Blitz - Book 4 of the Poppy Chronicles

by Claire Rayner

  And then, perhaps, she told herself as the bus came trundling along, looking like a faintly blue ghost in the darkness as its shaded bulbs glimmered coldly in its depths, perhaps even to make some sort of peace with the hated Bernie. He might be despicable but he was, after all, Jessie’s son. And for that reason alone it would be worth making the gesture of friendliness to him. It would make Jessie happy, certainly. And she sat in her corner seat as the bus started up again with a low growl, feeling suddenly a little better.

  26

  The bells were ringing at Aldgate East station when the train got there, and she swore softly under her breath. An alert in progress; and she stood on the platform as other arriving passengers moved into the crowds, looking at the rows of occupied bunks and people on mattresses and rugs who filled the whole area as far as she could see, very aware of the fetid air laced with the smell of hot winter clothes and rubber shoes and tobacco and above all of human sweat, and tried to think.

  To go out into a raid would be foolish and anyway the chances were a warden would appear to bundle her into a shelter again; but to stay here would be worse, and she hesitated, not able to decide what to do.

  Somewhere up the platform someone was playing a mouth organ and a couple of children, a little boy with crisp curling black hair, a wide grin and enormous energy, and a small round girl who was just as eager as he was, were tap-dancing to it, and she stood and watched them for a while, diverted.

  They were both obviously blissfully happy, their feet twinkling in practised unison, and grinning at their audience with practised skill as a small neat woman, obviously their mother, sat and watched them with bursting pride all over her face.

  ‘That’s it, Lionel – keep it going – good girl, Joycie!’ she cried and clapped her hands in encouragement, and the children danced even more energetically as their mother laughed delightedly, and Poppy thought – they’ve forgotten why they’re here, forgotten they’re here for the bombs and the sirens. They’re just happy dancing, and she looked at the other people around them who were watching them. They looked tired and white about the mouth, but they were amused by the children and enjoyed them, following their mother in clapping their hands in time to the music that the mouth organ churned out perkily.

  ‘On the good ship Lollipop,’ Poppy whispered under her breath in time to the music. ‘It’s a short trip to the candy shop, where the bon-bons are, happy landings on a chocolate bar –’ and suddenly her eyes smarted with unshed tears.

  Lee had loved that silly song, had learned to sing it in her tuneless little voice almost as soon as she could speak; and Poppy tried to imagine her here beside her, dancing like these children, and couldn’t. She was safe and happy enough where she was, however much she might be missed here, and Joshy too, and the tears came closer to the surface. I must see Jessie, she thought then with complete inconsequentiality. I must see her, raid or not. It had become the most important of matters, more than just a desire to calm the morning’s spat, more than a wish to make peace. It was an imperative that pushed her to the exit and the stairway to the surface.

  She arrived at the top a little breathless, for the escalators had stopped, to find the warden standing near the half-drawn iron gates across the entrance. It all looked very odd; the ticket office and the cigarette kiosk and newspaper stand shuttered, but otherwise the usual messy Underground station, and she stared round, trying to remember it all as it had been. A silly thing to do – another attempt to escape from what was really going on. And she shook herself mentally. There was no escape from the here and now. There never would be.

  The warden turned his head as she came up. ‘You want to stay down there below, missus, where it’s safe.’ He returned his gaze to the street. ‘The buggers are really after us tonight and no error – ’

  She looked out over his shoulder and saw it; the glow in the sky ahead, just at the far end of Leman Street across the wide road that was Whitechapel High Street, empty now of moving buses and lorries, for they were all abandoned at the kerbs, their occupants gone to seek shelter. It looked unreal and yet menacing out there as the glow in the sky ahead was reflected off such shop windows as had survived, and the patches of worn road where the gleam of tar showed through. And suddenly she caught her breath. Leman Street – close to the shop and restaurant and Jessie –

  ‘Where’s that coming from? That glow there – any idea?’ she said as she came closer to the man, and peered through the gap between the gates.

  ‘Last I heard from the fellers over at the Post, it’s a direct hit on Cable Street,’ he said, peering out into the dimness. ‘And ’ere they come again, the devils. Get down!’ And he turned to run towards the head of the escalator as above them the low roar of aeroplanes shook the sky.

  She pushed the gates open wider and wriggled out. A direct hit on Cable Street. Oh, God, she thought. Oh, Jessie. Oh, God, and began to run as the man in the station behind her, suddenly realizing what she was doing, shouted after her and the noise of the planes overhead got louder.

  She ignored his shouts and ran on along the familiar route, staring ahead with her eyes wide for fear of missing her footing in the blackout and then realized that with the light overhead as well as the other fires burning around her and lighting up the sky, there was ample illumination. Fire engines were everywhere, with police and more wardens, and she dodged arms put out to stop her as she ran on, getting first dreadfully breathless and then at last finding her second wind, which made it possible to run even faster.

  The planes overhead grew quieter, and she thought – thank God, they’re going over to somewhere else and then felt a great stab of shame. Wishing bombs on other people. Is this what we’ve been reduced to? Wishing others hurt, anyone as long as it’s not ourselves –

  She came bursting out of Leman Street to make a great curve to her left, and at last was in Cable Street. And then stopped and stared and knew that this had been entirely what she had expected. It had to be. There couldn’t have been any other outcome. From the moment she had left Norland Square, she told herself with a sick certainty, this was what I expected. I knew, somehow I knew –

  She began to run again, until she was up to the edge of a depression in the ground which was almost deep enough to be called a crater, and which had on its far side a heap of battered remains of the building, great slabs of concrete and piled dusty bricks, and, incongruously, a broken table lying helplessly on its back with the legs in the air like a stranded tortoise, and she thought – it’s mine. From my office. Oh, God, it’s my table. And she stood and stared over the rubble, trying to see, and a warden shouted ahead somewhere and she looked up, almost frightened to see what was beyond.

  And for one moment felt a stab of hope. It was the restaurant that had gone with the office over it, but the building alongside where the kitchens and the shop were was still standing. Fire licked along the crest of the roof, but there were firemen up there and hoses played elegant dancing arcs of water across the darkly orange sky above. If she’d been in the kitchens she’d be all right, Poppy told herself, almost whispering the words aloud If she’d been in the restaurant – and then caught her breath in a half-sob, half-shout as a warden appeared out of the hubbub and looked out towards her.

  ‘Hey, you,’ he bawled angrily. ‘Take cover – ’

  ‘Tom?’ she called, recognizing him even under the layer of soot that covered his face. ‘It’s me – Mrs Deveen – do you know who was here? Can I come and see what’s up and who was here? I just got here – ’

  The man peered at her in the fitful light, as a couple of firemen went by her hauling another hosepipe, and she stepped sideways to keep out of their way and almost slithered into the crater, and the man Tom cursed loudly and came slipping and stumbling over the pile of rubble to reach her.

  ‘I told you to take cover – oh, Gawd, Mrs D – I didn’t hear what you shouted – didn’t know it was you. Listen ducks, nothing you can do. The place got a direct hit – I’m that sorr
y.’

  ‘Who was here?’ she said and her voice amazed her by its steadiness. ‘I must know – who was here?’

  ‘Place had almost shut for the night, according to the man we got out. Old fella – head waiter?’

  ‘Horace,’ she said and caught her breath. ‘He came over tonight to help out.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ the warden said quickly and then, amazingly, laughed. ‘Dead annoyed, mind you. They took him off to the hospital to get his broken leg sorted out and he was cursing a treat. He was just counting up the tips or something – the tronk, is it? – anyway, sharing out the moolah, he said, and the bloody Huns come and scattered the lot. Steamin’ mad he was – ’

  Poppy managed to laugh. It was so very much a Horace sort of thing that, and the relief of hearing the irascible old man had been up to form, in spite of his injury, was huge. But there had been others there and she caught her breath again and said, ‘Tom – my aunt was here tonight, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Mrs Braham?’ Tom said and swore again. His language was rich and rounded and seemed to help him. ‘Here, Dave!’ he bawled over his shoulder. ‘Dave! Mrs Deveen says as how the old girl’s in there – any luck looking?’

  ‘No one on the ground floor or the upper ones,’ a hidden voice roared back, barely audible over the sound of the spluttering hoses and the crackling of flames greedily eating wood and throwing an incongruously cheerful kitchen-in-the-early-morning sort of scent into the air. ‘ – take another look – ’

  ‘The cellars?’ Poppy said then and tried to follow Tom as he turned to clamber over the rubble towards the distant shouting voice. ‘She may have been down there. It’s pretty deep – she could be all right, but we’ve got to get her out – ’

  ‘Leave it to us, for Gawd’s sake, Mrs D –’ The warden turned and looked down at her and she saw him brilliantly outlined against the smoky light of the fire that was now taking hold of the kitchen and shop building and which seemed to be defeating the sweating, shouting firemen. The sound of crackling wood had become an ominous roaring now. ‘We got enough to sort out without having another civilian down there to worry over – we’ll look for her, trust me – Cellars, you say –’ And he turned and slithered away to the other side of the heap of rubble, leaving her staring impotently after him.

  It seemed to be an eternity that she stood there waiting. There was nothing else she could do. To have insisted on following Tom would have been stupid. He was right to tell her she’d be in the way. But she couldn’t go away, either, and she stood there, her head thrown back, staring up at the roof where the years of Jessie’s and her own hard work seemed to be about to be slowly eaten away into a cloud of white ash and broken bricks, and waited.

  And then suddenly there was action, loud action, and she strained forwards to try to see what was happening and frustrated by the heaping of the rubble which obstructed her view, made up her mind and began, slowly and awkwardly, to climb it.

  Her feet slipped and twisted on the broken bricks and timbers which lay drunkenly across it and she almost fell on her knees at one point, but managed to regain her balance just in time. And got to the top of the pile of rubbish that had once been the best restaurant in the East End to stand staring down on the other side.

  It was like a scene on a stage. At the rear the glow of the fire and at ground level, the bulk of the building with its roof ablaze, and in front of that a little group of slowly moving people lit by flashes of light from above as the fire on the roof leapt up in response to the sudden bursts of breeze that came swooping over the roof tops from the river. She stood frozen into stillness, watching as they inched their way across the remains of the pavement and blinked as the heat made her eyes smart and run tears and rubbed them and stared again.

  Two people carrying a stretcher and on it a figure that didn’t move. Behind them another stretcher with three men carrying it this time, and a figure that seemed to be moving a little. Or was it an optical illusion due to the leaping firelight? And then she knew it wasn’t. She could see arms waving about and hear the sound of voices, but it was hard to hear properly for the roaring of the fire was now very loud. She strained her eyes and ears even more, but it was useless. There was only one thing to do and she did it.

  She slid precariously down the other side of the rubble heap, bringing a good deal of it down with her, and tearing her legs painfully on bits of twisted metal that stuck out of it, until she was on reasonably safe ground and then, holding her hand in front of her face, because the heat from the fire was now almost searing, pushed towards the stretchers.

  By this time they’d reached the edge of the cleared area, where an ambulance stood waiting, its doors gaping wide, and as she came up to it, the bearers began to push the first stretcher with its still burden into it. And then she was there at last, standing beside the second stretcher with its three bearers and she looked down at it, almost too frightened to focus her eyes and saw the glimpse of red under the rough blanket and swallowed hard.

  ‘Jessie,’ she said very softly and the head on the stretcher moved and then turned and the husky voice said, ‘Poppela – I knew you’d come, dolly. I knew you would –’ And then stopped in a little sigh.

  Poppy was crouching beside her, trying to see in the unreliable light and the man behind the stretcher said kindly, ‘She’s all right as far as we can see, lady. Friend of yours?’

  ‘My aunt,’ Poppy said, and set her cheek against Jessie’s. ‘She’s my aunt and the best woman in the world. She’s not too hurt – ?’

  ‘Legs seems funny,’ the other stretcher man said. ‘Couldn’t feel nothing when we moved her. There was this thing across her back. They’ll sort her out at the hospital though. She’s on her way – ’

  Poppy got to her feet then and peered into the ambulance where they were settling their first passenger, arranging the blankets neatly across the stretcher and she called out, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘No idea,’ the stretcher man said, and looked down at her. ‘Might you know if you was to look?’

  ‘Yes –’ she said breathlessly, trying to think who it might be. Lily? Had she stayed late tonight? One of the waiters or the chef? And, fearful and unwilling, she climbed into the ambulance, not wanting to look.

  The stretcher man stood aside courteously and she wanted to giggle. It was just as though he were one of her own waiters showing a customer to a table, and she almost expected him to use a napkin to flick an imaginary speck of dust away. But she controlled herself and looked down at the face on the stretcher.

  The eyes were half open and the hair was rumpled over them. It made him look, down one side of his face, like a child who had fallen asleep so suddenly he hadn’t even had time to close his eyes properly. But the other side of his face showed no expression at all. It couldn’t. It was a mass of bloody tissue which had been torn from the bone so deeply that she could see a white gleam in the depths, and experienced though she was in seeing battlefield wounds, the sight made her head swim and her belly heave with nausea.

  ‘Do you know him, lady? It’d help for the labelling,’ the man at her side said and she looked at him and again at the stretcher and shook her head to clear it.

  ‘Yes,’ she said dully. ‘I know him. His name is Bernard Braham.’

  27

  Robin stood at the far side of the casualty waiting hall, pre-tending to look through the bundles of patients’ record notes she had in her hands, but in fact watching Hamish. She had to talk to him; that ten minutes she had spent listening to Chick as they came out of Night Nurse’s breakfast to go on duty had shown that. He deserved an apology. But the trouble was, if she apologized would he read more into it than she intended? Could he perhaps think she was being the same as her half-sister? The mere idea of that was enough to make her feel hot with shame. She couldn’t bear to let him think so. Yet, equally, she couldn’t bear to let him go on thinking she had been rude and hateful and didn’t want him to be her friend any longer. She sighed. Whate
ver she did she was in trouble. Devils and deep blue seas just weren’t in it.

  Chick came out of her cubicle with a swish of the curtain behind her and made her way to the sterilizer in the corner, making a detour in order to pass Robin and as she went she hissed, ‘Ass! talk to him now. Tell him I told you what he told me – that your Chloe lied like a Persian rug and then some – he’s entitled to know. And the longer you put it off the harder it’ll be – go on!’ and then caught Sister’s eye as she went bustling across the waiting room and smiled beatifically at her. Robin, also seeing Sister, was forced into action. She couldn’t just stand here watching Hamish any longer.

  He had just finished scrubbing the walls of the soiled cubicle when she went in, and was about to start on the floor. It smelled foul – beer and worse – and she wrinkled her nose a little, wishing they could talk somewhere else, somewhere quiet and decent and –

  ‘I’ll be away from here in about five minutes, Nurse,’ he said in his soft burr, not looking at her. ‘If you need the cubicle urgently – ’

  ‘I don’t need it, Hamish,’ she said. ‘I need you.’

  He went on mopping the floor in long practised strokes and then hauled the mop into its bucket and screwed it into the squeezer. He didn’t look at her.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to speak to me,’ he said at length.

  ‘I was wrong.’ She managed somehow to keep her voice steady. It really was difficult. ‘I have to apologize.’

  There was a long silence and then he looked at her, and just for a moment leaned on his mop. ‘Well, Who’d ha’ thought it? And you so convinced I was some sort of – of – ’