‘Do I pay you to stand about doing nothing?’ Jimbo suddenly rounded on Ellie. She’d finished putting the lights on the tables and had been so intent on their conversation that she’d forgotten to be discreet about it.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ellie blushed furiously. ‘It was just that –’ she paused, not daring to say what was in her mind.
‘Just what?’ he snapped rudely, frowning with irritation.
‘Well, I can sing,’ she said, twisting her hands together nervously. ‘If you’re really stuck.’
Jimbo was staggered. He was a bumptious little man, so full of his own importance he rarely noticed his staff unless they did something wrong. Mostly he couldn’t even remember their names.
‘You! Sing?’
‘I can,’ she said, suddenly feeling bolder. ‘Try me now before anyone comes in?’
Jimbo turned to Roy, shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of disbelief.
‘Can’t lose by trying her out,’ Roy said, grinning at Ellie. He wasn’t a bit surprised: many a night he’d noticed her body swaying to the music in quiet moments, her dark eyes lit up with the kind of passion that could only come from a frustrated performer.
‘What numbers do you know?’ Jimbo sneered at her, half expecting her to falter.
‘Almost anything Roy can play,’ Ellie said calmly. ‘Why not try me with “White Cliffs of Dover”?’
Ellie preferred more pacey songs – she wanted to say ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’, but was aware that she’d need rehearsal for that.
‘Go on then.’ Jimbo waved his hand towards the small stage. ‘If you’re lousy I’ll send you home for wasting my time.’
Ellie might have concentrated all her energies on mere survival in the past four years, but she hadn’t stopped practising singing, dancing and acting. Marleen in her sober moments was a good coach, particularly with dancing. Nights down in the tube during the Blitz had honed her comic routines, as anyone who could offer a few moments of entertainment was soon persuaded to forget any bashfulness.
As Roy began the introduction, Ellie took a deep breath. She was aware she would only get this one chance, that Jimbo was nasty enough to carry out his threat. But she wasn’t going to fail.
She began to sing, lifting her head and filling the club with her voice. The words sounded almost prophetic after the scene with Marleen. That thought gave more emotion to her voice and her nervousness just faded away.
In her mind she was back at school in Suffolk, Miss Wilkins playing the piano. She saw Jimbo sit down on a chair, and Brenda, Alice and Hilda standing still beneath the arch listening, and she knew she hadn’t lost the ability to entertain that she’d learnt as a child in Alder Street.
Never had the words of the song – joy, laughter, peace ever after – meant so much to her. She looked right into Jimbo’s eyes, imagined it was her mother sitting there, and all at once she saw he was smiling.
Jimbo was not a nice man. He’d got where he was by backstabbing, conning people and using them. He guessed the girl was under-age, otherwise she would be in the WAAFs, or the ATS. He’d taken her on just because she was pretty and when she turned out to be a good worker that was a bonus. But as he heard her rich, contralto voice, he got a tingle down his spine. The Yanks would love her, he wouldn’t have to pay her much and she’d be so bloody grateful to him she’d never be any trouble.
‘Bravo,’ he called out as she finished and a chorus of clapping came from the other waitresses. ‘Two sets tonight. One before I go on, the other after. Sort out some numbers, Roy!’
‘Well you’re a dark horse.’ Brenda grinned as Ellie came back to the bar to join the other girls. ‘Where’d you learn to sing like that?’
‘I’ve always sung,’ Ellie said shyly, stunned that singing one number to Jimbo had resulted in her suddenly being pushed into the limelight. ‘Was I really okay?’
‘Okay? You were marvellous.’ Brenda patted her back. ‘But don’t count your chickens yet, love. You know what the punters in here can be like!’
The club was packed, so full of smoke Ellie could scarcely breathe. There was a different balance to the crowed tonight, fewer servicemen as so many had gone to Normandy, but more businessmen and theatre people. There were a couple of Americans in one corner who Brenda thought were deserters as they weren’t in uniform and looked decidedly shifty. For her own sake, she hoped the MPs or ‘snowdrops’ as the men called them because of their white helmets, didn’t choose to raid the place tonight. There were also a great many more of the Soho spivs back at the bar and she wondered if Jimbo was in fact a black marketeer himself.
Ellie squeezed through the tiny gaps between chairs, holding her tray of drinks high over the customers’ heads. She didn’t know whether her churning stomach was from terror or excitement. She did know, however, that she’d got to calm down enough to take drink orders without making any mistakes.
‘Hi there.’ A brawny American airman tried to catch hold of her hand as she took the drinks off the tray and handed them round to his five friends. ‘Come and sit with us, babe?’
‘I can’t, I’m working.’ Ellie flashed a big smile and put the bill in front of him.
‘Hell! Surely you don’t work all the time, honey?’ he said as he took his wallet out and handed over a note. ‘Can’t I walk you home later?’
Ellie just laughed and shook her head, even though he had bright blue eyes and a warm smile. She never knew quite how to handle advances from men – she was drawn to them, yet scared too. Sometimes she thought she was the only girl of her age in London who’d never been kissed.
‘Keep the change, honey.’ His hand lingered on hers.
Ellie blushed. She wasn’t sure if it was caused by the big tip, his blue eyes, or the touch of skin on skin.
‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ he drawled, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Change your mind about joining me, and I’ll be right here.’
Just before eleven, she slipped out to the changing-room to check her hair and put on some more lipstick. She was quivering with nerves and the quiet of the changing-room made it worse. Over the din from the club she could hear that the band had stopped playing and Jimbo was telling jokes. She took a deep breath and walked back into the club.
‘Tonight I’ve got a treat for you,’ Jimbo said, catching sight of her standing beneath the archway. ‘A lovely young lady who’s been hiding her light behind my very own bar. I give you “Our Ellie”.’
Ellie had to push her way through the crowd. Her legs felt as if they were made of rubber. Roy smiled encouragingly at her and patted the piano to indicate she should come and sing by him.
He began the introduction of ‘Shine on Harvest Moon’, before she actually reached him, perhaps guessing that it was better to push her into singing immediately, before she had time to look at the audience and panic.
Ellie could see no further than the tables right by the dance floor. The rest of the club was full of swirling smoke and shadowy shapes, punctuated here and there by a brilliant white shirt and the red glow of cigarette ends.
Her nervousness faded with the first line. Singing always made her feel good, lifting her from reality. Around halfway through the song she realised everyone had actually stopped talking and with that her confidence grew. The next number was ‘I’m Going to Get Lit Up’ and she let go of the edge of the piano and quite unselfconsciously began to move with the music. By the third number, which had been her choice, ‘The Thingummy-Bob Song’, she was acting it out.
They loved it. She could hear people tapping their feet, see heads nodding, and as she got to the last line, wild applause broke out.
‘She’s bloody good,’ one of the spivs back at the bar said to Jimbo. ‘Where’s you find ’er?’
Jimbo looked at the slender, dark girl up on the stage and a shiver of pleasure went down his spine. She had magnetism, the kind of stage presence he associated with Marie Lloyd and other great music hall stars.
‘Right under my nose,’ Jimbo gri
nned. ‘And that’s where I’m gonna keep her.’
*
It was some time after two when Ellie left the club and she was so full of excitement she felt like whooping with joy. Jimbo had offered her a regular spot on Friday nights for which he’d give her an extra five bob on top of her wages and he’d also said he’d use her as a stand-in if other entertainers let him down. As she slipped down the deserted back streets towards High Holborn she was humming ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, hearing again the whistles, the clapping and stamping of feet.
Nothing mattered any more; not her shabby dress, not having to do a flit from Gray’s Mansions in a few hours, not even Marleen’s drinking. She was on her way: she felt it with utter certainty. Tonight maybe it was only a handful of songs in a seedy dive, but she had a lot more up her sleeve to show people. One day she would look back on June 21st, 1944 as the day her career started.
She looked up at the sky as she walked and smiled. Marleen had once pointed out a bright star and said that was Polly looking down on them and the thought had comforted Ellie on many a dark night.
‘Did you hear me, Mum?’ she whispered to herself. ‘Were you proud?’
Ellie laughed aloud then, hugging to herself the shock in the airman’s eyes after her first set, Brenda’s praise and even Cyril the barman’s laconic ‘You ain’t just a pretty face’.
She was on High Holborn, nearly at Gray’s Inn Road, when she heard the roar of a doodle-bug coming from the direction of Blackfriars. She stopped in her tracks looking up, paralysed by fear. It seemed to be coming right for her, a blast of flame from its exhaust making the bark of the engine even more menacing.
‘Get to the shelter!’ she heard a man yell from somewhere behind her and in that moment she was overcome with the strangest feeling of déjà vu. She was only yards from the place where Polly had been killed running for the shelter of the tube.
The rocket was right overhead now, and the roar of the engine louder than a dozen motor bikes revving up. She wheeled round, not knowing which way was the safest to run. She didn’t dare look up: boarded windows were rattling and a pub sign cranked to and fro, squeaking in protest. Diving into a shop doorway, she crouched down, arms protecting her head.
The engine cut out. It was like being suspended in space, every muscle tensing as she waited for the explosion and death.
‘Not me, not now,’ she whimpered.
The boom was so close she felt the ground shudder beneath her and it was some minutes before she dared remove her arms from her head and open her eyes.
To her surprise, there was no sign of any damage around her and no sign of any other person, but she could hear fire-bells in the distance, coming closer with every second.
Relief flooded through her. She even smiled at how frightened she’d been. Only this evening she’d overheard someone saying they could swear their heart stopped for a moment under similar circumstances, and now she knew just what they meant.
The clamour of fire-bells filled the air and as she resumed walking home, a fire-engine hurtled towards her, screaming left into Gray’s Inn Road. Ellie ran then, suddenly acutely aware of Marleen. A thick pall of billowing dust blew into her face as she turned the corner, obscuring any view of what was going on further up the street.
‘Don’t let it be our place,’ she whispered as she ran.
Another two fire-engines overtook her, bells clanging, then a truck with helmeted rescue men in the back.
Ellie saw the tree first. It was the one just across the street from their flat, which Marleen jokingly said ought to be cut down so she could spy on her neighbours. It had been stripped of its leaves, suddenly winter-bare. The fire-engines had stopped beside it.
Her blood seemed to turn to ice in her veins, the dust making her choke and her eyes run. Gray’s Mansions had a direct hit.
Ellie stopped short, her mouth falling open in horror. The mansion block looked as if a giant fist had thumped down on its centre, crushing the central eight flats, yet leaving both ends intact. The marble steps and the porch were still standing but a dense fog of dust and mortar was billowing from the building.
She rubbed her eyes, willing it not to be true. But it was. Their flat was gone with the others – just a mountain of smoking rubble, with papers and bits of curtain fluttering above it like so many small birds.
Her senses were assaulted from every direction. Screams from one quarter, shouted orders from firemen already advancing on the rubble, dragging hoses. Small bursts of flame leaped up, turning the scene into an image of a thousand candles lit in a dark shrine. She could smell escaping gas, feel dust settling on her face and hair and taste mortar on her lips.
A woman wearing only a nightdress suddenly appeared from nowhere, screaming at the top of her lungs as she ran mindlessly up and down. Only then did the full impact hit Ellie. Unless Marleen had disobeyed her, she was in that rubble!
Ellie ran to the nearest fireman. ‘My aunt’s in there!’ she screamed at him. ‘Get her out!’
‘We’ll get everyone out,’ he said calmly. ‘Did you live here too?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking wildly back at the ruined building. ‘On the second floor.’
‘Look. Go back over there.’ The fireman pointed to where a team of rescue workers were getting shovels from the back of a truck. ‘You can help by telling one of the men all you know of the other tenants in the block. Try not to worry about your aunt. She might have gone down to the shelter.’
Ellie watched and waited, willing Marleen to appear, staggering drunkenly up the road. She saw tenants from the part of the block left intact being brought out and shepherded away to safety. Other neighbours came out to watch, coats over their nightclothes, some of the men joining the rescue workers.
She saw two bodies lifted on to stretchers and carried carefully down, but although she ran forward, she was prevented from seeing them by a policeman.
‘It’s the people from the top flat,’ he said gently.
Ellie retreated to the other side of the road, sobbing as she remembered the kindness that old couple had shown her when she first came to London. Next they found Mr Grace from across the landing to the Hardings. He was a widower and as deaf as a post and she heard someone say he was found still in his bed. They found two more bodies from the top floor, but Ellie didn’t recognise their names.
It was so frustratingly slow. She watched as men eased up beams and took brick by brick away, all the time calling and listening. There were no serious fires, but with the overpowering smell of escaping gas the firemen were taking no chances, damping down as they tunnelled their way into the debris.
‘We do find people alive,’ a fireman said as he came over to Ellie with a cup of tea from a mobile canteen. ‘Quite often they’re trapped under tables, even in wardrobes sometimes. Why don’t you let one of the WVS ladies take you to a rest centre?’
He indicated a couple of women who’d been shepherding people from the rest of the flats away to safety.
‘I can’t go,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ve got to stay.’
He seemed young, although his face was almost concealed with dust. She noticed one of the silver buttons on his uniform was covered with black cloth, a sign he was in mourning.
‘I know how you feel.’ His voice was husky and gentle. ‘But you’re cold and in shock.’
‘I can’t leave.’ The sympathy in his voice made tears spring to her eyes. ‘If you find her and she’s still alive, she’ll want to see me straight away.’
Charley King had joined the fire brigade when war broke out. Like all firemen, he’d faced death night after night during the Blitz and he’d seen so many terrible sights he thought he had gone beyond being affected by a girl’s tears. But just two weeks ago he’d heard his brother Eddie had been killed in Normandy and so he knew exactly how she felt.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, putting one hand on her shoulder and wishing he had the nerve to give her a comforting hug. ‘When we find your aunt
I can say you’re waiting.’
‘It’s Ellie,’ she sniffed. ‘Ellie Forester. My aunt’s called Marleen.’
Charley patted her shoulder. ‘I’ll see if I can get a blanket for you.’
The first rays of dawn light did nothing to cheer Ellie. She sat hunched up on the steps of the flats opposite Gray’s Mansions, wrapped in the blanket, watching and praying for a miracle.
There had been so many people milling around all night, some just to watch, others to help, but now at dawn people were coming down the road to go to work. Groups of nurses with their capes over their uniforms, stopping for a moment to offer help, cleaning ladies off to do their stint at offices in Chancery Lane and Holborn, bus drivers, porters and all those other people who scurried about their business when Ellie was usually fast asleep. She was exhausted now, dropping off for odd moments, then jerking up at each sudden noise or voice.
‘Poor kid.’ Fred Barratt prised up a heavy lump of masonry with a lever, looking over to where Ellie sat on a step, hunched in the blanket. ‘I don’t reckon she’s got another person in the whole world.’
‘I tried to get her to go to the rest centre,’ Charley King replied, slipping a rope round a metal beam and signalling for the others to start hauling. ‘She won’t go.’
The two firemen had been on duty since six the previous morning and in twenty-four hours they’d attended at three other jobs. Exhaustion was their biggest enemy now; working in poor light, one wrong move could bring down rubble and kill not only buried survivors, but rescue workers too. Each brick and timber had to be taken out carefully; it was too dangerous to use heavy lifting equipment. Although they knew replacement men were on their way to relieve them, as always when people were unaccounted for, they were loath to leave.
‘Did you hear something?’ Fred suddenly dropped to his knees, putting his head down into the hole they’d just excavated.
Charley joined him, straining his ears above the sound of traffic. ‘Tapping!’ he exclaimed, grinning at Fred. ‘There’s someone down there!’