His broad shoulders were soon sucked into the seething crowd.
Joyce looked about, swallowing down her fear. WVS volunteers were doing what they could to provide tea and comfort, but they were horrendously overstretched. The large school hall, now operating as a rest centre, was packed to the rafters.
There wasn’t a spare patch of floor to be found in the hall, with what looked like huge family groups and neighbourhoods staking out territories.
Babies grizzling. Old folk weeping. Children quarrelling. So many bombed-out families sitting in just their nightclothes, faces and arms cut to ribbons, blackened feet shoeless and bleeding. One poor woman in nothing but a nightie was perched on a suitcase, caked in blood, attempting to nurse a tiny newborn baby.
‘Awful, isn’t it? It’s the same upstairs and in the basement too,’ remarked a WVS lady over the noise. ‘Canning Town’s been badly bombed. People have been arriving all evening.’
‘What’s going to happen to them?’ Joyce asked.
‘Hopefully coaches are on their way to take them to the safety zones in Kent,’ the WVS worker replied, before hurrying off.
Hopefully?
Next to Joyce, a baby was bawling at the top of his lungs. His poor mother was juggling him while attempting to calm a fractious toddler clinging to her ankles.
‘Here, let me help,’ Joyce said.
‘Would you? It means I can give the nipper a feed.’
Joyce bent down until she was eye level with the toddler. ‘Hello, my love. I’m Joyce.’
He stared at her suspiciously. She felt in her pocket and found a leftover piece of squashed bread pudding from the library clear-up.
‘Would you like this?’ He nodded and grasped the piece of stodgy cake in a chubby fist, settling down to eat.
‘Thanks. I thought my skull was gonna split in two,’ said his mother, leaning back against a wall while her baby breastfed.
‘S’pect you think I’m selfish, don’cha? Not sending my kiddies away to the countryside.’
Joyce shook her head. ‘No. I’m not a mother, so I’m in no position to judge you.’
‘You’re a rarity. I had a woman spit on me in the street last week when she saw my pram.’
Tears filled her exhausted eyes.
‘There ain’t a day goes by when I don’t wrestle with my decision, but in the finish, I just can’t be parted from them.’ She nuzzled the top of the baby’s head. ‘It’d be easier to scoop out my heart than give them over to a stranger.’
‘God bless you. What’s your name?’
‘Jean. Jean Farley.’
Harry appeared at her side. ‘We have to go, Joyce. Quickly now. I’ll explain in the car.’
‘Bye, Jean,’ Joyce said, standing up. ‘Hope you and your kiddies get to safety soon.’
As they walked back across the school playground, Joyce’s head spun. Dore had confided in her that 1,360 children had been killed or wounded in October alone in the bombings, most of them in London. But she had meant what she said. Who was she to sit in judgement of these women? She wasn’t a mother. She would never presume to untangle the complicated ramifications of sending your child to live with a stranger.For many of these women here, desperately soothing fractious children, holding your child close was just about the only thing that made sense in an insane world.
In the car, Harry turned to her, his face grave. ‘I’m going to drop you at the Tube then I have to get to the council offices in West Ham. Apparently a messenger has been dispatched to request urgent evacuation for those poor folk, but I need to get down there and warn them how critical things are.’
They drove in silence, Harry a tightly coiled spring. Outside Swiss Cottage Tube, he pulled over.
She reached over and framed his face in her hands, gazing into those impossibly silver eyes.
‘Stay safe, Harry.’
He smiled back wearily, his face softening.
