Orphans of the Storm (29 page)
The dog licked her cheek as if he had understood every word, and presently Debbie slept.
Pete had arrived in Liverpool because of a misunderstanding. He and Sammy had stayed in Devonshire until the end of their furlough, and had then got on a train to go back to Norfolk. When they changed trains, however, Sammy had decided to ring the air force station to say that they were on their way back and had been told that their aircraft was still not fit for flying so they could take a further three days’ leave. Sammy decided he would return to the station anyway, but Pete had heard on the news that morning that Liverpool had had more than a week of intensive bombing raids and so announced that he would go to that city, just to make sure that his mother’s friend was all right. He had her address tucked away in his wallet but, better than that, knew that Jess worked in a big hospital on the Stanley Road. He concluded that it would be easier to find the hospital than a tiny side street, so he would go there first. In her last letter, Nancy had laughed at herself for telling him that Jess’s daughter Debbie was just a child.
Other people’s time passes differently from one’s own
, she had written.
Jess tells me that Debbie has been working in a big factory, assembling the radio sets you chaps use in your kites as you call them, which means, I suppose, that she’s got to be at least fourteen, and possibly more. Yes, come to think of it, she’s fifteen, quite a young lady. So remember what I said to you the last time we met!
Pete, remembering that long-ago conversation, grinned to himself.
Other people’s time passes differently from one’s own
, she had written.
Jess tells me that Debbie has been working in a big factory, assembling the radio sets you chaps use in your kites as you call them, which means, I suppose, that she’s got to be at least fourteen, and possibly more. Yes, come to think of it, she’s fifteen, quite a young lady. So remember what I said to you the last time we met!
Pete, remembering that long-ago conversation, grinned to himself.
‘I know you’re only nineteen and your dad didn’t even think of marriage until he was pushing thirty,’ she had said, ‘but women is rare in the outback even now and I guess you’ll be posted to England sooner or later. English girls are the salt of the earth, son – look at Aunt Anne and myself! – so it would be a grand thing for you if you were to meet a girl over there and want to bring her back.’
Two years ago, the young Pete had laughed and thought his ma was joking, especially as she had laughed too before reaching up to kiss his cheek. ‘And if you don’t fancy an English girl yourself, then put a couple in your pocket for your brothers,’ she had said lightly. ‘Because if none of you marry, where shall I get grandchildren from?’
He had laughed aloud at that idea. ‘Oh, Ma, ain’t you jumping the gun a bit? Jamie’s only sixteen and Jacko’s not fourteen yet. Still, I’ll do my best to provide you with a daughter-in-law.’
The two of them had laughed again at the absurdity of it and changed the subject and he had not given the matter another thought until today, when he might actually meet the Ryans at last.
Pete arrived in Liverpool early on a sunny May morning. His first view of the city had stunned him, for he had never before seen the results of a week of heavy bombing and was appalled by the scene before him. Everywhere, there was chaos and destruction. Buildings still smouldered, black smoke hung like a pall over what he assumed to be the dock area, and there was rubble and brick dust everywhere. Stepping down from the large lorry whose driver had given him a lift for the last twenty-five miles, he thanked the man and wondered how on earth he was going to get anywhere or find anyone. People were doing their best – men were shifting rubble from the roadway as fast as they could – but it reminded Pete of an old poem he had read somewhere:
‘If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said, / ‘That they could get it clear?’ / ‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter, / And shed a bitter tear
.
‘If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said, / ‘That they could get it clear?’ / ‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter, / And shed a bitter tear
.
Grinning wryly to himself, Pete approached the nearest workman and asked for directions to the Stanley Hospital. One of the men pushed his dusty cap to the back of his head and scratched the tuft of hair which stuck out over his forehead. ‘Once I’d ha’ telled you to jump aboard a number twenty-four tram, or I suppose you could ha’ got a taxi, but now . . . I dunno. Wharrabout walking? It ain’t that far, mebbe a couple o’ miles, and a feller on foot can skirt round obstacles, or dive down a side street, whereas if you’re on four wheels you could be stuck for hours.’
‘Right, I’ll walk,’ Pete said equably. He glanced round him rather helplessly. ‘But which way? Which way?’ Once more he realised he was thinking of Alice, standing with her hand on the top of her head to feel whether she was growing taller or shorter after nibbling a bit of the EAT ME cake, anxiously saying to herself: ‘Which way? Which way?’ before finishing the rest.
His informant, however, had probably never read Lewis Carroll and certainly would not query the quotation. Instead, he indicated the direction Pete should take, saying prosaically: ‘Keep straight on the main road, ’cept where there’s buildings or bomb craters that won’t let you pass, when you’ll have to take to the side streets. You can ask anyone – everyone knows the Stanley.’
As he traversed the ruined streets, Pete saw broken water mains jetting their contents into the roadways, barricades and danger signs erected round fractured gas pipes, split tramlines rearing up like angry snakes, and electricity cables torn from their places, whilst more barricades were hastily erected to stop the public from getting too close. Grim-faced men laboured ceaselessly at the myriad tasks that faced them, but Pete realised that for most of the people of Liverpool life was simply going on. Two women stood on either side of a bomb crater, one shouting to the other that Sample’s hadn’t been touched and they’d got some bread, plain cake, and even a few ginger nuts. The other woman, large, shawled and cheery, called back that she didn’t think she’d bother with Sample’s since Mr O’Neil’s storeroom had been hit. ‘It ain’t got no glass in the windows and one of them ’cendiaries set fire to some sacks of provisions, so mebbe he’ll sell me some damaged goods cheap,’ she bawled. ‘I’ll bet a pound to a penny they’ve got broken biscuits ’n’ all, broke by the Jerries!’
Pete grinned to himself and continued on his way, and presently he reached the Stanley Hospital and went inside.
The reception hall was crowded with nurses in uniform and worried civilians and Pete guessed that all the hospitals would be run off their feet. He wondered whether it was fair to enquire for Jess before he had even visited her home and was turning away when one of the nurses came over. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked briskly. ‘I can see you aren’t hurt, but perhaps you’re searching for someone?’
‘Yes, I am. I’m trying to find a Mrs Jess Ryan; she nurses here and I thought – I wondered – oh, nurse, I can see you’re busy . . .’
The nurse nodded. She was an attractive woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed and neat, probably in her mid-thirties, but there was a smear of dirt on her crisp white apron, and another on her forehead, and she looked pale and hollow-eyed, as though she had been working for many hours and would continue for many hours more. However, she consulted a clipboard which she held under her arm and told him: ‘Oh, yes, she’s in ward eight. That’s straight down the corridor there and first turning on the right.’
‘Thank you, nurse,’ Pete said. ‘It’s awfully good of you to take the trouble . . .’ But the nurse had turned away and was already hurrying in the opposite direction.
Pete made his way to the ward in question and as soon as he entered the swing doors a nurse hurried towards him. Like his previous informant, she carried a clipboard and she was consulting it even as she said: ‘Yes? Who are you looking for? Most of these patients are in here as a result of last night’s bombing.’
‘It’s all right, nurse, I’m looking for you,’ Pete said, giving the woman a tentative smile. He had no idea what Jess actually looked like for his mother had no more recent photograph than one taken on Jess’s wedding day, which had shown a slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl, perhaps not pretty but certainly not plain, and the woman standing before him looked as he imagined that bride might look now. ‘You are Nurse Jessica Ryan?’
The woman looked puzzled. ‘No, I’m Nurse Berringer,’ she said. ‘But oddly enough, you’ve found the right ward. Nurse Ryan was brought in earlier.’ She jerked her head at someone further down the ward. ‘Are you a relative or just a friend? Only she’s pretty bad and I’m not sure . . .’
‘I’ve never met Nurse Ryan, but she and my mother were close friends when my mother lived in England,’ Pete said. ‘I promised my ma I’d make sure she was all right . . . how bad is she?’
The nurse shrugged slightly and began to lead him down the long ward. ‘She’s terribly worried about her daughter,’ she said. ‘In the middle of the raid – when she should have been having a meal break actually – she decided to go home and check that the girl was all right. She’d been intending to go to the cinema with a friend in the evening, apparently, and she hadn’t got back by the time Nurse Ryan came on shift. But somewhere on the road – she doesn’t seem to know where – she was hit both by flying glass and by blast, so she never did find out what had happened to her daughter. I think if you could promise to check the house and the local shelter and come back here with news, then she might rest easier.’
As she spoke, she stopped beside a bed and Pete saw Jess Ryan for the first time. She looked terrible. She had a huge face wound, stretching from her hairline across brow, nose and cheek right down to her jaw. It had been cleaned and stitched but he could see that placing a concealing dressing across it would have been very difficult. Two tubes led from her arm, one to a bottle of what he assumed was saline solution and the other, unmistakably, to blood. The nurse bent over the bed and touched Jess’s hollow cheek, and after a moment the older woman’s eyes opened. She stared vacantly about her and then she saw Pete. It was as though she recognised in him some likeness, perhaps to his mother. ‘Pete?’ she said questioningly. ‘Nancy’s boy?’
Pete nodded dumbly; how the devil had she known? But she was speaking still, in a halting, breathy voice, and he bent close, the better to hear.
‘She’s alive, but she’s in the dark,’ the thin thread of a voice was murmuring. ‘They don’t know she’s there; they think everybody’s dead. Oh, Pete, I prayed someone would come, someone who could tell ’em she’s buried under all that stuff. Will you fetch her out for me?’
The nurse had moved away and Pete bent closer over the wan figure. ‘How do you know?’ he asked quietly. ‘And where is she? Which shelter? Under which building? I’ll do everything I can, but I don’t know the area. Don’t know where to start?’
‘She’d gone to the flicks with her friend Gwen; it’ll be somewhere in the city centre,’ Jess whispered, after a long pause. ‘Please find her and look after her; she’s so afraid, so alone.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Pete said softly. ‘Can you think of anything else, anything else at all, that would help me to find her?’
He waited a few moments until it became all too clear that Jess, having passed her message on, had lapsed into unconsciousness once more. Then he turned and left the ward, walking with long, impatient strides. He would check the house first, then ask the way to the nearest shelter. If it had not been bombed, then he supposed it was possible the girl might have made her way to the factory in which she worked. He remembered that it made radio parts so surely it would be easy to find. If she did not know her mother had been injured, she might easily have gone off to work, none the wiser.
Pete had to ask directions to Wykeham Street, but when he found it he realised almost at once that the house was simply a shattered shell. From a distance it had looked fairly respectable, but when he got closer he saw that this was an illusion. The back of the house had been sheared off, as though with a gigantic pair of scissors, and the frontage was already leaning to one side as though it longed to dive into the enormous bomb crater there. Curiously, he peered through a glassless front window, checking as he did so that it really was the right number. It was, and he found himself reluctant to look into the crater, dreading that he might see a girl’s body there. But look he must, and all it seemed to contain was a variety of domestic furniture and fittings many of which, so far as he could see, were still all in one piece. Glancing up, he saw an old-fashioned double bed hanging by its back legs from the front wall, and hastily withdrew. That bed might crash down at any minute; indeed, the wall itself looked pretty shaky.
As he moved away from the house, an ARP warden came running up. ‘Don’t go near any of the buildings,’ he shouted. ‘They ain’t been made safe; there’s leakin’ gas pipes, live electricity cables, and enough broken glass to have a whole army bleedin’ to death if they was to make their way amongst it. Besides, there’s looters . . . you don’t come from round here. Just what are you doin’ hangin’ round the Ryans’ place?’
‘I’m a friend and I’m searching for Jess’s daughter Debbie,’ Pete said. It was clearly not the moment to keep his own counsel. ‘Jess is my – my godmother. She’s badly injured, and when I saw her just now in the Stanley Hospital she explained that Debbie had gone to the cinema last night and asked me to try to find her.’ He looked at the man, wondering how to phrase the next question. ‘I don’t suppose you know . . . her mother was afraid she might have been hurt . . .’
‘She weren’t in the house. I met her Uncle Max when I came down the road last night, checking that everyone was in the shelter. He went to the one down the Stanley Road, same as he always does. Later, I checked the shelter and spoke to him; he were worried because young Debbie hadn’t joined him down there. So I reckon you’ll have to go up to the city centre. If she were on her way home from a cinema when the raid started, I reckon she’d have been coming up the Scotland Road.’ He looked at Pete under his brows and said thoughtfully: ‘You from down south? I can tell you ain’t from these parts.’
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