London - Edward Rutherfurd [583]
The narrow back garden of the house the Doggets rented below Lavender Hill had already been put on a wartime footing. First, beside the little concrete path, the grass had been dug up and a vegetable patch substituted. Next to that was a pen with three chickens which provided eggs. Beyond that was the Anderson shelter.
Ruth hated it. “I just can’t bear being cooped up in that little thing,” she complained. “It’s damp anyway, so it’s bad for the baby,” she insisted, though Charlie found it perfectly dry. But he knew Ruth: obstinate as could be. So that left the third choice, which was to stay in the house, under the stairs. Charlie had sandbagged the back door and window. It was as safe as he could make it. “If the bomb’s got our names on it, there’s nothing you can do anyway,” she had told him – and six out of seven Londoners felt the same way. But even so, he still tried to persuade her into the Anderson shelter each night before he left.
“I can’t stay and argue any more,” he said finally.
“I know,” she said. “We’ll be all right.”
So with his uniform on, and carrying his helmet and his boots, Charlie Dogget set off for his dangerous night’s work.
At a quarter past six Helen Meredith kissed her mother goodbye. She looked so well in her uniform, with her fair hair pinned up under her cap. “I swear you don’t look a day over twenty-five,” Violet said with a smile.
Helen smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Helen,” her mother gently took her arm as she was turning to go. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
Neville Silversleeves was a man who naturally collected responsibilities. It was not his fault: people asked him to do things and he did them very well. At an early age he had succeeded his father as head of the respected old firm of Odstock, Alderbury and Silversleeves, Solicitors. If he joined any society, within a few years he was inevitably asked to be its secretary. He was tall, with thinning black hair, and a very long nose. “That nose,” a cruel barrister had once remarked, “collects petty authority like a flypaper.”
As a good churchman, whose firm had done work for the diocese, Neville was a verger of St Paul’s and, given his position, had become one of the select group of ARP wardens in the City and Holborn. In recent months the wardens all over London had been unpopular for their ruthless enforcement of the blackout – a policy they had only followed because they had been informed, quite incorrectly, that even a lighted cigarette could be seen from a German bomber five thousand feet above. In the City itself, the residential population was small, but with so many banks, offices and churches to protect, the wardens had important responsibilities. They were also at considerable risk from bombs and fires themselves. But to Neville Silversleeves, this was just another of the burdens which he believed it was his destiny to bear.
He was on duty that night.
The Fleming brothers’ substation lay in section 84, at the outer edge of the London region’s authority. It was an evacuated schoolhouse. The equipment consisted of four taxis with ladders, three trailer pumps, a van and two motorcycles.
The crews had all arrived by soon after six, but there might be hours to wait before they were summoned to back up the hard-pressed crews in the centre. There were two women on the telephones. There was the substation officer, who had been a regular fireman, and the crews, all Auxiliary Fire Service men. Percy and Herbert did the back-up tasks and Percy usually looked after the kitchen.
The men had set up a darts board in the main schoolroom; and Herbert had made himself a popular figure by playing