Whistling in the Dark Page 4

  Betty Grable soon reappeared on the screen and the audience settled down, uneasily. Everyone was listening out for any kind of noise. For quite a while there was silence outside − an unusual stillness. Then they heard it, quite clearly above the film soundtrack: the throb of aircraft engines, far away at first, but getting steadily louder.

  “Heading for Liverpool…” muttered the man in the row behind them.

  Joan couldn’t concentrate on the film. Her ears, like everyone else’s, were straining to catch the sound of those engines getting nearer: German Focke-Wulf bombers on their way to drop their nightly barrage of high explosives to pound the Liverpool docks.

  Joan glanced fearfully up at the ceiling of the cinema. It did not look particularly solid to her. There was a kind of ramshackle glass skylight in the middle, with makeshift blinds, that looked as though it might give way at the slightest impact, let alone a direct hit. She could not help wondering if the cinema manager’s instruction to stay under cover was such good advice after all. Those German aircraft would not be aiming at their suburban area, she knew that, but, flying at night, they had been known to make mistakes.

  The raid lasted about three and a half hours, by which time they had seen both Down Argentine Way and the newsreel played twice. Every so often the electricity went off, and they were plunged into darkness. It was terrifying when this happened, and Joan was so relieved when the picture reappeared on the screen, somewhat jerkily. Nobody in the audience panicked – one girl in the back row was crying and clinging to her boyfriend, but most people remained grimly silent. They all knew that to make for the exits at this point would be more dangerous than sitting tight. The air was dense with cigarette smoke.

  They could hear the distant sickening crunch and thud of explosions over Liverpool and the accompanying cracks of anti-aircraft gunfire. Once or twice the ceiling shook badly, and flakes of plaster floated down like grubby snowflakes onto their heads.

  Doreen was amazingly brave. Every time there was a particularly frightening noise, her hand tightened on Joan’s arm, but she kept looking resolutely at the screen. Joan did likewise, determined to match her courage.

  When at last the all clear sounded, the whole audience scrambled to their feet, struggling into their overcoats as they crowded towards the exits. Joan and Doreen were caught up in the rush. Outside, they joined other strangers in shaking hands and wishing one another good luck and a safe journey home. It was a starless night, but the sky over Liverpool was blazing orange and fiery red.

  “The fire and ambulance services’ll be busy over there tonight,” said one man. His wife only shivered.

  Neither Joan nor Doreen had remembered to bring their little electric torches. They set off silently, arm in arm, into the blacked-out street. It was not yet nine o’clock, but they were so tired they could hardly walk. A hurrying figure loomed out of the darkness ahead of them and a powerful flashlight was shone into their faces. It was David.

  “Doreen! Joan! Are you OK? Everybody was out except me, so I thought I’d better come and meet you.”

  Doreen threw her arms around him. “Oh, Dave! We were in there for ages. They showed the film over and over. We thought the roof was going to fall in on us all!”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s probably held together with Sellotape.”

  He took them both by the arm, and the three of them walked on together. When they reached the Russells’ house and David had seen Doreen safely inside, he turned to Joan and said, “It’s pretty late. I’d better take you home.”

  “No, I’ll be all right, really.”

  “Come on.”

  They walked in silence. Normal chit-chat was out of the question at this point, and anyway Joan could not think of anything to say. The evening had been overwhelming. When they reached her front gate and she turned to thank him, they were interrupted by Mum’s frantic appearance on the doorstep.

  “Joan! Is that you? Thank heavens! I’ve been worried stiff about you. Brian’s staying with a friend, and Audrey and Dai are at the dance, so I couldn’t leave Judy on her own in the middle of an air raid and—”

  “It’s OK, Mum,” Joan said wearily. “We had to stay under cover until the all clear went, and then David came to meet us.” She was so glad to be home.

  “Oh – it’s David! How kind of you to bring Joan home. Won’t you come in?”

  “No, thanks, Mrs Armitage. I’d better be getting back.”

  “Well, if you’re sure. Thank you so much.”

  “Yes, thanks a lot,” Joan said.

  She stood for a moment, watching the light of his torch bob away up the road, then walked slowly into the house.

  CHAPTER 8

  As the autumn wore on and the days grew shorter, a storm cloud loomed heavily on Joan’s horizon: the golf club dinner dance. The thought of having to get through a dinner with Mum and Captain Harper Jones, then sit there watching them dancing – perhaps even (heaven forbid!) cheek to cheek – was depressing. Worse, Doreen and her family, and maybe even David, would be there to witness it. But Joan’s efforts to get out of it were in vain. Excuses like having nothing to wear were briskly brushed aside by Mum.

  “You can wear Audrey’s blue velvet dress, and I’ll lend you my diamanté clip,” she said.

  “I’d look silly in that frock. Everyone’ll know it’s not mine. They’ve seen Audrey wearing it.”

  “Of course they won’t. People don’t remember things like that.”

  “But I haven’t got any decent shoes. And don’t suggest I borrow Audrey’s, because my feet are much bigger than hers.”

  “Don’t worry. You can wear your best black patent leather ones. You’ll look lovely. And there’ll be some really good food. Ronnie’s managing to lay on an excellent three-course meal. I don’t know how he does it in these difficult times.”

  Joan said nothing. She knew it was useless to resist.

  The big room at the golf club, which was usually the bar area, had been cleared to make room for dancing. A live band – piano, drums, saxophone and clarinet – was setting up in one corner when Joan and Mum arrived. Captain Ronnie Harper Jones had been there most of the day, setting up dining tables in the adjoining room and checking that the blackout shutters were in place. A large vanload of food had arrived from Liverpool and had been unpacked and laid out on the buffet table. It was an excellent spread, as promised: a rare treat in wartime. But Joan was dreading the dancing that followed too much to relish the sight.

  She looked anxiously about to see if anyone her own age had arrived yet. Ross and Derek were nowhere to be seen, of course. Their families were probably not invited, even if they could afford to come. This was strictly an officer-class event. She spotted a few girls from school, although mercifully not Angela Travis. Gradually the room filled with guests. They were mostly, as Doreen had predicted, middle-aged people, but some had a few uneasy teenagers in tow. Drinks were served and the older people made bright conversation.

  This is going to be even worse than I expected, thought Joan. But when the Russell family walked in, the atmosphere lightened up considerably. Doreen and her mother led the way, looking lovely. Mr Russell and David strode behind. Joan had never seen David wearing a suit before. Ronnie Harper Jones rushed over and greeted them enthusiastically. He even kissed Mrs Russell’s hand, then fell into a long conversation with Mr Russell. The rest of the family came straight over to where Joan and her mother were sitting.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you made it,” Mrs Russell said, giving Mum a kiss. “And you too, Joan. You’re both looking marvellous. We’re going to need all the moral support we can get when the dancing begins.”

  Doreen shot Joan a quick glance and rolled her eyes. David said nothing.

  Sadly, the two families were not seated anywhere near each other during dinner. Joan was trapped next to Ronnie, with Mum on his other side. She was too oppressed by the sound of his braying voice ringing out across the table to do more than toy with her food. Then the mom
ent she’d dreaded arrived. The band struck up with their first number, a current hit called “You Are My Sunshine”, and people started to move towards the dance floor.

  Ronnie and Mum were among the first, and he lost no time in showing off his nifty footwork. Ignoring the plodding “slow, slow, quick, quick, slow”, which most couples of his age were happy to settle for, he went straight into some complex double-reverse turns. He even tried swinging Mum around with one hand while (as Doreen had also so accurately predicted) sticking out his backside.

  Joan watched with a sinking heart. She wondered how long this evening was going to last. Doreen was on the dance floor too, partnered by a boy who Joan vaguely recognized as being in the same class as Brian at school.

  Joan was staring down at her plate, crumbling the remains of a bread roll, when David ambled across the room and sprawled down on the chair beside her.

  “Sorry I can’t ask you to dance,” he said. “I’m no good at it, I’m afraid. Your feet would probably never recover.”

  Joan smiled. “That’s OK. It’s rather a relief, as a matter of fact.”

  David helped himself to one of the delicious biscuits that had been served with the coffee.

  “How’s art going these days?”

  “Well, OK, I guess.”

  “I envy you. I can’t draw for toffee. And now, at school, there never seems to be time for anything but sport and the main exam subjects. I still play the piano, though, when I can.”

  “Classical pieces?”

  “Yes, sometimes. But what I really like is playing boogie-woogie. It drives my mum mad. She doesn’t much care for my jazz records either.”

  “Jazz? You mean dance music? Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw?”

  “Well, not really. I love Louis Armstrong – he’s the best trumpet player in the world! – but I like the small groups, with terrific instrumental players like Buck Clayton and Lester Young, people like that. And blues singers… Billie Holiday beats them all.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her. Is she on the radio?”

  “Sometimes. But they’re all black American musicians, of course.”

  “Oh yes, of course!” Joan said. She was trying to remember if she’d seen pictures of any of these people in Audrey’s fan magazines, and vowed to find out more about them. There was a pause, in which they sat watching the dancers. Joan wanted very much to talk to David about what she really cared about, which was drawing, and her plans to try to get into art school as soon as she could, rather than stay on in the sixth form at school. But somehow she didn’t feel this was an appropriate moment.

  At last Doreen extricated herself from her partner and came over to join them, flopping down in a chair in mock exhaustion. “I wonder how long this will go on for,” she said. “I don’t know how all these oldies find the energy.”

  David looked at his watch. “It’ll be quite a long time yet,” he said grimly.

  “Let’s hope there isn’t an air raid tonight or we’ll get stuck here for hours and hours!” Joan said.

  But there was no air raid that night. And when finally the band played the last waltz – “Who’s Taking You Home Tonight?” – followed by “Goodnight, Sweetheart”, Joan prayed that David and Doreen didn’t notice Mum and Ronnie dancing cheek to cheek.

  In the end, to Joan’s great relief, it was only she and Mum who walked home together, side by side in the blackout, because Ronnie had to stay on to supervise the clearing up.

  “I wonder what happened to all that leftover food?” said Joan.

  “Oh, I expect Ronnie will see that it’s given away to someone who needs it,” said Mum. Then she took Joan’s arm. “You didn’t enjoy it much, did you, Joanie?”

  “Not much. Did you?”

  “Oh, yes – well, I suppose I did. Anyway, thanks for coming along.”

  “That’s all right,” said Joan. “As long as I don’t ever have to do it again!”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Luftwaffe made up for their one night’s absence with a particularly heavy raid on Liverpool the following evening. It began early, just after dark. All the family were in the back room eating supper and enjoying Forces Favourites on the radio when the sirens started.

  Mum switched off the programme and they sat there in silence, listening. After a while they heard it, that chillingly ominous sound that was becoming all too familiar to them now – the steadily increasing drone of approaching enemy aircraft: German bombers, headed for Liverpool.

  “It’s too late to get down to the pubic shelter now,” said Mum, doing her best to sound calm, like those people in the propaganda films with titles like Britain Can Take It! But her voice was a bit shaky and Joan could tell she was scared.

  Mum turned off the lights, went over to the window, and peered out through a crack in the blackout blind. The rest of the family crowded behind her. They could see the searchlights springing to life and raking the sky over the city. Then the ack-ack barrage from the anti-aircraft guns began in earnest. There were sudden flashes of hectic white light from the flares that the enemy bombers were dropping to guide them to their main target, the Liverpool and Birkenhead docks.

  Brian was keen to go outside and watch, but Mum shouted at him to stay where he was.

  “You’d all better get under the stairs,” she said. This was supposed to be the safest place to be if the house got a direct hit. But there wasn’t really room for all four of them in there. Audrey refused point blank, saying she would rather go to bed. Judy, who was getting used to raids and often managed to sleep right through them, clung to Mum and started to cry.

  In the end, Mum settled for getting the children into sleeping bags under the dining-room table while she sat up in an armchair, huddled in an overcoat. Joan wasn’t in the least bit sleepy. Sleep was totally impossible under these circumstances. She just lay there, trying to avoid Judy’s knees sticking into her back and listening to her miserable grizzling. They could hear the barrage steadily intensify, the guns on the high ground above Liverpool and Birkenhead keeping up a constant fire.

  The crazy thing is, I just can’t believe that any of us are going to be killed, Joan thought to herself. But she knew very well that, although their suburb was supposed to be a relatively safe area with no military objectives, the German bombers often dropped their unused bombs at random on their way home, to lighten their load.

  The raid seemed to go on endlessly. It was well after midnight when at last the all clear sounded. Judy had long since fallen into a deep sleep, and had to be scooped up and carried to bed by Mum. Audrey, yawning and stretching her cramped back and legs, followed. Joan and Brian were still wide awake. They hovered on the landing, and Brian, careful not to show a light, peered out of the window. The searchlights were gone now, leaving the sky over Liverpool a fierce, sullen red, heavy with smoke and reflecting flames from the burning docks.

  “They must have dropped a lot of incendiary bombs,” said Brian.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t on us,” Joan said, then stopped short, realizing what a heartless remark that was when so many people’s homes must have been destroyed. Heartless too, she thought, that even though she knew that people had died in those fires, the sight of them lighting up the sky seemed unreal somehow, like those paintings she had seen of infernos and shipwrecks at sea and visions of hell. But it would have been only too real if their home had taken a direct hit. Joan shivered.

  Their little back garden and the golf links lay shrouded in darkness. It was high tide. All they could hear now was the sound of waves washing in peacefully beyond the sand dunes.

  “Come on, you two,” Mum called out wearily. “Time you were in bed.”

  Brian trudged off to his room, but Joan hesitated for one last look. Just before she turned away, she thought she caught sight of a movement near the fence – something like the figure of a man standing under the pear tree. But, when she looked again, he was gone.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was the morning aft
er the raid and a Saturday. As Joan had a day off from youth service, Mum asked her to queue at Barrett’s the butcher’s. It was always a long queue, especially if word had got round that there was a chance of some sausages, or maybe even lamb chops, so she set out early. It was a chore she hated, but it made a change from collecting scrap metal. The queue was mostly made up of women, looking tired out, with headscarves tied turban-like over curlers. They were all talking about last night’s air raid.

  “They say Huyton and Childwall got it last night, as well as the docks,” one woman said. “My auntie lives over there. I’m dead worried about her. I couldn’t get through to her on the phone. They’ve been dropping landmines – those awful things, floating down on parachutes.”

  “My hubby was on roof-spotting duty all night with the ARP,” said another. “I was right glad to see him back this morning, I can tell you.”

  A third chipped in, “Mine’s an air-raid warden. It drives me mad that they always expect him to turn up for work at the factory first thing next morning, even though he’s been up all night and is dead on his feet.”

  They lapsed into a gloomy silence. Joan was dreading her turn to face Mr Barrett. He was a large man with a bristling moustache, waxed at the ends, and great hands, mottled purplish red, the colour of the raw meat he attacked with such vigour on his chopping board. Once, for a dare, Joan and Brian had telephoned him anonymously and enquired if he had pigs’ trotters. When he said yes, they giggled and came back with, “Hard luck! What are you going to do about it, then?” and rang off. Hilarious though it had been at the time, she’d always had an uneasy feeling that he knew they were the culprits.

  “Chops are off,” he said, eyeing her coldly when it came to her turn. “I can let you have a bit of liver.”

  “Oh, yes – thanks,” said Joan meekly, and watched as he expertly sliced up a rather meagre portion of meat with his big knife and slapped it onto a sheet of newspaper. Joan paid Mrs Barrett, his thin, exhausted-looking wife, who sat clipping out ration coupons at the cash till, then hurried outside.