The Daughter of Victory Lights

by Kerri Turner

  ‘Look, we’re only wasting time. Get on.’ The man was already in front of him, back against Flynn’s chest, curling his arms beneath his limp knees.

  Flynn wrapped his own arms around the soldier’s shoulders and then they were jogging forward. They’d only gone ten steps when there was a shout to shield their eyes. The darkness was broken apart by the strong beam of a light. It disoriented Flynn for a moment. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of it, then opened them as he felt the man begin to move again.

  ‘Name’s Alvin, by the way,’ he grunted, dispensing with ranking.

  Flynn had just shared his own name when he dug his dirtied fingers into Alvin’s uniform. ‘Over there, look!’

  Alvin spun, stumbled another ten steps, then leaned down into the debris and pulled free the small item Flynn had noticed. It was a toy: a plush dalmatian with large eyes that looked unbearably sad, as though it knew what had happened.

  Flynn gazed into those eyes, panic gripping his throat in a tight vice. ‘This is what she was holding,’ he rasped.

  He could see Alvin’s head moving, knew his eyes were scanning the wreckage.

  ‘There’s Red Cross nurses setting up over there,’ he told Flynn. ‘I’ll get you to them, then come back and look for her.’

  ‘No! We need to look now. If she’s in there and still alive, it might not be for much longer.’

  Flynn tried to roll himself out of Alvin’s grasp, but the other man had a stronger grip and wouldn’t let him go. He wished they’d exchanged ranks; if he outranked Alvin he could have ordered him to let him go.

  ‘Your legs are busted!’ Alvin said, staggering towards the nurses. ‘You won’t be any help to anyone.’

  ‘I don’t need my legs,’ Flynn cried. ‘I’ll use my hands, drag myself through the rubble.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Alvin muttered.

  He’d attracted the attention of a nurse, who came running up to give Flynn a once-over. ‘Only minor blood, no missing limbs, still breathing,’ she concluded.

  ‘Something’s wrong with his legs.’

  ‘Over to pain management then. We’ll see what we can do to fix him up later.’

  ‘I don’t need pain management. I need you to let go of me so I can help!’ Flynn shouted, fingers sinking into the fur of the toy Alvin had passed to him. Here was a chance to stop death instead of clearing up its remains—if only they were fast enough, had enough hands to help.

  ‘Quiet,’ the nurse snapped at him, already turning to stride away. ‘It’s hard enough to listen for sounds of life without you carrying on so.’

  ‘One man won’t make a difference,’ Alvin said as he lowered Flynn to the ground.

  They both knew that wasn’t strictly true. Sometimes, one man meant all the difference between life and death.

  ‘This isn’t a battlefield,’ Alvin went on, as though reading Flynn’s thoughts. ‘I’ll get my comrades to help. We’ll find her.’

  With that, he was gone, leaving Flynn only able to watch, useless once again in a world which needed help.

  He found it unbearable to be carted away to a hospital when the girl still hadn’t been found but knew better by then than to argue. The nurses were already referring to him as a troublemaker for twice having tried to drag his way over to the wreckage of the late-night café. They’d warned him he was causing more work, for now they’d have to pick gravel out of his palms.

  Once in the hospital bed, surrounded by low groans, the soft weeping of family members, the smell of sick, Flynn’s legs began to move again.

  He couldn’t understand. Back at the bombing site he couldn’t even twitch a toe on command, but now he was able to swing his legs over the side of his cot, flex his ankles, even stand if he held onto a wall. He looked around the room; there were men with missing limbs, women with their faces bandaged, small figures shrouded in white sheets being taken out with quiet dignity. He felt an imposter.

  ‘What have we here?’ the doctor asked, coming up to him with a harried air. His hair was messed up on one side, as though he’d repeatedly run a hand through it. ‘American soldier, are you? Caught in the blast?’

  ‘On the fringe. My legs stopped working. But as you can see …’ Flynn gestured at his lower half. His eyes were glued to the doctor’s face, searching for the sign that would tell him the doctor thought he’d been faking his injury. But there was nothing but the blank mask of professionalism.

  ‘Let’s see then.’ He had Flynn run through a myriad of tests, not telling him what he was looking for. Finally, he said, ‘You appear to be in good health and strength. No reason to keep you here any longer, although I will be writing a recommendation you be monitored for relapse by your base doctor before being cleared for any active duty.’ The doctor was looking over his shoulder, gesturing to a waiting nurse that he would be with her in one minute. Flynn ran his tongue over dry lips.

  ‘Are you saying there was never anything wrong with me?’

  ‘Bodies can react in strange ways to moments of intense stress. Temporary blindness, muteness, fits or the inability to move might be unusual but aren’t unheard of. It’s a coping mechanism of the brain. One that can’t be predicted and is completely involuntary.’

  He went on to reassure Flynn that it had nothing to do with a person’s character or fortitude, but all Flynn could hear was that he’d had no injury. He could have helped search for the girl all along. But his brain had turned coward and frozen his limbs until all threat—and all possibility of helping—had gone. A wash of shame settled over his skin, so thick and heavy it felt as though it might smother him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1944: London, England

  The 93rd Searchlight Regiment’s success at bringing down enemy planes was all too short-lived. Germany was now sending V1s and V2s over the Channel, knowing their extreme speed made them impossible to track. There was a heightened sense of danger among the searchlight group, and although they still worked like a well-oiled machine it wasn’t without tension. The stress of knowing how many aircraft they were letting through was almost too much to bear, and it was with a mixture of frustration and relief that they received new orders. They were to abandon the one-hundred-and-fifty-centimetre lights for smaller, more moveable ninety-centimetre ones, which would be loaded on the backs of lorries and taken throughout London to assist in recovering survivors from bombing sites.

  Evelyn had seen the destruction caused by bombs before, of course. But it was very different to be called to a bombing site as a searchlight operator. The first site she attended had once been a multi-storey hotel, but was now just a tangled mess of rubble. Somehow the building on the hotel’s left had survived, its windows shattered and its brick walls stained black with soot, one wall torn completely off so you could see inside. It was a miracle it was still standing. A red double-decker bus lay on its side in the street in front, partially obscured beneath the debris.

  There were shouts, but it was impossible to tell if they came from trapped passengers on the bus, survivors beneath the shattered walls and floors and furniture of the hotel, or the crowds of people—nurses, firefighters, helpful onlookers and neighbours desperate to find friends who had worked or stayed at the hotel.

  Evelyn’s job was to erect the light and aim its horizontal beam. She moved quickly and efficiently, making sure to train the light so that both bus and debris were illuminated. She was supposed to stay by the light, but that was impossible. She couldn’t stand by and simply watch a rescue effort. Not when another set of hands might be the difference in gaining the extra few seconds needed before someone died. She quickly learned to barely move her lips when she spoke, so the dust wouldn’t stick in her throat and choke her with the taste of lives snuffed out in an instant.

  Over the weeks and months that followed, the work didn’t get any easier. In fact, the longer they went on, the more Evelyn began to feel as though she knew the people she was pulling out of the wreckage. She saw the tiny details of their lives,
even when she didn’t want to. Two young girls wearing matching dresses who must be sisters. The elderly man whose pocket revealed a picture of a young man in uniform, a son at war he missed and was worried for. The woman wearing red lipstick and polished shoes who had been treating herself to a night out which would never come.

  They filled her nightmares when she finally fell asleep during the daylight hours, exhausted and aching. She was sure the other women had nightmares too, but no one ever mentioned them. Their own feelings weren’t important. What was important was that they were needed here: Evelyn, her 93rd Searchlight Regiment sisters, and their lights.

  The strange thing was, through all the death and horror, hope never quite faded. Evelyn could pull out a foot not attached to a body, or a child already stiff and cold, or a woman clinging to life only to take her final breath in a dark London street that smelled of dirt and blood. But the tiny possibility that someone might survive made her turn her mind from the horror and just keep digging.

  Evelyn didn’t want to go home to Cynthia on her next rare break from the regiment. It was difficult to tell which had become more tense: their silences, or the conversations in which Evelyn inevitably veered into the wrong territory.

  Disembarking the train at Victoria Station, she thought about going to a nearby café she’d enjoyed before. She couldn’t afford one of the steaks they were famous for, but she liked to breathe in the savoury smell of the meat as she sipped her unsweetened tea. An hour or two there might give her the strength to go home.

  But when she got there, it was to see a new notice propped up in the window: Horse meat only in this establishment. She sighed. Another café’s menu crumbled beneath the restrictions. She didn’t fancy the smell of charred horse meat, so cast her mind about for somewhere else to go.

  Climbing aboard a bus, she paid for a ticket to Holborn. There was a department store there, Gamages, with a large model railway on display she’d heard talk of.

  The railway was attracting smiles from children and adults alike. Evelyn stayed to watch as staff changed the lighting so it went from a daytime scene to a night one. She wanted to see how those lights worked. She crouched down level with the children, her nose almost close enough to be nipped by the train, her eyes taking in the mechanics that were visible. She wished she had some paper to jot down a sketch, and looked around for the famous Gamages catalogue. It was no use though; paper was another thing that had come under strict rationing.

  Realising she was beginning to get odd looks from nearby parents, Evelyn picked up the gasmask bag she’d dropped on the floor and reluctantly edged away. She wandered in the direction of the electronics department, figuring there might be something interesting to look at there. A display wireless was switched on and the poet Una Marson was critiquing a Caribbean poem. Although she seemed largely in favour of it, one line was drawing her ire. Her trademark sharp wit made Evelyn chuckle; at the same time a man on the other side of the radio laughed. They both ducked their heads around, almost knocking them together, which caused them to laugh again.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Evelyn said, pushing her curls back into place.

  ‘Not at all,’ the man replied in a heavy accent. ‘It was my mistake.’

  He was young and handsome, a fact impossible not to notice given how much time Evelyn spent around only women these days. His dark-blond hair was neatly tucked beneath the blue-grey wool cap that marked him as part of the Royal Air Force, and his wide-set blue eyes seemed to smile as he stuck out a hand. Evelyn felt a flush of pleasure as she shook it.

  His name was Miroslaw. He was Polish, part of the night fighter squadron in the Polish Air Force that was operating out of Great Britain in conjunction with the RAF. The Poles were the talk of London for their unmatched flying skills. Their success rates were nigh on implausible and gave a beleaguered Britain something to feel triumphant about for once.

  Evelyn thought of the words Ralph Ingersoll, an American newspaper man, had written about the Polish airmen: They say the girls cannot resist the Poles, nor the Poles the girls. She felt her eyelashes actually flutter a fraction, then wanted to berate herself for being so daft.

  ‘Won’t you let me buy you a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘To repay you, for almost …’ He gestured at their heads.

  Knowing she should really be getting home to Cynthia, Evelyn accepted the invitation. A cup of tea turned into a restaurant meal of tinned salmon and potatoes, which turned into a kiss underneath a streetlight just as it was turned off for the blackout.

  ‘I will walk you home,’ Miroslaw’s lips whispered against hers.

  ‘It’s a long way. I’m fine to catch a bus by myself,’ she responded.

  She couldn’t risk Cynthia seeing her with a man. But still, she didn’t make a move to go. He had made her laugh, and laughter was such a rare commodity these days.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I have … My friend, a British man in the RAF, he has a place in London he no longer uses. Near the store where we met. I can borrow it in return for giving him some of my rations, if you wanted to …’

  Perhaps Evelyn should have felt insulted by the suggestion. But Miroslaw’s cheeks were colouring and she had a suspicion she was the first girl he’d invited there. And even if she wasn’t, did she care? She ran her hands up the starched and ironed sleeves of Miroslaw’s uniform. The Evelyn of old would have cared. But the Evelyn of old wasn’t at risk of being crushed by any building she happened to be in or near, or engulfed in flames from an incendiary, or blasted apart when a delayed explosive hidden within a bomb that had already struck took out all rescuers.

  In that moment, with the streets blanketing them in thick darkness, all Evelyn could think about was what if she was the next person to be pulled from the rubble? She didn’t want the person who dug her out to notice all her little details and see no kind of life at all. She looked at Miroslaw’s hopeful eyes. The war had robbed them of the surety of tomorrow. There was only today. And if she wanted to live, she had to do it now.

  ‘Show me this flat,’ she said.

  It turned out to be a small and rather shabby place above a row of shops, but Evelyn couldn’t have cared less if it was the Anderson shelter in her sister’s garden. All thought was lost as Miroslaw’s arms formed a circle around her. Despite everything going on in the world, his embrace made Evelyn feel safe.

  Theirs became a regular meeting—or as regular as it could be, with his flying and her regiment work. They didn’t talk about the war, or anything of consequence. It was what made their time together so special. Evelyn introduced him to Anne Shelton’s songs; he made tea, and laughed that despite all the deprivations the British always found a way to have their cup of tea. Their meetings were an oasis of trivialities and amusement in a world gone mad.

  Their affair would end when one of them died; of that, Evelyn was certain. It was the way everything good ended these days. But until then, she was content to enjoy what she had.

  In the end, it was someone else’s death that made it impossible for Evelyn to continue seeing Miroslaw.

  The regiment had been sent to light the remains of a destroyed terrace of houses, and Evelyn had abandoned her searchlight once again to help dig out survivors. To her left, a woman was wandering around with her arms wrapped around a kitchen sink which she’d evidently salvaged from the rubble. Evelyn had seen stranger.

  ‘Evelyn, you might want to check your light,’ Gussie called. ‘He’s headed straight for it.’

  Evelyn turned to see a man, covered head to toe in soot and dust, stumbling towards the light. She let out a cry and jumped to her feet. The arch in their lights could blind a person if they looked directly at it. Of course, civilians didn’t know this.

  She reached the man and whirled him into her arms in a waltz-like embrace, shielding his eyes. ‘Don’t look directly at it,’ she said, pulling him away from the beam.

  He tried to resist, but his body was weak. When Evelyn stood back slightly and checked his eyes,
she saw that his pupils were large and all colour had drained from his cheeks. He looked as corpse-like as the actual bodies that had been pulled from the destruction and were being lined up in a neat row. Shock. Evelyn had seen it enough times by now to recognise the signs.

  ‘Come on now, come with me,’ she said, nudging him more gently this time. ‘Let’s get you over to the nurses. You’ll be nice and safe there. They’ll take good care of you. There’ll be an ARP warden who can take your name and set you up with a place to stay …’

  She knew he couldn’t understand her in his confused state, but the words didn’t matter so much as the comforting tone of a voice in charge. It was in the middle of her spiel that she heard it: a minute sound that should have been undetectable in the panicked bustle of the bombing site but would forever remain the sound of wartime London for her. A gasp of fear, raw and certain.

  Evelyn turned towards it, and her eyes met Gussie’s. She was standing at the corner of the very end building. Beneath Evelyn’s gaze the wall next to her crumbled, obliterating Gussie from sight. One minute she was there, and the next she wasn’t. Poof, a disappearing act.

  For a second Evelyn wanted to laugh. Magic had no place here. A sliver of a lifetime later, the force of what she’d seen hit her. Then she was running, falling to her knees when she reached the bricks where Gussie had disappeared.

  ‘Gussie! Augusta!’ Evelyn’s voice was hoarse and not at all her own.

  She was shoulder to shoulder with her regiment sisters, their broken nails and bloodied hands scrabbling at the bricks, throwing chunks away, calling Gussie’s name.

  Two of the regiment girls stopped; one sitting on her heels and staring into space, dumbstruck; the other with her legs bent, elbows on her knees, hung her head low.

  ‘No,’ Evelyn said, but it was only a minute before her hands stalled too. It was obvious. There was no use. The wall had been too big.

  Evelyn felt her backside hit the ground. Her legs were splayed before her, and she let tears stream down her cheeks, wiping her nose with her sleeve in a way that would have appalled Cynthia. How many losses had she witnessed by then? How many bodies had she pulled from the rubble? Yet this loss still managed to hurt, because it was someone she had known.