Ellie (26 page)

To her surprise, there was no sign of any damage around her and no sign of any other person, but she could hear fire-bells in the distance, coming closer with every second.

Relief flooded through her. She even smiled at how frightened she’d been. Only this evening she’d overheard someone saying they could swear their heart stopped for a moment under similar circumstances, and now she knew just what they meant.

The clamour of fire-bells filled the air and as she resumed walking home, a fire-engine hurtled towards her, screaming left into Gray’s Inn Road. Ellie ran then, suddenly acutely aware of Marleen. A thick pall of billowing dust blew into her face as she turned the corner, obscuring any view of what was going on further up the street.

‘Don’t let it be our place,’ she whispered as she ran.

Another two fire-engines overtook her, bells clanging, then a truck with helmeted rescue men in the back.

Ellie saw the tree first. It was the one just across the street from their flat, which Marleen jokingly said ought to be cut down so she could spy on her neighbours. It had been stripped of its leaves, suddenly winter-bare. The fire-engines had stopped beside it.

Her blood seemed to turn to ice in her veins, the dust making her choke and her eyes run. Gray’s Mansions had a direct hit.

Ellie stopped short, her mouth falling open in horror. The mansion block looked as if a giant fist had thumped down on its centre, crushing the central eight flats, yet leaving both ends intact. The marble steps and the porch were still standing but a dense fog of dust and mortar was billowing from the building.

She rubbed her eyes, willing it not to be true. But it was. Their flat was gone with the others – just a mountain of smoking rubble, with papers and bits of curtain fluttering above it like so many small birds.

Her senses were assaulted from every direction. Screams from one quarter, shouted orders from firemen already advancing on the rubble, dragging hoses. Small bursts of flame leaped up, turning the scene into an image of a thousand candles lit in a dark shrine. She could smell escaping gas, feel dust settling on her face and hair and taste mortar on her lips.

A woman wearing only a nightdress suddenly appeared from nowhere, screaming at the top of her lungs as she ran mindlessly up and down. Only then did the full impact hit Ellie. Unless Marleen had disobeyed her, she was in that rubble!

Ellie ran to the nearest fireman. ‘My aunt’s in there!’ she screamed at him. ‘Get her out!’

‘We’ll get everyone out,’ he said calmly. ‘Did you live here too?’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking wildly back at the ruined building. ‘On the second floor.’

‘Look. Go back over there.’ The fireman pointed to where a team of rescue workers were getting shovels from the back of a truck. ‘You can help by telling one of the men all you know of the other tenants in the block. Try not to worry about your aunt. She might have gone down to the shelter.’

Ellie watched and waited, willing Marleen to appear, staggering drunkenly up the road. She saw tenants from the part of the block left intact being brought out and shepherded away to safety. Other neighbours came out to watch, coats over their nightclothes, some of the men joining the rescue workers.

She saw two bodies lifted on to stretchers and carried carefully down, but although she ran forward, she was prevented from seeing them by a policeman.

‘It’s the people from the top flat,’ he said gently.

Ellie retreated to the other side of the road, sobbing as she remembered the kindness that old couple had shown her when she first came to London. Next they found Mr Grace from across the landing to the Hardings. He was a widower and as deaf as a post and she heard someone say he was found still in his bed. They found two more bodies from the top floor, but Ellie didn’t recognise their names.

It was so frustratingly slow. She watched as men eased up beams and took brick by brick away, all the time calling and listening. There were no serious fires, but with the overpowering smell of escaping gas the firemen were taking no chances, damping down as they tunnelled their way into the debris.

‘We do find people alive,’ a fireman said as he came over to Ellie with a cup of tea from a mobile canteen. ‘Quite often they’re trapped under tables, even in wardrobes sometimes. Why don’t you let one of the WVS ladies take you to a rest centre?’

He indicated a couple of women who’d been shepherding people from the rest of the flats away to safety.

‘I can’t go,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ve got to stay.’

He seemed young, although his face was almost concealed with dust. She noticed one of the silver buttons on his uniform was covered with black cloth, a sign he was in mourning.

‘I know how you feel.’ His voice was husky and gentle. ‘But you’re cold and in shock.’

‘I can’t leave.’ The sympathy in his voice made tears spring to her eyes. ‘If you find her and she’s still alive, she’ll want to see me straight away.’

Charley King had joined the fire brigade when war broke out. Like all firemen, he’d faced death night after night during the Blitz and he’d seen so many terrible sights he thought he had gone beyond being affected by a girl’s tears. But just two weeks ago he’d heard his brother Eddie had been killed in Normandy and so he knew exactly how she felt.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, putting one hand on her shoulder and wishing he had the nerve to give her a comforting hug. ‘When we find your aunt I can say you’re waiting.’

‘It’s Ellie,’ she sniffed. ‘Ellie Forester. My aunt’s called Marleen.’

Charley patted her shoulder. ‘I’ll see if I can get a blanket for you.’

The first rays of dawn light did nothing to cheer Ellie. She sat hunched up on the steps of the flats opposite Gray’s Mansions, wrapped in the blanket, watching and praying for a miracle.

There had been so many people milling around all night, some just to watch, others to help, but now at dawn people were coming down the road to go to work. Groups of nurses with their capes over their uniforms, stopping for a moment to offer help, cleaning ladies off to do their stint at offices in Chancery Lane and Holborn, bus drivers, porters and all those other people who scurried about their business when Ellie was usually fast asleep. She was exhausted now, dropping off for odd moments, then jerking up at each sudden noise or voice.

‘Poor kid.’ Fred Barratt prised up a heavy lump of masonry with a lever, looking over to where Ellie sat on a step, hunched in the blanket. ‘I don’t reckon she’s got another person in the whole world.’

‘I tried to get her to go to the rest centre,’ Charley King replied, slipping a rope round a metal beam and signalling for the others to start hauling. ‘She won’t go.’

The two firemen had been on duty since six the previous morning and in twenty-four hours they’d attended at three other jobs. Exhaustion was their biggest enemy now; working in poor light, one wrong move could bring down rubble and kill not only buried survivors, but rescue workers too. Each brick and timber had to be taken out carefully; it was too dangerous to use heavy lifting equipment. Although they knew replacement men were on their way to relieve them, as always when people were unaccounted for, they were loath to leave.

‘Did you hear something?’ Fred suddenly dropped to his knees, putting his head down into the hole they’d just excavated.

Charley joined him, straining his ears above the sound of traffic. ‘Tapping!’ he exclaimed, grinning at Fred. ‘There’s someone down there!’

‘We can hear you,’ Fred shouted. ‘We’re trying to reach you. Tap again if you can hear me.’

The two men grinned as an answering tap came back.

‘Is it Marleen?’ Charley yelled.

Again a faint tap.

‘Ellie’s here,’ Charley shouted down. ‘She’s safe and waiting for us to get you out. Hang on.’

The shrill whistle woke Ellie out of her torpor. She saw it was blown by the young fireman who’d given her the blanket and she jumped to her feet. She dodged through the rescue equipment and on to the site.

‘Have you found her?’ she called out, clambering over the rubble.

Charley leaped to his feet. ‘Go back, its not safe,’ he yelled, climbing down towards her.

They met halfway up the pile of rubble.

‘It is your aunt,’ he said. ‘She’s alive, she was tapping.’

Ellie’s eyes flew open, wide with delight.

Charley put one warning hand on her shoulder.

‘Go and wait down there,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ll only get in the way. She might be badly injured and anything could happen while we dig down to her. But I told her you’re here.’

‘Bless you.’ Ellie was so overcome with joy she impulsively kissed his grimy cheek.

Ellie had no choice but to stand back as the entire force of rescue workers and firemen concentrated on getting Marleen out of her tomb. She mentally lifted each stone, brick and piece of timber herself. It began to rain but she didn’t feel it. New firemen arrived to replace the ones that had been working all night, but she was touched to see that ‘her’ fireman refused to leave.

A crane arrived on a truck and a couple of sniffer dogs with their handlers joined more rescue men. Now at last the pace seemed to be speeding up.

Ellie felt faint with a mixture of exhaustion, cold, hunger and anxiety, but still she stood resolutely in the rain until at last she saw one of the firemen signal to a man who was standing by.

Ellie couldn’t wait another moment. She was up on the rubble faster than a scalded cat.

As she reached the edge of the hole the men had cleared she saw Marleen, or rather the legs of her silk pyjamas. Pale green, yet soaked with blood.

Her stomach contracted violently and her legs collapsed beneath her.

Strong arms lifted her and she felt herself being carried back down to the road.

‘Sit here, don’t come back up.’ She opened her eyes to see it was the young man again. His face beneath his helmet was too grimy to read an expression, but his voice was sympathetic. ‘She’s trapped by a beam across her back,’ he said gently. ‘Her head seemed to be protected by a low table. One of the rescue workers is slipping a tube into her mouth to give her some sodium bicarbonate solution to counteract shock. A doctor will be here any minute.’

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Ellie’s croaked out.

Charley didn’t know what to say. He suspected the woman’s back was broken and when he’d shone his torch on her face it had looked like a side of raw beef.

‘I’m no doctor,’ he replied. ‘But I promise you I’ll get her out.’

Chapter Ten

The casualty department of University College Hospital was quiet, considering it was midday and that three V-1s had fallen in the surrounding area in the last twelve hours. Around twenty or so patients waited to be seen, some with emergency dressings over wounds, still caked in dust and grime, staring mindlessly as if unable to comprehend what had happened to them.

Charley King glanced around the waiting area anxiously. He had left Gray’s Mansions soon after they freed the woman Marleen, leaving the replacement watch to finish searching for further bodies. But although he’d gone home to bed he found he couldn’t sleep for thinking about the girl.

It was that remark Fred had made. ‘She don’t look as though she’s got anyone left in the world.’

‘Have you seen a Miss Forester?’ he asked a nurse as she hurried by.

She paused, frowning. ‘A patient?’

‘No. She’s a relative of a woman brought in with back injuries early this morning. A young, tall girl with black hair,’ Charley explained.

‘Oh yes. She’s in the waiting-room.’ The nurse pointed back along a corridor. ‘We’ve asked her to go home several times but she just won’t.

Her somewhat callous report irritated Charley. ‘Perhaps that’s because she hasn’t got one,’ he said tersely, and wheeling round, made for the waiting-room.

All the firemen in Charley’s watch had nicknames, often heartlessly cruel ones relating to some peculiarity like sticking-out ears, or bad teeth. Charley’s was Shirley Temple. This wasn’t meant as a slight to his masculinity, just a leg-pull because he had blond curly hair and an almost pretty face. Practical jokes, affectionate abuse and leg pulling was the way firemen dealt with their dangerous and often traumatic job. Charley was every bit as tough as the next man, and his emotions were rarely tugged in the line of duty, but as he looked through the glass pane on the waiting-room door and saw Ellie asleep in a chair he felt a pang of almost unbearable tenderness.

She looked so young and grubby. Her bare legs, face and dress were daubed with dirt; even her hair was grey with dust. Aside from an old man, also asleep, she was alone, a small handbag and her shabby coat beside her, clearly all she had left in the world.

The door creaked as he opened it and she woke up with a start.

‘I’m sorry to wake you,’ Charley said. ‘I just wondered how things were with your aunt.’

He saw her frown and realised she didn’t recognise him.

‘I’m Charley King, the fireman,’ he said, a blush creeping up his neck. Even through the dirt he could see she was beautiful – huge, dark, sad eyes, a wide soft mouth and such long thick eyelashes. ‘The one who got you the blanket.’

‘The one who stayed behind.’ She attempted a smile, but her eyes were dead. ‘You look different without your uniform.’

All she remembered of this man was his kindness to her, but even in her present dazed and forlorn state she couldn’t help but be cheered a little by his appearance. He had an open, boyish face, with springy blond curly hair and gentle brown eyes. His open-necked shirt was worn and old, but a dazzling white, his grey trousers, equally worn, were well-pressed, but the overall impression was one of strength and robust health.

‘I hope you don’t mind me coming here,’ he said, taking a seat opposite her, looking down at his hands nervously. ‘I just wanted to know how your aunt is and if you’ve got somewhere to stay.’

Ellie was touched by his compassion. She couldn’t fault the care the doctors and nurses had shown Marleen, yet not one of them had shown the slightest interest in herself. This young fireman who’d been working all night had found it in his heart to spare a thought for her.