Darkest Before Dawn (34 page)

Martha could have screamed. As she had expected, the lull had arrived, though already she could hear the next wave of bombers approaching. She shot into the kitchen, grabbed the small bottle and tipped two aspirin into the palm of her hand, then ran back and put them on the bedside table. ‘There you are,' she said briskly. ‘Good night, Mrs Wilmslow; see you in the morning.'

Mrs Wilmslow sniffed, but picked up the tablets and popped them into her mouth, then took a swig of tea. ‘If I'm spared,' she said bitterly. ‘Likely I'll be dead as a doornail. It ain't right to leave a sick woman . . .'

But Martha heard no more; she was across the kitchen and out of the back door and running down the street, heading for the shelter.

It was a long night, and several times the blasts were so close and the noise so tremendous that Martha, clutching Evie tightly in her arms, could not begin to imagine what sort of carnage was being wrought in the streets above their heads. Usually, the people in the shelter kept their spirits up by singing carols, playing guessing games, or something of that nature, but the tremendous noise made such diversions impossible. Several times during the course of the night Martha went to the end of the shelter, pushed aside the curtain and went up the steps to take a look around. But she always descended again before she had caught anything but a glimpse of the fires raging in the docks, for there was no point in lingering when the danger was so great.

When the all clear went, there had been comparative quiet for some time. Martha and Evie wearily gathered up their belongings and made for the steps with everyone else. The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, but a quick glance around showed that the fires still burned in the docks, and the familiar outlines of warehouses were familiar no longer, for in the place of a good many of them were jagged gaps, black against the flames.

As they turned their footsteps towards home, Mr Wilmslow came up, pushing his tin hat to the back of his head. He was blackened by smoke, his eyes red-rimmed, and he looked exhausted, but he spoke cheerfully enough. ‘What a night, eh, Mrs Todd? I thought I were a goner over and over, but it seems the bomb with my name on it didn't fall last night. I passed the shop as I were comin' along; the right-hand window's been blowed out, so I'll come in wi' you now and nail cardboard over it, just till I can get hold of a bit of wood to do the job properly.' He gestured towards the warehouses. ‘All that food gone up in flames, Mrs Todd! And the ships what were sunk, you wouldn't believe. Oh aye, the docks took a right pasting, so they did.'

‘I never thought . . . do you mean to say the government are still storing food in warehouses close to the docks?' Martha demanded. ‘What arrant stupidity! Why, they've known for months that Hitler meant to send his bombers to Liverpool, so why store the food in such a danger spot? I'm telling you, Mr Wilmslow, they ought to have a woman in charge at the Ministry of Food.'

‘Aye, I dare say you're right. I reckon them oranges'll be marmalade by now,' Mr Wilmslow said wistfully.

Martha knew he was fond of an orange and, as he took her heavy bag from her, patted his arm consolingly. ‘Well, since you've had such a dreadful night, I'll let you into a secret. Young Evie here queued for nearly two hours yesterday, but she managed to get two grand big oranges and we mean to give them to you as a Christmas box. So you see, all the oranges didn't get burned up.'

They reached the shop as she spoke, and Mr Wilmslow took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and ushered them inside, locking it firmly behind them. ‘I don't want no early customers poppin' in before I've had me breakfast,' he said gruffly. He glanced hopefully at Martha. ‘I s'pose you wouldn't be willing to feed all of us, down here, while I get meself cleaned up and out of me uniform? Then I can start blocking the window up.'

Martha agreed that she would do so and the three of them went into the back room. Mrs Wilmslow was not in her bed, so Martha assumed she had somehow managed to get herself to the WC, but Mr Wilmslow stopped dead in the doorway. ‘What's goin' on?' he asked, his voice higher than usual. ‘Where's Mrs Wilmslow? My God, where's the bleedin' wheelchair?'

All three of them stared, unable to believe their eyes, and Martha saw that it was not only the wheelchair that was missing, but also the older woman's dressing gown and slippers, and the big Gladstone bag which she always kept by the side of her bed. Another glance showed her that the packet of sandwiches, and the flask of tea, were no longer on the bedside table.

For a moment, she thought wildly of the Morrison shelter, but when she looked it was empty, and besides, Mrs Wilmslow would not have needed the wheelchair in order to reach the dining table. And even as this thought occurred to her, she glanced across at the back door and saw that it was not properly closed. Dumbly, she jerked Mr Wilmslow's arm and pointed. ‘She's gone out through the back door,' she whispered. ‘Do you think someone came for her? Only I can't imagine who would do so.'

Evie ran over to the back door and pulled it open and Martha, following her, saw that the yard was empty. Mr Wilmslow gave a deep, martyred sigh. ‘God alone knows where she's bobbied off to,' he said resignedly. ‘But she can't have gone far because she wouldn't have left until the all clear sounded. Look, Mrs Todd, if you get on with making the breakfast, young Evie and meself can search around, question folk. Right?'

‘All right,' Martha said wearily. ‘As you say, she can't have gone far.'

Evie trotted along beside Mr Wilmslow, scanning the streets. Despite the earliness of the hour, there were quite a few people about; most, she imagined, having emerged from the shelters. The air was dusty and smelled of burning, though it was very cold. Evie thought wistfully of the warm kitchen, the porridge that her mother would be making, and the nice hot cup of tea which would accompany it. Mr Wilmslow stared ahead. She could read the worry in his face, but thought there was little reason for it. After all, Mrs Wilmslow was grown up and sensible and could not be far away.

As they progressed along the road, Mr Wilmslow began to mutter. ‘She might have gone along to see Mrs Bunwell . . . only I wouldn't have thought she could have got that far. But we'd better – Oh my God, what's that?'

They were passing a narrow alley, and as he spoke Evie saw the wheelchair; it was lying on its side, and the Gladstone bag in which Mrs Wilmslow kept all her most precious possessions lay beside it, gaping open. The man and the girl ran forward together. Mr Wilmslow righted the wheelchair and looked round wildly, but it was Evie who saw the small, crumpled figure lying twenty yards further up the alley, close up against a sooty brick wall.

It was Mrs Wilmslow, and she was dead.

They pieced together what must have happened later in the week, when the formalities of funeral arrangements and so on had been dealt with. The obvious explanation, that she had left the house after the all clear had sounded, could not have been the case, since Mr Wilmslow had passed the shop on his way to the shelter and had seen no sign of his wife or the wheelchair. In order to get so far, she must have left the house during a lull in the raid, and the doctor who examined her body said she had almost certainly died as a result of a blast.

Martha felt terribly guilty and knew that Mr Wilmslow felt the same but, as she told him, there was little that either of them could have done. ‘In wartime, everyone has to do their duty; mine was to my daughter and yours was the work of an ARP warden,' she told him. ‘You tried to persuade her to come down to the shelter, and I stayed with her as long as I could; it's useless reproaching yourself, Mr Wilmslow, because it's happened, and we can't undo it.'

‘I know, but if I'd been with her it wouldn't have happened . . . couldn't have happened,' Mr Wilmslow said heavily. ‘She must have been terrified . . . think how she hated the wheelchair, was determined never to be seen using it. Yet she got into it herself, dragged the bag on to her lap, and somehow managed to wheel herself all the way to where we found her. I suppose terror must have lent her strength, but oh, if I'd stayed . . .'

Martha told herself that briskness was her only course. She too wished now that she had stayed with the older woman. But if she had done so, it might easily have been Evie lying in the hospital mortuary, and Evie had her life before her.

But it made up Martha's mind that she should get her child out of the city. Evie had refused to be evacuated when the war had started, and Martha had agreed that the child might stay in Liverpool. But somehow Mrs Wilmslow's death had brought home to Martha as nothing else could the dangers which lay in wait for all of them. The second night of bombing had been even worse than the first, and Christmas had been a subdued and miserable time for them all. Evie wanted to stay but Martha decided she would simply have to put her foot down. Evie must be evacuated, for if anything happened to her, Martha knew she would never forgive herself.

Martha was sitting before the fire, knitting a new school jumper for Evie, who was in bed, for it was past ten o'clock. Outside, the wind howled, and occasionally sleet spattered against the window pane. It was almost the end of January 1941, and Evie had been despatched to a small village on the Wirral on the 5th of the month and returned home on the 7th. She was very pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and refused, totally, to return to the village though she had admitted, airily, that her foster mother had been a kind and generous woman.

‘But I won't leave you here all by yourself, with that horrible old man coming up every night, like as not, to get you to work overtime on his wretched books,' she had said roundly. ‘I've written to Seraphina and Angie, and I'm sure they'll both say I've done the right thing. If you'd like to come and stay with me in the country, that would be grand, but I won't leave you alone here, and so I'm telling you.'

‘But Mrs Baldwin's sent the younger children off again, though admittedly not to the same foster parents,' Martha had pointed out. ‘Look, darling, what do you think your pa would have done if he'd been alive? He'd have sent you to safety, that's what, and he would expect me to do the same.'

Evie, however, was adamant, repeating constantly that her place was with her mother, that she did not trust Mr Wilmslow to take care of her, and that if sent away she would simply run home every time. She saved her strongest argument till last. ‘I should always have to run away at night,' she had explained, ‘and get lifts with anyone who would stop for me – lorry drivers, van drivers, soldiers, anyone. You say you'd never forgive yourself if we got bombed . . . well, how would you feel if I was murdered by someone giving me a lift?'

Martha had been forced to laugh but had given in and now, she thought, glancing around the kitchen, she was glad of it. Despite her fears, there was still a school to which Evie could go every day, and though, no doubt, the bombers would not give up so easily, they were having a bad winter, with clouds, sleet and snow making bombing raids difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, she really appreciated Evie's company and the child had been quite right: when Mr Wilmslow was not on ARP duty, he came up to the flat, as of right. Admittedly, he usually carried loads of paperwork, but even so, she knew there would have been talk had not Evie always been present at these sessions. Martha supposed she could have hinted Mr Wilmslow away but thought it would have been a cruel thing to do, for he was missing his wife abominably and talked of her often, though Martha secretly thought that he was seeing her through rose-coloured spectacles. He had told Martha, half shyly and half defiantly, that she should have known Mrs Wilmslow in the days before her crippling illness had struck. ‘She were only in her early forties and a prettier, sprightlier woman you couldn't hope to meet,' he had said reminiscently, a smile tugging at the corners of his narrow mouth. ‘She was into everything in them days: worked in the shop, ran a Brownie group, organised the ladies' sewing circle. She were full of fun, were my little Ruby, and a great one for helping others.'

Martha had murmured encouragingly, but found it difficult to believe that the spiteful, crabby sixty-year-old she had known had ever been the ‘little Ruby' whom her husband remembered so fondly. But it clearly helped Mr Wilmslow to regard his dead wife as a saint and Martha was glad that he should do so. After all, she knew that Harry had been the best husband in the world and she found it a great comfort.

A coal shifted in the grate, bringing Martha abruptly back to the present. She glanced at the clock and decided that she might as well damp the fire down and go to bed herself. Then she remembered that she had meant to write letters this evening and felt a stab of guilt. The girls loved to get her letters so she tried to write once a week, but it had been ten days since she had last had an evening to herself. However, it would not matter if the letters were almost identical – indeed, they would have to be, if she were to finish both before her eyes closed of their own accord – particularly since Seraphina was in Norfolk and Angela in Devon, so they never met.

Martha got out her pad of notepaper, her pen and a bottle of ink, and began to write.
Dear Seraphina
, she began, and even as she did so her daughter's lovely fair face appeared in her mind's eye, so that the letter became almost like a chat between the two of them. Martha wrote on.

Seraphina was hurrying past the bulletin board when ACW Betts hailed her. ‘Hey, Fee, there's a couple of letters for you; want them?'

Seraphina turned back at once, a smile spreading across her face. Everyone wanted letters because it was your one contact with the outside world, or at least the world of home. ‘Thanks, Betty,' she said, taking the proffered envelopes and seeing at once that the first was from Toby and the second was from her mother; nothing from Roger, but then they telephoned one another two or three times a week. They had had only one brief meeting since she had joined the WAAF, when she had gone into Norwich in the gharry and Roger had begged a lift from a friend, and they had spent a delightful weekend exploring the ancient city.