Survivor (22 page)

They quickened their steps to reach the
factory but didn’t speak. Mariette knew she ought to have phoned home before
leaving the office. Once Noah heard the bombs, he would ring one of his many
contacts to find out what was
happening
and where. When he rang her at the office and found no one there, he would be
worried about her.

As they reached the factory gates,
Mariette resolved to ring home as soon as they got inside. But the moment Greville
had pushed the gates open, a handful of people appeared in the road.

‘Can we come in, mister?’
asked a woman with a baby in her arms and two small children clinging to her
skirt.

When Greville didn’t answer,
Mariette spoke for him. ‘Yes, come on, we’ll all be safer in the
cellar.’

An hour later, there were over fifty
people, mostly women and children, in the large cellar. They all came from homes in
the neighbouring streets, and some of the women worked at the factory. The cellar
had never been used for storing material or machinery as it became damp in the
winter. But now, at the end of the summer, it was dry. Greville had got the few men,
all of whom were either over or under conscription age, to carry some of the sewing
machines and bales of cloth down there. Mariette and some of the women had brought
chairs and a large trestle table, used for cutting out the uniforms, in an effort to
make everyone a little more comfortable.

The cellar was lit by only two light
bulbs, but as they kept flickering Mariette had found a box of candles for backup if
they went out completely. Down here the bombing was muted, but she’d heard a
little girl ask her mother if they were safe now. She hoped they were.

When she risked a trip to the workshop,
two floors above, the sound of the mayhem by the river seemed to be coming closer.
Because of the thick black smoke she couldn’t see more than twenty yards from
the windows, but she could hear the sound of falling masonry and hissing hoses, and
that sounded ominously close by.

Noah answered
the phone when she rang home. ‘Whatever were you thinking of, going
there?’ was his immediate response.

‘I have to try to help,’ she
said. ‘I think we’re safe enough for the time being. But should the air
raid get worse, will you ring someone to tell them there are people in the cellar
here?’

He agreed he would ring the Civil
Defence people, and advised her to make sure there was adequate ventilation in the
cellar and to take water down there for everyone. ‘If your Mr Greville had had
any sense or foresight he would’ve made preparations for an eventuality like
this,’ he said. ‘You can’t just fill a cellar with people without
making some provision.’

‘Is it better for them to die in
crushed houses with a sandwich in their hands? Or to be hungry and alive?’ she
said sharply, and put the phone down.

There was what passed for a kitchen at
the back of the loading bay. It was very dirty – the factory workers had always used
a kitchen just off the main workroom to make their tea – but, whatever its
shortcomings, it was safer to use the dirty one than risk people going up another
flight of stairs. Mariette collected up all the cups and mugs and tea-making
equipment and took it down there. There was also a lavatory beside it; she hoped
against hope that the bombing wouldn’t become so bad that they had to resort
to using buckets in the cellar.

Everyone apart from the children, who
were too young to know what was going on above them, looked terrified. They sat
huddled in small groups, alert to the slightest sound. Iris and Janet, two of the
machinists, dished out cups of tea and tried to act as if it was all just a bit of a
lark, but the smiles they got back were forced ones.

Greville kept himself busy by collecting
up files and documents and bringing them down to the cellar. ‘Thank goodness
that big shipment of uniforms was
collected on Thursday,’ he said to Mariette at one point. ‘I suppose the
girls could work down here on Monday, if the bombing continues – that is, if I could
get some power down here.’

Mariette was astounded that he could
only think of his business. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, sir, we ought
to be thinking of how we can get some blankets, milk for the babies and some food
for everyone. Not thinking about making uniforms.’

Some of the children were already saying
they were hungry. But just as she was about to suggest that it might be a good idea
to get a few volunteers together to go to the nearest houses and get some food and
milk, there was an explosion. It was loud and forceful enough to shower dust and
mortar down on everyone. Many people screamed involuntarily, some covered their
heads with their hands as if that would protect them, and a few ran towards the
door.

‘Have we been hit?’ Mariette
asked Greville. But she might as well have saved her breath because he was trembling
with fear. ‘Get a grip,’ she hissed at him, shaking his arm.
‘I’m going out to see what damage has been done.’

She opened the cellar door tentatively,
half expecting the way out would be blocked. But it wasn’t, so she ran up the
concrete stairs to the loading bay. That was still intact, as were the open factory
gates, but the houses on the right-hand side of the road outside the gates had
received a direct hit. The whole row, about ten small houses, had come down like a
pack of cards. The air was thick with swirling brick dust and mortar; as she stood
there, too shocked to move, the wall right at the end of the terrace came crashing
down too.

Hearing another plane, she turned to
look towards the docks, in time to see a German bomber drop its load less
than half a mile away. At the sound of
the deafening explosion that followed she ducked back into the factory, and ran down
the stairs to the cellar.

Iris came over to her.
‘What’s been hit?’ she asked.

Mariette hesitated. One of the destroyed
houses was Iris’s home. She had four children, all of whom were in the cellar
with her, and her husband was in the army.

‘Come on, put a girl out of
’er misery,’ Iris laughed.

Mariette liked Iris. She was always
laughing. She claimed to have nothing to be miserable about. She was thirty-one and
had given birth to her first child at seventeen; the other three had come one after
the other in close succession. Because of her bleached-blonde hair, and a voluptuous
figure which she poured into tight low-cut dresses, some of the more shrewish
machinists called her a tart, but she didn’t care. One of her favourite
put-downs for those who gossiped about her was, ‘Men like an angel in the
kitchen and a tart in the bedroom. I’m no great shakes in the kitchen, but I
can be a tart in any room they like.’

‘I’m sorry, Iris,’
Mariette said. ‘But your house, and the whole terrace, has been
hit.’

Iris blanched and put her hands over her
mouth in horror. But to Mariette’s astonishment, she forced a laugh.
‘Bloody good job I was behind with the rent then,’ she said.
‘I’d ’ave been ’opping mad if I’d just paid
it.’

Most of the other residents of the
terrace were in the cellar, but none took the news as bravely as Iris. One, a very
fat middle-aged woman, began a terrible keening noise, rocking backwards and
forwards in her chair, and couldn’t be comforted.

The all-clear sounded then, and almost
everyone got up to leave. Mariette went out into the yard with them. When they saw
the devastation before them and the black, greasy smoke
almost blotting out the sun, they looked shaken,
helpless and undecided about what to do.

‘If your home has been hit, or if
the siren goes off again, you can come back,’ Mariette told them. ‘It
might be a good idea to bring some food with you.’

She watched them clambering over the
rubble in the road; even the young women looked suddenly old and careworn. The ones
whose homes had been hit began picking through the rubble for things to salvage.
Only the children seemed undeterred by the carnage. She saw one little girl picking
up a rag doll from the wreckage of her home and shouting to her mother gleefully
that it only needed a wash.

‘What will we do?’ Iris said
at her elbow.

Mariette knew she meant about getting
another home. ‘I think the Civil Defence people help with that,’ she
said. ‘I told my uncle to ring them and tell them about all the people here,
so they are bound to send someone round very soon. But tonight you and the children
had better stay in the cellar. Shall we go and see if we can find some clothing and
bedding?’

There was far too much to do for
Mariette to even think about going home. Some of the women were too stunned by the
destruction of their homes to think for themselves. And although Mariette assumed
there would be no further bombing today, that couldn’t be relied upon.

She had made a list earlier of everyone
who had been in the cellar, including their addresses. She’d also got each of
them to tell her the names of other people who lived at the same address but
weren’t with them, just in case their house should be bombed. As far as she
could tell, all the people from the flattened terrace next to the factory had either
come to the cellar, or weren’t at home, so it didn’t appear that there
was anyone who might be trapped
under the rubble. But someone had to inform the Civil Defence of this, so when she
saw Greville locking up the upper floor in preparation for going home she was
shocked.

‘But what about all these homeless
people?’ Mariette said.

‘I’m leaving the cellar
open. That’s enough, isn’t it?’ he said, looking surprised that
she expected more of him.

‘Don’t you think you should
stay till someone from the Civil Defence comes?’

‘To do what?’ he said
impatiently. ‘None of the people here earlier were hurt. They’re not
sick, they can speak for themselves, can’t they? You should go home
too.’

‘I will, once I’m sure
someone in authority knows about the cellar,’ she said.

‘Well, leave as soon as someone
comes,’ he said. His tone was terse, as if he was irritated by her. ‘If
I see a policeman as I walk up to the main road, I’ll direct him
here.’

Mariette began to help the bombed-out
women salvage blankets, quilts and clothing from the ruins of their houses. Whilst
there, some of the people who had left earlier came back. Most of them were in
tears, or looking dazed.

‘It’s like the end of the
world,’ one woman sobbed out to Mariette. ‘Whole streets gone, just
piles of bricks and broken furniture. My grandfather clock was smashed to pieces,
lying in the road. There’re people who’ve been killed, we saw the rescue
teams laying the bodies on the road.’

Mariette put her arms around the woman
to comfort her. ‘Did they tell you where to go?’

‘We told them we’d been in
the factory while the bombing was going on, so they said to come back
here.’

A red-headed boy of about twelve gave
Mariette more information. ‘I talked to one of the rescue men, he told me the
fires down on the docks are real bad and just about every
fire engine in London is there. There’s people
trapped under rubble too, just a couple of streets away from here. They’re
trying to get buses in to take people away to somewhere safer, but it will take a
while as most roads are blocked with rubble. The rescue man told us to come back
here for the night. He said he would send someone with blankets and sandwiches for
us.’

A man with a handcart arrived around
half past five with a pile of blankets, a box of cheese sandwiches and a few bottles
of milk. The people living in the houses on the left-hand side of the street, which
hadn’t been knocked down, brought over whatever they could spare. One of them
made up bottles for the babies and shared out some old nappies.

Mariette was about to make her way
home, when the wail of the siren began again. Everything had looked organized and
even a little homely in the cellar up until that moment. People had claimed their
space with their family and friends, put their blankets down, many had lit a candle
in a jam jar, and the atmosphere was calm and quite jovial, especially considering
what they had all experienced such a short while ago.

But it all changed when other people
hammered on the door to be let in. It wasn’t only those from the undamaged
side of the road, who had been here earlier, but also new people from neighbouring
streets. Suddenly there was mayhem as they walked across carefully laid-out
blankets, and the owners protested. Babies cried, small children rushed about, and
arguments broke out.

Mariette was forced to take charge. She
blew the whistle she’d found earlier in the day to make everyone pay
attention.

‘They may start bombing us again
at any minute. So before they do, please listen to me. This cellar is big enough for
all of you, but please remember your manners and don’t walk
across blankets or frighten small children by arguing.
We’re all in this together. It’s not very comfortable, there is only one
lavatory up in the loading bay, so I’m relying on everyone to be kind to one
another and share what little we have. Can you do that?’

‘Sure, love, you can share my
blanket any time,’ a wild-haired man of about thirty called out.

She didn’t get the chance to
respond as they heard the drone of approaching aircraft, growing louder and louder
until it became a roar. Then there was the bark of anti-aircraft guns, followed by
the scream of falling bombs and the earth-shaking thump as they exploded.

It seemed to be far worse than the
bombing of the morning. People held hands or clutched children to their chests; in
the dim light their faces showed their terror. No one knew how far down a bomb could
penetrate, and there was real fear of being buried alive.

Mariette made her way round to everyone,
making sure she had all their full names, addresses and dates of birth on her list.
It crossed her mind that, if the factory did receive a direct hit and they were
buried in here, the list would never be found. But busying herself, getting to know
these people, and perhaps giving them some comfort by taking charge, helped take her
mind off the danger.