Mary's Child

by Irene Carr

  Chrissie answered, ‘That’s right!’ It was one of the precautions she had decided on when planning for the possibilty of an air raid. She had never thought there would be one, but here it was. And another precaution: ‘But send all the guests down into the cellar.’

  ‘Right y’are, miss.’ Len hurried back to the foot of the stairs to waylay the guests as they descended. It was then that the whistling came again, at first distant as before and again increasing in volume. But this time the shriek came much closer, was deafening when it ended – in an explosion that rocked the hotel and blew the glass out of the windows along its front to shatter in fragments in the street.

  Chrissie and Len both staggered as the blast shoved at them. Then the foyer filled with dust, some of it falling from the plastered ceilings as they cracked under the vibration, but most boiling in from the street through the empty windowframes. Chrissie guessed that meant a nearby building had been hit. She shouted, her own voice sounding far-off in her ringing ears, ‘Look after things here, Len!’ Then she ran out into the street.

  She saw the zeppelin that had passed overhead. She could hear its engine and see the propeller spinning behind the gondola that housed the engine and crew, slung under the silver body. Now it was droning away to the south of the town but turning seaward. Chrissie thought, On their way home. Damn them! Damn them! Fright and shock dragged the curses out of her.

  She turned back to the street. It was filled with a cloud of hanging dust which was already being dispersed on the wind. She did not have to look far to find its source. Next to the hotel was a shop and beyond that a terrace of houses. These had taken a direct hit and the front of one of them was spread across the street in rubble. The house was opened up to the wind and the sky like a doll’s house with the front removed. The floors of the front rooms had fallen and only the back rooms remained standing, and those precariously. There was smoke coming from the rear of the house and Chrissie glimpsed a flicker of flame there.

  ‘Now then, lass! You stand back where you won’t get hurt!’ said the policeman, a wartime Special Constable as old as Len. He was out of breath, puffing as he climbed off his bicycle and propped it against a lamp-post. ‘The fire brigade is on its way.’ He gripped Chrissie’s arm, pulled her back and she obeyed. Then he realised who she was and let go. ‘Ah! It’s you, Miss Carter. I didn’t recognise you.’ He did not say, ‘In that get-up’, but from the way he looked her up and down, it was obvious what he thought.

  He warned, ‘Better not get too close because that lot looks as if it might come down with the rest any minute,’ pointing to the rooms at the rear of the house. Even as he spoke they sagged further and a shower of bricks and plaster slithered down on to the rubble banked up from the street.

  He said, ‘There y’are, y’see.’ He peered at the wreckage and asked, ‘Do you know if anybody was in there?’

  Chrissie searched her memory for what she had heard and seen, and said, appalled, ‘There’s a woman and her three children live there. Her husband is away at sea – in the Navy. Her mother and father normally live with her but I don’t know exactly who was in there tonight.’

  By now the street was filling up with people from the nearby houses and among them were a man and woman who supported another woman between them. In the light from the moon and the searchlight’s beam that still fingered its way across the sky, Chrissie could see all three of them were coated with dust. The woman in the middle was crying hysterically. The man said, ‘We’re from number eight, next door. This is Mrs Gates. She was in her place when the bomb fell but she got out and come over the back wall into our yard and banged on the back door. She says her three lasses are still in her cellar.’

  The growing crowd groaned and the policeman asked, ‘Was anybody else in there?’

  The man shook his head and Mrs Gates, with a coat over her nightdress, choked out through her sobs, ‘No. Me mam and dad are at me sister’s for a few days and Fred’s at sea. But the three lasses are in the cellar. I sent them down and before I followed them I thought I’d look out of the kitchen window. I’d just got there when there was this shriek and the house fell down. I couldn’t get to the cellar. It’s all covered up. I had to climb out o’ the kitchen window.’

  A clanging bell warned of the fire brigade coming. The engine turned the corner into the road, ran down past the Railway Hotel and stopped by the rubble with a squeal of brakes. The policeman told the firemen about the three girls and they cautiously climbed up on to the rubble. A fire now crackled in the back of the house and the firemen ran out a hose and played its jet on the flames. Then their leader turned around where he stood on the little mountain of debris and shouted, ‘Quiet! Everybody keep quiet! We think we can hear them!’

  A stillness fell on the crowd. Mrs Gates stood with her hands pressed to her mouth. Then the fire chief called, ‘We can hear them shouting! It’s coming from a hole here!’ He knelt down among the bricks and shattered timber joists. Chrissie stared at him, guessing at where he was in relation to the geography of the house, and judged he was halfway back, about where the door, set under the stairs coming down from the upper floor, opened on to the stairs leading down into the cellar.

  Then the wreckage shifted, slowly, ominously, and an upper rear wall still standing buckled and fell. The firemen scrambled back to get out of the way. The fire chief, down on his knees, was too late but the bricks and mortar fell just short of him in a boiling of dust. He shoved up on to his feet and came back with his men, wiping at his face and spitting dust. He told the policeman, ‘That lot can collapse at any time. I could hear their voices but they’re coming out of a hole that wouldn’t let a rabbit down, let alone a man.’

  Chrissie hesitated, afraid, but then said, ‘What about a woman?’

  The two men looked at her and the policeman said, ‘This is Miss Carter; she manages the Railway Hotel.’

  The fire chief peered at her, finding it hard to believe of this girl. ‘Does she?’ Then he said, ‘I don’t know about the hole. It’s bl—’ He bit that off and corrected himself: ‘It’s very small.’

  ‘Can I go and see?’

  He eyed the wreckage, not moving now, smoke rising from the back of the house where the jet from the hose continued to play on the fire, now just a glow and a pall of smoke that caught at their lungs as it drifted on the wind, mixing with the dust and steam.

  The fire chief, worried for her, said, ‘I don’t think it’s safe.’

  Chrissie hesitated again, and in the silence there came to them the faint cry of a child: ‘Mam!’

  Mrs Gates wailed, ‘That’s Peggy!’

  Chrissie started up the heap of rubble towards the hole. The fire chief called, ‘Here! You can’t go up there!’ but she eluded his grasp and kept going. He swore and followed her, shouting over his shoulder, ‘Nobody else! Any more on here and the whole lot could collapse!’

  When he came up with Chrissie she was on her hands and knees, bent over the black hole. He said, ‘See? Wouldn’t hardly let a cat through.’

  Chrissie asked, ‘Have you got a torch?’

  He switched it on and she took it, trained its beam into the hole. Now she saw that it was roughly triangular, formed of timbers that had been the upper floor of the house and were now tip-tilted and broken but holding up the low mountain of debris. At its entrance the hole was narrow. Chrissie said, ‘I think it widens further on. The passage by the stairs looks to be clear.’ It was, so far as she could see through the dust still hanging in there.

  The cry came again: ‘Mam!’

  Chrissie said, ‘I’m going down.’ She shoved her hands into the hole then wriggled after them.

  The fire chief said, above and behind her, ‘Take care, lass. For God’s sake, don’t get stuck down there.’

  That fear was at the back of Chrissie’s mind. She tried not to think about it as she wriggled down through the hole. She had to force her way, sticking more than once. She could feel, through the overalls, the timbers that
made up the sides of the hole scraping the skin from her flesh. But she got through, legs kicking, and thought that it was as well she was wearing the overalls and not a skirt: they’d have got a view then.

  She lay still for a few seconds as she caught her breath after her struggle. The torch showed her that she was in a cave inside the collapsed house. In fact she was under a table on which rested the timbers that formed the tunnel through which she had painfully squeezed. To her left lay the passage and she could see that it was clear but for a litter of fallen bricks a foot high. Between the table and the passage the cave was just the height of the table, three feet or so. In the passage and under the stairs was the door to the cellar. It was closed and bricks lay piled against it but the staircase still stood so the door could be opened were it not for the rubble which held the door, trapping the children within.

  The cry came from there again now, and louder: ‘Mam!’

  Chrissie answered, ‘All right, pet! We’re coming!’ That brought silence but as she started to crawl over the bricks and under the low ceiling of the cave towards the door she heard two or three voices. The girls were all talking at once, the words indistinguishable but the tone frightened, relieved, hysterical.

  She came to the door and cleared the rubble away, working one handed while holding the torch with the other. She tossed aside the last brick, reached up and seized the handle then dragged at the door. Its foot grated on the small pieces of plaster and cement still lying on the floor but it opened. Chrissie shone the beam of the torch inside and it lit the pale, open-mouthed faces of the three little girls, clustered together on the cellar steps.

  And the house, timbers subjected to unintended pressures and strains, creaked in pain and moved.

  The staircase slumped, grinding down on to the top of the opened cellar door. The roof of the cave sagged. Dust and fine rubble filtered down, setting them all coughing and filling the air so the beam of the torch shaking in Chrissie’s hand penetrated barely a yard. The girls shrieked and then came the voice of the fire chief: ‘It’s too late! Get out yourself, miss!’

  Chrissie opened her mouth, shut it again as she realised only a squeak would come out, took a breath and forced herself to answer in a measured tone: ‘I’ve got the girls! I’m bringing them out!’ Then she told them, ‘Come on out of there.’ She shepherded them, crawling, through the dust-laden dimness of the cave to the hole and pushed them out one at a time. And the fire chief answered outside: ‘Got her . . . got her . . .’

  As the eldest and last was wriggling through the hole the house groaned again, a long-drawn-out grinding that ended with a sliding crash. Dust swirled around Chrissie and she cried out as the cave collapsed and rubble fell on her ankles where they lay outside the protection of the table. The table itself held – just. She could see the top of it bowing in the middle.

  The fire chief hauled the last girl from the hole and called, voice urgent, ‘Got her! Now you, miss! Quick as you can!’

  ‘Just a second.’

  Tension raised the tone of his voice: ‘Come on out! What are you waiting for?’

  Chrissie, bent double as she tried to claw away the rubble, answered, ‘My legs are caught.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ And then, his voice fainter, addressing the watching crowd and his men, ‘She’s fastened down there!’ Chrissie heard the keening of the people outside, half wail, half groan, the women’s voices blending with those of the men. And the building settled again, grinding down.

  She froze for long seconds as the table cracked above her and more rubble cascaded down around her. But this time none added to that on her legs. The grinding stopped. Dust still drifted on to her face but she stirred into life again, digging the broken bricks and chunks of plaster from her legs. Until she was free, able to turn and thrust herself, arms and head first, into the hole again. She squirmed and kicked, glimpsed the beam of the torch held out in front of her glinting on shining buttons. Then big hands clamped on hers and dragged her out into the night air.

  She heard the people cheer then the fire chief was running her down the hill of wreckage, his hand on her arm. The cheering stopped as there was a rumbling crash behind her and in the silence that followed the crowd cried, ‘Oooh!’ It was a sigh of horror mixed with relief. The fire chief halted and Chrissie turned and saw the house had fallen in on itself. The rear no longer stood and the hole she had just left had been swallowed by the avalanche of débris. Another minute and she would have been buried alive, squashed like a fly under tons of brickwork.

  She had to endure the tearful thanks of Mrs Gates, the cheers of the crowd and the fire chief’s congratulations. But she escaped as soon as she could and walked back to the hotel. Now her legs shook and she wanted to hide. In the foyer she found Len sweeping up broken glass and a number of her guests, in dressing-gowns, peering out of the empty windowframes at what they could see of the air raid. That was little enough now. The zeppelin had gone and the searchlights no longer swept the sky, the guns were silent.

  Len told her, ‘A bobby came past a minute ago and said it was all clear. Jerry’s shoved off.’ He jerked his head at the guests. ‘So I told them they could come up and go to bed but they only got this far.’

  Arkley was there now, had come limping across the bridge from his home on the other side of the river. He said, ‘I saw the fire was over this way and thought it might be this place.’ He glanced around and added, ‘It damn near was.’ Then he saw Chrissie covered in dust and grime from head to foot and he asked, ‘Here! What happened to you, miss?’

  ‘I got dirty helping some people out of a hole.’ Chrissie remembered her duty, raised her voice but managed to keep it steady. ‘You can all go back to bed now, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry you were disturbed.’

  Someone laughed nervously, then a man said, ‘She’s a cool one!’ The laughter, born of relief, became general and they began to drift off to their rooms.

  Chrissie lit the gas boiler over the bath and ran it full, made a cup of tea and drank it while soaking. Then she dressed, went down to her office, prepared a list and gave it to Len. ‘I’ll look after things here. I want you to call on these people and ask them if they’ll come in straight away.’ She saw him off then turned to Arkley, reached for another sheet of paper and started another list. ‘This is what we have to do.’

  She worked for the rest of the night with the team she had called out. So that the guests, when they came down to breakfast, found the dining-room and other public rooms clean. Broken windows had been reglazed or boarded up. And one commercial traveller, paying his bill as he left to go to his next call at York, commented, ‘Business as usual, eh?’

  Chrissie, immaculate and smiling, though with dark smudges under her eyes, answered, ‘That’s right.’ ‘Business as usual’ was what she had worked for.

  Business became better still over the next weeks. Her guests of that night went away with a story to tell of having survived an air raid, and it had not cost them any discomfort apart from an excited half-hour in the cellar. They had only praise for the Railway Hotel and Miss Carter. She found she was a local heroine; everyone heard of her rescue of the three girls and many came to the hotel just to see her, spending money at the same time.

  Lance Morgan wheezed, ‘It could ha’ been a disaster for trade but you’ve turned it into profit. I just wish you could do something like that about this war.’

  Chrissie shivered, remembering. ‘I hope I’ve finished with it. Once was enough.’

  But the war had not finished with her.

  A month later the British and German Fleets fought the battle of Jutland. The enemy were forced to withdraw but once again there were long casualty lists. Chrissie read them, heart in mouth in case she found a name she knew. Jack Ballantyne was not mentioned. Frank Ward’s destroyer had not been in the battle, but then he came to her in the night.

  The bars were about to close when a kitchen maid came to Chrissie, who was supervising them. The girl said, ‘’Scuse me,
miss, but there’s a sailor at the back asking to speak to you. He said to tell you his name’s Frank.’

  ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’ Chrissie tried to keep her reply casual, but she knew something was wrong. Otherwise Frank would have walked in at the public bar. She glanced over the crowd in there, saw no one likely to cause trouble and told the elderly barman, ‘Put the towel up on the stroke of ten, Geordie, please.’

  He laughed. ‘They’ll not want to go out in this.’

  Chrissie grimaced sympathetically at the rain beating against the windows, but told him, ‘They’ll have to. Ten o’clock closing is the law now.’ And she could wait no longer.

  ‘Aye. Right y’are, Miss Carter.’

  She hurried through the hotel to the kitchen and found Frank standing by the door opening on to the back alley. There were only the two kitchen maids there now, cleaning the place ready for the morning. They whispered to each other and cast giggling glances at Frank. Rain dripped from his sodden overcoat into the pool that had formed around his feet.

  Chrissie asked, ‘What are you doing here? Why didn’t you come to the front and ask for me?’

  Frank’s eyes slid to the two girls and he said, low voiced, ‘I wanted to see you and I didn’t dare show me face at the front in case a pollis saw me.’

  Now Chrissie guessed. She said in a normal tone of voice so the girls could hear, ‘I wasn’t expecting you tonight, but come along to the office.’ She led him out of the kitchen but then turned up the back stairs, took them at a run and ushered him into her room. There she faced him. ‘You’ve deserted.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not that. Give me credit, Chrissie. I’m not one to run away.’

  She knew that was true. ‘So what, then?’

  ‘Like I said, I just had to see you. I’ve got a draft, to a cruiser up at Scapa.’ The Grand Fleet had its huge base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. ‘They’re putting a dozen of us on a train for there tomorrow. And I’ll be on it, no fear of that. But I wasn’t supposed to be ashore tonight so I jumped ship. I couldn’t go to the station to catch a train because there’d be a pollis or two there. The same goes for buses. So I got a lift on a lorry for part o’ the way but I walked most of it.’