All Fall Down (27 page)

Chapter Sixteen

‘Tommy!' Edie intercepted him on the stairs to her office. All week he'd turned his back on her. Bill had come and gone without her breaking the news about Tommy, and she'd been unable to find him to talk things through since. He hadn't been near the flat since Monday night and hardly came into work, at least when she was there. He looked grey and unkempt, unlike himself. ‘You and me gotta talk.'

‘What's to talk about?' He shut his ears, closed his mind.

She held her place on the stairs, refusing to let him pass. Behind her, she knew that Lorna or one of the other shop girls might pick up what was said. ‘Tommy, please.'

He gave in at last and retreated into the office. Edie followed him and closed the door. ‘Why won't you look at me? Just look at me for a second, Tommy.' It drove her mad that he could treat her as if she was invisible, as if nothing had ever happened between them.

He went to the desk and slammed a ledger shut. The muscles in his jaw were clenched so tight that a nerve jumped and nicked.

‘I can't bear it!'

‘
You
can't?' He paced round the desk. ‘That's rich.' All week he'd gone around feeling as if someone was stamping on his chest, pressing him to death. He couldn't eat; instead he drank himself part way to oblivion. Knowing that he wasn't fit company, he'd taken himself out of the way and holed up in a market pal's place behind the cathedral; a cold and draughty warehouse overlooking the docks.

‘You've got to try and understand.' The sight of him, so worn
and careless, made her break down. However bad she felt, Edie still made an effort to look as if she was coping. Each morning she did her hair and make-up, presented a decent front.

‘Try me.' He stopped pacing and met her face to face. ‘Try telling me why I'm sitting wasting my time in the Duke waiting for you to come clean with him, hanging around like a bleeding idiot, as it turns out. And all along you two are having a cosy little time, and I'm the last thing on your mind, I bet!'

‘That ain't true. It wasn't like that.'

‘I'm a fool, I am, letting myself get dragged in. Don't worry, I blame myself. I should've been able to see it coming a mile off.' As the days had passed, Tommy's bitterness had increased. He was back to condemning the frailty of women and his own gullibility.

‘What?' She stood helpless only dimly understanding the implications of what he said.

‘It happens all the time.' He was suddenly calm, shrugging it off. ‘So what?'

‘What are you on about? You think I did this on purpose?' She felt bad enough about her failure of nerve. Now the idea that she had coldly used Tommy and cast him aside struck home. ‘Is that what you think?'

‘What am I supposed to think?' He said he'd seen them together at Nelson Gardens, he'd put two and two together; her change of clothes, Morell's swaggering air. He didn't tell her that jealousy had ripped him apart worse than any gun or bomb. Edie, the woman he worshipped, had been with another man.

His eyes drilled into her. She saw what he thought of her. What could she do? Tell him what had actually happened, give a blow-by-blow account? The truth was, Bill had forced himself on her and she had given in. She hadn't resisted and so in her own mind she was guilty too. She gave a groan and hung her head.

‘Go on, tell me I got it all wrong.' He raised his voice, brought his hand down flat on the desk. ‘I'm listening!'

‘You make it sound easy, Tommy.' One last effort to hold herself together. The room swam in front of her eyes. Tommy glared at her. ‘It ain't that simple.'

‘No? It looks it to me. “Bill, I've got someone else; ta-ta!” That's how it goes, see? You open your mouth and the words come out.' He'd given up his own marriage; you got it over and done with.

‘He took me off-guard. I didn't have time to work up to it.'

‘What do you want, a bleeding rehearsal?'

‘I had to work out what I was going to say.' This was insane; trying to justify what she couldn't forgive herself for. She leaned on the desk opposite him.

He tilted his head back and frowned. ‘Yes, righto. Next time, then? Or the time after that?' What sort of fool did she think he was?

There was a knock at the door. A figure stood beyond the frosted glass panel, peering in. ‘It's me, Lorna. Do you want me to cash up for you? It's half five.' In reality, she had come down to spy on them.

It ruled a line under things. ‘Fine, you go ahead,' he called.

‘Tommy.' Edie could only repeat his name softly one last time, as Lorna retreated upstairs.

He picked up the phone. ‘Listen, Edie, it never happened between us, right? Nothing. One big round nought.'

She shook her head.

‘That's it, finish. From now on we're going to act as if nothing went on, OK?'

‘No.' There was no fight left in her, but it would be impossible to go on treating him like an ordinary boss, if that was what he meant. ‘I'll have my cards. You can find someone else.'

He shrugged and dialled a number. ‘Please yourself.' He didn't enjoy being cruel. It might sound like it, but he didn't. It was the only way he could get through this.

‘You left some of your things in my flat.' She reminded him about his shirts, his bathroom gear.

‘Chuck 'em.'

She nodded and reached for her coat. ‘You'll balance the books then?'

‘I'll show Lorna. She'll soon learn.'

They dealt with mundanities as their world fell apart.

That night Edie sat alone in the flat. She took notepaper and a pen from the bureau drawer and wrote a letter to Bill. In it she told him that she had no love left for him and she didn't want them to stay married. She said that she was sorry to hurt him, that she should have told him sooner. She wished him well and hoped that he would eventually understand.

It was a cold, windy night, the dead heart of January. The politicians calked on the wireless of blood and sweat, of toil and tears. A new term had entered the language after Hitler's blitz of the Midlands. Now you were ‘Coventrated' if you came up from the shelters to find your home in ruins. There was no let up in the bombing or its aftermath; a pall of dark smoke hung over shattered townscapes as workers picked their way through debris to ammunition factories and looters sifted wreckage for whatever they could sell.

Only Churchill and eye-witness proof of minor victories kept them muddling through; a Stuka shot out of the sky by a Spitfire, its plume of white smoke spiralling down. Or plucky survivors pulled out of wreckage days after a direct hit with nothing more than a scratch.

Geoff and Bertie stood with Ernie on Duke Street as Walter took part in one such rescue; a driver trapped in his train, hit that afternoon as it shunted coal across the viaduct at the top of their street. The locomotive had tipped on its side, taking the cargo with it. Bystanders said that it had rained coal onto the street below, an avalanche of precious fuel. The ARPs quickly brought cutting gear to the train driver's cab. Now sparks flew in a brilliant orange fan to the whir and whine of the blade as it sliced into the metal. The boys stood mesmerized in the road below.

Just as they pulled the driver free, an engine droned through the dark sky. It was a rogue plane that had escaped the radar and soared unseen into the heart of the city. Before anyone could shout, before the air raid siren could begin, the pilot jettisoned his deadly cargo. A searchlight pierced the sky, too late except to pick out the bomb whistling overhead. People stood transfixed, caught in
the open. A thud, a flaring light as the first fire-bomb landed in a street to the south.

Ernie grabbed Geoff and Bertie. Up on the viaduct, Walter leaned over to yell instructions. ‘Get them to shelter, Ernie. Quick as you can!'

‘Pa!' Geoff saw him and wrenched free. He darted into the mêlée of onlookers. Bertie shouted, but they lost sight of him. He turned helplessly to Ernie.

They heard another thud. This time the glare was nearer still, the sound of splintering glass louder. Yet another. People scattered in all directions.

Walter had vanished from the top of the viaduct. Ernie kept hold of Bertie and turned this way and that. He couldn't head for shelter until he found Geoff. A bomb landed in Duke Street and the force of the blast threw him to the ground.

When the bomb went off, Tommy was sitting alone in his basement office. He heard a deafening explosion, felt a tremor shake the foundations. Ledgers and catalogues tumbled from shelves, the glass door shattered as the frame cracked and split. Using his arms to shield his head, he rolled sideways under the desk, and was plunged into darkness. The noise deafened him; the grating roar of falling masonry, the long rumble as it hit the ground. Everything above ground level caved in, sending a landslide of rubble grinding down the cellar stairs.

He knew he was trapped. Though unable to see much, he could make out that the roof of the basement had held up. The fall of rubble deadened sounds from above. Trickles of plaster dust sifted through wide cracks in the ceiling. At last the quaking roar died. Whatever had been taking place up there was complete.

Tommy eased himself out from under the desk and dusted himself down. In the gloom he saw that the door had caved in and the stairway was a solid wall of fallen rubble. He went over and felt it, his eyes slowly growing used to the dark. Tommy swore and went for the telephone. As expected, the line was dead. He took stock; before the bomb exploded he'd locked up and sent the staff
home. No one to worry about there. What about the flat? As luck would have it, today was the day Dorothy had gone to fetch Charlie out of hospital. He doubted now that she would have much of a place to bring him home to. Again he tried the phone, refusing to accept that his one line of communication had been cut. But the wire must be down, the electricity gone. How would anyone know he was down here? There could be a fire up there with dozens of victims lying injured. He listened hard for ambulances and fire engines, but his office was eerily quiet. Bricks and stones separated him from the outside world; it was impossible even to guess what hell had been created up there.

Anything was better than sitting in the dark, however. He tore off his jacket and set to, dismantling the landslide of rubble in the stairwell one brick at a time. He reckoned he could soon tunnel out. But as he dislodged a section of bricks using a metal shelf bracket as a makeshift crowbar, the weight of the rubble shifted and the gap caved in. He'd worked up a sweat and scraped his hands red raw for nothing. He tried again, this time more gingerly, using his head and trying to work out what could be moved without displacing a ton of new stuff. How much was up there, he wondered?

As he worked, other grim possibilities framed themselves. For instance, was there enough air down here to see him through? He left off levering at the bricks and groped across the room, glad to find that an air vent leading from street level to a grate behind the safe seemed unobstructed. He pulled the safe clear of the wall to let the air circulate freely.

How long might it be before the rescue teams realized that he was trapped down here? Tommy had done himself no favours that week by snubbing his pals at the Duke and cutting dead all questions about where he was living. And since no one knew where to look, how would they know he was missing? He gave a grim smile as he went back to work and shifted another loose brick; one too many. His excavation grated, shifted and collapsed. Back to square one. He felt for a cigarette in his waistcoat pocket, then searched for a match. Out of luck there too. He shook the empty box and threw it down.

Walter yelled to his mates that he was heading down to street level. He vaulted the viaduct wall and scrambled down the bank, ignoring shrapnel that still showered through the air, ignoring the cries of the wounded. He couldn't leave Ernie to cope with the boys. He had to find them himself and help them to safety.

Out of the corner of one eye he saw the entire front of Tommy's shop lean outwards, sway, then swing forwards and collapse onto the street, burying several of those who fled for shelter. A hot wind gusted against him, flames lit the terrified faces of those who had escaped.

‘Move!' he yelled. ‘Save yourselves. You can't do anything here!'

He jumped from the bank and ran for the railway arches where he had last seen Ernie with the boys. He prayed that they'd dived for shelter; the arches were the safest place to wait while the splinters of glass, wood and metal landed. Let them be there when the clouds of dust settled, safe under an arch.

All was dark. He called into the shadows: ‘Bertie, Geoff!' Women huddled and sobbed. They clutched their own children, waiting to be told what to do.

‘Make for the shelter!' He hauled them out of the recesses, told them to run. The plane had stopped flying overhead, but there was fire. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction; they must get out of here quick. ‘Jimmie, have you seen the boys? Or Ernie?' He caught hold of one familiar fleeing figure and demanded an answer.

‘I seen Ernie. He's over there!' Jimmie struggled free. ‘He ain't got the kids with him though.' Then he was running, down Meredith Court, scrambling along the railway embankment on a short cut to Nelson Gardens.

Walter went cold. Ernie had lost the boys. He was meant to hang on to them at all costs; even he knew that. Now anything could happen to them. There was all this shrapnel flying through the air, clouds of choking smoke. He saw Ernie loom out of the shadow of one of the vast arches and ran and grabbed him by both arms. ‘Where are they, Ern? Have you seen them?'

Ernie couldn't take it in. One moment they'd been standing
watching the sparks fly as the men cut through metal to rescue the train driver. Next thing they were thrown to the ground. He knew he had to get hold of Bertie and Geoff again, but there were people lying groaning. Some were bleeding. This was bad, very bad. He must go on looking for Bertie and Geoff. He came blundering out of the archway into Walter's path.