'Kate! Look at us! We're the messenger patrol!'
She laughed and applauded them, then insisted she had to go into the house and say hello to Sheila.
'Maggie's in bed,' Sheila told her.
'Not ill?'
'No. but the poor woman's exhausted. It's too much to work twelve hours a day and then spend three nights a week fire watching. And on the other nights we get disturbed with air raids. They've been worse lately. We're all of us faint with weariness, but at least I can snatch an hour or two during the day. George insisted she needed a few hours in bed before her next watch tonight.'
It was after six when Maggie appeared, hollow-eyed but eager to hear all Kate's news. Sheila had prepared a huge pie and fed the children earlier, then the five adults sat round the kitchen table, exchanging news and speculating on the increasingly dire situation.
'They've got thousands of these pesky U-boats in the Atlantic, sinking the convoys, they say,' George said. 'I wonder if the Yanks can go on sending us food? I'm thankful I dug up the garden and planted potatoes this year, we've enough to see us out the winter.'
'I don't like potatoes,' Hattie said suddenly. She'd ignored Kate completely when she came downstairs for her meal. 'It's potatoes for breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. Like we used ter have nothin' but fish. Fish and chips. Frying ternight, Sheila?'
'Eat your pie, Hattie,' Sheila said, unperturbed.
'Pie, pie and chips. Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie. When will it be Christmas?'
'Six weeks yesterday, Mom. I wonder if the Nazis will give us a rest then?' Maggie asked, yawning.
Before anyone could answer the eerie wailing of the sirens sounded.
'By golly, they're early tonight,' George said. 'Get the kids, Sheila, into the shelter.'
'I haven't got the flasks ready yet. Hattie, you take the little ones, while I boil a kettle.'
'Where are you tonight, Maggie?' George asked.
'In the bus station. And you?'
'Broadgate. Owen Owen's.'
'Not your own factory?' Kate asked, surprised.
'No, we leave that to some of the women who live nearby. They need lots of watchers all over the city.'
'I'll come with you. Where can I report, or shall I just stay with you. Maggie?'
'Come with me. Where are those kids? They've been told not to go off on their bikes after dark.'
'Don't worry, they'll soon be home,' Sheila said. 'Get off with you. God bless.'
'Listen! The planes are already here,' George said. 'That was fast. Quick, love, into the shelter. Never mind flasks. You can do without for a few hours.' Coming this early they'll be gone before midnight.'
Kate pulled on her flying suit, adding her fleece-lined jacket and fur-lined boots. She'd be cold out at night. She took Maggie's hand and blindly followed her from the house. George took her other hand and they pressed on, almost bumping into someone running towards the house.
'Watch it, mate!' George said.
'I'm in 'urry.'
'Sam?' Maggie exclaimed. 'What are you doin' here?'
'In next street when it started. I'm goin' ter shelter.'
'Our shelter?'
'Any shelter's better than none.'
He ran on, ignoring Maggie's comment he should be helping. She shrugged. 'Sam always were a coward.'
'But didn't he go to Ireland?' Kate asked.
'That's what he said, but mebbee they wouldn't have him. Or he got inter more trouble with them pals of him, and decided he'd be better off here.'
All was pitch dark, the windows blacked out, no street lamps or lights from vehicles. Maggie seemed to know the way, though, and Kate went with her, down towards the town centre.
'Look! They've dropped incendiaries. That's near the cathedral, isn't it, George?'
'Looks like it. Little chance of them not being able to see that, it stands so high.'
By this time they could see their way in the fitful light of fires all over the centre of the city. Smoke was pouring through the roof of the cathedral and flames belched up from underneath.
'This looks bad. Come on, they'll need all the help they can get,' George said, beginning to run. 'Where are the fire engines? I can't hear any bells.'
For several hours Kate and the others joined the people carrying out the cathedral treasures. They ferried silver and vestments across to the police station. There was little water, and despite several fire engines having by now arrived, they could do little. All too soon most of the hydrants had run dry.
'Mains must have been hit,' one man said as they stood and watched the flames.
All the time they'd been conscious of the whistling noise as more and more incendiaries rained down on them, but now they realised there were more of the duller crumping sounds, accompanied by both near and distant explosions, as heavier bombs did their destructive work.
There was no water, nothing to control the flames. Kate heard the distant chimes of a church clock and counted them. Eleven. The raid had been in force for four hours, and showed no sign of ending. The constant drone of the aeroplanes ahead was a backdrop to the noisier, sharper bangs of the explosions, and the nearer crackling of the fires.
'It's going!'
Several people cried out, and they watched in horror as the interior of the cathedral building slowly folded in on itself and went hurtling down to the floor of the nave.
There were more planes, more bombs, and more of the city was being destroyed around them. Kate and Maggie helped make tea for the exhausted firemen, tried to comfort people who were huddling in shelters, or wandering dazed around the streets with stories of their houses being wrecked around them. Many were crying, searching for loved ones, and one mother was carrying her dead baby along, crooning to it softly, seemingly unaware that the child's head was crushed.
'Where's the ambulances?' someone asked. 'I've got casualties here need treatment.'
'Can't get through, roads blocked with rubble,' someone else answered.
George had left them hours ago, to go to the aid of men tearing down burning timbers in what were usually vain attempts to stop the fires spreading. Then, in the middle of the night, Maggie felt a small hand creep into hers.
She turned irritably. 'What is it? Sid! What the blazes are you doing here? Why aren't you in the shelter at home? Where's the others?'
'Me and Harry and Jeannie have been taking messages. On our bikes. The telephones don't work no more. Then I saw yer. Where's Kate?'
'Here, Sid,' Kate said, peering round Maggie. 'I'm here.'
'Cor, I dain't know yer with yer face all blacked.'
'Find the others and tell them to get into a shelter, fast,' Maggie said. 'There's still bombs falling!'
'Oh, Ma! The men says we've bin real useful. We've bin able ter get through on bikes, 'cause we can lift 'em across the bricks an' things. Yer should see what's come down, every shop in the town, they say.'
'Do as you're told, Sid!'
He shrugged and vanished. Maggie glared after him. 'Little devils! Sheila must be going frantic with worry.'
'She'll think they went to the nearest public shelter,' Kate said. 'How much longer is this going to last?
It was morning before the bombers left, and the all clear sounded. 'Go home, have some sleep,' an equally exhausted policeman told Maggie and Kate. 'We'll start clearing up later this morning.'
In the faint dawn light they forced themselves to trudge homewards. Kate, who had been uncomfortably warm in her heavy clothes, and from the fires all around them, began to shiver.
'It's frosty, look,' she said. 'It was so hot all night I almost forgot it was mid-November.'
'I hope those kids got home.'
'I expect they'll be in shelters in the city.'
Maggie was too weary to fret for long. She was thinking of other things. 'I wonder if the water and gas are still on? I'm dying for a cup of my own tea, able to put my feet up.'
They turned into their road, wh
ere groups of people huddled outside the front doors. Then Maggie saw George, standing outside his house, holding Jeannie and Harry by the hands.
Maggie was too tired to run to them, but she clasped Jeannie to her. 'George, thank goodness you're safe, Where's Sid?'
'It's OK, Maggie. He's safe, they've put him to bed next door. Oh Maggie, what shall I do?'
'What do you mean?'
One of the neighbours took her arm and began to lead her to a house further along the road. As if in a daze George followed, and Kate, suddenly apprehensive, went with them.
'Come with me, love, you can't use your house.'
'Why not?'
'The back's all blown out. The shelter was hit. I'm sorry, love.'
*
'They say you're going home next week, old chap,' his fellow instructor said.
Robert was sitting on a verandah attached to the ward. He nodded. 'A couple of weeks, they insist, say I'm not fit yet, but I can walk more than a mile now. It's a drag, they need me.'
'I bet you'll be glad to get out of this place. Hospitals give me the creeps. So you'll be back at work a week or two later. We can do with you. We've got lads sent out on raids after just a few hours of flying. Babes, they are, no wonder losses are heavy.'
'Poor devils. I keep thinking, lying here, that I ought to be doing their job, instead of the safe billet I've got,' Robert replied. 'What's new? They keep the news from us here.'
'Coventry got hit last night. Whole city destroyed, they say. Cathedral in ruins, and thousands killed. They've allowed the papers to print more than usual. They say it's the worst raid of the war so far. I hope your little friend's OK. She said she was off there yesterday.'
Robert sat up sharply. 'Who? You mean Kate Martins? She has family there.' He was thinking frantically, trying to plan as he tried not to think about Kate, limbs smashed, face unrecognisable, lying amid the ruins. He mustn't think like that! She'd be safe. Surely he'd have known by instinct if anything had happened to her.
'Yes. Delivered a Moth yesterday,' the other man said, oblivious of Robert's turmoil of mind. 'She said she had a few days off.'
Robert stood up. 'I've got to go to her. Be a good chap, will you give me a lift to the station?'
'But – you're only wearing pyjamas!'
'My flying suit's in my locker. They didn't have time to do anything with it when they brought me in. Come on, if you don't help me I'll walk there, steal a horse, anything. I have to find out if Kate's safe.'
*
They'd given Maggie a sedative and she was asleep in a neighbour's house, her face still grimed with smoke except where washed with tears. George had refused to take this way to oblivion, and had to be held back from tearing at the rubble which covered the crushed shelter. The surviving children were being looked after by other neighbours, and Kate, offered a bed but unable to sleep, wandered back into the devastated city centre.
The oldest three children, thank heavens, had survived because they had disobeyed orders to go to safety. Some safety! Tears streamed down Kate's face as she mourned her small half-siblings, who'd had so little pleasure in their short lives, with a feckless father and, until the past year or so, constant poverty. Sam, she felt, was small loss, but Maggie had once loved him.
She recalled the good things about Hattie, who had taken her in as a baby instead of making Maggie send her to an orphanage. She'd been harsh, but she'd done her duty as she saw it. And her own life had been hard. Her family had rejected her but she'd still married Alf, and had to depend on him alone without other family support.
George would be hit hard, losing his beloved Sheila and his younger children. At least he had Harry still. If only Sheila had stayed in the country. Many people had returned to the cities, thinking them safe, and must have lost their own lives.
There seemed to have been bombs everywhere. Single houses, or whole streets of them, had been flattened. Glass, wooden beams, tiles and bricks, as well as the more personal things people had probably cherished, were strewn across the roads, and volunteers were busy clearing paths for the ambulances and other emergency vehicles to get past. Soldiers, wearing hard hats, had arrived and were directing operations. Some were demolishing buildings thought unsafe. Smoke and the occasional flames still belched from some of the ruins, but there was no water to put the fires out. She heard they'd been using sewer water during the night to tackle the worst blazes.
A pall of smoke lay over the city centre. Where buildings still stood their windows had been blown out. Buses lay on their sides in the bus station, and the railway lines were twisted and broken. If she and Maggie had been at the bus station last night instead of helping at the cathedral they might well have been killed.
Kate wandered on, dazed at the terrible sights she saw all around her, until she came at last to the smoking ruins of the cathedral. The outer walls and the tower still stood, blackened by smoke, and the rubble inside, all that was left of the roof, was piled high.
Then Kate saw a child, no more than six or seven years old, carefully carrying a jam jar filled with flowers, late mauve frost-scarred chrysanthemums, a few violas, and sprigs of holly with a few bright berries shining against the pervading black and grey of the rubble and the smoke.
She began to weep. Such a symbol of hope in the midst of such savage destruction seemed, somehow, to encapsulate the spirit of the people. They'd never be defeated, whatever their enemies threw against them.
There was work to be done, and Kate spent the rest of the day helping to make and distribute tea and sandwiches to the men clearing the rubble. Drinking water had been brought from outside the city, and because there was neither gas nor electricity oil stoves were being used to boil it. Bread had been sent from nearby towns and villages, as well as margarine and jam. The helpers snatched a break to eat and drink when they could, and late in the afternoon a halt was called to the rescue operations. A few people had been dragged alive from the ruins, but it was unlikely anyone else could live.
'Get into a shelter in case they come back tonight,' the helpers were told. 'You'll be needed tomorrow.'
Kate didn't know if her legs would carry her as far as home. Then she began to wonder where she would sleep that night. Had they remembered her? Would a neighbour let her sleep on a sofa? She'd be happy to sleep on the floor. She'd been awake for almost forty hours.
It was raining, a cold wet drizzle that seemed to find its way past clothing and trickle down between Kate's shoulder blades. Her hair was soaked and stiff with dirt and smoke. But she lifted her face into the rain and relished the coldness which revived her sufficiently to encourage her to plod on.
She reached the street where Sheila's house had been, and it looked so innocent. All the damage was at the back, hidden. In the dusk the houses looked the same as ever, but there were no lights, and no one around. People were probably huddled in shelters if they hadn't already fled the city, dreading what the night would bring. Kate sat on a low wall, wondering where she might find Maggie. She'd forgotten which house had taken her in.
Then she heard the sound of uneven footsteps approaching. A figure loomed up out of the gloom, limping slightly, and stopped in front of her. A match was struck and flared briefly, and then she was sobbing again as Robert folded her into his arms.
'Kate, my darling! I've been searching for you ever since I arrived. I was so afraid! Maggie's in the next house. Let me carry you inside.'
*
George, his face grim, refused to abandon his factory. 'There was a little damage, but we can soon mend that, and then I'm going to work day and night to make sure those devils pay for what they've done to us.'
Kate, still exhausted, had slept for fourteen hours until Maggie woke her on Saturday morning with a cup of tea and asked if she wanted to join in the discussion. 'They're treating it like a top command planning operation. Oh Kate!'
They wept together, then mopped their eyes and went to join the others.
'We can mourn properly later,' K
ate said, 'when the immediate things are done.'
They went to join Robert and George, and they sat round a table in a neighbour's kitchen. They were all grimed with smoke and in their only clothes, the ones they had worn on the night of the fourteenth, because there was no water to wash and their other clothes had been lost.
When Kate and Maggie joined them they found George welcoming Robert's offer of his mother's house in Edgbaston for the surviving children and Maggie.
'That part of Birmingham is not near factories, they won't target it,' Robert assured him.
'I'm not leaving either,' Maggie said. 'They hurt me too.'
'Then who will look after Harry?' George asked. 'Maggie, after this I won't listen to anyone else. My kid, and yours, are getting out of the city. And you are going with them. You've had enough trouble. And I won't trust them with anyone else.'
'I could perhaps find a cottage near Tern Hill,' Robert suggested. 'Then when Kate delivers planes there she could come and see you.'
'Won't your training ground be a target?' George asked. 'I'd thought of somewhere way out into the country. In Wales, perhaps, or the Yorkshire dales.'
'I'd make sure any cottage was pretty isolated. But meanwhile, stay in Edgbaston. I know some of the soldiers, I can find transport for us all, since the railway won't be back to normal for a while.'
Eventually Maggie agreed, and Robert went off to find a helpful captain, a schoolfriend who had seen him searching for Kate the previous afternoon. He now detailed a driver and a truck to take them to Birmingham.
'He's fetching more troops anyway,' he'd said, 'but not until later. We need every possible man for the moment.'
Kate slept again during the journey, and only woke when the truck drew up in the driveway of Robert's house. She looked round curiously. It was larger than Daphne's, older, and was surrounded by lawns backed by a band of evergreens which screened it from any neighbours.
She wondered where Daphne was. She was feeling rather ashamed of herself, for last night she had clung to Robert and kissed him back as he had kissed her. It had been relief, she told herself, relief at finding an old friend, which had prompted him. Surely, now he was engaged to Daphne, he'd forgotten his infatuation with her.
Can Dreams Come True? Page 33
