others in A.T.S. uniforms were already sorting out their bags and parcels from home.
Boyes walked slowly down the slope from the platform. Apart from all the uniforms it had not changed much. Shabbier, but so was everywhere else.
He would walk the rest of the way to his home, steeling himself as he went up St Mark’s Hill, just as he had that morning on his way to school when he had been dreaming of being accepted for early entry into the navy.
He had known that church on the hill for most of his life, and had sung in the choir there because of his mother’s insistence.
But that morning it had been quite different. When he had passed the last houses he had looked for the church tower and steeple, a landmark thereabouts. There had been nothing but the steeple left standing; a German bomb had wiped the rest away. It had felt like an invasion, like being assaulted by something obscene. He shivered, as he had done when the Fawn had finally dived to the bottom.
Then he gripped his case and walked into the sunlight. He turned once to stare after the lorry but it had already swung out on to the main road, and he thought he could hear the girls singing some army song.
A real gifl. And she had liked him.
He caught sight of himself in a shop window and tipped his cap to a more jaunty angle.
Home is the sailor.
Lieutenant Philip Sherwood paused on the steps of the club and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. He breathed deeply like a farmer returning to the land; even in wartime it was still London. Bombed, battered and rationed, with traffic groping up St James’s Street towards Piccadilly, the night sky already criss-crossed by early searchlights, nothing seemed able to take away its personality.
He half-smiled. Like the old club he had just left, where he had dined alone in the high panelled room with its portraits of stern-faced bankers and businessmen.
His father had put his name down for membership years back when he had left school for Cambridge. His grandfather had been a member there too.
Just now he had asked an elderly servant if the club had ever been bombed.
The man, in his Pickwick-style brass-buttoned tailcoat, had given a wry smile while he had glanced at some equally old members who were sleeping in their chairs, faces hidden by their newspapers.
‘It is my belief, Mr Sherwood, Hitler wouldn’t dare!’
Mr Sherwood. Even that sounded old and quaint. Sherwood was twenty-six and had been in the navy since the beginning. His father had wanted him to wait a while. The business would not function without a younger head in the boardroom. Anyway, the war would be over by Christmas. That was four years ago.
In the club’s elegant entrance hall hung one huge chandelier, unlit now because of the black-out and power cuts. But it was a chandelier which had once been the pride of London’s clubland.
It had been made, or built as they called it in the profession, by one of the oldest chandelier companies, Sherwood’s.
It had gone during the first devastating fire-blitz on London. They had all been there, that was the worst part, his father, mother and two sisters, helping after hours, to pack some of the antique, priceless pieces which would be sent into the country for the duration. The whole street had been demolished, and the blaze had been so terrible that the firemen had been unable to fight near enough to save anyone still inside.
It was still hard to accept that life could change so completely and remorselessly. Sherwood had left the affairs of his family in the hands of a solicitor who had been his father’s friend and a cousin from Scotland he hardly knew. He could not face going back to the family home outside London in the quiet suburbs. Sherwood’s had always kept a small flat in Mayfair, for foreign buyers and the like. By some miracle it had so far avoided both the bombing and being commandeered for some deskbound warrior from Whitehall, so Sherwood stayed there whenever he was able to reach London. To many people the city was a rambling maze; to Sherwood it was sheer escape, and could have been a desert island for all the notice he took of those around him.
An air-raid siren began its nightly wail, rising and falling above the growl of traffic, with barely a passer-by glancing at the sky. It was all too commonplace. To think about it could bring nothing but dread and despair. You just kept going.
Sherwood could see beyond the thousands of servicemen of so many nationalities who thronged the cinemas, pubs and dance-halls in search of momentary enjoyment. He saw instead the people, as they went about their daily affairs almost unnoticed. People who set out each day for the office or shop by any form of transport left running after a night’s air-raid, not even knowing if the place of work would still be standing when they reached it. And at the end of their stint, returning home again, with that same gripping fear that it too might have been wiped away in their absence.
They were the real heroes, he thought. Without their courage under fire, all the sea battles and tanks in the world could not keep this island going for long.
He thought suddenly of Hargrave, their first meeting in the wardroom. Confrontation. His question about fear, his own reply about its only coming when there was an alternative. It was terribly true, but how could anybody like Hargrave understand?
Sherwood knew he was being unreasonable. Once he had tried to contain it. Now he did not care any more.
After his family had been killed he had returned to his ship and straight away had volunteered for mine disposal. He had been in Rob Roy about nine months. He had not expected to be alive this long when he had first volunteered for what they called the most dangerous work in any war.
His mind lingered on fear. That was the strange part. With him it was no act. He really did not feel it. He had supposed that one day he would either crack up completely as some had done, or make a stupid error which in the blink of an eye would have solved everything.
A dark figure seemed to slide from a doorway and he heard a girl say, ‘Hello, love, d’you feel like a go?’
Sherwood quickened his pace, angry at the interruption, the intrusion into his solitude.
She insisted, ‘Anything you like, and I’m clean!’
Sherwood caught the scent of strong perfume and sweat.
He snapped, ‘Bugger off!’
She yelled after him. ‘You stuck-up bastard! 1 hope they get you!’
Sherwood swung round. ‘What did you say?’
He heard her high heels tapping on the pavement as she ran into the jostling figures and disappeared.
Sherwood walked on more slowly, his hands deep in his raincoat pockets.
Perhaps he should have gone with her. He almost laughed out loud. Probably end up in Rose Cottage, as they called the officers’ V.D. hospital.
He looked up and saw the tiny pinpricks of bursting flak. Soundless from here. The searchlights were groping across some clouds; it all seemed quite harmless, unreal. It was south of the Thames somewhere.
A voice said, ‘’Ere we go again. Let’s find a shelter.’
The crowd seemed to be thinning, and Sherwood found himself walking past the Ritz, beside Green Park. He had often walked there with his sisters.
He clenched his fists together in his pockets. Leave it. They’ve gone. You can’t bring them back.
Crump – crump – crump – the familiar sound of shell-bursts, nearer now. More casualties, more smashed debris where streets had once stood and survived the years.