‘Yes,’ he called back. ‘Don’t come up.’
They were more obedient than he’d been, and stood where they were, watching and waiting.
‘You’ll tell us, Jim?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He was irritable with anxiety and fear. They were being so slow, uncovering the body so gently. Please don’t let it be her.
It was Baby, her neck broken, her blonde hair bright among the dust, and the remains of the peroxide bottle still clutched in her hand.
Jim climbed down to tell Joan and Lily. Oddly none of them wept. They stood together, clinging to one another as though they were drowning, but they didn’t weep. It was as if the horror had anaesthetized them.
‘Oh poor Baby!’ Lily said over and over again.
And Joan said, ‘Now it’s only Peggy.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his heart leaden in his chest.
‘We’ll help,’ Lily said. ‘Tell us what we’ve got to do.’
Leslie and Ernest were standing side by side in the rubble. Ernest was trying to mop the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that was now more brick dust than cloth.
‘We ought to tell Mrs Geary,’ Leslie said, looking down to where the old lady was still sitting, wrapped in her blanket, waiting.
‘We’re standing on our house,’ Ernest said sadly, looking at the piles of brick and debris under his feet. ‘There’s a bit of your jardinière over there. Oh God, that poor kid, to die so young.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ Leslie decided. ‘You have a breather.’ And he climbed down the rubble, neat and deft as a cat.
But when he reached the wall of the Earl Grey and Mrs Geary was peering myopically towards him he couldn’t think what to say. Her face looked peculiarly naked without her glasses, naked and vulnerable and lost.
‘Leslie, is it?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve found someone.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s Baby.’
‘Dead?’ the old lady said flatly.
‘Yes.’
‘That bleedin’ Hitler,’ she said fiercely. ‘He ought ter be hung drawn and quartered for this.’
‘Quite right,’ Mr Allnutt said, patting her hand. ‘So he should. An’ that’s what we’ll do to him, an’ all, once we’ve caught the bugger.’
Leslie stood before them uncomfortably, wondering whether he ought to tell Mr Allnutt about Mr Cooper now, but before he could come to any decision, there was a noise behind him and turning he saw that Ernest was scrambling over the wreckage towards them. He had a dark object held against his chest and as he got nearer Leslie and Mr Allnutt could see that it was the parrot’s cage, squashed and dented and with a dust-covered bundle of feathers lying at the bottom of it like a discarded mop.
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Geary said, as he handed it to her, and then, as she managed to focus her eyes, ‘Oh Gawd! It’s my poor old Polly. It’s my poor bird. That bleedin’ Hitler’s killed my Polly.’
And the bundle of feathers stirred, turned its head and opened one round yellow eye to glare at her balefully.
‘Star-news-standard,’ it croaked. ‘Aark!’
‘Well would you believe it!’ Mrs Geary said in wonder and relief. ‘You good old boy. See that, Mr Allnutt? He’s lived through it. He ain’t dead after all. There you are you see, you can survive. There’s hope for our Peggy. You go right on back you two,’ she said to Leslie and Ernest, ‘and you get her out this very minute. Oh, what a good old boy you are, Polly!’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ Ernest assured her, but he spoke without hope. When they found the poor girl she would be – well – like Baby. How could it be otherwise in such destruction?
Mr MacFarlane was calling from the wreckage. He was almost hidden by a pile of bricks but his face was pink with excitement. ‘We’ve found the shelter,’ he said. ‘Over here.’
There was a rush towards him as Leslie and Ernest and Mr Allnutt ran from the Earl Grey and Jim and Joan and Lily climbed up from the street. They could see a pit in the rubble and down at the bottom of it was the top of the Morrison shelter. Was there hope? Was it possible?
‘Quiet everybody!’ Mr Goodall said as they crashed towards him. And when he’d got silence, ‘You call her, Jim.’
And Jim called, leaning over into the little crater so as to put his face as close to the roof of the shelter as he could. ‘Peggy! Peggy! Are you there? Peggy!’
But there was no answer. Not a sound.
‘Try again,’ Mr Goodall said.
‘Peggy! Peg! Say something! Peg!’ He was groaning with the agony of no reply. ‘Peggy, please!’
Joan was beside him, leaning into the pit. ‘Someone get me a stick,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she’s too weak to call. Come on, quick, some of yer. A stick, a pole, something to bang with.’
She was handed a piece of guttering. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Keep quiet.’
And she leant into the pit and knocked on the roof of the shelter, once, twice, three times, the way they’d signalled to one another through the bedroom walls all those years ago in Tillingbourne.
There was no answer.
‘Knock again,’ Jim said.
She knocked again, once, twice, three times. And they listened again, holding their breath, hoping against hope.
And a small faint knocking answered them. Once, twice, three times.
‘She’s there!’ Jim whooped. ‘She’s there.’
‘Get down out of it quick then,’ Mr Goodall said. ‘The sooner we get her out the better.’ She’d been buried for far too long, and time and oxygen were running out.
The three of them stood in the street and watched as the rescue teams hauled away the last obstructions, clearing part of a wall, more and more bricks, and finally revealing a section of the roof, which lay aslant the shelter, crushing one corner. Lifting equipment was hauled into position as they watched, praying and hoping.
‘Once that’s out the way we shall see where she is,’ Mr MacFarlane promised them. ‘Wait a wee while.’
It was for ever, standing in the dust, not daring to hope, hardly daring to breathe, as the rescue teams hauled and dug. Please don’t let her be dead. Let it be her who was knocking.
One of the men was waving. ‘Now,’ Mr MacFarlane said. And he led the way across the rubble.
As Jim climbed he could see that the edge of the Morrison was jutting up from underneath the bricks. It was buckled but intact.
‘Is she there?’ he begged, falling onto his knees among the broken bricks, peering down into the hole they’d made.
There was something in the shelter. He could see a shape, a torn shirt, part of an arm, and the roughened fur of a tabby cat lying under the arm. ‘Peggy!’ he called. ‘Peggy! Are you there?’
They were jacking up the top of the shelter. ‘Peggy! Peggy!’ Lifting out the cat, which hung between its rescuer’s hands, damp and swearing.
‘Let me go down,’ he begged. ‘Please let me get her out.’ Whatever state she was in, dead or alive, he had to be the one to get her out.
They made way for him, glancing at the leader of the rescue team for his agreement. And so he was lowered into the shelter.
She was lying on her side as if she was asleep, and there was blood streaking her shoulder and congealed on her hands. ‘Peggy,’ he said, and he put out his hand fearfully to touch her face. And her face was warm.
‘She’s alive,’ he called. ‘She’s still alive. Thank God.’ And warmth flooded his own face and spread into his chest and down his arms. She was alive.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, exactly as she’d done so many times early in the morning waking to a new day. ‘Jim?’ she said. ‘Oh Jim. Is it you?’
He was lifting her up, holding her in his arms like a baby. Her left arm was hanging limply and her shoulder was out of alignment so something was broken. But she was alive. She would heal. Hands reached into the hole to help them both out. And then he was carrying her into the light of day and the good fre
sh air.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said weakly. ‘To the house. I should’ve said. You were right.’
‘Hush, hush,’ he soothed, kissing her dusty hair. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Nothing mattered now that she was alive. That was the important thing. ‘Oh Peg, I love you so much.’
She leant her head against his chest as he climbed carefully down the rubble towards the waiting ambulance. ‘I’ll come to the house,’ she said, ‘I mean it. I should’ve said so yesterday. I love you more than anything.’
‘I know,’ he said. And he did know. They both knew. The bomb had stripped them of every emotion except love. ‘Save your strength, my little love,’ he said. ‘First we’ll get you over this. Then we’ll go to the house. I promise. We’ll go as soon as ever we can. Everything’ll be all right. You’ll see. We’ve got a new world to build.’
A Note on the Author
Beryl Kingston was born in Tooting in 1931. She was eight when the war began and spent the early years of her education in many different schools, depending on her latest evacuation. As an undergraduate she attended King's College London, where she read English.
She married her childhood sweetheart when she was 19, with whom she has three children. Kingston was an English teacher before embarking on a career as a full-time writer in 1980.
Discover books by Beryl Kingston published by Bloomsbury Reader at
http://www.bloomsbury.com/BerylKingston
A Time to Love
Fourpenny Flyer
Gemma’s Journey
Maggie’s Boy
Sixpenny Stalls
Tuppenny Times
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book.The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1990 by Macdonald & Co. Ltd
Copyright © 1990 Beryl Kingston
All rights reserved
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make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448213948
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