A Strong Hand to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  Even the firemen, having exhausted the hydrants and drained the canal, could not contain the fire. They concentrated their efforts instead on getting people out. Many were trapped, some were buried by machinery, badly injured or burned. Peggy was one of the fortunate ones, although she had a number of cracked ribs and a deep gash on her head that needed stitching, and a mass of cuts and bruises. Later she lay in the General Hospital and remembered her friends and colleagues that had been badly injured and killed that night and knew she was lucky to have got off so lightly.

  Jenny went home at seven o’clock on the morning of 20 November to wash and change her clothes. She met the accusing red-rimmed eyes of her mother as soon as she went in the door. ‘Here she is, the heartless bitch.’

  Jenny was in no fit state for this after the traumatic night she’d had and she fought to control herself. ‘Mother, I know Anthony’s death is a shock and I’m heart sore about it myself. But last night was the heaviest raid I’ve ever seen. I was needed.’

  ‘There you go, you see,’ Norah said bitterly. ‘Other people are always more important than your own.’

  ‘What good would I have done, stopping here?’ Jenny asked. Her voice broke as she went on, ‘If I could do anything to bring Anthony back I would, but he’s gone. We … we must accept it.’

  ‘Accept it? I’ve sat up all night with bombs pounding around me and cried for my son.’ Norah glared at her daughter and burst out, ‘Oh, you’re a wicked selfish girl.’

  Later, getting ready for work, Jenny wondered if her mother was right, for as yet, she’d shed no tears for Anthony. She really didn’t know how she would cope without him. But she was so shocked and stunned by the events of the previous night, she knew she wasn’t really thinking straight.

  At work the supervisor looked at the white pallor of her skin and her black-ringed eyes and sent her home again. But Jenny didn’t want to go home, she needed to rest, to try and sleep for hours and hours, but she’d get no peace in the house with her mother and grandmother.

  Instead, she found herself drawn to the wreckage facing the school. The unexploded bomb had been defused at two that morning, but the wreckage had been untouched.

  There was another woman staring like she was. She was quite tubby and had a nondescript brown coat and a headscarf covering her frizzy grey hair. She looked completely flabbergasted. She turned to Jenny with anguished eyes, tears streaming down her face, as she said, ‘Bleeding mess, eh?’

  Jenny nodded.

  The woman pointed and said, ‘Used to be my house, that did.’

  ‘Then you’re Beattie, the one they told us was away?’ Jenny said.

  ‘That’s right. Was you here last night then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘When I have my other hat on I’m an ARP warden. I’m terribly sorry about your house.’

  ‘So am I duck,’ Beattie said. ‘Me and my Bert will have to lodge with our Vera, and the snobby cow can’t turn us away. But what I can’t get over is Patty and the nippers all gone like that and yet they were in a bleeding Anderson shelter. Lived right next door for years and never a cross word between us. God it’s hard,’ she wiped tears from her eyes and said, ‘And young Linda an’ all.’

  ‘Linda?’

  ‘Her daughter, Patty’s daughter. She was only twelve.’

  ‘There was no girl with them.’

  Beattie stared at her. ‘There must have been.’

  ‘There wasn’t,’ Jenny insisted. ‘I was here at the scene.’

  ‘Could she have been blown out of the shelter?’ Beattie asked.

  Jenny shook her head. ‘No. It collapsed inwards. We had to move sandbags and corrugated iron to get them out.’

  ‘Didn’t they have a list?’ Beattie demanded. ‘Who was in charge?’

  ‘Phil Rogers.’

  ‘Oh him,’ Beattie threw up her hands in despair. ‘He’s no bleeding good. His mother’s the same, I was at school with her. As for him, he couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.’

  Jenny had the desire to laugh at the expression on the outraged woman’s face. What, she wondered, was the matter with her? Was she mad to want to laugh when a child was missing, possibly dead. The laughter bubbled within her, high and hysterical. Beattie, far from being offended, put her arms around Jenny’s shoulders and said, ‘There duck, there.’

  The laughter turned to racking sobs. Jenny spluttered through her tears in an attempt to explain. ‘I’m so sorry. You see, my brother was shot down yesterday as well.’

  ‘Oh, you poor sod,’ Beattie said, and the sympathy from a perfect stranger opened the floodgates at last. Beattie led her to the kerb where they both sat down and she held Jenny in her arms while the tears streamed from her eyes. When the paroxysm of grief was spent, Jenny lay, worn out against Beattie who then said, ‘I’ve got to look into this business of Linda being missing, but I don’t want to leave you by yourself. Is there anyone I can take you to?’

  ‘My gran’s,’ Jenny said, not wanting to go home. ‘She lives in Westmead Crescent.’

  Maureen O’Leary was half demented herself when they arrived with the news that the BSA where Peggy had worked on the night shift had been attacked the previous night. Gerry had been like a madman until Peggy was able at least to send news that she was safe and in the General Hospital, nothing then would do, but he had to go up there. ‘I’ve put in enough hours overtime,’ he’d said to Maureen. ‘They can do without me for once.’

  ‘But son, she says she’s not badly injured, and thank God for it.’

  ‘I have to see for myself, Mammy,’ Gerry said, looking at his mother bleakly. ‘My life’s nothing without her. I thought you knew that.’

  ‘I guessed, lad,’ Maureen said. ‘And I should tell the girl if I were you and put her out of her misery. I’d have done the same for my own man. Go on and satisfy yourself.’

  And then, not half an hour after he left, she opened the door to her granddaughter who was being helped by a woman she’d never seen before.

  ‘What in God’s name is the matter with you?’ Maureen cried, putting her arm around Jenny and drawing her inside, where the girl sat on the settee sobbing with her head in her hands. ‘What is it?’ Maureen asked Beattie, but Beattie didn’t answer. It wasn’t her tale to tell.

  ‘I have to be off,’ she said.

  ‘Will you not stop a while?’ Maureen said.

  ‘No, ta all the same,’ Beattie said. ‘I have things to do, and you two need to be alone.’

  When Beattie had gone, Maureen went into the kitchen and came back with a cup of tea that she pressed into Jenny’s hands. ‘Drink that,’ she said, ‘and then for God’s sake, tell me what it is.’ And then she sat very still and said, ‘It’s no one else is it child? You haven’t had another telegram?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘None of the family,’ she said. ‘It isn’t that. It’s just that last night was a terrible raid and I saw some awful sights.’ She looked at her gran and said, ‘Beattie, the woman who brought me here, had her house destroyed and her neighbour, a young woman with three children, was killed and her two young sons with her. The daughter is still missing; she’s only twelve years old.’ Jenny’s hands shook so much she was in danger of spilling the tea.

  ‘I know pet. It’s this awful war.’ Maureen said, and put her arm around Jenny’s shoulder.

  ‘Yesterday, I told myself that Anthony had a sort of choice,’ Jenny said. ‘I mean, he chose to be a pilot, but he’d never choose to die, he loved life too much for that. This morning, I suddenly realised I’d never see my brother again. I’ll never see him smile or hear his laugh or have a joke and argue with him. Oh Gran, I don’t think I can bear it.’

  ‘You’ll bear it, cutie,’ Maureen said sadly. ‘You’ll never forget Anthony like you’ve never forgotten your daddy, but you’ll learn to live without him.’

  Jenny knew her grandmother was right, she’d have to learn to live without Anthony, however hard it was.

  ‘I’ll tell
you what,’ Maureen said, ‘you need a good feed and a sleep. Then you’ll feel better able to cope.’

  ‘Oh no, Gran.’

  ‘Oh yes Gran,’ Maureen said. ‘Sit you down and drink that tea before it goes cold. I’ll just be a minute.’

  After a bowl of stew and another cup of tea Jenny did feel better, but she was still very tired and her gran lifted her legs onto the settee and covered her with a blanket.

  She slept deeply and didn’t wake, not even when Gerry came back and said he was away to see the priest because when Peggy came out of that place they were to be married as soon as was humanly possible, and no one was going to stop him.

  Then Beattie came to see how Jenny was. ‘Tell her we’re searching the bomb site,’ she said. ‘It’ll be for a body, I dare say, for if the child’s under it she doesn’t stand much chance.’

  ‘There’s always a chance,’ Maureen said.

  Beattie thought she could only say that because she hadn’t seen the mountain of rubble, but she didn’t disagree with the older woman.

  Linda had given up the chance of being rescued. She seemed to have been inside her black tomb for ever and was in so much pain. She’d screamed in agony when she’d woken up and had shouted and yelled, but no one had heard. There was no one there. It was like everyone in the whole world had disappeared. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there, but it seemed a long time. When she’d first woken up and opened her eyes she’d shut them quickly, because such intense dark frightened her. She would have said she wasn’t afraid of the dark, like George was, but this dark was different.

  She shivered with cold and fear, her legs were throbbing and she cried out with pain. God, she’d never felt pain like this and she wasn’t sure she could stand it. She was soaked because she’d had to wet her knickers, she couldn’t ever remember doing that before. She lay on her back and let the tears trickle out of her eyes and run unchecked down her cheeks.

  Phil Rogers looked mournfully at the mountain of debris and said, ‘You sure there’s someone in there?’

  ‘Course I ain’t sure,’ Beattie said. ‘But if she ain’t in there, where the hell else is she? All I know is, if you’d checked the bloody list last night, you’d have known she was missing, at least.’

  Phil looked at Beattie and remembered the previous evening. Pockets of incendiary fires had lit up the sky and bombs had been raining down as they tried to evacuate people from the area of an unexploded bomb in Paget Road School playground just yards from houses. He knew it would have been easy to miss one young girl in that nightmare. They daren’t use heavy lifting gear whilst there was even the remotest chance of someone being alive inside it. He knew how impossible a feat it was going to be to clear the area by hand, but Beattie had begun to shift the bricks already. ‘Come on you daft ’aporth and put your bleeding back into it,’ she cried.

  When Jenny woke, she was determined to go and help after hearing Beattie’s news. She impatiently swallowed the sandwich and drank the scalding hot tea that Maureen insisted on before she’d let her leave the house. She gave little mind to her mother and grandmother. They can look after themselves for once, she thought, and maybe it will do the pair of them good.

  She hadn’t quite reached the bombed site, when she saw Beattie detach herself from a group moving debris, and run down the road to Jenny. ‘You’ll never believe it,’ she said, ‘but we’ve heard her. Or at least, we heard a scream from somewhere, so she’s still alive, but we don’t know exactly where she is.’

  Jenny wondered how the child had survived so long. The bomb that had killed her mother and brothers and landed on the house fell at about seven o’clock. She’d been incarcerated for nearly twenty-four hours.

  Doctor Sanders was there on standby. He was very worried, because since the one petrified scream an hour or so ago there had been nothing, though they’d knocked and called repeatedly.

  Suddenly one of the rescuers said, ‘I reckon there’s only one place she can be.’

  ‘Where’s that then?’

  ‘In the pantry,’ the man said. ‘It’s well known. You’re as safe there as in a shelter, built under the stairs as it is. That’s where she’d have made for if she’d got any sense, I’d say.’

  Nearly everyone agreed with that and the rescuers began to concentrate on the debris at the very edge of the stack where the side of the house and stairs would be. They worked feverishly for hours in the black bitter cold night using the inadequate light from shielded torches. Jenny’s coat was now filthy dirty and her fingers blistered, her nails were all broken and her back felt as if it was ready to snap in two, but she made no word of complaint. But when Maureen O’Leary appeared with a tray of tea and buttered soda bread for them all later, she could have kissed her. ‘Any news?’ she asked Jenny.

  ‘None for hours,’ Jenny said. ‘When I first got here Beattie said they’d heard her scream. Since then there’s been nothing. Let’s pray she is taken out alive Gran.’ Maureen could only nod her agreement.

  Through the evening, many workers had dropped out and others had taken their place. Even Beattie had been to a neighbour’s house where her Bert had slept before putting in a few hours helping the rescue attempt before he went back to work that evening, and Jenny’s Uncle Gerry had come to help after a day at work. He’d also been to visit Peggy at the hospital, but he said none of that to Jenny: in his opinion she had enough on her plate already.

  Gerry had been there about an hour when there was a sudden shout. Wearily and hopefully Jenny lifted her head. ‘I’ve found the front of the house,’ someone shouted and indeed he had, for though there was no front door or bay window left, the bottom of the stairs that once led from the tiny hall had eventually been uncovered.

  However, it was soon apparent that the stairs could not be moved at all, the weight of the house was resting on top of them and if the child was in the pantry, the stairs could be protecting her.

  Before long they’d uncovered a couple of roof beams that had fallen against the staircase, leaving a tiny triangular-shaped hole, filled with broken bricks and tiles, and Jenny knelt down and began pulling them out with her hands.

  ‘Steady girl, you’ll have the lot down,’ Beattie cautioned. ‘Take it easy.’

  But Jenny was impatient to get to the child and the others felt the same way, helping all they could. Soon, though, they’d pulled the debris out as far as anyone could reach and stood looking at the small hole. ‘It might be like that all the way to the pantry, filled with rubble,’ Jenny said. ‘The stairs are probably taking the strain, stopping the big stuff falling down. Someone could get in there and perhaps find out.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ one man said. ‘Nowt but a midget could get in there.’

  ‘I could,’ Jenny said.

  Everyone turned and stared at her and eventually Gerry said, ‘You couldn’t do that. It’s too risky, you could bring the lot down.’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ Jenny snapped.

  There was no answer to that. Gerry felt he ought to forbid Jenny to go – he was after all her uncle – but he knew Jenny, she’d probably take no notice of him anyway. He felt bad that he couldn’t offer to go himself, but he was far too big. God, but it was a dangerous operation for a young girl. Far too dangerous.

  Jenny had already removed her scarf and coat, begrimed with dust and dirt, and handed them to Beattie as she asked for the loan of a torch. ‘Won’t you be scared to death?’ Beattie said.

  Jenny looked at the black, uninviting hole and suppressed a shudder. Scared to death was an understatement. She was absolutely petrified. Since she’d been a small child she’d been terrified of closed-in spaces, worried to death she wouldn’t be able to breathe. Somehow she had to conquer her fear, or commit the child to never being found alive.

  So she looked Beattie straight in the face and said, ‘No, not really. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You know what you have to do?’ Phil Rogers asked Jenny, handing her his flashlight, as she crouched
at the tunnel mouth.

  ‘Course I do.’

  Phil Rogers nodded and stepped back. Jenny looked around at all the faces before taking a deep breath and going in head first. ‘Oh God, I hope she’ll be all right,’ Beattie said, and everyone echoed the same sentiment as Jenny’s legs slowly disappeared into the tunnel.

  FIVE

  Jenny O’Leary’s heart was pounding against her ribs, the breath rasping in her throat as she tried to contain her panic. Every nerve in her body urged her to get out of the bombed house now, while she had a chance. Progress was pitifully slow; there wasn’t room either side of her for her elbows, so she had to pull herself along by her hands. Her whole body rested on broken bricks and tiles and shards of glass. Her arms were grazed, her hands and her legs tom and bleeding, but she bit her lip and pulled herself on across the rubble, inch by painful inch.

  The space was so small she had to keep her head down and her mouth and eyes filled with dust and grit. Suddenly she stopped, too frightened to move any further. She couldn’t breathe and knew she’d die in this futile attempt to rescue Linda Lennox. The girl must surely already be dead! The tears came then and she sobbed and prayed more intensely than she’d ever done before. ‘Oh God, help me.’

  Strangely, she did feel eased, though the roof of her mouth was still dry and her hands clammy. She forced herself to count to ten slowly and take deep breaths to prove that she could. Afterwards she felt a little better; she focused on the entombed child and inched herself a little further.

  She wondered after a while how long she’d been in the tunnel. It seemed for ever. Surely the pantry wasn’t as far as this? Perhaps the tunnel led somewhere else entirely, or nowhere at all. Panic threatened to overwhelm her again; she moaned in great distress, dropped the torch and it went out.

  ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ In the pitch black she scrabbled frantically. To be stuck here in the pitch dark was the most frightening moment of her life. She’d not stand it! She’d go mad!