There was room by the door, on the slatted benches. She flung herself into it, to get her breath back. She must cut down on the ciggies; except it was hard to refuse when the men wardens offered them, friendly-like.
Still panting, she looked around.
And sighed. It seemed a totally miserable sort of shelter.
People huddled together in a dim blue light. Silent except for the racking cough and the dismal wail of a baby at the far end.
Some shelters were really jolly. Fellers brought a fiddle or a squeeze-box, and you could have a good sing-song to drown the noise of the bombs. In some of the bigger ones there was dancing – a good knees-up as those Cockneys called it. In some there was even a drop to drink, or people passing round home-made toffee and biscuits.
Some even had buskers, doing their spoon-bashing or playing the Air on a G String on a musical saw. Or telling rude jokes that made the mums scream with laughter, and then tell their kids to put their hands over their ears so they couldn’t hear.
But this was a bunch of real miserable sods. Looked really sorry for themselves. Nothing but cough, cough, wheeze and snore.
Might as well be dead, Rosie thought. Where there’s life there’s hope …
She caught the eye of an old feller opposite. She said, just to say something, “Big raid tonight. I expect they’re copping it down the Dingle. Hope they don’t hit the off-licence!”
The old man nodded, friendly enough; but he didn’t say anything. Then he pursed his lips and shook his head, as if he was afraid she might wake the kid he was nursing on his lap.
God, even the kids were spiritless. In the shelter at home they were always yelling for a condensed-milk buttie, or punching each other and chasing round the whole shelter, and getting their ears battered all the way round. What was the matter with this lot? Had they left their sense of humour at the pawnbroker’s up the road?
So she told the only really dirty joke she knew. If that didn’t get them laughing, it would take a thousand-pound bomb to shift them …
Again, the old man raised a finger to his lips.
Rotten old killjoy. Like the deacons in chapel when she was a kid. Children should be seen and not heard. No giggling in the House of God.
Cripes, she thought, this isn’t a chapel, it’s only a shelter. There must be somebody lively, further down …
She turned her head and shouted, “Are we downhearted?”
In her home shelter, the yell of “No!” would have raised the concrete roof two feet in the air, and made the Liver Birds rock on their perches.
Here, nothing. Silence.
Cough, cough. Wheeze. Snore. They might as well be dead.
Chin up, she thought. Grin and bear it. Never say die.
But she didn’t actually say any of those things. A chill was working into her, even through her thick warden’s greatcoat. She shivered. And shivered again.
This shelter’s damp, she thought. They’ve all caught bronchitis. She studied them intently in the dim blue light. They did look sort of ill; wrinkled, poverty-battered faces, mouths hanging open to show ill-fitting false teeth.
Unemployment, she thought, scrimping and saving and spreading marge on bread then scraping it off again. Years and years when hardly anybody’s boat ever came in. Poor Liverpool! Let the poor souls rest in peace …
She shivered again. Shut up, Rosie, they haven’t all been as lucky as you. The babies you looked after might have been boring, but at least you got four square meals a day, and a hottie in a nice clean bed at night. Count your blessings. Don’t despise those who are worse off …
And then it began to bother her.
Where was that blue light coming from?
Normally the light in a shelter was yellow. Candles burning. Kids showing off their torches, flicking them round the ceiling. Or the hurricane lamps that the ARP laid on.
But the light was always yellow.
You only got blue lights in hospitals and factories, where they had mains electricity.
And there was no electricity in shelters. It was forbidden in law, in case the shelter was hit by a bomb and the broken electric cable-ends fried everyone to death.
So where was the blue light coming from?
Rosie stared around her.
It seemed to be coming from the people themselves. From their clothes, hands, faces … all over them.
“Where’s the blue light coming from?” she shouted at the old man, a sudden cold fear gripping her heart.
With a ghastly little smile he raised his cap to her. Under his cap, his domed bald head was broken. Cracked open like an egg. Stuff oozing out.
She was up and out and running before she knew her legs had moved. Running through streets as bright as day with searchlights, shells and bombs exploding. But still she ran. She would have run into the mouth of Hell itself to get away from that shelter …
It was the singing that stopped her in the end.
“There’ll be bluebirds over, the White Cliffs of Dover …”
Another shelter. An accordion playing. People bellowing their lungs out.
She staggered inside. Every face turned to look at her. Interested grinning faces.
“Ey, whacker,” said the warden by the door. “Catch your breath. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
When Rosie finally caught her breath, luxuriating in the yellow candle-light, the hot breath from the singing, the little kids tripping over her legs, she asked the warden, “Do you know a street near here, wi’ a bombed-out chapel and a pawnbrokers?”
He flinched, as if at some quite unbearably horrible memory.
“You mean Mellor … Street?” he asked.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by Collins Audio in 1994
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Text copyright © the Estate of Robert Westall 1994
Illustrations copyright © David Frankland 1995
Robert Westall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007336654
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007573240
Version: 2014–01–10
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