Into the Storm

by Lisa Bingham

  A pounding began. Closer, different somehow. It took several minutes for RueAnn to realize that it didn’t come from the bombs or fires but…

  Knocking?

  As if on cue, she heard the tinny ring of the doorbell.

  For a moment, she feared the Germans had begun the invasion in earnest, but then she realized that if paratroopers were storming London, they wouldn’t ring the bell.

  Scrambling from her hiding place, she hurried down the stairs, two at a time, and flung open the door.

  The fellow standing on the stoop was as surprised to see her as she was to see him. But he quickly gathered himself together asking, “’Excuse me, Miss. Could I possibly use your phone?”

  Of all the words she had expected him to utter, these would never have occurred to her.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your phone. I need to call in and report.”

  RueAnn stared at him, her mouth agape, sure that this was an elaborate prank.

  “Ma’am. Your phone.”

  She swept her hand wide even as outside the destruction continued. As the din of battle rang in her ears, the dour-faced gentleman strode to the phone, shouted instructions into the hand piece, then set it back in place.

  He touched a finger to his metal helmet. “I may need to use it again, if it’s not too much of a bother.”

  Bother? Having to wait in the ration line was a bother, cleaning up the sifting dust was a bother.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Miss, you should get to shelter while you still can. It doesn’t look like this barrage is about to let up any time soon.”

  “I-I can’t. My…my motherin-law. I think she’s had a stroke.” She touched the man’s arm, tugging him toward the staircase. “Could you help me? Please?”

  The man looked toward the door, clearly torn, but he allowed himself to be drawn upstairs.

  “I put her under there,” she said, pointing to the blankets she’d draped over the edge in case of flying glass.

  The man dropped to his knees, then shimmied his upper body beneath the bed enough to examine Edna. When he rolled out again, his expression was grave.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Can you call for help?”

  He shook his head. “Even if I did, it’s unlikely anything but fire services would be dispatched until the all clear. It’s hell itself out there.”

  The noises from outside grew louder. The house shimmied and shook, threatening to be pulled apart at the very seams.

  “There’s a cubby under the stairs.”

  “You need a proper shelter,” he said reluctantly.

  “Please. I can’t take her all the way to the Tube, but I can’t leave her here alone.”

  The man finally relented. “I’ll carry her downstairs until we can get her some help, at least. Then I’ve got to get back to my post.”

  Pushing and prodding, they managed to move the tester bed away. Then, after wrapping Edna in a blanket, he hefted her into his arms, staggering.

  Gathering as many pillows as she could carry, RueAnn hurried down the stairs. At the last minute, she avoided the small space under the stairs. Headroom would be at a premium, as would a spot for RueAnn to care for Edna. So she made a beeline for the sturdy farmhouse-style table in the kitchen. She arranged a nest of pillows, then stood back as the stranger set Edna down. He panted, braced himself on one knee for a moment, then struggled to his feet.

  “Once…I can find someone…an ambulance or something…I’ll send them your way.”

  “Thank you.” She walked with him to the door. “And feel free to use the phone whenever you’d like,” she added, the words sounding ludicrous amid the din of the bombardment.

  As the man hurried outside, RueAnn wondered if Edna would chide her for allowing a stranger off the street to track up her floor.

  But then, with a start, she realized that Edna could not offer her objections.

  Staggering, she hurried to the kitchen, but just as she pushed through the door, the shudder of a nearby explosion threw RueAnn to her knees. Instinctively, she threw her arms over her head, squeezing her eyes shut as the ground trembled. Beside her, Edna cried out and RueAnn forced herself to scramble toward the woman.

  Her motherin-law’s eyes were wide with panic.

  “Shh, shh,” RueAnn soothed. “You’re safe now. A fellow—a soldier—helped me carry you downstairs.”

  An inarticulate noise emerged from Edna’s throat. The right side of her face sagged like a candle left too long in the sun. Pitiful. Hideous.

  Edna’s left arm scrabbled across her body, reaching toward RueAnn, but when RueAnn tried to grasp Edna’s hand, she batted it away, her agitation growing.

  Then, suddenly, she squeezed her eyes closed, sobbing. Within moments, the unmistakable odor of urine filled the room.

  Edna, her humiliation complete, turned her head away, her chest still convulsing with strangled sobs.

  Stunned into silence, RueAnn scrambled for something to say, then realized that there was nothing she could offer to restore the older woman’s dignity, so she reached out, squeezing her hand. Then, amid the scream of aircraft and the syncopated thunder of explosions, she made her way upstairs in search of fresh clothing for her motherin-law.

  Rifling through the woman’s bureau, she found a clean housecoat that buttoned up the front. Unsure what to do for undergarments, she abandoned the idea altogether. There was no way that Edna could make her way to the loo, so she grabbed a stack of towels instead.

  So intent was she on her errand, that when the window at the end of the hall suddenly shattered, she screamed, whirling, and dropping to the floor. She lay there for long moments, the sound of battle increased tenfold.

  Standing, shouting obscenities at Germans, she feared that the bombing was only a precursor to the horrors that were to follow. She’d seen the newsreels of the Nazis invading Europe—tanks racing through open fields, marching soldiers, urban combat.

  Dropping Edna’s belongings near the top of the stairs, she rushed up to her own room. The door slammed against wall as she hurried to the bureau. Wrenching the bottom drawer free, she threw it on the floor, then reached inside to retrieve the velvet-wrapped parcel. Tearing the scraps of fabric away, she cradled the heavy revolver in her hands, the blue-black metal at once reassuring and abhorrent.

  Slowly, she rose to her feet, the gun pulling heavily on her arm until she let it fall at her side, her thumb automatically stroking the hammer, her finger curled around the trigger.

  Calmer, more determined, she took a deep breath and turned toward the stairs, knowing that this gun had killed before. If need be, it could do so again.

  • • •

  Susan huddled in the darkness of the public shelter, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around her legs. She couldn’t stop shaking. Not because of the cold, but because of the noise. A frightful noise that brought everything back with a rush—the explosion at the Ironworks…the heat and wind of the burning docks…her father’s hand in the rubble…

  Tears gathered behind her eyes and her shoulders shook with silent sobs as she tried to shrink further into the shadows. She mustn’t worry her mother. Millicent Blunt had been devastated when she’d heard the news. Susan had watched as her mother seemed to deflate before her very eyes, becoming somehow older and infinitely more weary in the space of a heartbeat. Yet, she’d refused to cry, refused to shed a tear in front of the younger children. She’d merely drawn them all close, whispering that they would all continue to do their best. For Daddy’s sake.

  Suddenly a hand touched her shoulder and Susan started, her head rearing up. But it was only Sara. Sara, who understood her in a way that no other person ever could.

  Sinking onto the ground beside her, Sara wrapped them both in a blanket, then drew Susan’s head down onto her shoulder.

  “Shh,” she whispered, her own eyes bruised and hurt. “I know…I know…”

  Then, in a way that only close sisters c
an, she wrapped her arms around Susan’s shoulders and rocked her from side to side as if she were a child in need of soothing. And in those long moments, as they huddled together as they used to do in the nursery when a fierce storm woke them from their beds, Sara was the stronger twin. Susan’s rock. Her foundation in the buffeting winds.

  Alone, they were lost.

  But together, they would find a way to survive even this.

  • • •

  Rouen, France

  He was hot, so hot. His body radiated warmth with the same ferocity of desert sand seething under the midday sun. But just when he felt he could bear it no longer, a coolness touched his brow. His cheeks. Then a dribble of moisture entered his parched mouth.

  Yes…yes…

  “Shh…”

  The sound melted out of the darkness. A hand touched his forehead when he tried to lift himself toward the saving drops of water.

  “Lie still…lie still…”

  His eyes flickered—and for a moment, he panicked when the darkness enveloped him. Then, he began to pick out shades of gray that slowly resolved themselves into shapes.

  A face.

  Above him, a woman smiled.

  Squinting, he thought, just for a moment that he knew her. Coffee-colored eyes. Dark, dark hair.

  “RueAnn?” The word tasted sweet on his tongue. Familiar. Grounding him when he thought he might float away.

  But then, blinking, the face shifted again, settling into the unfamiliar planes of a delicately boned stranger with red gold hair.

  Her eyes were gentle. But they were gray. Even in the shadows, he could see they were gray.

  “No,” she soothed.

  She placed a wet cloth against his face again, and he sighed as the dampness drew some of the heat from his body. Then, settling it on his forehead, she whispered, “Would you care for more to drink?”

  His nod was jerky, his body recalcitrant in obeying his commands.

  Sliding a hand under his head, she set a cup to his lips.

  “Slowly now. I spent a great deal of time stitching you up. I don’t want you coughing and spoiling my handiwork.”

  He drank greedily. Thirsty. So thirsty.

  But after only a few swallows, she removed the cup.

  “We’ll take things slowly, yes? A little at a time.”

  Charlie closed his eyes, panting, damning the way that so small an exertion had taxed him beyond measure. Pain radiated through his body. A searing, omnipresent pain.

  But different somehow.

  For a moment, his stomach lurched. The water that he’d so greedily consumed threatened to come right back up.

  The cloth was replaced with a cool one, giving him something to focus on other than the nausea, until soon, his gut spasmed. Then relaxed.

  “Sleep,” the woman whispered. A velvet command.

  His mind slipped and skidded, following fantastical threads of thought like a rabbit darting into the underbrush, running this way and that. And it was only as the last shreds of consciousness flitted away that a tiny, coherent part of him realized that the woman who bent over him spoke English.

  • • •

  London, England

  RueAnn woke with a start.

  Silence. Blessed, blessed silence.

  Twisting from her nest of blankets next to Edna, she quickly felt the woman’s cheek, then shuddered in relief when she found it warm to the touch.

  She’d survived the night.

  They’d both survived the night.

  Lying on her back, RueAnn flung an arm over her eyes. She was tired, so tired. She didn’t know how long she’d cowered under the table as the world raged beyond their doors. Where the barrage had first filled her with an unmistakable fear, sucking her ability to move or even think, she’d become so absorbed with caring for Edna that her terror had soon been swamped by anger—at the Germans, at her circumstances, at Charlie for his betrayal.

  But then, as the hours and the air raid continued unabated, her emotions had consumed themselves and her energy had drained away, leaving her filled with a black despair. It was clear that the Germans meant to either bomb them into submission or oblivion. And there was nothing, nothing, that RueAnn could do to stop it.

  Crawling from beneath the table, RueAnn pushed herself to her feet and staggered to the back door. As she stepped outside, a whine of the all-clear filled the late morning air.

  Today, the air was thick with storm clouds.

  No.

  Not clouds.

  Smoke.

  Smoke that roiled and turned in upon itself, tainting the breeze with its acrid stench. And where she’d thought she’d been greeted with silence, her senses began to awaken, bit by bit, until she realized that she was surrounded with noises of a different kind—the clamor of bells, shouts, the low roar of distant fires.

  Breathing deeply, RueAnn closed her eyes, squeezing them tighter, tighter still, then opening them again, praying that she was in the midst of a nightmare from which she could awaken. But just as she feared, when her gaze latched onto a wounded barrage balloon that sagged and twisted in the breeze, bumping carelessly into chimneys and knocking roof tiles free as it continued its death throes, she realized this was her reality now.

  Turning back to the house, RueAnn hurried to the telephone in the front hall. Lifting the receiver, she prayed that she could somehow rouse some help for her motherin-law.

  But the line was dead.

  She dodged back into the kitchen, assuring herself that Edna was still sleeping. Then she ran to the front door. She needed to find a policeman or a member of the fire brigade—someone, anyone—who could tell her where she could get a doctor.

  Blindly, she ran down to the end of the walk and through the gate just as straggling group of people began to trudge from the entrance of the nearest shelter, their arms heaped with pillows and bedclothes.

  RueAnn shuddered in relief when she recognized two blonde sisters in the midst of the first group. She ran toward them, stumbling on stray bits of masonry that had been thrown into the lane. She’d gone scarcely half a block, before she saw Susan touch her sister’s arm and point in RueAnn’s direction.

  “Please!” RueAnn gasped as she approached. “Please, I need help.”

  Alarmed, Susan handed an armload of blankets to a tall boy at her side. “What’s wrong?”

  “Edna. She’s had a stroke.”

  Sara handed her own load of bedclothes to the young children at her side, a little girl with red curls and a skinny, knob-kneed boy of about ten.

  A thin, graying woman of about fifty asked, “Have you tried calling—”

  “The phone isn’t working.”

  Before RueAnn could say another word, the woman took charge. “Margaret, Michael, take our things back to the house. I want you to fold them neatly and stack them by the front door in case we need them again. Then hurry into the kitchen, slice the bread as thin as you can, and make everyone some sandwiches. Can you do that, my darlings?”

  They nodded, wide-eyed.

  “Run along, then.”

  “Really, mother. Sandwiches?” Sara asked.

  “It will keep them busy.” Mrs. Blunt turned to the gangly teenager. “Phillip, run and fetch Dr. Plymsome. If he can’t come right away, make sure he understands the urgency of the situation. Make him promise to be here as soon as he can.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  He handed his own armful of blankets back to Sara.

  “Hurry, dear. Hurry!”

  As he ran in the opposite direction, Mrs. Blunt took RueAnn’s hand. “Come along, RueAnn. Let’s see what we can do in the meantime.”

  • • •

  In the end, there was little more that the women could do to help Edna than RueAnn had already done. Although Edna would have been more comfortable upon a bed, they feared that another air raid might leave her vulnerable again. So with the twins’ help, they carried the mattress from RueAnn’s cot downstairs to the kitchen and set it on the
floor. Millicent Blunt sent Susan scurrying back to their own house, where she unearthed a rubber sheet from the depths of a closet in the nursery. After dressing the mattress with clean linens, the rubber sheet, then a layer of towels, they carefully lifted Edna onto the makeshift bed and covered her with a blanket.

  “There, there, now, my dearie. You rest. We’ve got things well in hand. The doctor has been summoned, and soon you’ll be right as rain. You’ll see!”

  A tear trickled from the corner of Edna’s eye, wriggling its way down her cheek and Millicent clucked at her, tucking the blankets tightly under her chin.

  “Have you got any meat rations left?” Millicent asked RueAnn as Edna’s lashes fluttered, and the ferocious grip of her good hand eased around the edge of the covers.

  “N-no.”

  “How about vegetables from the garden? We’ll make some broth for her. She’ll need something nourishing to keep her strength up once she wakes again.”

  “I’ll get it, Mum,” Susan said.

  Millicent made a shooing motion in RueAnn’s direction. “Go with her, dear. Sara and I can see to sweeping up the dirt and plaster.”

  The back door burst open and Phillip stumbled in, out of breath. “Dr. Plymsome…will be here as…soon as he can. But there’s a queue of walking wounded outside his surgery nearly a half-block long. It could be some…time.”

  He pressed a hand to his side.

  “Very well.” Millicent nodded. “It’s not the first time in history we women have been left to care for one of our own without the help of a doctor, and I don’t suppose it will be the last.” She offered RueAnn an encouraging wink. “We’ll simply muddle through on our own until that meddling old fool can see fit to make an appearance.”

  • • •

  Two days. It took two days before Dr. Plymsome was able to examine Edna Tolliver. But RueAnn could not fault the man. The Germans had left very little time for any of them to carry out normal business. Instead, the raids came hard and fast upon one another, over and over again, until day bled into night, night into day, relieved only by those intermittent hours of calm when London’s beleaguered citizens were able to stagger from the shelters and go about their business.