Somewhere Over England (21 page)

She saw more flames shoot into the air and the timber yard which stood close to the warehouse caught fire. Then there was a whoosh as the draught from the flames sent timbers up into the air to fall and set other areas alight. Over to the right a man ran past telling her the gas station was ablaze and that burning rats were running from the warehouse, and now Helen wanted to get home, to shut the door on all this, not to have to see and hear the destruction. And so she ran, knowing as she did so that there would be another raid, and another and another, and perhaps, next time, she would burn.

She ran until the breath pumped in her chest and hurt her throat. It was light now from the fires and she jumped over hoses which curled across the road and round people who came to stand and look. The road ahead was cordoned off and so she turned right, then left, but her way was blocked by an ARP rescue lorry which roared as it backed up to a pile of smouldering rubble. She turned again, crossing down a narrow footpath, then out into Kendle Street but she was walking now because her legs were weak and she wished that there was someone at home waiting for her.

She could not hear the sound of her footsteps against the noise of ambulances, rescue lorries, fire engines. She passed old women who pushed food from baskets into the mouths of rescue workers who could not stop to eat or drink. Further along a dead fireman lay on the pavement. Further along still a queue was forming at the Town Hall for missing relatives. She wanted to go up and shake them. Tell them to go away because there would be another raid and they would be dispersed and have to begin queuing all over again. But she did not because it happened every night and they all knew it did.

She looked at her watch. It was nine o’clock. She had left work at seven and not eaten since midday. Her mouth tasted sour and dry. She wanted to get home before it all began again. She started running once more down a street where no fires burned but it was darker because of this and so she slowed, moving out past a car slewed into the kerb, but a hand caught her arm and stopped her. She swung around, her hair in her eyes, her breath shallow. She pulled but could not break free.

‘It’s all right. It’s all right. I’m a doctor.’ The man’s voice was calm and so Helen stood still. She could not see his face clearly because his back was to the burning sky.

‘There’s a man in there, down in the basement.’ He was pointing to a house which no longer had a front, just floors which hung limp and wallpaper which was torn. ‘He’s not good but we can’t get to him. We’re too big.’

The doctor pointed again but this time two ARP wardens – one of them Mr Simkins – came over and guided her to the building over scattered rubble, glass and shrapnel, showing her a small gap at the base of the destruction.

‘Can you get down there, Helen? Talk to him, see how he is? We can only hear noises.’

Helen stood there, the dust from the fallen masonry making her cough. I’m going home, she wanted to say. I want a drink. I want a hot cup of tea. I’m cold and I want to go home. And I don’t like the dark. I don’t like the dark.

‘Be a good girl,’ the doctor said, taking her arm again.

I’m not a girl, she wanted to say as he started to take her coat off, pulling it from her arms because there would not be room for her to pass through the gap while she still wore it. I’m not a girl, she repeated to herself, I’m a woman of twenty-seven but then women of that age shouldn’t be frightened, should they?

‘You’ll need to go in head first. We’ll hold your legs, drop you as far as possible. Call to him, see what it’s like down there.’

Mr Simkins took her arm. ‘It’s Frank, the grocer,’ he said.

She went, of course, head first down into the dark where the air was so full of dust she thought she would die, feeling the bricks scrape her legs and she cried out. ‘My coat, put it under my legs.’ She could feel them pushing it between her skin and the bricks, and the pain eased but it had made her cry.

Down into the dark and it was her mother’s cupboard again, coming and closing itself around her and she cried, silently. It was dark, so dark.

‘Call Frank,’ the doctor said. ‘Call him, see how he is.’

‘How can I see? It’s dark. Pitch dark, you bloody fool.’ Helen shouted these words and anger drove the fears away. Along with the anger came surprise because she seldom swore. Ladies didn’t, did they? ‘Send down a torch, for God’s sake.’

‘Ssh, Helen,’ Mr Simkins said. ‘Don’t disturb anything. We don’t know how safe it is.’ He paused and Helen felt the blood coming into her head. She closed her eyes. There was a scrabbling sound and then something cold brushed her face
and she opened her eyes, seeing the beam of weak light catching the particles of dust, those same particles which caught in her eyes, her nose, her mouth. She gripped the torch, feeling the string round the handle.

‘Don’t take the string off. You might drop the torch,’ M Simkins called.

She could hear grunts still and turned the torch towards them. There were just bricks and beams and one arm and one leg visible.

‘Frank, Frank, it’s me, Helen. How badly are you hurt?’ There was no proper reply, just grunts and gurgles, but if they lowered her just a little more she could reach down and touch the hand and perhaps move the bricks.

‘Drop me a little further,’ she gasped, the dust thick in her mouth. Her ankles were breaking. ‘Shall I move the bricks? All I can hear are grunts.’ She started coughing now and her legs bucked as she did so and she dropped the torch, but it was still on its string so the doctor pulled it up and it was dark again.

She called ‘Pull me up. Pull me up.’ And now she was screaming because it was so dark and there was a man grunting, but he wasn’t a man, he wasn’t Frank any more. She had seen the blood as the torch swung, the bones and his head and knew why he grunted. They pulled her up but she couldn’t stand, just sat with her head in her hands. And then she was sick and her mouth was sour as she told them again and again what she had seen.

The doctor wiped her face and held her head and told her he wanted her to go down again and give Frank an injection because no one should bear that sort of pain. But she couldn’t. How could she go back down into the dark? How could her mother make her? How could this man make her? Where was Heine, why wasn’t he here helping her? Keeping her safe. He had promised, hadn’t he? She lifted her head. There was still the noise of the flames, the timber, the ambulances but up here at least there was some light.

It was dark down there. Didn’t they know that? It was dark and there was a man with no face, grunting and gurgling, and she wanted to go home to her flat but there was no one there, was there? God damn it, there was no one there.

She was crying but it was inside and it was hurting her.

Mr Simkins helped her up, handed her the torch.

‘Be a brave girl,’ he said.

But Mrs Simkins wasn’t brave, was she, Helen wanted to shout. She had left London, hadn’t she? She had left and gone to live where bombs don’t fall.

She took the syringe and listened as the doctor told her what to do when she got close enough to the arm. They held her legs again as she eased through the hole, her arms out before her, dropping down into the darkness, breathing the stifling air, the dust, hearing no crackling flames, just those grunts, and then the torch was lowered on the string. She caught it, using the light to guide herself back to the rubble, but she had to release it to move four bricks, slowly, carefully, hearing the creaking above her, feeling a sudden fall of dust, but nothing else moved. She groped her way forward. The torch swung round and round on its string, its light not reaching this far and so she felt over the jagged mortar, the splintered wood. She touched a hand. It was still warm and fingers closed around hers and the grunting stopped, just for a moment.

The crying inside her stopped too then, and so did her fear of the broken head and face and it was Frank who held her hand and for a moment they gave one another strength.

Then his groans began again and she talked through the dust in her throat. She talked of the shop and Christoph; the shrapnel he had swapped; Mary, the friend he had made. ‘They’re both outsiders you see,’ she murmured gently as she plunged the needle into his arm, pressing the morphine into Frank.

Mr Simkins called, ‘Shall we bring you up now?’

The blood was pounding in her head but it was not until the grip on her hand relaxed and the grunts ceased that she called, ‘Yes, bring me up.’

The rescue team was there as she was dragged back through the hole and the doctor took the syringe from her, checking her carefully, making her sit, but this time she was not sick. This time she waited, breathing in the cold air, heavy still with the smell of burning and floating with ash fragments.

‘Will someone be worrying at home?’ the doctor asked. ‘Shall I drop you off?’ He turned as an ambulance stopped and a nurse called to him.

Helen shook her head. ‘No. I shall be quite all right. You’re needed again,’ she said, clambering to her feet, moving out of
the way. She waved to Mr Simkins as he answered a call across the street. ‘Shall I wait?’

Mr Simkins turned. ‘No, Helen, you get back. This’ll take all night. Get your head down before the next wave comes.’

The flat was dark and cold but she did not light the fire. There was no point. There would be another raid soon. She lit the gas under the kettle, cut sandwiches, rinsed out the Thermos. Then she shook her coat out of the window, clearing it of brick dust, and did the same to her skirt. Her lisle stockings were torn and her legs grazed but before she stepped into the bath she poured water over the tea in the strainer. It had only been used once this morning and so was not too weak. She filled the Thermos and used what was left for a cup now, sipping hastily as she did so because the sirens might go and she must get clean today for the first time.

After her bath she put woollen stockings and socks on and then her boots. There was a candle in the upturned flowerpot in the Anderson from last night for warmth but she would need matches and so she put them in her pocket. She was talking aloud, listing her shelter provisions but that was better than the sound of nobody’s voice. She had missed the nine o’clock news but the wireless was playing music and that was some sort of company. She did not put on the light in the sitting-room but instead eased back the blackout. Her hair was still wet from her bath and lay cold on her neck. She picked up a towel and rubbed it. Marian was coming tomorrow for lunch.

How was Frank? She paced to the kitchen, pouring more boiling water on to the tea leaves, drinking as she walked, frying rissoles in the pan. Listening, always listening for the siren, for the planes, and she was glad Christoph was not here but she missed him and paced again to push away the ache. She sat down and wrote to Heine by the light of the red sky and the moon, telling him of Chris swapping shrapnel for sixers, and for a moment she could smell the rotten conkers which they had found in the park beneath the tree. She told him of the bank because she hoped he would laugh, and of Marian coming tomorrow because it was Saturday and they had the day off. She told him she missed him and loved him, because she did, but she did not tell him that she wished he was British and that they were the same as everyone else. She told him she was so glad he wasn’t here, that he was safe.

She did not tell him of Frank, of the dust and the darkness, because he blamed himself that he was not here and part of her did so too.

At eleven the bombers had not come back and she put on her coat because she wanted to see what had happened to Frank. She had walked as far as the corner of Ellesmere Road when the sirens went again and this time the bombers were close, roaring in, wave upon wave, and there was no time to go back to the shelter in the High Street, no time to go to her own. She pressed herself back against the wall of the gutted house behind her. It had been bombed in November.

The noise grew louder, spreading itself around her, trying to force her to the ground, and then the bombs came again, flashing, crushing and juddering. Helen crouched, knowing that the whimpering she heard was coming from her. She looked up at the black wide bodies, the bursting ack-ack, the two parachute mines floating down in the direction of the park.

She flung herself down, holding her fist to her mouth. She must not scream. She was not a child. She must not scream. Two long dull roars came and the barrage balloon stood out in relief against the blaze that came. Fire bombs were hurtling down now and white magnesium fires leapt up to turn red as buildings caught fire. The thuds of heavy oil bombs followed and now she could feel the heat. The bombs were getting closer.

She lay on the ground, rubble digging into her. She could hear glass shattering. More incendiaries fell; small, pretty. They did not blast, they just burned where they fell. A warden ran by, stopping, shouting at her as she lifted her head.

‘Get into a bloody shelter.’ His voice was harsh, impatient. Then he ran on.

But where was there a shelter? She scrambled up now, looking each way, then running to the corner, hearing the shrapnel falling all around. There was no safety anywhere. She ran blindly now, across the road, down a lane, but everywhere there was heat and falling walls, shouts and screams, and then she came to a crossroads and there on the opposite corner was St Bede’s; dark, black and solid, and she ran in through the gate, past the gravestones, into the porch, panting. Gasping for breath. Holding her arms tightly round her body.

Was there ever a time when life was quiet, when nights were
for sleeping? It was madness. Absolute madness. She felt the ground juddering, heard the hiss of the falling bombs, and even here the shrapnel came and so she ran again, keeping close to the walls of the church whose windows had been boarded up when war was declared. She was stumbling now, tripping on the graves, falling on frozen grass until she came to the clump of lilac trees which bloomed each summer and there was a large door down some steps and Helen stopped. She turned, feeling her way down until she reached the bottom. There was someone else there, an old woman who caught hold of her, pulling her against the door.