Somewhere Over England (22 page)

‘Bless you. Gave me a fright you did,’ the old woman said, pulling her scarf tighter round her head.

Helen looked at her, at the camp stool she sat on, the knitting she was doing out here in the open air. On her hands she wore fingerless gloves. Helen pushed at the door. There was a crypt here. She remembered now because they had held the vicarage fête in the gardens before the war and the tables and chairs, the bunting, the stalls were carried in here afterwards. Heine had laughed because the vicar had been so busy directing everyone he had become jammed behind the benches and they had to move everything back again to release him.

The bombers were coming in another wave now, overhead. The noise was loud, the explosions close and over to their left. Shrapnel still fell, clattering down the steps, against the door. Helen ducked and pushed again.

‘No good doing that, ducky. The vicar keeps it locked.’ The old woman laughed but her voice trembled and Helen touched her shoulder.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked, crouching beside her, looking up at the sky, wincing as a bomb dropped nearby.

‘Nowhere else nearby, is there, love? I ain’t got no shelter, the station’s too far and the brick one in Maine Street got hit last week.’

Helen ducked as the run of explosions drew closer still. The ack-ack thudded nearby.

‘There’s more poor souls out past the lilac bush. They got bombed out earlier. They’ve got nowhere else to go. They don’t want to leave the area, see. It’s their home.’

There were fires crackling and ash being blown across from the nearby streets. Helen eased herself up, pushing once more
at the door, and then again. It gave a little each time but not enough. She eased herself up the steps.

‘Have you asked the vicar to unlock it for you?’ She was shouting now against the noise.

‘He’s too busy, isn’t he? Rushing around seeing all these dead people.’

Helen was up the steps now, running round to the back of the church and on towards the vicarage. She knocked but there was no reply. She ran round to the Anderson, too angry to fear the bombs. Too damned angry.

There was no one there. She ran back, wrenching at the upright garden fork stuck deep into the soil, dragging it along behind her so that it clattered on the path but that was just one more noise in the bedlam.

She dragged it past the lilac bush, shouting at the people there to come down; the crypt was going to be opened. She carried it down the steps, forcing it into the gap between the door and the frame, just below the handle, pushing on it. It gave further this time but still not enough. Helen threw her weight on it but still it did not open. She turned then as old gnarled hands added their weight and an old man nodded. Together they tried it and then the wood of the door splintered and the lock gave way. The door was open.

Helen turned. ‘Get in here. Quick.’ A bomb dropped outside the churchyard.

‘Get in quick!’ She was screaming now, grabbing at the old woman, who dropped her ball of wool and went back for it. Helen pulled her, running for the wool herself, pushing at two more people who came running down the steps from the graveyard where they had been sheltering. The wool caught in her fingers, she dropped it again, picked it up once more and this time held it to her, backing into the crypt, slamming the door shut.

‘Everyone away from the door,’ Helen said, her voice hoarse now, remembering the inspector who had insisted on a blanket for the shelter because of blast splinters.

It was pitch black. There was no light and almost no noise.

‘Can’t see to move,’ the old man said.

Helen was fumbling in her pockets. She had her matches. She struck one, cupping it in her hand, moving forwards and then sideways to get out of the line of the door, hearing the
shuffle of feet as they followed her, feeling a hand clinging to her coat for guidance.

There were benches piled high and a stuffy feel to the air but no shrapnel clicked and cut. One of the old women had a candle in the bag which held all that she now owned.

Helen lit it and with the old man who smiled a smile without teeth she left them in the dark on seats they had found while she moved amongst the vicarage fête material looking for more candles.

The old man found a new packet, long, thick white ones, which Ruth, the woman who had dropped her knitting, said they could not use because they were for the altar. Helen looked at her and at the others.

‘I will speak to the vicar in the morning,’ she said, burning the bottom of the candle so that the wax melted and then setting it down on the lid of a tin of old powder paint they had found. They sat or lay on the benches which Helen pulled round into a square until the all clear at four-thirty a.m. They had been cold but safe and Helen had not been alone.

She was tired and angry as she watched the others leave, walking out into the grey dawn. But then she called, ‘Come back tonight. It will be open and there’ll be hot tea. Bring some bread and butter and some tea if you can.’ She went round to the vicarage again and knocked on the door, and when there was no reply she waited, sitting on the step until the vicar came up the path, his face grey with tiredness.

Helen stood up; she held out his garden fork. ‘I broke into your crypt last night.’

He paused, his hand in his coat pocket, where he had been searching for his key. ‘Why?’ was all he said.

‘Because we needed shelter,’ she said, but what she meant was that she was tired of people locking doors in her face, dropping bombs, making her send her son away, making her feel anger at her husband.

‘Come in, we need some breakfast.’ He was an old man, bent and tired, his face thin. His tea was as weak as hers but his toast was warm and she was hungry in the cold green kitchen with its half empty meat safe on the windowsill.

She told him that she had people who would come back again tonight. That there was no other shelter and she would break the crypt open again if he barred it to them.

He smiled, stirring his tea and told her that she could use it. They needed a rest centre in the area as well as a shelter; a refuge for those bombed out, for those unable to endure loneliness any longer in this world which had once known peace.

‘Do you understand what I mean?’ he asked, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark. ‘War is lonely as well as dangerous.’

Helen nodded, for she understood too well.

‘We’ll need toilets, primus stoves, cups, blankets,’ Helen said, washing her cup in water poured from the simmering kettle.

He nodded as she continued, drawing up a verbal list because she had used the hours of the raid to channel her rage into this. There was no work at the bank on Saturday this week and she was glad because she had to go to the ironmonger’s for rubber gloves and a hurricane lamp but the first one would not sell them to her because Heine was a German. Helen was too busy to speak to him as she would have done yesterday.

The second one smiled because Heine had taken his son’s photograph shortly before he had been killed in a car crash. He sold Helen two hurricane lamps and filled them with paraffin though he would not sell her a can because of the risk of fire. She could come each day for more. He gave her the gloves because she had no more money on her.

She carried them back to the crypt, kicking away the rubble from the path in the churchyard, clearing the shrapnel from the steps with her boots. The vicar was there already, pushing back the benches, setting out tables. He had found two camp beds in his attic and had spoken to the Red Cross about chemical toilets.

Helen looked across at the bucket she had found last night and which was now full. She grimaced and the vicar moved towards it but she stopped him.

‘Go and get some sleep,’ she said, pulling her rubber gloves out from her pocket.

‘But you must be tired too,’ he objected.

‘No, I’m not. I’m not at all.’ And she wasn’t. She carried the bucket to the door, walking behind him, watching him climb the steps.

‘I should have done this before,’ he said, turning. ‘Somehow there wasn’t the time to stop and think.’

Helen nodded. No, there was never any time to stop, never
any peace to think. She turned then, carrying the bucket down the side of the church to the back, pouring it down the drain, scrubbing with a brush while the smell made her retch but as she did it she thought of the letter she would write to Heine, telling him of the crypt, telling him of the people who now had shelter, of the buckets instead of toilets, of the altar candles which the vicar had laughed about, of the sign he was going inside to write, pointing people towards the new Rest Centre. But first he must speak to the authorities.

She would tell Marian of the work that needed to be done. The tea that needed to be brewed, the advice that needed to be given about lost ration books. Marian would help. It would stop her brooding over Emily. Over Rob, her husband, who had been posted to Scotland.

She scrubbed the bucket with disinfectant and stacked it beside the door which the vicar had said was to remain unlocked at all times. At midday she left because Marian was meeting her at the flat where they would heat thick soup and talk of their children and their husbands until the next siren went.

She picked her way through debris and chaos, turning left as a cordon blocked the street. The air was thick with smoke but then it always was. She came into the street and her flat was still standing but the one opposite was down and Mr Simkins stood waving pedestrians past.

‘Did Frank survive?’ she asked him and was not surprised when he shook his head. She remembered the clasp of that weak hand and was filled with the waste of it all.

She was tired now, and pushed at the front door which was singed by the heat from the bomb which had dropped so close. There were blisters on the paint. She eased it open, hearing Marian call as she came down the street, so she turned, her hand on the doorpost and saw the telegraph boy riding his bike, then stop by Mr Simkins and ask directions.

She saw her neighbour point to her, then stop the boy and take the telegram from him, carrying it himself, his overalls dirty, his yellow initials blackened by dust. She watched as he came, but slowly, oh so slowly. She watched as though from a distance as his ankle twisted sideways on a piece of brick. ‘It’s for you, Helen,’ he said, his voice cracked and dry from the nighttime dust.

She knew it was for her. Of course it was for her, she had seen him pointing, hadn’t she? But Heine was safe from the bombing, wasn’t he? And so was Chris, wasn’t he? So it was a mistake. She shook her head, pushing the envelope from her. She turned but Mr Simkins’s hand pulled her round and pressed the telegram into her hand.

‘It’s a mistake, you see,’ she said, still shaking her head. The paper was cold and limp in the frosty air. She could read her name, Mrs H. Weber. The type was black against the buff. She knew she must open it, she knew that she must lift the flap and read because Mr Simkins and Marian were standing there and it was cold and she mustn’t keep them waiting. Mrs Tomkins hadn’t kept Helen waiting when her telegram had come last month.

But it couldn’t be news which would tear her heart from her body because both of them were safe. They weren’t here as she was, living next to fire and death. No. Neither of them could die. They couldn’t die. She wouldn’t let them die.

Marian came to her side. ‘It might not be bad news.’ Her hand was on Helen’s arm.

So Helen peeled the envelope open, lifted the telegram out and read, aloud, that Heine was dead.

Killed in a fall from rocks while on a walk. Stop.

For over an hour Helen stood in the doorway, pushing Marian and Mr Simkins from her because they were not Heine and he was all she wanted but how could she tell them that when the only noise she could make was this moaning from deep within her? When the only sound she could hear was his voice? There was no cold piercing her coat, no war in front of her eyes. There was nothing but him; but he was gone and she couldn’t bear it.

And then she said, ‘How could he die like this? I don’t understand how he could die like this?’

She turned and walked over trailing hoses, only now seeing the firemen on the top of ladders, hearing the coughing from all sides from the smoke which hung over the city, over them all. How could he die when he wasn’t amongst all this? It was wrong. They must be wrong. She walked on towards the vicarage, towards the only phone that worked, because she had to tell them that they were wrong.

The telegram was damp in her hands and it still held the words which told her Heine was dead. It still, still held them but she was not going to cry because they were wrong. She picked her way round the brick wall which had run round the back of the grocer’s but now spilled across the pavement. She listened to Marian who held her arm and talked of how bad the trains were and how she shouldn’t think of going up for the funeral, she really shouldn’t.

Helen cut through these words because they were wrong, weren’t they? She said, ‘I’ve opened the crypt. Why don’t you come and help? It will need a committee to get things running smoothly.’

She eased between the cordon and the rescue truck. Its rear bumper was ripped from its nearside support, hanging suspended by only the right-hand screw. There was a jagged
hole in the bodywork. She crossed the road, passing the queue of people waiting for a new delivery of eggs. They all seemed so clear this afternoon, as though they were etched in glass.

Marian was shaking her arm now. ‘Yes, I’ll help. Of course I’ll help. It’s so lonely with Rob away.’ And then she suddenly stopped talking.

Helen crossed the road to the vicarage. Yes, it will be lonely with Rob away, she wanted to say. But neither of them are dead, are they? She wanted to shout it, scream it so that it would reach the Isle of Man. She hurried because she must tell them quickly – but they were at the gate now. Soon they would reach the telephone.

She pushed at the gate, leaning her weight on it, looking again at the telegram in her hand, hating it, tearing it, again and again and again as she hurried forward, throwing it, watching the wind take it, piece by piece, fragment by fragment, because it was wrong. But why was there this terrible pain inside her when it was so wrong?