Charing Cross, 1942

CHARING CROSS, 1942.

If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be spending my twenty-seventh birthday alone, in the buffet bar at Charing Cross, and rather enjoying it, I’d have never believed them. But a lot has happened in the last year or so and frankly there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Of course I could have gone out with Jimmy Fenton from Accounts, who inquired ever so politely if I’d finally accept his offer of a drink this evening to mark the occasion, but quite honestly I’d rather not inhale his cigar smoke, and I’m certainly not in the mood for a ball-by-ball account of Hutton, or whoever’s, triple hundred at the Oval in 1938.  Poor men! They think they have to talk a girl to death before they’ll try to kiss you.

Mum suggested I go dancing with Ellen, but I’m afraid that’s not to be. Ellen’s back on her feet, thank goodness, she was in the dumps for such a long time. But I think everyone would say “Why not? Why shouldn’t she get out and enjoy herself?” — it is nearly a year after all since her Jack went down with the Ark Royal.

But it’s one thing to go out dancing when you’ve been widowed a year; it’s quite another when your husband’s a prisoner of the Japanese. That would not go down so well, even if I was tempted — which I’m not. I shall not go out dancing, not until Hugh is safely home.

“So that’s your contribution to the war effort is it?” Mum asks. “Staying at home and making yourself miserable?” Perhaps it is. But there are times, I’m ashamed to say, when even this small sacrifice seems too much.

“You’re dressed up!” Mr Bramley behind the counter tells me a little too eagerly. I’m wearing the blouse Hugh bought me for my twenty-third and the skirt I wore the first night we went dancing at the Camden Ballroom.  

But I don’t want to explain any of that to Mr Bramley or let on about my birthday — the last thing I want is some dreadful sing-song — so I simply tell him that I’ve been promoted to Haberdashery and we have to look our best.

He winks and tells me that I certainly look my best. It’s difficult to know quite how to deal with Mr Bramley. Thankfully Mrs Bramley makes an entrance with a tray of her cakes and ceremoniously arranges them behind the counter. 

They look like Fortnum and Mason’s finest, and I purr in approval: scones and fairy cakes and iced fancies. But I know from hard won experience that they taste like everything else on the South Eastern Railway: something approximating wallpaper paste, set rock hard, with a bitter lemon flavor if you’re lucky. 

So I thank them: no, I have to watch my waistline and she laughs and says the boys like a bit of flesh on a girl and we both smile and chuckle as we always do, as if we’ve seen a bit of the world. Perhaps she has.

I sit by the window and sip my port. It will be an hour or two before she’s here, but I’m happy enough to wait.

Life doesn’t have quite the same sense of drama since the bombing quietened down. But then the bombing itself ceased to have the same sense of drama once we’d got used to it. It’s remarkable, actually, how quickly we did get used to it.

I remember going to the theatre one night with Hugh’s parents; standing in the bar in the interval when the sirens started. Three or four patrons rushed out to get to the Underground, but most of us stayed. Hugh’s father was rather belligerant about it: “We’ve queued up for these bloody gin and tonics, we may as well stay and enjoy them.”

I rather miss the bombing. Oh, not that I’d wish death and destruction down on anyone - no I don’t mean that — it’s more that... well, I always worried terribly before the war. I always worried about what I would do, and what I looked like, what people thought of me. Even after Hugh and I got married, I worried: what if I couldn’t make him happy? What if my cooking wasn’t up to scratch? I worried terribly about steak I remember. It seemed way beyond my powers to cook a decent steak. 

And then the bombing started and it was as if all my worries were simply wiped clean. There were no longer good neighbourhoods and bad neighbourhoods. It was all just London, and London was being attacked and we were all in it together. And suddenly London seemed a very wonderful place.

I remember the first bombing raid. I was sitting in the train compartment at Charing Cross when the siren went, and the guards rushed around getting everybody out and down into the Underground. I wasn’t keen on it down there. There were far too many people for my liking. 

A few nights later, the second raid, I held my ground. I would stay on the train and tough it out. It seems quite a few other people felt the same: my compartment was almost full! 

It turned out to be a rather enjoyable evening, despite it all. There was a chap who should have been on the radio, what he said about the films and plays he’d seen in the last few months made everybody howl. He was awfully clever. And then someone passed around a few sandwiches and someone else - a civil servant from Woolwich I think - shared a flask of coffee with a tot of rum. Of course Kensington and Chelsea got it badly that night so I don’t want to rhapsodise about it too much; it’s just that by the time the All Clear sounded, I really didn’t want to go home.

I was sitting opposite a lovely girl, a couple of years younger than myself I’d say. She came in breathless, as if she’d just run all the way from Piccadilly, which it turned out she had. The train was half way across the Thames to Waterloo when the sirens started and all the lights on the train shut down.

With the train stopped and the blinds down, and all of London shrouded darkness…well… it takes forever to get adjusted to it. I wasn’t scared; strangely I felt more cold than scared. This was her first time in London she said — she was visiting an aunt in Greenwich and — her first night in London — she’s copped an air raid!

I said a few words to her, I’m not sure what exactly, but they seemed to cheer her up, because even in the darkness I thought I saw her smile. And suddenly there was the most almighty blast and she leapt up and threw herself into the seat beside me.

And then the strangest thing: she reached for my hand. She held my hand.

We didn’t say anything the whole time, we just sat side by side with her squeezing my hand in the darkness. Then when the All-Clear came about an hour later and the train began to move she gently slipped her hand away and we all laughed a little that Thank God That’s Over, and she moved back to the other side of the compartment.

We got into the usual conversation: the war, the weather, what do you do and so on... she was ever such a charming girl — Sally Martin — a nurse, down from Leeds, visiting her aunt in Greenwich.

“Not Molly Martin, surely! Who has the grocers down on Duke Street?” And of course she was! So once again the small nature of the world was remarked upon and I told her that I was a regular at her aunt’s and that her aunt’s potatoes were second to none.

I didn’t see Sally again but I did receive a postcard from her a few days later thanking me for my kindness, as she called it, thanking me for talking to a perfect stranger. She’d always heard Londoners were a “bit stuck up”, she said, but the very first person she’d met had shown her quite the opposite.

I saw Molly Martin a few days ago and she tells me that Sally is coming down to take a job at the Royal Infirmary. She’s coming down tonight in fact, and Molly has asked me to keep an eye out for her at Charing Cross, just in case.

Sally should be getting into King’s Cross round about now. I’m not in any hurry to get home, so I’ll have another port, or a pot of tea perhaps, and I’ll keep an eye out for her. I usually take the 6:15 but tonight’s my birthday after all and I’m not in any hurry to get home, as long as I’m home by midnight. If I see Sally I’ll point her in the right direction.

I wonder if I’ll recognise her, or she me. We barely got a glimpse of each other, really.

After the bombing stopped that night the train just crawled the journey back to Greenwich: they never know if the track’s been damaged: you may as well walk to be honest.

It took forever and the whole journey was in total darkness and when we got to Greenwich we could just see the flickering of the fires across the river and in Woolwich. We walked a little way together until she was to turn right on Duke Street and I was to take the left on Nelson. So I’m not entirely sure I’d recognise her. 

But when we said goodbye she held out her hand to shake and I felt her delicate warm hand through her gloves. And I think it’s her hand I’d recognise. Even in the dark.