Survivor (24 page)

‘Belle and Etienne would be so
proud to see you in it,’ Lisette had said the day she tried it on.
‘Their little girl all grown up, and so beautiful. We must have some
photographs
taken to send to them. It
will be hard for them on your birthday, not being with you to share your special
day.’

Mariette went over to the dress and
stroked the soft, sensuous material. When Lisette had first got the dress out to
show her, she’d thought silver-grey would drain her of all colour, but
she’d been wrong. It reflected light back on to her face and made her glow.
She couldn’t wait to wear it. Lisette was also right about her parents being
sad: birthdays had always been a big thing in their family, with bunting put up
around the kitchen and in the garden. Belle always made an elaborate crown for the
birthday boy or girl, which had to be worn throughout the party. All their friends
and neighbours came, Mog would make a fantastic cake, and everyone had to wear their
best clothes and play party games. Often, the adults carried on drinking and dancing
until the early hours, and Mariette could remember wishing she was grown up so that
she could stay up with them.

Mariette could imagine both Belle and
Mog crying a little on the 8th. Maybe Mog would make a cake anyway, and they’d
all raise a glass of wine to toast Mariette. But it would be a very quiet affair as
Alexis had been called up as soon as he’d turned eighteen, in January. He was
off at a training camp now, waiting to hear whether his regiment would be sent to
Europe or North Africa. In less than a year it would be Noel’s turn. Mariette
could hardly believe her skinny little brothers had turned into young men capable of
firing guns. She wondered too how her parents and Mog would cope without any
children in the house.

She wished she could go home and see
them; all those scathing thoughts she’d once had about Russell being a
primitive backwater where nothing ever happened seemed so stupid now. She’d
give anything to be sailing out on the bay, or climbing up Flag Staff Hill to look
at the spectacular view.
Just to sit in
the quiet of the evening on the veranda, with a warm breeze fluttering her hair,
seemed like paradise.

Returning to her letter, she wrote down
those thoughts about home and how much she wished she could be there with them. She
added:

As I’m writing this, it will be early morning for you. I can almost
hear Mog raking out the stove and calling up the stairs for Noel to get up.
I expect Mum is outside feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, maybe
Papa has already left the house to take someone out fishing. I didn’t
appreciate how lovely it was when I was there, but I do now.

Tears filled her eyes as she remembered
how she’d played her parents up. She recalled the deceit, all the fibs, and
thinking she was somehow deprived because Russell was so small and quiet. She knew
now, after seeing children who really were deprived, that she’d had the best
childhood anyone could have. She’d always had enough food, and so much love
and attention. No one had ever taken a stick to her. Her father never came home
drunk and nasty, turning on anyone in his way. Her mother made things fun, and Mog
was the comforter. Her lap was one of the best places on earth to be when Mariette
was small.

She knew now she wanted a marriage like
her parents had – sharing everything, good and bad, their love for each other
shining out like a beacon – and how foolish she had once been to daydream that this
was how it would be with Morgan. And yet, she found it very annoying that she
couldn’t forget him either. The last message she’d had from him arrived
just after the Blitz began. She couldn’t call it a letter as it was so brief.
He wrote that he was leaving the hospital any day now, and he hoped she would keep
safe.

There was not a word about his injuries,
whether he was
going back to his
regiment or to another hospital, and she’d heard nothing from him since.

Johnny maintained that Morgan had
someone else and wasn’t man enough to admit it. But that made no real sense,
because why would he have bothered to write from the hospital?

She just didn’t understand him at
all. But from what she’d seen and heard about people’s behaviour in the
last six months, nothing would surprise her. She’d seen married women with
children have a torrid fling with someone else while the husband they professed to
love was serving overseas. Two women she knew were pregnant with the child of a man
they’d met at a dance, and would never see again. Iris’s husband had
gone AWOL and was caught in Portsmouth with a girl of just sixteen. He’d
written to Iris while waiting for his court martial and said he didn’t love
her and never had. He’d only married her because he had to. An elderly man
living near the factory had reported his wife missing after an air raid. A couple of
days later, her body was found under some rubble, but her injuries were consistent
with being struck several times on the head with lead piping, not being hit by
falling masonry. When the police began investigating the crime, the husband broke
down and confessed it was him. He said he was convinced he was going to die in an
air raid, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her being left alone.

It seemed to Mariette that war altered
everyone’s character to some extent. The meek could become brave, the mean
become generous, and mild-mannered men could turn into little Hitlers once they put
on an air-raid warden’s uniform. She knew she had changed too. She could
hardly believe how self-centred she used to be, and yet now she chose to spend her
days sorting out old clothes for people, when she could be earning good money as a
secretary, and going out nightly to dance and flirt with off-duty officers.

Peter was
bringing a fellow pilot with him to her birthday celebration. His name was Edwin
Atkins, he was twenty-six and, according to Rose, very handsome and good fun.

Mariette wished Rose and Peter would
give up on playing Cupid; this was the third man they’d tried to push on to
her since Gerald was shot down. She expected he’d be much like the other two –
well bred, hearty, a bit full of himself. Fighter pilots might be national heroes
and most girls’ dream, but they weren’t hers.

Noah perched on the padded top of the
fireguard in the drawing room, smiling as the photographer he’d booked to call
at the house before leaving for the Café de Paris took some pictures of Mariette on
her own.

She looked sensational in the silver
dress, her strawberry-blonde hair cascading in loose curls over her bare creamy
shoulders and the elaborate necklace Lisette had lent her sparkling like real
diamonds, even if it was only paste. But the bracelet on her wrist was the real
thing, his present to her for her twenty-first.

It was just on two years she’d
been with them, and he’d grown very fond of her. She had Belle’s easy
manner, a ready smile, and a genuine interest in other people. When she’d
first got here, he thought she was a little calculating, as if she was weighing up
everyone to find their weak points. But that must have been just his old
journalistic mind seeing shadows where there were none, or perhaps it was because
Annie, her grandmother, had been like that. Annie had felt no loyalty to anyone,
particularly not to Mog who had been devoted to her. Etienne, Mariette’s
father, had some worrying traits too. He was the best possible man to have on your
side, but cross him at your peril.

Yet, whatever he thought two years ago,
he was wrong,
and Mariette was now very
much her own person. She might have her mother’s dogged persistence in doing
what she wanted to do, with her father’s courage and a sprinkling of
Annie’s arrogance thrown in, but she also had a big heart. He was hoping she
was going to fall for Edwin tonight. He was made of the right stuff – intelligent,
charming and from a good family.

Lisette kept telling him that he must
stop trying to marry the girl off to a ‘toff’; she thought Mariette
needed a man similar to Etienne to make her happy. But Mariette was his
god-daughter, and he couldn’t help but want the best for her.

‘Come on now, a group
picture,’ the photographer said, arranging Mariette in the centre with Rose
and Lisette either side of her, and beckoning to Noah.

‘Take one of the three most
beautiful girls in London first,’ Noah said as he got up.

Rose was wearing a fabulous pink evening
dress, and Lisette was as elegant as only a Frenchwoman could look in black
lace.

‘Aren’t I the lucky one
taking you three beauties to the Café de Paris!’

The air-raid siren sounded just as Noah
was paying off the taxi at the Café de Paris by Piccadilly Circus. It was chilly,
and both Mariette and Rose wrapped their fur stoles more tightly around their
shoulders before hurrying to the door of the club. When dance halls and nightclubs
were closed down at the start of the war, the Café de Paris had remained open
because it was underground and considered safer than any shelter. It had a long and
illustrious history, attracting the rich and glamorous ever since the Prince of
Wales had announced that it was his favourite nightclub. Rose, Noah and Lisette had
all been here before the war, but tonight they were just as excited as Mariette
because they wanted to see the resident band, Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson
and his West Indian Orchestra.

A long staircase led down to the first
of several galleries, each table lit with a small lamp. Mariette was bowled over by
the decor of the club as it was reminiscent of the ballroom of the White Star liner
Titanic
, with lots of gold leaf and beautiful chandeliers.

Peter and his friend Edwin were at the
table waiting for them, looking very dashing in their uniforms. Mariette was
pleasantly surprised that Edwin was every bit as handsome as Rose claimed. He had a
rugged face with a square chin, brown hair and soft brown eyes. She liked his smile;
it was slightly bashful, reflecting the fact that he wasn’t sure he wanted to
be fixed up with Rose’s relative. But even if he was reluctant, he
didn’t show it. He jumped up to shake her hand and then led her to the chair
next to him.

Their table was
on the lowest gallery, looking down on to the stage and the dance floor. At present
there was a quartet playing, and the leader was singing ‘Stormy
Weather’. Mariette was so busy looking at all the beautifully dressed women,
their partners either in evening dress or uniform, that she didn’t even notice
the waiter pouring them all champagne and Noah proposing a toast, until Edwin nudged
her arm.

‘To our beautiful Mariette on her
twenty-first,’ Noah said as he raised his glass. ‘I wish Belle and
Etienne could have been with us tonight, they would be so proud of you. But
let’s drink to a happy birthday and to absent friends!’

‘Happy birthday and to absent
friends,’ everyone chorused.

‘You must feel a little sad to be
so far from home on your birthday,’ Edwin said to her after the toast.

She was touched that he should be so
sensitive. ‘Yes, I was rather homesick this morning when I got up, my mother
always made such a fuss on our birthdays. My elder brother has just been called up,
which leaves only the younger one, Noel, for Mum to run around after.’

‘Do they hear in New Zealand just
how bad the Blitz is? Or do the newspapers there focus more on the North African
campaign and the Japanese?’

‘They never comment, but I’m
quite sure that my dad is very well informed about all the action, all over the
world. But then, they’d know better than most New Zealanders what war is
really like as my father was in the French Army in the last war. And my mother drove
ambulances in France.’

‘From what Peter tells me,
you’ve got the same spirit. You help out in the East End, I
believe?’

‘I got into it by accident really.
I was caught up in one of the first bombing raids there. Once I’d got to know
people and had seen the problems they face, I sort of had to help.
They have had such a hammering there. But I don’t
need to lecture you about that!’

He smiled at her, his blue eyes as warm
as a summer sky. ‘We tend to concentrate only on shooting the enemy down and
getting ourselves home unscathed. We don’t see the suffering that bombs cause
to civilians, at least not in the way you do.’

She was touched by his lack of ego,
loved his deep voice, and she felt a little shiver down her spine. Maybe she would
want to see this man again after tonight.

The meal was disappointing – the steak
was small and tough, and the vegetables were overcooked – but this was how it was
now in almost every restaurant, and no one commented on it. But the champagne and
the wine that followed were good, and it was lovely to be surrounded by people
having a good time.

Mariette was taken with Edwin; he was
funny, chatty, but didn’t try too hard. He wanted to know about New Zealand,
and said he’d even given some thought to emigrating there when the war ended.
‘If it ever ends,’ he said ruefully. ‘I love sea fishing and
sailing, I want to live in a country with space.’

‘There’s plenty of
that,’ she laughed. ‘And more sheep than people!’

‘What do you think of him?’
Rose whispered later, when Edwin and Peter had gone to the men’s room.

‘He’s very nice,’
Mariette admitted.

‘Does that mean you’ll want
to see him again?’

Mariette laughed. ‘Let’s see
what tonight brings first.’

The meal was finished by nine, and the
waiter cleared the table except for their drinks. ‘Snakehips’ Johnson
was due on now, and Mariette and Rose could hardly wait to see the handsome young
singer from Guyana who had got his nickname because of his smooth moves and
undulating hips.

They were not
disappointed. Ken Johnson was even better looking in the flesh than in the pictures
they’d seen, and his West Indian Orchestra played swing music that made them
all leave their table to go down on to the dance floor.

‘We won’t be able to move on
this tiny dance floor after ten,’ Edwin told her as they danced.
‘That’s when most people arrive. But one good thing will be that I can
hold you tighter.’

Mariette smiled. She would be glad to be
held close by him. But she was aware that more people arriving would mean long
queues in the powder room, so she excused herself to go there now.

She paused to look back just before she
went through the powder-room door. ‘Snakehips’ was singing the hit song
‘Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, How You Can Love’. The words made her feel a
little guilty that she was having such a good time with another man, but she quashed
that thought and reminded herself that this was a family party, not a date.

Lisette and Noah were doing a quickstep,
but Rose and Peter were just shuffling from side to side, their arms wound tightly
around each other. Edwin was standing by the dance floor just watching and smoking a
cigarette. She had half expected him to find another partner the minute she’d
gone, and it was nice that he hadn’t.

She was putting on some fresh lipstick
when she heard the almighty crash of a bomb. It sounded as if it had hurtled down
through the building, smashing everything in its path. The shock made her drop her
lipstick, and then the screaming began.

Opening the door, the sight that met her
eyes was so terrible that she screamed too. The bomb had come down from above the
stage, and she thought ‘Snakehips’ and the other band members were dead.
They were on the floor, their white dress shirts already red with blood.

The lights were
flickering but she saw, to her horror, that a woman sitting by the dance floor had
been decapitated.

Then the lights went out completely.

In that second or two while the lights
flickered she hadn’t been able to see any of her party because the dance floor
was so packed with people who had either fallen or were trying to get away. But as
she stood there, rigid with shock in the darkness, a second bomb came roaring
down.

There was enough illumination from the
flash of the bomb and some candles on the tables further back in the club to see
that no one on the dance floor had much chance of survival. They were too tightly
packed together, creating a maelstrom of flailing bodies as chunks of plaster, brick
and glass from the lights showered down on them.

Mariette instinctively stepped back
rather than moving forward, towards the carnage. She’d learned enough from
bombing in the East End to know the whole building could come down. She was under
the gallery, where, just a short while ago, they’d been sitting at a table
eating dinner. There were another two galleries above it, then the long staircase
leading up to the street. She knew that in a matter of minutes men with torches
would appear, and then it would be possible to see who was dead or seriously
injured. But unless Noah, Lisette, Peter, Rose and Edwin had left the dance floor
while she was in the powder room and returned to their table, she feared they were
in that tangled mass of bodies she’d glimpsed before the lights went out.

Looking up, she could see stars
twinkling through the hole in the roof made by the bomb. Then she saw bobbing
lights, from high up, and heard shouted instructions, ambulance sirens too. And it
was only then, when she knew help was at hand, that she began to cry.

More light shone from torches and
lanterns up at street
level, and a
commanding male voice called out. ‘Will everyone who is unhurt please make
their way up the staircase to the street,’ he yelled. ‘There are people
there waiting to take your names. Do not try to find your friends and family now,
you will just make it harder for the rescue team to help those who are
injured.’

Mariette couldn’t bring herself to
move. Her head said she must, but her eyes were on the tangled heap of people on the
dance floor. The light was too poor to identify anyone, but she strained her eyes
for a glimpse of Rose’s pink dress or Peter’s blue uniform. That she
couldn’t see either gave her a little hope, but she knew Lisette’s black
dress and Noah’s evening clothes would only blend in with all the others
there.

How many people were dead?

A hand on her arm startled her. It was a
rescue worker in a tin hat, carrying a torch. ‘Come with me, miss,
there’s people up the top who’ll take care of you.’

‘I was in the powder room when it
happened,’ she sobbed out. ‘It’s my twenty-first and I left them
all dancing. I don’t know if they are amongst those …’ She pointed
to the dance floor.

‘They may not have been,’ he
said gently. ‘Let’s get you upstairs, you might find them
there.’

Taking her arm firmly, he led her to the
staircase and then up the stairs. She stopped at the first landing to look back
down. There was more light now, and she could see that rescue workers, police and
ambulance men were moving around the bodies on the dance floor, checking for life.
Two women were tearing strips off the bottom of their dresses for bandages. She saw
them helping a woman in a red and white dress to sit up, but then realized it was a
white dress and the red was her blood.

Then she saw Rose, her pink dress
unmistakable, with
one arm flung across
her face, legs twisted as if she’d been tossed into the air and then dropped.
‘That’s one of my friends,’ she sobbed out to the rescue worker.
‘The one in the pink dress. Her mother and father and her boyfriend must be
there too. Will you check?’

‘I will after I’ve got you
upstairs,’ he said. ‘Come along, miss, this is no place for
you.’

There were so many people like her being
shepherded up the stairs. All in a state of shock, moving slowly, the way
she’d seen so many people do in the aftermath of other air raids. She could
hear crying all around her, people pleading for help in finding someone. And there
were injured people too, with cuts on their heads and faces, stumbling with the
effort of climbing up one side of the stairs, as rescue people with stretchers went
down the other side.

Finally, she reached street level and
the club’s foyer, where a female rescue worker in a siren suit took her name
and asked about the rest of the group she was with: their names, ages, clothing and
anything else which would help to identify them.

Mariette managed to give her the
information. ‘I saw Rose on the dance floor, so I think they are all
together,’ she added, breaking into fresh tears. ‘And there was Edwin
Atkins too. He’s in an RAF uniform, about five foot ten, brown hair, age
twenty-six.’

‘That’s a great help, Miss
Carrera,’ the woman said. ‘I can see you are shivering, so I’ll
get someone to give you a blanket and take you nearby for a cup of tea. You can wait
for news of your friends there.’

With an army blanket around her bare
shoulders, Mariette was led with some other people, all as deeply shocked as she
was, out of the club, along the street and down some steps to a basement room. There
were forty or so people in there
already, some sitting crying, others pacing the floor.
She could tell those who had come from the Café de Paris as they were all in evening
dress. There were other people too, in ordinary day clothes, who had clearly come in
here when the air-raid warning went off a couple of hours earlier.

A big woman in a WVS uniform was manning
a tea trolley, but to Mariette none of it seemed real. She felt she should be the
person behind the tea trolley handing out cups of tea because that was the role she
was used to. She had never expected to be the one receiving sympathy, being asked if
she was warm enough and other such solicitous questions.

She took a cup of tea, but she was
shaking so much that one of the helpers took it from her and led her to a seat,
putting the cup on the one next to her and then wrapping the blanket more firmly
around her shoulders.

Most of the other people couldn’t
stop talking in loud voices about what had happened. Someone said it was as well the
bombs came so early; if they’d been dropped after ten, when the club was at
its busiest, it would have been much worse. She gathered that most of these
survivors had been on the upper galleries. Some, like Mariette, had friends or
relatives who had gone down to the dance floor and were still unaccounted for, but
the vast majority hadn’t lost anyone, they were just here until they got some
transport home.

It made her feel sick to hear them
raking over the details, describing the band members who were hit, and the woman who
was decapitated.