All Fall Down by Jenny Oldfield

miserable, standing in the cold corridor. ‘Well then, I should think about doing just that, if I was you.’ She sighed as he went upstairs. Stubborn, wrong-headed, so sharp he cut himself. Her son.
    â€˜Ernie, cop hold of this, there’s a good chap.’
    Walter Davidson and George Mann had decided to line part of the cellar at the Duke with a reinforced fabric called Zylex. Amy had got hold of the roll for fifteen bob, and reckoned it was waterproof and untearable. She agreed with Annie, Hettie and Sadie that the barrel-vaulted cellar of the pub was as safe as any shelter in Nelson Gardens, should the worst eventually happen. There was a general feeling growing against the public shelters and, despite the lack of gardens in the terraces and tenements of South-wark, many families had begun to make their own arrangements.
    Ernie held the sheeting in position at one end while Walter hammered it into place.
    Annie had come down to supervise proceedings, and now took it upon herself to explain to her stepson the new plan. ‘Nice and snug, eh, Ern?’
    He looked up and nodded. With only the foggiest notion of the reality of war, which existed for him merely as a wail of sirens and the fear of bombs dropping from the sky, but without any grasp of the devastation they would cause, he still did as he was told.
    â€˜This is going to be our shelter now, Ernie. It’s handier than the Gardens, see? We won’t have to run there with all our belongings. What we do when the siren starts is just dive down here into the cellar.’
    â€˜What about the others?’
    â€˜Rob and Amy and Bobby? They know to head here too. There’s plenty of room.’
    â€˜And Sadie?’
    â€˜Yes. And Walter and Meggie.’
    â€˜And the boys?’
    â€˜No, Bertie and Geoff are safe in the country, remember.’
    Ernie frowned and nodded. ‘Not the boys.’
    â€˜You got it. When the siren goes, you head straight here. Don’t worry about no one else.’ Not for the first time, Annie wondered if it might have been kinder to evacuate Ernie along with Sadie’s boys. In a way, he hardly understood any more than seven-year-old Geoff. She pictured what the long wait, the stale boredom of the phoney war must be doing to him. Sometimes she thought she saw a haunted look, as if Ernie was playing and replaying some horrid scene inside his head. She resolved to keep an extra special eye on him, knowing that was what Duke would have done.
    For instance, when Ernie asked to be allowed to go out with Sadie and Meggie in their so-far fruitless search for Richie Palmer, Annie had put her foot down. ‘No, Ern, you stay and help look after things here. What would I do without you, now that George has to go out on patrol?’
    That made him happy, thinking he couldn’t be spared at the pub. He would queue with the ration book, to save Annie or Hettie the trouble. He would wash glasses and clean floors. He knew where he was at the Duke.
    â€˜Righto, Ern? You dive down the cellar from now on, no messing.’ They were making a good job of damp-proofing the arch where they stored the barrels of bitter and mild on the long wooden gantries. Now if the water mains burst up above, or if they had to stay down for any length of time, they would be dry and safe.
    Ernie stood up straight and stepped back to look at their handiwork.
    â€˜Here, take this and hammer down the bit above the door.’ Walter handed him the tool. ‘Nice and straight now, Ern, that’s perfect.’ He winked at Annie. ‘What do you think?’
    â€˜I think poor little Hitler don’t know what he’s up against.’ She winked back. ‘Fancy him thinking that dropping a couple of bombs on our heads will be the end of us!’
    It wasn’t long before Meggie and Sadie decided it was safer to go out looking for the tramp from Tottenham Court Road during daylight hours. This became easier as