The noise and confusion, the smell c burning, the mingled cries of people who were still able to cjr, whirled around him, making him sick and dizzy.
”Look, catch hold of this !” The end of large timber was thrust into his arms and without any protest he licked with it while two I other men pulled it gently from a pile of rbble. When it had been
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laid on the ground he hurried forward and said, ”The . . . the garden flat.”
”What?” The man turned a face to him that looked as if it had been freshly powdered.
”The garden flat. There was a garden flat.” r
”Everything’s flat, chum, you can see for yersel’.”
”The people, the people inside.”
”Look” - the man rounded on him - ”we don’t know who was inside or how many; we’ll be lucky if we find out by mornin’. Now if you want to make yourself useful get at them stones and move them gently.”
He didn’t do as he was bidden and start moving the stones, but he scrambled over the strewn debris and round what he thought was the corner of the house and to where the garden flat had been. There was no sign of it, at least above ground. What was here was a huge hole. There were men round it. Pulling at the sleeve of one, he stammered, ”Ha ... ha ... have you got anybody out ?”
”Not yet. There was a shelter underneath, there was bound to be somebody in it.”
”There . . . there was someone in the flat above an’ all, my aunt and her child and . . . and her father.”
”Oh!” The man was shouting now. ”There were two adults and a bairn here, this is a relative.”
The man turned to him again. ”You sure they were in?”
”They . . . they were bound to be, the baby’s young. She . . . she doesn’t go out at nights.”
”Well, all I can say, lad, it’s a pity she didn’t go out this night in particular; can’t see anybody standing a chance down there. Still, we’ll have a go now we’ve got something sure to go on.”
When the man started giving directions Dick said, ”I’ll. . . I’ll help. I must see -” He couldn’t finish and say, ”if they’re dead or alive”; as the man said there was little hope.
”Well, gently does it. Straddle that beam if you can.” He swung an arc light from a standing support towards the hole. ”You’re about the lightest of us, ease yourself along it. Go careful because it’s at a steep angle, but once you feel it give, stop.”
Dick threw his leg over the beam, then cautiously hitched himself forward. The sweat was raining from his face as he glanced downwards into the tangled debris of wood, brick, and, what now made him want to retch, recognizable pieces of Florrie’s furniture.
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She had loved her furniture. Oh Florrie ! Florrie ! Oh D$& I Dad !
He was brought sharply from his moaning thought by the man shouting, ”It’s steady then?” and after a moment he called back, ”Yes, quite steady. It ... it seems fixed tight.” He pointed to where the beam disappeared into a mass of stones.
The man’s voice came to him again, shouting, ”Well and good, we’ll take it from there.”
And so they took it from there. He became lost in time. He was aware, yet unaware, that his back was breaking, his arms were snapping, his throat was choked with dust, his clothes were Tom and covered with lime. For how long he and the other members of the team were in the hole at a stretch he had no idea. He only knew that they lifted blocks of stone that would in ordinary times have defied any combined human effort; that they passed pieces of furniture from one to the other, those pieces that couldn’t be pulled up were put in a sling, or were roped.
It was some time in the early dawn when a fresh set of men took over and he was hauled up from the hole, which was now much deeper than when he had first dropped into it. It was as he sat on a pile of rubble that he became aware of Hilda and Molly. Molly was carrying mugs of tea from a Salvation Army canteen trolley, but whatever Hilda had been doing she had stopped and was now standing staring at him, and he, because of his exhaustion, said no word to her but drooped his head into his hands.
It was Molly who brought his head up as she pressed a mug of tea into his hand. He had just finished drinking it when a shout came from the hole: ”Someone here.”
He pulled himself quickly to his feet; then the three of them moved forward. He could not see what was happening down below until the men on the rim of the hole moved aside and a form was laid gently on the rubble. It was that of a woman, but not the one that was in their minds.
”There’s a number here in the corner, some alive I think.”
They were now pushed back, and all they could do was to wait.
As each figure was hauled up from the shelter they looked down on it. A few were groaning, the majority would never groan again.
They all now seemed to lose count of time until a distant voice yelled, ”God! I think there’s a bairn here. Aye, aye; yes, there is.” At this Dick pressed forward and lowered himself once more down into the mangled depths. As he went to scramble over the 248
head of Florrie’s couch that was sticking en«NijWi-aian gripped his arm and said, ”Steady! Wait on. Steady.” ; -’ ’
”The bairn, is it alive?”
”Aye, yes, I should say so, we heard it whimpering. But it’s fast under a woman; she must be lying over the cot.”
Dick drew his lower lip tightly between his teeth; then he said quietly, ”Let me give a hand, she’s
. . . she’s a relative.”
”We’ll all give a hand, mate, but slowly does it. Don’t go too close. Help to move this stuff here so as to make the way clear for her when they get to her. She’s fast held across her back from what I can see, but it’s just her arm caught in the front.”
Dick looked in the direction in which the man was pointing, but all he could make out at first was bits of twisted wood that could be remains of anything. Then he saw the broken bedhead over which was draped a narrow strip of velvet curtain. He knew it was velvet and he knew it was red; Florrie had them hanging both in the bedroom and her sitting-room. . . . And then he saw the form, at least the humped back. He couldn’t see the legs, and from the top of the hump an arm protruded; the head and the other arm were lost behind a jagged slab of plaster.
Quickly and silently they worked now, passing the debris from one hand to another. Once he stopped and muttered, ”It hasn’t cried again,” and the man said simply, ”No.”
When they managed to dislodge the piece of plaster that was covering her head, it also exposed part of the cot over which she was lying, and at that moment the cry came again from the baby.
They stopped all activity for a moment to listen to the loud, natural, hungry cry.
”Careful, careful. Easy, easy.”
These words were said over and over again; then they were changed to, ”There you are then.
There you are then,” and at this point he saw that one of the men had eased the child from under Florrie’s contorted body. He didn’t pass it to the man next to him, but came stumbling over the rubble with it, saying, ”There doesn’t seem to be a scratch on it, it’s face is hardly dirty. And that’s a healthy yell, isn’t it ?” Then he stopped as Dick said, ”I’ll take it; it’s . . . it’s my niece.”
He could have said, ”my sister”, but that would have complicated matters.
Yet when the man put the child into his arms he knew he couldn’t get out of the hole with it, he knew he’d have to pass it
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on. But now lifting his head, he shouted as he held out the child to further waiting arms, ”Give it to my . . . my mother. She’s up there waiting.”
Hilda and Molly were standing some way back from the hole now but they heard clearly each word that Dick had yelled, and they glanced at each other. Then Hilda drooped her head forward and looked towards the ground; but only for a moment before she took four slow steps to where the men were standing
waiting. When the dust-laden bundle appeared over the rim of the hole as it passed from one set of arms to another, she stared at it, her body stiff, her arms by her sides, until there was a movement from a Red Cross uniformed figure beside her; then her arms almost shot out and the child was in them, Florrie’s child, Abel’s child.
”All right, missis ?”
She moved her head once.
”You’ll see to her? There’ll be a doctor at the dressing-station wagon if you want him.”
Again she moved her head.
Molly was at her side now, and Hilda turned to her and went to speak, but no sound came from her throat. She coughed and swallowed deeply before bringing out in a cracked voice, ”I’ll. . . I’ll have to get her home and . . . and cleaned up. Will you stay and see what’s happened to ... to our Florrie ?”
”Yes, yes, I’ll do that. Can you manage?”
Hilda merely nodded as she moved away, her head bent over the baby.
Molly watched her for a moment; then she turned swiftly back towards the hole again, there to see a man carrying a medical bag being lowered down into it. Her voice a whisper, she asked the man next to her, ”Is she ... is she alive . . . the mother ?”
”I don’t know, lass, but somebody down there is, they’ve just called for a doctor. This one they’re bringing up now though doesn’t look as if there’s any life left in him.”
Molly now looked down on the thin crumpled figure they were laying out on the stones.
Although the face was covered with lime she immediately recognized Mr Donnelly and she thought, Poor soul! Poor soul!
She didn’t know how many times she repeated these words during the next half-hour, or was it an hour, until she found Dick standing by her side. She hadn’t noticed when he came up, all her 250
attention had been on the makeshift stretcher to which one of the victims was strapped. When Dick stumbled away, she went by his side holding on to his arm, and she was surprised when his steps took them over the tangle of pipes running from the fire engines, past the row of army lorries, and towards the still standing wall that separated the garden from the street. Here, pulling himself gently from her hold, he leant his face against the stone and began to cry. Molly said no word as she turned him from the wall and into her arms, until he straightened up and, drying his face, said, ”I’m sorry.”
”Don’t be silly. ... Is ... is she dead?”
”No.” He shook his head. ”Perhaps it would be better if she ’ were. The doctor had to take one arm off and her foot is crushed, but her back’s got it worst of all I think.”
”Poor, poor, Florrie.” Molly’s voice was breaking now.
”Yes, poor, poor Florrie.” He did not add, ”And poor, poor Dad.”
There was a jinx on his father, he seemed fated never to be happy. He would be Tom to shreds by this latest blow of fate, blaming himself for not being with her. If he had loved her before he would love her more now ... if she lived. And she must live, at least until he came out, otherwise .
. . well . . . His mind refused to take him further.
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The child lay gurgling in its new cot. She kept the cot mostly in the kitchen where she could keep looking at the child. She wanted to keep looking at it; she sat for hours looking at it, whether it was awake or asleep. She kept telling herself not to do this, she kept telling herself that she only had it for a short time, she kept telling herself that Abel would be out any day now and he would take the child. . . . But where would he take it ? He had nowhere to take it to. She was going to tell Dick today to tell him that she would look after it until he got settled, and she knew that that would take some time because wherever he went it would have to be a pkce where a wheel-chair could be taken in. And another thing, Florrie wouldn’t be out of hospital for weeks, months, so she could have the child with her all that time. . . . That’s if he agreed to let her stay. But what was the alternative ? He could put her in the care of a council home. No, no ; she wouldn’t stand that. She’d even go to him herself.
Turning from placing a kettle on the stove, she went to the cot and, bending over it, she smiled and chuckled down into the laughing face, saying, ”There now. There now. You’re either laughing or you’re crying, and either means you want to be lifted up, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?”
Having given herself the usual excuse to hold the child, she was about to take it from the cot when she heard Dick’s familiar quick step coming up the yard, and she straightened herself and went back to the sink. She was scouring it out when he opened the door.
Any faint semblance of the boy that might have remained up till a week ago was gone, so also had the stammer and the twitch to his shoulder, which in a lesser form had persisted even after the court case. Stark reality had replaced the subconscious fears.
He didn’t speak, but going to the cot he looked down on the child. Then he took off his coat and threw it over the back of the
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chair before walking towards the fire. After staring down at it for a moment, he said, ”I couldn’t tell him.”
She turned sharply towards him now, saying, ”You should have; he’s got to be told some time.”
Slowly sitting down in the wooden armchair, he said, ”I daren’t risk it, not in that place. He might have gone berserk and tried to escape, and it’s only another week or so. He ... he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t come. I told him she’d had a bad dose of flu. By the way” - he turned his head towards her - ”I . . .1 called at the hospital on my way back. She would like to see you.”
”What!” Her hand went to her throat. ”She said that?”
”Yes.”
She, too, now sat down.
”You’ll go?”
She moved her head slowly from side to side while looking down towards the floor. ”I ... I don’t know; I don’t think I could face her.”
”You shouldn’t hold anything against her now.”
”Oh, I don’t. I don’t.” Her head was up and shaking now. ”It’s just that . . . well -” She rose from the chair, her fingers twisting each other as if her intent was to wring them off. Then with her back to him, she muttered, ”I’ve wished her ill, I ... I don’t think I could face her.”
He came and put his arm around her shoulder; then on a small laugh, he said, ”Join the gang.”
”What?” She turned her head up quickly towards him as he said, ”Molly went through purgatory because she had wished her mother dead. For years and years I wished my mother dead so that Dad wouldn’t have to go through what he is going through now. Retaliation is a natural feeling, we all experience it. You go and see her. She needs someone, someone belonging to her.”
”No, that’s silly. We don’t belong, you know that.”
”Yes, you do; you were brought up belonging. Birth has nothing to do with it, it’s the early years you spend together I think that matter. Why do I feel about you the way I do and not about the woman who bore me ? Come on.” He squeezed her to him for a moment. ”We’ll go along together tonight; Molly will look after the bairn. But now” - he released his hold on her and pushed her gently away from him - ”I’d consider it a favour if I was offered a cup of tea.”
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This gentle bullying of her about his food and drink was the »’ only tactic he seemed able to use in an effort to divert her, but she didn’t smile at him, she merely bowed her head and went towards the stove and took the kettle off and mashed a pot of tea. *|-
The nurse had opened the ward doors and the horde of visitors had swarmed in, scattering to this side and that as if driven by a powerful wind, but Hilda still stood in the corridor. Her body stiff, her throat tight, she looked pleadingly at Dick now as she said, ”You go in first, go on, please.
I’d rather see her on my own. . . . Just sort of prepare her.”
He shook his head for a moment, then turned away, and she remained standing where she
was, waiting. But when she saw him returning in a matter of minutes her eyes widened and she shook her head slowly in protest against a sudden thought, but he reassured her, smiling and saying,
”It’s all right, she’s just been moved into a side ward, number two.” He turned and pointed.
”That’s it.”
”Is she worse?”
”I don’t know. Just stay put.”
She stayed put for five minutes this time and when the door opened and he came out unsmiling now, he said to her, ”She’s got to go down again to the operating theatre, in the morning.”
”It’s bad?”
”Well, she doesn’t look any different, but. . . but I think there’s something gone wrong with . . .
with her spine. Go on.” He pushed her gently. ”She’s waiting for you.”
She moved towards the door, she went through it, she was in the room, then she was standing looking at the stranger lying flat in the narrow bed. Oh my God! my God! she couldn’t move either backwards or forwards until the voice, the known voice, said, ”Hello, Hilda.”
She had to force her legs towards the bed, and then she was looking down on to the face that she had been jealous of all her remembered life.
”How are you?” It wasn’t her asking the question but Florrie.
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What could you say to that ? She bowed her head, and when the tears rolled down her cheeks Florrie said, ”Now, now. Look.”
”I’m • I’m sorry.” The words were the most sincere Hilda had ever spoken in her life, and in answer to them Florrie said, ”It’s me who should be saying I’m sorry, Hilda. You’ve . . . you’ve gone through so much, and . . . and I’ve added to it. It’s been on my mind. Yes, I’m the one that should say, Tm sorry’.”
Hilda closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them she found herself staring down on to the one hand that lay limp on top of the bed cover. Then her eyes travelled to the cage covering the bottom of the bed and in her imagination she saw the mangled foot. She’d had lovely feet, lovely legs ; she had always envied her her legs, long, slim, springing legs. Her own had always been short and thick. But hers were still whole. Oh God! God! why had this to happen ? She wouldn’t have wished this on the devil himself. And at this moment she felt that she was the cause of it all. It had all come about through her thinking. ;
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