Read Online The Love-Charm of Bombs by Lara Feigel - Free Book Online
Authors: Lara Feigel
Ads: Link
later recalled that Yorke was as happy during his time as a factory worker as he ever knew him to be.
The fire station was providing Yorke once again with the chance for camaraderie with the working classes. He was nicknamed ‘the Honourable’ by the other volunteers, whom he found tended to be domestic servants and hotel staff as well as burglars who had joined up hoping to loot the bombed houses they were saving. But, secure in his role, he at least liked to convince himself that he felt at home with them. And he enjoyed listening to the other firemen talking and gossiping, taking mental notes for the novel that would become Caught . ‘The behaviour of my AFS unit gets more and more fascinating,’ he had written to Mary Strickland in July. ‘It will make a good book one day.’ He was learning a new, communal language in which getting the flames down became ‘putting the light out’, the other firemen were known as ‘cock’ and children became ‘nippers’.
In Caught Yorke satirises Richard Roe’s sense that he can merge with the firemen around him. Richard is convinced that he has become indistinguishable from the other firemen, at least in appearance.
In his dirt, his tiredness, the way the light hurt his eyes and he could not look, in all these he thought he recognised that he was now a labourer, he thought he had grasped the fact that, from now on, dressed like this, and that was why roadmen called him mate, he was one of the thousand million that toiled and spun.
He announces happily that ‘It brings everyone together, there’s that much to a war.’ But in fact this kind of anonymity is never possible. The narrator makes it clear that Richard merely lets himself ‘drop into what he imagined was their manner of talking’. He goes to great lengths to ingratiate himself with the regular firemen, buying them drinks in the bar, but is never in fact accepted as one of them. Nonetheless, Yorke does portray Richard as content to be caught up in this myth.
According to William Sansom, some integration did inevitably occur among firemen forced to spend such long periods in each other’s company. For Sansom, the effect of the long shifts was to imbue the men with semi-military discipline and to concentrate life more at the station than at home. While waiting for fires the men at most sub-stations went into the local pub together to drink draught ale.
But the night of 26 September came at the end of a busy shift for Westminster firemen. The previous night an HE and an unexploded bomb had fallen at the junction of Denbigh Street and Belgrave Road, and firemen were called in to rescue people trapped in a vault shelter underneath the pavement, where water was dangerously pouring in from a broken mains. They were responsible for attempting to restrict the fire and for pumping water out of the flooded basements. At one stage the firefighters found dead bodies, killed by the bomb, floating in the water. That morning the officer in charge of Westminster stretcher parties had gone to inspect the unexploded bomb at just the moment that it exploded. His head was caught in the blast and he died later that day. Firefighting was turning out to be as dangerous an occupation as Yorke had feared it would be at the start of the war.
After a day of attempting to catch up on sleep at the fire station, Yorke and his crew were now ready for the next batch of incidents. Shortly after 11 p.m. there was a series of explosions between Oxford Street and Mayfair. At 11.21 p.m. the Curzon cinema was hit, with half the stage damaged by fire, heat, smoke and water. But the most notable incident in Westminster on the night of 26 September was the bombing of Old Palace Yard, close to the Houses of Parliament, by an HE at ten minutes after midnight. This was the first time the Parliament had been directly affected by the bombing. The western frontage of the buildings, including the main public entrance, was badly damaged and the tip
The fire station was providing Yorke once again with the chance for camaraderie with the working classes. He was nicknamed ‘the Honourable’ by the other volunteers, whom he found tended to be domestic servants and hotel staff as well as burglars who had joined up hoping to loot the bombed houses they were saving. But, secure in his role, he at least liked to convince himself that he felt at home with them. And he enjoyed listening to the other firemen talking and gossiping, taking mental notes for the novel that would become Caught . ‘The behaviour of my AFS unit gets more and more fascinating,’ he had written to Mary Strickland in July. ‘It will make a good book one day.’ He was learning a new, communal language in which getting the flames down became ‘putting the light out’, the other firemen were known as ‘cock’ and children became ‘nippers’.
In Caught Yorke satirises Richard Roe’s sense that he can merge with the firemen around him. Richard is convinced that he has become indistinguishable from the other firemen, at least in appearance.
In his dirt, his tiredness, the way the light hurt his eyes and he could not look, in all these he thought he recognised that he was now a labourer, he thought he had grasped the fact that, from now on, dressed like this, and that was why roadmen called him mate, he was one of the thousand million that toiled and spun.
He announces happily that ‘It brings everyone together, there’s that much to a war.’ But in fact this kind of anonymity is never possible. The narrator makes it clear that Richard merely lets himself ‘drop into what he imagined was their manner of talking’. He goes to great lengths to ingratiate himself with the regular firemen, buying them drinks in the bar, but is never in fact accepted as one of them. Nonetheless, Yorke does portray Richard as content to be caught up in this myth.
According to William Sansom, some integration did inevitably occur among firemen forced to spend such long periods in each other’s company. For Sansom, the effect of the long shifts was to imbue the men with semi-military discipline and to concentrate life more at the station than at home. While waiting for fires the men at most sub-stations went into the local pub together to drink draught ale.
But the night of 26 September came at the end of a busy shift for Westminster firemen. The previous night an HE and an unexploded bomb had fallen at the junction of Denbigh Street and Belgrave Road, and firemen were called in to rescue people trapped in a vault shelter underneath the pavement, where water was dangerously pouring in from a broken mains. They were responsible for attempting to restrict the fire and for pumping water out of the flooded basements. At one stage the firefighters found dead bodies, killed by the bomb, floating in the water. That morning the officer in charge of Westminster stretcher parties had gone to inspect the unexploded bomb at just the moment that it exploded. His head was caught in the blast and he died later that day. Firefighting was turning out to be as dangerous an occupation as Yorke had feared it would be at the start of the war.
After a day of attempting to catch up on sleep at the fire station, Yorke and his crew were now ready for the next batch of incidents. Shortly after 11 p.m. there was a series of explosions between Oxford Street and Mayfair. At 11.21 p.m. the Curzon cinema was hit, with half the stage damaged by fire, heat, smoke and water. But the most notable incident in Westminster on the night of 26 September was the bombing of Old Palace Yard, close to the Houses of Parliament, by an HE at ten minutes after midnight. This was the first time the Parliament had been directly affected by the bombing. The western frontage of the buildings, including the main public entrance, was badly damaged and the tip
Similar Books
