Free Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir by Penelope Lively

Beneath the bombs, an entire street could go down like ninepins. My own house must have shuddered under the blast of that bomb a few doors away; the bricks remember. A few hundred yards away a land mine fell on the corner of Ritchie Street, obliterating a large site, now rebuilt. The whole borough is pockmarked like this, the post war new builds inserted into the Victorian infrastructure, replacing the rubble and the willow-herb. Islington knew the V2s; a pub on the corner of Mackenzie Road and Holloway Road was flattened on Boxing Day 1944, along with twenty houses and shop premises: seventy-one dead and fifty-six seriously injured. Another Islington rocket on January 13, 1945, killed twenty-nine and seriously injured thirty-six.
    So the blitz has a legacy; it is still here, its manipulation of the city is visible, as though a giant hand swept through the place, knocking this down, plucking that out. And then other hands rebuilt, steadily, doggedly, just as they always have done, century by century, the place reinventing itself, expanding, responding to new requirements, new populations. And the real blitz, the actual thing, the
Sturm und Drang
, has slipped off into history, into the books, into the documentaries and the fictional reconstructions. It has spun its own legends of chirpy Cockney courage, of the King and Queen picking their way through the ruins of the East End, of heroism and stoicism. And the darker stories of those who seized the day: the black-marketeers, the looters who kept people camping out in their bomb-damaged homes in case they lost everything, the opportunists who snatched rings and watches from the bodies of those killed in the Piccadilly Café de Paris bombing.
    My aunt Rachel, on the front line as it were, recorded her own vision in letters to her mother – brisk, factual letters that reflect her own vigor and energy (she was thirty-two at the time). She was giving an account of what she saw and did, of the behavior of those with whom she was dealing (September 1940): “It was exciting starting out this morning to view the damage. The first I saw was the Science Museum, all the large towers still standing, but the centre all gone. Up in Central London there was a big fire in Holborn, and various small craters to see, and then a big crater bang in the middle of the roadway between the Bank, Royal Exchange and a public shelter. It couldn’t have missed more important targets if it had tried! . . . The people . . . really are wonderful. Lots were wandering, homeless, towards the City this morning, with suitcases, all they had saved, but they seemed quite resigned and unmoved . . . None of the homeless people I had in were grumbling; they were all determined we must stick it out . . . There seems to be only one billeting officer for refugees, so, naturally, he can never be got hold of by anyone; no canteens seem to function and of course all the gas, etc., is off, so people can’t get hot food. They are still sticking it wonderfully well . . . I can have up to £30 to use for travelling expenses of intending evacuees who have an address to go to and don’t come under any scheme. So I have got one or two off today in this way. Generally when they ask to be evacuated I ask, ‘Has your house been demolished yet?’ and if it hasn’t I have to tell them to wait until it has, as then we can do something. So later they come in with broad grins to announce that now it has been blown up and they can get away . . . There was an exciting air battle today – a big lot of Germans ran into a barrage of AA fire, one could see them scatter and rock in it, all very high up. Then they met our fighters, but came right over us so we had to stop watching. The sky seemed full of them for a few minutes. They came in the evening to drop incendiaries to start fires to guide them later . . . there is no evacuation scheme for old people, the blind, cripples, etc., who are too infirm to get to the