Gloria managed to doze off after a while and her head slid slowly sideways until she was resting her cheek on my shoulder and I could feel her warm breath against my throat. I still couldn’t sleep. I was left with nothing but my own gloomy thoughts and rasping snores from the soldiers. We stopped in the middle of nowhere for nearly two hours at one point. No explanation.
Because of the double summer time, it didn’t get light as early as it used to, but even so we weren’t more than six or seven hours into the journey before we were able to open the blinds on muted early-morning sunlight slanting across the fields. People had put odd objects like old mangles and broken cars on some of the empty meadows to make obstacles for any enemy planes that might try to land there.
One field was scattered with country signposts stuck in the ground at strange angles. The signposts had been taken down at the start of the war, along with all the station nameplates, to confuse the enemy in case of invasion, but I was still surprised to see where some of them had ended up.
All in all, the journey took ten hours, and the last hour or two seemed to take us through the endless London suburbs. It was here that I caught my first sight of street after street of bombed-out terraces, shattered lampposts, powdered plaster, twisted girders and jagged walls. Rosebay willow herb and Oxford ragwort grew from the rubble, pushing between the cracks in the bombed masonry and brickwork.
Packs of children roved through the streets, playing among the derelict houses. One ingenious group had rigged up a rope from a lamppost that seemed to be leaning at a precarious angle, like the Tower of Pisa, and they were proceeding to take it in turns to swing back and forth, playing at Tarzan the Ape Man.
Some houses were only half-destroyed, split open like a cross section. You could see wallpaper, framed paintings and photographs on the walls, a bed half hanging over the jagged remains of the floor. Here and there, people had moved damaged items of furniture into the street: a doorless wardrobe, a cracked sideboard and a pram with buckled wheels. I felt like a voyeur at a disaster site, which is what I was, I suppose, but I couldn’t stop looking. I’m not sure that I had any real grasp of the full extent of the war’s devastation until then, despite seeing Leeds after that air raid.
It seemed that on every area of spare ground not taken up by allotments, a barrage balloon station had been set up to deter low-flying enemy planes. The fat silver balloons glinted in the sun and looked like whales trying to fly. In some of the green areas, rows of antiaircraft guns pointed at the sky like steel arrows.
Of course, there were also plenty of buildings left standing and some of these were surrounded by sandbags, often to a height of about ten feet or more. I also noticed a lot of posters, on just about every available hoarding; they told us to grow our own food, save coal, buy war bonds, walk when we can and Lord knows what else.
I was so lost in the sights that I hardly noticed the time pass until King’s Cross. It was after ten o’clock in the morning when we arrived at the station and I was starving. Gloria wanted to head straight for Whitehall, but I persuaded her to stop and we found a Lyons, where we managed to get a rasher of bacon and an egg.
After breakfast, we walked back into the street and I was at last able to take in where I was. My first sensation was of being a very small, tiny, insignificant little creature lost in an immense and sprawling city. People pressed in on me from all directions; tall buildings towered over me.
The whole place had a shabby, worn and slightly defeated air about it. Everybody looked pinched and pale, the kind of look you get after years of rationing, bombing and uncertainty. Even so, for a Yorkshire country girl, it might as well have been another planet. I had never been anywhere bigger than Leeds before and I’m sure London would have overwhelmed me even in peacetime.
It had started to drizzle, though the air was still warm, and the damp sandbags gave off a musky smell. There were so many people rushing about, most of them in uniform, that I began to feel quite panicky and dizzy. I clutched at Gloria’s arm as she led me purposefully toward a bus stop. Often people smiled or said hello as we passed. I saw my first wounded soldiers, sad-looking men with bandaged heads, missing limbs, eye patches, some on crutches or with their arms in slings. All of them lucky ones; they were still alive.
Gloria was in her element. After only a few moments of disorientation at first, something seemed to click, as if the city actually made sense to her, which it certainly didn’t to me. She seemed to have only the slightest doubt over which bus to catch, and a quick word with the clippie, who was trying to look like Joan Crawford, soon set her right on that. We went upstairs, where you could smoke, and then we were off.
It was a whirlwind journey and more than once I feared the bus would tip over turning a corner. In the east, I fancied I could see the immense dome of St. Paul’s in the gray light through the dirty, rain-streaked window. I was overwhelmed by the size of the buildings all around me. White and gray stone darkened by rain; curving Georgian or Edwardian facades five or six stories high, with pediments, gargoyles and pointed gables. Huge Ionic columns. Surely, I thought, this must be a city built by giants.
At one point my heart jumped into my throat. I saw broken glass and rubble on the pavement and, strewn among it all, human body parts: a head, a leg, a torso. But when I looked more closely, I could see no blood, and the limbs all had a hard, unnatural look about them. I realized that a bomb must have hit a dress shop and blown all the mannequins into the street.
We passed Trafalgar Square, where Nelson’s Column stood, much taller in reality than it had been even in my imagination. You could hardly see poor Lord Nelson up at the top. The base of the column was covered with hoardings asking us to buy National War Savings Bonds. Across the square, near the Insurance Office and the Canadian Pacific Building, was a huge billboard advertising Famel cough mixture.
There were a lot of soldiers milling about. I didn’t recognize all the caps and uniforms, in just about every color you could imagine, from black to bright blue and cherry-red. I also saw my first-ever Negro from that bus in Trafalgar Square. I knew they existed, of course – I had read about them – but I had never actually seen a black man before. I remember being rather disappointed that, apart from being black, he didn’t look all that much different from anyone else.
Gloria nudged me gently and we got off on a broad street flanked with even more tall buildings.
And that was when our search began in earnest. I felt like a small child dragged along by its mother as Gloria took me from building to building. We asked policemen, knocked on doors, asked soldiers, strangers in the street, knocked on even more doors.
Finally, wet and weary and ready to give up, I rejoiced when Gloria found some sort of minor clerk who took pity on us. I don’t honestly think he knew anything about Matthew or what had happened to him, but he did seem to know a little more about the war in the Far East than anyone else would admit to. And he seemed to take a shine to Gloria.
He was a tidy little man in a pinstripe suit, with gray hair parted at the center and a neat, trim mustache. He glanced at his watch, pursed his lips and frowned before suggesting he might spare us ten minutes if we cared to accompany him to the tea house on the corner. He had a rather high-pitched, squeaky voice and spoke with a posh, educated accent. At that point I would have cheerfully murdered for a cup of tea. We dragged ourselves inside, bought tea at the counter, and Gloria started to pump the poor fellow for information before we had even had our first sip.
“What are the chances that Matthew might still be alive?” she asked.
This clearly wasn’t the sort of question the man, who told us his name was Arthur Winchester, was trained to answer. He hemmed and hawed a bit, then measured his words as carefully as the sugar cubes in the bowl were rationed. “I’m afraid I can’t really answer that question,” he said. “As I told you, I have no knowledge of the individual case to which you refer, merely a little general knowledge of the situation in the East.”