Past Remembering

by Catrin Collier

  ‘I couldn’t stop him, sir,’ he apologised to the senior officer who came running in response to his signal. ‘I tried – ’

  A second crash sent the rescuers back choking, coughing and spluttering for breath. An ominous silence settled over the area, punctuated only by the creak of timbers, crackle of flames and distant screams and shouts.

  ‘Right, start digging,’ the senior officer commanded. ‘Anyone left in this house before that silly bugger went inside?’

  ‘We’re not sure, sir.’

  ‘Then ask someone! I’ve a feeling that this is going to be the usual story. Family safe in the nearest shelter while the idiot home on leave kills himself by rushing into a blitzed house.’ The senior warden looked at what was left of the building. It had been a long night, and it promised to be an even longer day. Taking off his helmet he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then set to work.

  ‘Fourth right at the top of the stairs on the first floor. When I took in the evacuees I turned Andrew’s dressing room into a sitting room so I’d have somewhere quiet to retreat to when I needed it. It’s small but cosy, and it’s next door to the bedroom and bathroom. Maisie knows you’re coming, she’s already changed the bed and she’ll bring up breakfast.’ Bethan stopped the car on the gravel drive that swept round to the front door.

  ‘Where are you going to sleep?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘When I’m not with Alma’s mother, in my children’s room.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about Eddie and Maud.’ He reached out for her hand, sympathy etched on his face and in his eyes, and she understood something of the pain Ronnie had felt at receiving so many condolences the night before.

  ‘Thank you, but if you don’t mind we’ll talk about them later, Charlie. How much leave have you got?’

  ‘Three days.’

  ‘They could have given you longer after all this time.’

  ‘Some men in my unit haven’t had any leave since the beginning. I’m lucky to get this much.’

  Bethan turned to Alma in the back seat. ‘Then you’d better see he makes the most of it. You’re going back on Saturday morning, Charlie?’

  ‘First thing.’

  ‘If you don’t mind us taking up your time, we could have a small party here Friday night. I’ll invite Phyllis and my father, and anyone else you want to see. Think about it? Let me know tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I will, and thank you,’ he responded mechanically as he heaved his kitbag and Alma’s small case out of the car. Maisie must have heard them coming because the door was already open.

  ‘Mrs John said you’d be tired so I carried the toaster and chafing dishes up to her sitting room. There’s porridge, scrambled eggs, bread, blackberry jam and tea. It’s all ready. Would you like me to take your coats?’

  ‘Thank you, Maisie.’ Alma followed her into the house that Andrew John had bought for his wife when he had returned to Pontypridd after working in a London hospital. Bethan had altered it beyond all recognition during the last two years. The fine lawns had been dug up and turned into vegetable and potato gardens. The once elegant, tiled hall was awash with children’s coats, prams, bicycles and rubber boots. Answering the plea for homes for evacuees, Bethan had put her name down to take four, but the hard pressed authorities had prevailed on her good nature, and she had ended up with six, plus a young girl who helped her to keep the brood in order. The maid Andrew had engaged before the war had long since departed to earn four times what Bethan could afford to pay her in the munitions factory, so she had taken an unmarried mother, Maisie Crockett, from the workhouse to help out, and feeling sorry for her, had ended up with Maisie’s child as well. Three women and nine children, including Bethan’s two, made for a very full house, but there was no sign of anyone except Maisie.

  ‘Just stack the breakfast dishes when you’ve finished with them, Mrs Charlie. I’ll get them when I come in. It’s my morning for putting our order into Griffiths’ shop and Pegler’s Stores, so you’ll have the house to yourself until the children finish school, and even then they won’t come near Mrs John’s rooms,’ Maisie reassured them shyly as they walked across the hall.

  ‘Mrs John said Liza Clark had taken the children down to Graig Avenue.’ Alma glanced into what had been Andrew’s pride and joy, the spacious formal drawing room. Bethan had packed the best furniture into the old groom’s accommodation above the stables, and a threadbare, faded carpet, a couple of sagging sofas, and overflowing baskets of home-made wooden and rag toys were all the furnishings that adorned the once expensively decorated room.

  ‘The weather’s so fine, Mrs John thought the little ones would benefit from some fresh air. So Liza offered to take them over the mountain for a picnic.’ Maisie led the way up the stairs.

  Alma was amazed at Bethan’s powers of organisation at such short notice, unless she’d sacrificed a quiet day she’d arranged for herself to Charlie’s unexpected leave.

  All the windows in the house had been opened wide to the beautiful spring morning. She paused on the landing and gazed out over the fields. Barely two miles outside the town and they could have been in the heart of the countryside. The scent of apple and cherry blossom mixed with bluebells and newly ploughed earth wafted in on the warm, fresh air. Birds were singing. In the distance she could hear a dog barking and sheep bleating, and she suddenly realised that it had been a long time since she’d taken the leisure to enjoy the simple things in life.

  Sensing Charlie waiting behind her she climbed up the final half a dozen steps. Bethan had been right. Andrew’s dressing room was tiny but, just as she’d promised, it was also cosy. Two small easy chairs stood either side of the window, a round table between them set with chafing dishes warmed by candles, an electric toaster, bread, jam, sugar, milk and a scraping of butter in a small pot that Alma hoped Charlie wouldn’t touch in case it was the last of Bethan’s ration. Charlie dropped his kitbag by the door and in two strides was at the window.

  ‘I’ll bring up the boiling water for the tea and anything else you want, then I’ll be off,’ Maisie said.

  ‘There’s no need to wait on us, Maisie, I know where the kitchen is.’

  ‘You sure, Mrs Charlie? Mrs John said you were to rest.’

  ‘We’ll be fine, Maisie. Thank you for all this.’

  ‘It was nothing. Besides, I enjoyed doing it.’ Maisie bristled with pleasure at the praise before closing the door.

  Charlie unbuttoned his jacket and sank into one of the chairs as Alma went downstairs to get the water for the tea.

  ‘Seems to me Bethan has thought of everything,’ Charlie observed when she returned.

  ‘She always has been thoughtful, more so if anything since the war started. It can’t be easy, knowing Andrew’s stuck in a German prison camp for the duration and working as a district nurse. I don’t know how she does it. She has a houseful of evacuees as well as her own two children, and little Eddie’s only four months old.’ Alma was grateful to Charlie for mentioning Bethan. It was easier to talk about her than it was to talk about themselves.

  ‘There’s a new baby?’

  ‘Born seven months after Andrew was captured. She named him after Eddie. You got my letter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They fell silent, remembering Bethan’s brother Eddie had worked for Charlie in the shop and they had both been fond of him. His death fighting with the rearguard in Dunkirk was one piece of news she hadn’t kept from Charlie. She looked up at her husband, tracing the familiar lines of his face and features, thinking of all the nights she had lain awake dreaming of their reunion a moment just like this – and now that it had actually arrived, all she could do was sit in strained silence.

  As she reached across the table to lift the lids on the chafing dishes, her hand accidentally brushed against Charlie’s. He jerked back as though he’d been scalded.

  ‘You’re not still angry with me over Ronnie?’ she asked, fighting back tears. Exhaustion and his sudden, un
expected return had made her vulnerable to emotions she usually kept firmly in check.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bethan talked to you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I saw the look on his face last night. Before Mrs Lane told me about Maud I thought it was because he’d seen me. You were right, he is heartbroken.’

  ‘As I’d be if anything happened to you,’ she whispered.

  He picked up the tea she’d poured.

  ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, this probably isn’t the homecoming you expected. My mother ill, the extra shop …’

  ‘You should have told me more in your letters. Even if I can’t answer them right away, I read them as soon as I can.’

  ‘I don’t want to burden you with my problems when you have more serious things to think about.’

  ‘If it concerns the shop, they are not your problems. They used to be mine; now I suppose I have to accept that they’re ours.’

  She didn’t answer him. She didn’t even know how to begin to tell him that she hadn’t written about her difficulties because she clung to the irrational hope that if he had nothing else to think about, he’d have to concentrate all his energies on staying alive and coming back to her in one piece. But then what was the point in him returning to her when there was this awful gulf between them?

  ‘Charlie?’ she faltered, and lost courage. ‘Shall I dish out for you?’

  He nodded, reminding her of his infuriating habit of speaking only when absolutely necessary. When he began to eat, she left the room and went into the bathroom. She bathed and changed into the light summer dress she had brought, taking care over brushing out her hair, putting on cold cream, touching her lips with the remains of the last lipstick she had hoarded against Charlie’s return. Dabbing scent behind her ears and powder on her nose, she left the room and walked into the bedroom. Charlie had unlaced his boots, taken off his jacket and was lying on the bed in his shirt-sleeves and braces. His eyes were closed. She went to the window and pulled the curtains. He didn’t move. She returned to the bed and lay on it carefully, so as not to touch him. She longed to reach out, place her hand over his, whisper his name, but the chill between them froze the conciliatory gestures before she summoned the courage to make them. Afraid of a rebuff she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, and soon there was no need for pretence.

  ‘Here’s the idiot who ran past me.’ The ARP warden straightened his back as he raised the doorpost that had fallen on Haydn.

  ‘He all right?’ his colleague asked.

  ‘He’s breathing.’ He crouched down and checked Haydn’s vital signs, ‘but out cold. There doesn’t appear to be a mark on him.’

  ‘Thank God for that. We’ve had enough fatalities for one day. Call for a stretcher to carry him over to the FAP.’

  ‘That a baby crying?’

  Leaving Haydn lying on the rubble the two men picked their way gingerly through the debris to the back corner of the house.

  ‘It’s strongest here.’

  They began to move scattered and smashed planking and bricks in the slow, methodical manner of workers accustomed to their task. The cry heightened, reaching a crescendo that permeated Haydn’s subconscious. Dazed, he clambered to his feet. Rushing over to where the men were working he began to tear into the wreckage with his bare hands.

  ‘Steady, lad, or you’ll have the whole lot down on top of us, not to mention that poor little scrap,’ one of the men complained. ‘Slowly does it. Slow and steady …’

  Dizzy from concussion, hangover and lack of sleep, Haydn continued to snatch at the stones that covered the area where the stairwell to the cellar had been. The wardens worked quietly, straining their ears for a repetition of the cry that had died before they had cleared the top step. As soon as he was able, the senior warden moved into the hole they had dug, and inspected the mass of shattered masonry that blocked his path.

  ‘It must have been a cat. Nothing larger could have survived this,’ he asserted authoritatively, eyeing the craters in the floor that were now on a level with his head.

  ‘There’s a door at the bottom,’ Haydn pleaded insistently. ‘A strong metal door.’

  ‘A door’s no use when the ceiling doesn’t hold, lad. Can’t you see how it’s caved in over there… and there …’ The more he looked, the more holes he saw.

  ‘You heard the cry. I know you did. We all heard it.’ Grey-faced from dust and anxiety, Haydn continued to burrow into the masonry. The skin hung in threads from his fingers, dripping blood with every movement, his nails were cracked, split to the quick, but he continued to delve with his bare hands. The wardens glanced at one another. The senior one nodded.

  ‘Keep going, shout when you finally break through, but for heaven’s sake watch that beam up there doesn’t come crashing down on both of you. I’ll go back to the ARP post and see if I can organise a hoist and tackle.’

  Haydn didn’t even glance at the beam: all he could think of was that last, faint cry. He had never been a religious man, but as he dug he made a bargain with some vague, remote deity.

  ‘Please God let them be all right, and if they are, I swear I’ll send them back to Wales. I won’t keep them with me. Just let them be alive. Please God …’

  Alma woke to see Charlie standing over her with a tray in his hands. He cleared a space on the dressing table and set it down. ‘I’ve made tea and toast. You didn’t eat any breakfast.’

  ‘I was too tired.’ She sat up on the bed as he passed her a cup. ‘I’m sorry, I should be waiting on you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re the fighting man. You only have three days’ rest and I’ve wasted one of them by sleeping.’ She glanced out of the window. The light had turned from silver to gold. Even if the small hand on the alarm clock on the bedside cabinet hadn’t pointed to four, she would have known it was late afternoon.

  Charlie took his tea over to the window, and drank it looking down the valley at the oaks and chestnuts budding into life.

  ‘What would you like to do with what’s left of the day?’ Alma ventured.

  ‘We could go for a walk before the light fades.’

  ‘I’ll wash my face.’ She finished her tea and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  ‘Alma?’

  She turned and smiled.

  ‘Nothing.’ He watched her leave the room, not knowing how to breach the wall between them, despising himself for resenting the fact that life had gone on in Pontypridd without him. It was obvious Alma didn’t need him any more, not even to cope with the trauma of her mother’s final illness or the stress of expanding the business he had set up. And where did that leave him? A pawn on the chessboard of the secret war no one, least of all him, dare mention? An irritating disruption to his wife’s daily routine when he was given leave? But then, wasn’t that what he had wanted? He had come home with the intention of telling her to get on with her life no matter what happened to him. But now, when he was faced with an independent Alma and a newly returned and bereaved Ronnie Ronconi, it was unbelievably hard knowing he wouldn’t even be missed.

  ‘If you don’t take a break, you’re not going to be any good to man or beast, let alone whoever’s buried under this lot,’ an elderly cockney ‘helper’ warned, as Haydn stopped digging to wipe the blood from his split and shredded fingers.

  ‘Quiet!’ the warden ordered abruptly.

  Haydn sat half-way down the steps they had cleared and strained his ears. He heard it again. Could it be the mewing of a trapped cat his wishful thinking had transformed into Anne’s cry? Neither of the wardens ventured an opinion. He picked up a chunk of masonry and handed it to the cockney who in turn handed it to a warden.

  He drove himself on, hauling more and more debris to the surface. Finally he reached the steel door that had closed off the cellar. It was leaning drunkenly in its frame, the hinges and the surround buckling beneath the weight of shattered stonework. Beyond it lay a mass of rubble interspersed with splintered wood – and a severed
arm – a woman’s arm complete with rings and wristwatch.

  He tried to cry out, but his mouth was caked with dust. The urgency that had sustained him suddenly ebbed and his knees gave way, pitching him forward. The warden behind him blew his whistle to summon help.

  ‘Leave it to us now, lad. We’ll do everything that can be done. Stand down and go and get yourself a cup of tea. We need all the room we can get here.’

  Haydn retreated to the ruins of what had been the ground-floor apartment and waited while others fought to free his wife and child. His family were his entire world, he would have willingly laid down his life for them, and yet here he was, sitting impotently on a blasted window-ledge, framing prayers he hadn’t the strength to utter while others dug them out.

  ‘Steady … easy … here we go. You recognise her?’

  Haydn closed his eyes not wanting to look, clinging to the absurd thought that as long as he didn’t see Jane dead, she would still be alive.

  ‘We need to identify her. Come on, there’s a good lad.’

  He opened his eyes and scrutinised the corpse laid out on the ground. She had been young and pretty, but now she was motionless, her hair and skin overlaid by a fine layer of powdered mortar that had transformed her flesh to stone. Apart from a thread of crimson that ran from her temple down to her eye she was perfect. So perfect he had the peculiar notion that she ought to be exhibited like a sculpture in a gallery.

  ‘It’s Mrs Allen’s granddaughter from upstairs. Her name was Nancy. She worked in the canteen at the War Office.’

  ‘You sure, lad?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Haydn staggered to the hole that marked the boundary between house and street. He clung to a fragment of wall, leaned outside and was horribly and thoroughly sick. A young, pretty girl he had known and liked, one who had her whole life in front of her, was dead, and the only feeling he could muster was fervent and sincere gratitude, that it was Nancy Allen not Jane Powell who was being rolled on to a collapsible mortuary stretcher.