Chapter 20 Blitz Spirit #2
Ned ducked a punch from one of the bulkier looters and the younger man stumbled forward and smashed his hand into a glass display, cursing as the shards tore into his skin.
As Ned rolled back into a crouch, he glimpsed a grim-faced Charlie over his shoulder as he swung his bat, taking out the legs of another looter.
Ned shifted the knife in his hand and swiped towards his snarling opponent, who was trying to figure out how to punch a knife.
One of the great revelations of having gone to war was discovering he was a damn good fighter.
When forced into combat, Ned lost any sense of panic or noise—there was only action, reaction, feint, lunge, punch, and duck.
And excitement. Ned liked to be good at what he did.
He might have been more than midway through his fourth decade, but he could still absolutely kick the pants off these young men.
Charlie instinctually covered for Ned’s weak spots, as Ned covered for his. Here, at least, there was no awkward conversation, or unreadable looks, or mulling over decades of past emotional history. This was Ned and Charlie, back to back, fighting for survival.
Exhilarating in a way Ned was not sure whether he should be proud of or embarrassed by.
Yet even the most skilful could be unlucky, and an unexpected stumble on Charlie’s side separated him from Ned. Three more punches later, Ned found himself facing Mr Black Eye and Mr Bloody Hands with his back literally up against a wall.
“Give up, codger,” Bloody Hands spat out.
At Ned’s silence, they tackled him to the ground and delivered a staccato of punches to his side.
Ned tried to remember how to breathe. He couldn’t let himself pass out, not now when Charlie needed him.
Ned leaned into the pain, using it to hold tight to his knife, to find an opportunity to get back on his feet.
There was a movement above Ned, and, like a falling tree, Black Eye toppled off of him with a solid thunk, giving Ned enough time to knee Bloody Hands in the balls.
Looming over him was Charlie, sweaty but smiling.
He extended a hand to pull Ned up just in time for Ned to see that one of the youngsters Charlie had previously engaged was now charging behind him, a knife in hand.
Ned moved faster than he would have thought his body capable of, pushing up past Charlie and sliding his blade into the boy’s belly. The boy’s scream bounced off the broken shelves, scattered merchandise, and panting men.
Outside, the sirens wailed like banshees.
There was no time to brace. The ground shuddered, and Ned and Charlie were knocked to the floor.
The Blitz had come to Marylebone.
???
By the time Ned and Charlie picked themselves up, the looters had fled, leaving broken glass and a trail of blood in their wake.
Ned’s knife hand was sticky with blood. He didn’t think he had killed the boy, but at the moment he wasn’t particularly bothered either way. He could throw up about it later.
“I think they are gone.” Charlie leaned against the door frame, peering out into the street.
“Next time we meet for drinks, you’re paying,” Ned answered as he looked around for somewhere to wipe his hand.
Charlie’s response was cut off by the low buzz of aeroplane engines, and Ned looked up through the glass-less window frames to listen for whether the bombers were looping back.
“Should we make a run for the Tube?” Charlie shouted.
“Even if we made it in time, there probably isn’t any space,” Ned replied absent-mindedly.
A memory of a report flashed in Ned’s mind.
Underlined and circled, a ‘looks interesting' noted in Miss Forbes’ neat handwriting.
The report had documented the causes of fatalities in the Blitz and found that the majority were from falling walls or upper floors.
While a direct hit would certainly leave them dead as dormice, they might be able to do something to protect themselves against the secondary effects.
“Does your shop have any large metal plates, something that we could put up on top of a table?”
Charlie surveyed the mess around them. “I’ve some spare hoods, would they do?”
“Perfect.” Ned followed Charlie around the store’s turmoil where, sure enough, curved metal hoods were stacked neatly against a wall. “Put this on the dinner table and we’ll crawl underneath.”
If Charlie thought this was crazy, he kept his views to himself. “I’ve got some winches. They might add some extra reinforcement to the table legs.”
“Take them.”
That they had barely any time to enact this foolishness went without saying. The men scrambled to build their makeshift shelter, the cuts and bruises from the fight numbed by the urgency.
Finally they managed to squeeze and contort themselves under the table, barely fitting under its protection as they lay down side by side. This was the worst part for Ned, waiting, unable to see what was coming, powerless.
Trying to ignoring his racing heart, Ned looked up at the table on top of them to realise he knew this worn wood.
This was the old worktable where Charlie had once made his defiant hats, where he had bared his soul to Ned, still damp from the rain, and presented him with tickets to a fancy dress ball.
Of all the things for Charlie to have kept from the hat shop, Ned was struck that this remained.
He was about to ask Charlie about it when a whistle cracked through the air.
Another hit, closer this time. The electricity went first, plunging them into the pitch black.
Their only guide to what was happening around them was sound: furniture cracking as it rocked side to side, books and china tumbling to the floor.
Ned’s senses scrambled like a radio that couldn’t find a frequency. The smell of mud and blood filled his nose, even though he could feel the rough wooden floor beneath him. His uniform felt wrong. Where was he? Where were his men?
Ned wasn’t sure who reached out first, but suddenly Charlie’s hand was in his.
Their fingers interlaced, as if to anchor one another as much as possible.
The pads of Ned’s fingertips brushed over the fine hair on the top of Charlie’s hand.
Beneath it, he could feel Charlie’s tendons and bones, strength and fragility together.
A tight squeeze brought him back. Ned wasn’t in Flanders. This was now, this was London, under a table with Charlie.
Another crash and tremble. Around them, timber cracked, plaster broke, bricks exploded.
The fact that they were still alive to hear those noises meant it wasn’t a direct hit.
But it was close. Damn close. Pinging hits of debris bounced off metal interspersed with larger bangs that made the table’s winches creak.
Ned guessed that Charlie’s house didn’t have a roof anymore.
His and Charlie’s existence blurred together as one, both waiting for their improvised solution to fail, for the inevitable pain, or, if they were luckier, for everything to simply disappear.
But the table held. The winches didn’t move.
Their hands stayed clenched together. The metal hood absorbed what it needed to absorb.
Ned was going to buy Miss Forbes the biggest box of chocolates he could find when this was over.
Then the world was silent.
Charlie rolled to face Ned. Ned turned to Charlie.
Ned took a deep breathe in. Charlie exhaled.
Charlie’s survival instinct kicked in first, and he pulled back with a shuddering breath. He started to kick at the debris surrounding the table. In the surrealism of the moment, ears still ringing from the noise, Ned was confused. They were safe. They were together. Why did Charlie want to leave?
Charlie kept his grip tight on Ned's hand as he fought to escape their shelter. Neither could see in the darkness, but Charlie resolutely crawled in the direction of what had been the front of the building.
“Come on, Ned,” Charlie urged. “We need to move before the building goes.” Slowly, like swimming to the surface after a deep dive, Ned returned to himself.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he began to help Charlie advance through the fallen beams and bricks, spotting dead ends and walls on the brink of collapse.
Ned thought he saw a glint of what had been the large front windows of the shop when a woman’s sob penetrated the broken building. Charlie dropped Ned’s hand and started pulling frantically at the rubble around them.
“That’s Betty. They must have been let out of the shelters,” Charlie said to Ned, and then louder, “We’re here! We’re here!”
“Dad! Dad? Are you hurt?” Frank’s voice called out.
“My boy.” Charlie cleared a space and leapt over some fallen shelves, grabbing his son in a tight embrace at the shop’s entry.
“Dad, we saw the house, we thought… there was no way.” The boy’s voice was broken with tears.
They stumbled out and onto the street, Betty running straight into Charlie’s arms. He whispered into his wife’s hair as she sobbed against him, with Ellie and Frank clutching each of his sides.
“Hush, don’t cry. Ned saved us. Made us our own shelter.
That old dining table everyone hates? Perfect hiding place! ”
The entire red-brick street had been ripped apart.
All the insides outside like an animal’s carcass, transforming what was normally comforting to the grotesque, with roofs caved in, walls falling outwards.
Even buildings left standing were pockmarked with holes.
And everywhere, the smell of burning. It seemed inconceivable that the heap of rubble before Ned could possibly be the shop that he and Charlie had defended only a handful of hours earlier.
Ned looked down at his hand, which was stained with dried blood.
He needed to wash up. God Almighty, his back hurt.
Sometime over the course of the evening’s events he had lost his glasses.
He hoped he could find his spare pair. He was turning to leave and find his way home when he felt a tug on his sleeve.
“I think Dad needs you?” Ellie said to Ned. The statement confused him—surely she couldn't know—until he looked over to see that his friend literally needed help propping up a beam. He rolled his shoulders and turned back to the wreckage.
???
Dawn was breaking, and the noises of London getting ready for the day filled the air. Delivery boys, milk trucks, the bark of a dog, shopgirls headed to work, the cry of a baby. Life continued and found a way to avoid the craters in the streets.
Ellie, Frank, and Betty had collapsed into sleep on what had once been the chesterfield, both children’s brown curly heads looking so much younger when pressed against their mother.
Charlie, for his part, wandered amongst the remains of what had been his business and his home, dodging dangling furniture and shards of plaster to get to the broken dishes and the fluttering bits of clothes.
Every once in a while, he’d find an item that had miraculously survived, creating a haphazard collection of the family’s life: tools from the garage sitting beside a doll which was somehow unscathed, a slightly torn book, some folded shirts.
Ned struggled to distinguish one item from another in the carnage.
He would have fallen asleep himself if he hadn’t had one eye still focused on the street, half convinced the looters would be back. He rubbed his hand against his rough face. More than sleep, Ned desperately needed a shave.
“Thank God there wasn’t a fire.” His own soft voice surprised him.
Charlie looked up from the piles of rubble. Dust and soot coated both of their faces. Ned’s sleeve was soaked in another man’s blood, and most of Charlie’s clothes were torn and blackened.
Two old, tired, bedraggled men.
“I can’t do it, Ned.” Charlie’s voice was hoarse. “We protected the stock, the tools, but half of it is smashed to pieces now, and what use is it anyways if I’ve no shop to open? Never mind that I don't know where we’re sleeping tomorrow.”
If Charlie hadn’t been so exhausted, Ned thought he would have been crying.
“How many times does a man need to rebuild a life? After the war, after you, I don’t know if I can do it again,” Charlie said.
In agreeing to come to dinner, in volunteering to stay with Charlie against the looters, Ned had acted with the instinct of a younger man, and he did so again.
Ned pulled Charlie into his arms. “You, Betty, the children, you are all coming home with me.”
Charlie shook his head, though he didn’t pull away. “I can’t ask that, Ned. I’m sure that Kitty or Mary will take us in until we get back on our feet.” He took a shaky breath.
“No.” Ned dug in his heels. “You aren’t going to cram yourself into one of your sister’s homes. I have a whole flat to myself, which is nonsense. You are staying with me.”
Ned expected more resistance from Charlie, but instead it was like all the air went out of the other man’s body.
“I don’t know how you will rebuild again. I only know that you will do it. And that I’ll be there to help. We do better when we fight side by side.”
Ned really should have pulled back from the embrace at this point. Instead, he held Charlie even tighter. His head fitted perfectly beneath Ned’s chin. They stood there, in the early morning’s light, and felt each other’s hearts beat.
“I’m so tired of missing you.” Charlie’s voice almost didn’t make it up to Ned’s ear.
Ned kept holding on. He would hold Charlie as long as he needed, and then he would help Charlie collect more fragments of his life, find a taxi, and bring this family out of the wreckage of what was once a hat shop.