Dear Mrs. Bird: A Novel

by AJ Pearce

  ‘Fire Service,’ shouted Roy. ‘Coming through.’ He pushed his way past a large man who was trying to get a better view and in doing so, lost hold of my hand. Roy immediately looked back for me.

  ‘Keep going,’ I shouted at him. ‘I’m coming.’ He nodded and disappeared into the club.

  I tried to follow, shouting into the back of the fat man’s coat to let me get through, but the gap had closed and I couldn’t force myself past. People trying to get in were blocking the way of people trying to get out. Someone called out to Give Them Some Room. Above us the planes still roared and the guns kept booming.

  I stopped pushing for a second and stood on my toes. A slightly built man in grey was half carrying, half dragging a lady out of the Café. She was also entirely grey. But it wasn’t their clothes, it was the dust covering them and their hair and their faces, as if they’d been dipped in ash.

  Someone shone a torch at them and the woman cried out, putting her hand over her face and then recoiling from her own touch. Blood was coming out of a huge wound on her forehead, the red looking all wrong against the monochrome of everything else.

  My friends were in there. What if Bunty was hurt like this woman?

  ‘LET ME PAST!’ I screamed in a voice that came from the bottom of my gut, and I punched my fists into the thick overcoats blocking my way. Roy had got through and now I couldn’t. Just because he was bigger and stronger than me, and wearing a uniform that showed he was trained and knew what he was doing and could properly help. That wasn’t the point. In the horror of everything, the injustice sent me into a fury. Roy was William’s friend. Bunty was mine. It was my job to find her, my job to make sure she was safe. I would not be a bystander.

  I kept pushing and then shouted again, this time with more authority. It still didn’t work. I pushed harder.

  Somebody gripped my arm and without looking round I tried to snatch it away. But a man’s voice I vaguely recognised kept saying my name.

  ‘Emmy. Emmeline. Emmeline . . . MISS LAKE.’

  I turned, disorientated, my mind already inside the building, looking for Bunty.

  ‘Emmy,’ came the voice again. ‘It’s me.’

  Mr Collins took hold of my shoulders tightly, pulling me back from where I needed to go.

  ‘My dear girl, thank God,’ he said. ‘I thought you were in there. I was on fire watch. My friend’s restaurant.’ He stopped. ‘Where are your friends? Miss Tavistock?’

  ‘I have to get in,’ I said, half to Mr Collins and half to myself as I pulled away from him and started trying to push through the crowd again, managing to move a couple of paces closer to the door as would-be helpers made their way into the club, either disappearing into its depths, or getting as far as the door and helping more of the grey people trying to get out.

  ‘All right, miss,’ said an air-raid warden who was blocking my path. ‘No need to go in there now.’

  ‘Let me through,’ I said, staring him down.

  The warden looked at me in my civilian overcoat, my silk frock poking out underneath, and the stupid diamante clip in my hair. He probably thought I was drunk, or one of the women that hung around the streets in the area, looking for an easy opportunity to loot.

  ‘Run along, love,’ he said. I started to argue but he stood firm.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, man, let my wife through.’

  Mr Collins was by my side, barking the order in his most imperious voice.

  ‘She’s a nurse, you idiot. Let us both through.’

  He waved an identity card very quickly at the warden.

  ‘Dr Richard Green,’ he said, violently shoving the card back into his coat. ‘Now stand aside, so we can help these people before they drop any more on us.’

  The warden hesitated and I took my chance. Ignoring him and with a face that made Mr Collins’ assertiveness appear benign, I bunched up my fists and shoved my way in.

  As the shocked and injured continued to escape into the street, I slipped past. Only later I would think of how selfish I had been, how I chose who I wanted to help. But at that moment I just wanted to find Bunty.

  Inside the Café it was pitch-black and I fumbled in my coat pocket for my torch. Now I was inside, my rage disappeared. Nothing existed other than to find Bunty and Bill. My heart was still racing like anything, but now I became armoured with a single-mindedness and even a sort of calm.

  The air was almost entirely smoke and dust and immediately I started to cough. Hand over my mouth, I somehow remembered my training at the station, where even the admin staff were taught what to do if we were hit.

  More people die from asphyxia than burning.

  Keep calm.

  Breathe through your nose and don’t gulp.

  I felt my way down some stairs, stepping around debris and shining my torch ahead. Its little beam caught a line of four people coming up towards us, holding on to each other, making a human train to the exit. They weren’t grey like the others, but black from the blast. A man was crying. I thought perhaps his dinner jacket had been blown off, but then I saw he had put it around the shoulders of a woman with him. Her dress was in tatters. No one was running or shouting.

  I knew Mr Collins was close behind me, holding his torch over my shoulder and swooping it around to see where we were.

  ‘Emmy,’ he said. ‘Would they have been dancing do you think? Would they have been downstairs?’

  I didn’t know. Bunty and I had talked about whether we should have a table on the dance floor or up on the balcony and which would have the best view of the band. The most frivolous of chats had become the most important thing in the world.

  I thought she had said downstairs. I was almost entirely sure it was downstairs.

  I shone my torch along the balcony to my left.

  The balustrade leading along from the stairs had been twisted and mangled, like a roll of black liquorice. And then nothing. The balcony wasn’t there any more.

  I nodded, more to myself than in answer to Mr Collins, and holding on to the banister, clambered down the stairs, my shoes crunching on broken glass as I went.

  ‘Bunty,’ I called. ‘Bunty, it’s me. We’re here, darling. It’s all right, we’re here.’

  It was the voice my mother had used when I was little and had nightmares. I would call out for her and as soon as I heard her voice, even though the monsters were still in my room, I knew I could be brave enough to hold on. I would hear her voice as she came along the corridor, calm and soothing and telling me it was all right. Not stopping until she was in my room and the light was on and the monsters had gone.

  ‘Bunty, we’re coming,’ I called again. ‘Tell us where you are, sweetheart, we’re coming to help.’

  I kept calling and then I stopped and listened for her. There was no response. I could hear cries and moaning, someone shouting for help, people calling for each other, someone saying the ambulances were on their way.

  Mr Collins and I stopped for a moment when we reached what had been the dance floor. His hand was still on my shoulder. He asked me what Bunty was wearing and I remembered her blue dress and told him. It had ruffles on the hem. I said that William would be in his AFS uniform. Mr Collins said to just think about Bunty and whatever I saw, just to keep thinking of her and to keep calling and listening and not to think of anything else and that he was right behind me.

  I shone my torch and kept searching. There was rubble and glass and what may have been the balcony or the ceiling, but was now all over the floor.

  And there were bodies. I heard myself say Oh and then Oh again. Mr Collins’ hand did not move from my shoulder.

  ‘Keep calling her,’ he said when I stopped for a moment, shining my torch at something. I knew it was a person but I couldn’t really tell.

  ‘It’s not her,’ Mr Collins said, terribly gently, and I nodded, then kept nodding because unimaginably awful though it was, to be told that this poor soul wasn’t Bunty was the best possible news. I started calling for her again.r />
  We kept going, climbing around tables, past the low stage on our right where people, I supposed the band, must still be. Someone called out, saying It Hurts, It Hurts.

  I ignored them and that was disgusting of me. I ignored people who were dying. At the time, it didn’t feel like a decision. If Bunty was alive, she would need help. So I kept going.

  There were people and debris and dust and so much glass. We had to bend down to look at each person to see if they were Bunty or Bill. When they weren’t, it was as if there was one more person to stack the odds in our favour. Not everyone could be dead. It was a warped logic. For months afterwards, I would lie awake in my bed and wonder how, in a matter of moments, I had become someone who could think like that.

  Madly, wildly, while some people had been blown to pieces, others were still in their seats at their table. Black from the blast, dead, but unmarked. A man was slumped over a table as if he was drunk. I didn’t see his face, but I saw that his hands were gone.

  I turned away from the man and kept calling. I didn’t need to look round for Mr Collins. I knew he would not leave. Even as everything around us just got worse and worse, he never suggested we should turn back. I knew that for the rest of my life, even though he was my boss, I would love him for that.

  More people had arrived to help. A man shouted for a stretcher. A group of real nurses were helping a lady covered in blood and talking to each other in medical terms. I heard Roy’s voice, somewhere further back from the stage. He was shouting for Bill and Bunty over and over again.

  As we pushed on, I saw two dancers kneeling over someone. One was ripping a tablecloth into pieces and the other was pressing the material into the body. They were all dressed up in their sequins and not covered in dust or blackened at all.

  ‘Jesus, Amy, another five minutes and we’d have been out here,’ said one of them. ‘This poor girl.’

  Stifling a gasp, I flashed my torch onto the person they were trying to help. She was in her underclothes, her dress had been blown off by the blast. It was hard to see who she might be. But she had blonde hair. It wasn’t Bunty.

  The dancers must have been backstage or on a break when it happened. I shone my torch behind them. Huge chunks of plaster had fallen just by the stage.

  Then I saw. Half buried under one of them, someone in a long frock. You couldn’t tell what colour the dress was but you could see that it was long with ruffles along the bottom.

  ‘Bunty,’ I screamed.

  I scrambled over to her like a maniac and threw myself down by her side, not noticing as I knelt in the glass and rubble surrounding her. One of her legs was trapped and she was covered in debris, but I knew it was her.

  She opened her lips and said something. A tiny sound and I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say, but it was enough to know. She was alive.

  ‘Bunty, sweetheart, it’s all right,’ I said, touching her face. ‘You’re going to be all right.’

  I started to move chunks of plaster from around her. Mr Collins was on his knees too, doing the same.

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ I kept saying. ‘We’re going to get help. You’re going to be all right.’

  Bunty blinked. Twice. Her eyes were full of dust and she was struggling not to cough. But she looked up at me and in a wretched, hoarse little voice, managed to speak.

  ‘Bill.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It Was Our Turn

  After the ambulances came and Bunty was taken away, Mr Collins bribed a taxi to ignore the state we were in and follow the long grey convoy to Charing Cross Hospital. The rest of the night was a bad dream of trying to find out where Bunty was and if William had been found. I borrowed coins from Mr Collins at the hospital and phoned my parents, but all I could say over and over again was, ‘Bunty’s been hurt, Daddy. Bill’s missing and Bunty’s been hurt.’

  My mother and father drove through the night to get to the house, as did Bunty’s granny only her driver took her straight to the hospital. Charing Cross had sent me and Mr Collins home. They’d been insistent about patching up my cut knees and equally as firm that they couldn’t tell me anything about my friends.

  Sunday should have been the day that Bunty and I sat around the flat, reliving the glamorous excitement of the previous night and waiting for William to come round for lunch when we would relive it all over again with him. Instead, while Mother made endless cups of tea and Father insisted on re-bandaging the nurse’s perfectly good work, I tried not to relive anything at all.

  At ten to eleven that morning, the phone rang. It was Bunty’s granny. My father answered it, saying several times in his doctor’s voice, ‘I see,’ and, ‘Mrs Tavistock, these are very good signs.’ Then he said, ‘And any news of William?’ and after a short pause a quite upbeat, ‘Well, I’m sure they will tell you as soon as they know.’

  Then Father said Goodbye and came to sit beside me, taking hold of both my hands.

  ‘She’s pretty roughed up, my darling,’ he said gently. ‘And it’s going to take rather a time to recover. But I promise you, from what I’ve just heard, Bunty is going to get well, she really is. And while we don’t know where William is yet, Mrs Tavistock says she is sure we will soon. People were taken to several hospitals so it is taking a little while to find out.’

  After that, for just over an hour, everything seemed a bit better.

  Then, at nearly twelve, the doorbell rang downstairs. Buoyed by the news about Bunty and my faith in my father’s words, I headed downstairs to answer the front door. Not cheerful, far from it, but hopeful.

  But as soon as I opened the door and saw Roy, I knew.

  Still in his uniform from last night, but without his AFS cap and greatcoat, I barely noticed the dirt and grime that covered him. All I saw was the look on his face.

  ‘Emmy, love,’ he said quietly as he stood on the big wide doorstep. ‘Can I come in?’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Did you find him?’ I asked in a whisper.

  Roy nodded and gave me the smallest, saddest smile that his eyes didn’t join in with. He glanced into the hall. ‘We should sit down.’

  I felt my breath catch in the back of my throat.

  ‘Roy?’

  ‘He’s gone, love,’ he said softly. ‘Bill’s dead.’

  When people hear that sort of thing in films, they gasp or faint or put the back of their hand to their mouth in a dramatic way. But I didn’t do any of that. I wanted to say no, that it couldn’t be true. I wanted to tell Roy he was wrong. I wanted it to be ten seconds ago when I still didn’t know.

  But instead I just stood there, feeling as if someone had sucked all the air out of me. And then my bottom lip started to tremble, like it does when you’re little and you can’t make it stop.

  I tried to take a deep breath and be British and brave, but it didn’t work and instead, the tears began. Masses of them. Where did tears like that come from and how did they get there so fast? Were they always there, just waiting for something awful to happen? What a horrible job they had.

  Poor Roy. It was awful for him too. He stepped into the house and hugged me into his cold, dusty arms, holding on just like he had when the bombs fell, when he did everything he could to make sure I wouldn’t get hurt.

  And I clung back, just like before, trying to pull Roy out of harm’s way.

  But this time, we couldn’t protect each other. It was too late. Everything was all just too late.

  I couldn’t stop crying. Roy didn’t let go. I heard him say, ‘There, there, love,’ and his voice was shaking. I knew he was trying hard not to cry as well. Roy was one of London’s very finest. A big old tough fireman. But Bill was his best friend.

  I gently pulled away from him as I heard my parents coming down the stairs. Roy’s eyes were brimming with tears. I sniffed and tried to stop blubbing as it wasn’t fair on him.

  Mother and Father didn’t have to ask. Mother flung her arms around me and said My Darling but as much as I w
anted to cling on to her and howl, I wouldn’t leave Roy just standing there.

  ‘This is Roy,’ I said pathetically. ‘Bill’s friend Roy. My friend.’

  Roy coughed and cleared his throat, straightened up and said Sir, to my father, offering his hand for him to shake. It must have been dreadful for him to suddenly have to be so polite. Daddy took his hand and gripped Roy’s arm with the other.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said with an urgency, and I knew he meant for looking after me. ‘Thank you, Roy. Please come inside. Let’s get you a drink.’

  *

  In the living room upstairs, my mother made Roy take his uniform jacket off so that she could put a blanket around his shoulders. He said that he was fine thank you but she insisted and so he sat with the blanket wrapped around him, like one of the people he normally helped. He held on to a large glass of whisky.

  I sat on the sofa next to my mother who wouldn’t let go of my hand. I had whisky too. It tasted as awful as ever. It would be the last time I would ever drink it.

  ‘Are you sure it was . . .’ I asked.

  Roy started nodding before I finished the sentence.

  ‘The uniform,’ he said, looking into his glass, and then taking a large swig from it. ‘It was him.’ Roy looked even worse than before.

  Then I asked the question that I dreaded.

  ‘Who . . . who will tell Bunty? When will she know?’

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ said Roy. ‘I stayed with Bill until . . .’ He stopped. ‘Until they took him away. Then I went to Charing Cross but they’re swamped. Bad night. So I came here. I’ll go back to the hospital now.’

  Roy got to his feet. He looked exhausted.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Father quickly, also getting up. He glanced over at my mother, who nodded. I knew what they meant. It wasn’t fair to send Roy back and it would be better for Mrs Tavistock to hear it from my father than from a policeman or nurse.

  ‘Let me come,’ I said. I didn’t want to sit around being useless. I wanted to be there for Bunty. ‘I’m fine. Really,’ I added. It was a lie but that wasn’t the point.