Glass

Friday 30th November 1936

Anerley Road

Penge

South London

My dear Kitty,

Earlier this evening, I wrote another letter to you as it happens and was off to post it up the hill just after dinner about seven thirty. Mrs Figg does her best even if her suet pudding is not a patch on yours but I was feeling a bit down-in-the-mouth after all that's happened between us. I know that it's all down to me and my black moods. It's now been six weeks since you said you'd had enough and took little Arthur back to Maidstone and to be truthful I was at a loss as to what to say to put things right.

Anyhow, I flung on my jacket and went out with my letter, thinking how bitter it was with the wind blowing from the North-East. The thing about the Palace is that it always begs to be looked at, on the top of the hill as it is. I can’t help but pause when I see the towers rising out of the trees. A hundred feet taller than Nelson’s Column, they say. Just the idea that it was once so magnificent and elegant, built of glass and iron gives me a thrill. It was a sorry sight to see it fallen into neglect, but working there at night when it’s empty, scarcely a person about, makes you realise what spectres really live in the shape of a structure like the Crystal Palace.

I must just thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t my shift on at the Palace and even Bowls in the basement was cancelled due to Jimmy Fairbrother’s engagement knees-up at the Cat and Whistle.

I had reached the Anerley Hill postbox when a redness caught my eye. It was then that I saw the flames leaping into the sky. The Crystal Palace was burning and I realised that people were appearing from everywhere, all making for the Parade. I ran with the others, and by the time I reached it, it seemed that the whole sky was alight and police were pushing back the throngs. I tried my best to take hold of myself to help the others let out the birds, knowing the place as I do but to my shame I suddenly found myself sweating and shaking like a leaf and couldn't put one foot in front of the other.

It was like a hellfire, Kitty, I have never seen a sight like it! It roared in the wind like a living thing, tongues of flame higher than you could imagine, two hundred feet or more! The great glass and iron arches of the pavilion looked like shimmering wheels, showering sparks and dripping huge tears of molten glass. Coils of fireman’s hose twisted like enormous pulsing snakes on the ground everywhere you looked, and ladders stretched up skywards with a dot of a fireman at the top with his spray making no difference at all to the inferno. And still people came to watch, rivers of them, jostling and pushing, squashed shoulder to shoulder on the railway line below, and our faces shone and stung from the searing heat and you could feel the smoke scraping your lungs.

And then there were the birds, Kitty. Set free from the aviaries they rose in flocks from the blaze, thousands of them, rising from hell towards the cool of heaven. It was hard to see how many of them made it, but I saw many fall back into the smoke. And then as we watched, the iron skeleton of the pavilion bent, twisting and turning, falling like a dying animal, screaming and crashing to the ground.

Anyhow, I am dashing this off to you now because if you heard the News on the wireless tonight you may be concerned for my welfare. Just say the word Kitty and I'll come to you as soon as I can? I just hope the trams and trolley-buses will be going off in good time in spite of what’s happened.

Henry

*****

Saturday 1st December, 1936

Maidstone,

Kent

Dear Henry,

I was relieved to get your letter this morning, of course I am concerned. I've been sick with worry since last night and didn't sleep a wink. I was sewing a blouse for Mrs P. She pays up to a shilling but she's that impatient she wants everything finished the day before yesterday. As if any of that matters now?

Anyhow, I was just finishing up the buttonholes when I heard Arthur stir and found him perched on the windowsill gripping the latch, staring out into the dark, paying no attention at all to the bitter draught coming under the sash. The black sky above the fields to the north was tinged with red and far far away it flickered and flared with what looked like shooting stars. I rushed to the wireless then and heard about the fire on the BBC and wished we had a telephone. Though reflecting on it, maybe it's best we haven't as I would have been in turmoil if there'd been no answer.

Reading your letter again I find it hard to reconcile the Henry on these few pages with the silent shut-away stranger that Arthur and I have been living with. And I welcome it, I do. Your mother - may her soul rest in heaven - once said to me, if Henry could only share half the nightmares that he brought back from France all those years ago then he might be free of them instead of letting them fester like rats. And if you can only share them by writing a letter, then write as much as you want.

Kitty

*****

Saturday 1st December, 1936

Anerley Road

Penge

South London

My dearest Kitty,

It is now two in the morning and I can taste the sour smoke in my throat even now. It took an age to fight my way back to Anerley Road. There are people everywhere, like after the King’s Coronation, all the roads clogged with buses and taxis. When I got back to Number 34, I found Mrs Figg hysterical, thinking her house was going to burn down too. I managed to calm her with smelling salts and a nip of that brandy she keeps for her Christmas pudding.

I confess I was overcome with a sort of hysteria when I wrote before. I'm not proud of it, but witnessing that inferno so close seemed to let loose something in me that I've tried my best to extinguish. But now, thinking of the fire and how it could so easily have been a different story, it made me realise what I have with you and Arthur in Maidstone is too precious not to make a go of it. What I'm trying to say is that I will do what I have to do and if that means having to spill my worst nightmares to some doctor fellow I don't know then I will do it. I spend too much time in my head dwelling on things that don't matter a jot but can't speak the words out loud about things that do. There've been silences sharp as glass between us. I know now that it was foolish to think if I never spoke of the terrible things I see behind my eyelids at night our life would not be tainted by it. Perhaps it’s a lesson to take stock of?

Kitty, you mean the world to me. I know every tap of your foot, every chilblain in winter, every frown-line on your face. I miss watching your quick fingers when you're sewing, the soft crease under your chin where Arthur rests his head. The smell of Pears soap when we pass in a doorway. Hearing you hum in the scullery over the washtub. Your warmth. Your smile. Your laugh. The way you feel when I slide my hands around your waist. All these and a hundred things besides that I should tell you every day.

I know my prospects may look bleak and things will be back to being tight for us for a bit, with jobs being so thin on the ground but you mustn’t fret my Love. If we keep our spirits up I’m sure something will turn up.

Please kiss Arthur for me, and if he asks, tell him the birds escaped all right. I took him to see the Aviaries one Sunday not so long back.

I shall post this now and hope that you will know I am safe and will beg me to come home to you before another day is done?

Your Henry

*****

Monday, 3rd December, 1936

Maidstone,

Kent

Dear Henry,

You are still my first and only Love and Arthur's Papa whatever life throws at us.

Please come to Maidstone and we will make the best of everything we have.

Your loving wife, Kitty