‘There are things we need to talk about, Lucy,’ she said. ‘Serious, important things.’
The blue eyes looked at her steadily.
‘Grandad says we will more than likely be bombed again tonight. He is going to remain here because the rescue teams will need help. I think that I also should stay to drive the ambulance.’ She paused. ‘But we have to get Peg and Alec far away before night-time. Peg isn’t well enough to care for the baby by herself. She needs someone with her.’ Kezzie met Lucy’s gaze and did not look away. ‘I want you to go with them,’ she said.
Kezzie felt Lucy’s hand tighten in her own. She leaned forward and stroked her sister’s hair. ‘I know that we decided that our family would never be separated, but … well, Peg and Alec are just like family. And Ricardo feels he has to keep the café open, so there is no one else.’
Lucy nodded slowly as Kezzie finished speaking. Then she said, ‘I might never see you and Grandad again?’
Kezzie knew that she couldn’t lie. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, ‘that is possible. In fact, that’s another reason that I’d like you to go. If … the worst happens, then at least there would be one Munro left.’ She felt her eyes fill up with tears as she spoke.
But strangely, Lucy’s face was calm. She thought for a moment or two. ‘I suppose that’s being sensible. My teacher keeps telling us that we have to be sensible, especially during a war.’ She put her arms around Kezzie’s neck and hung on for a moment or two. Just like a little girl again, thought Kezzie. But as they came apart, and she looked at Lucy’s face, Kezzie knew that her sister was a child no longer.
* * *
There were evacuee buses leaving from various places in the Burgh. After an hour’s wait in Dumbarton Road Kezzie managed to get her little group on a bus which was going out to Shawcross.
‘Try to get in touch with Aunt Bella,’ she instructed Lucy. ‘If she can’t take you, then she’ll find someone who will.’ She hugged her sister tightly. ‘Be brave,’ she whispered. ‘No matter how it turns out, remember I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ said Lucy.
Kezzie turned away quickly as the bus jerked forward and rattled down the street.
The tiny village of Stonevale had no need to listen to the news broadcasts or read the newspapers that Friday morning. On the Thursday night they saw the glow in the distant sky which told them Clydebank was burning. They’d heard the enemy planes, both on their inward and outward journeys.
When word came that homeless families were arriving in the town, Bella had walked into Shawcross and spent most of the day in or around the Town Hall. ‘If they’ve managed to survive, then Kezzie will come here,’ she told her husband.
It wasn’t until early evening that Bella caught sight of Lucy. Still wearing her coat over her nightie and clutching a food parcel, she was dismounting from a ramshackle single-decker bus.
Bella struggled through the crowd in the reception area until she reached Peg and Lucy. She looked around. ‘I thought the old man would stay on,’ she said, ‘but where’s Kezzie?’
‘She’s driving an ambulance, she wouldn’t leave,’ said Peg.
Bella gave Lucy a big grin. ‘So ye came to bide with yer Auntie Bella after all,’ she said.
‘Kezzie said it was my duty,’ Lucy told her seriously. ‘And apart from Peg, I’m the only one that baby Alec’s really happy with. You know, there’s a special way of feeding a baby, Aunty Bella. It’s quite difficult, not everybody can do it.’
Bella winked at Peg. ‘Well, ah’ve only had the six myself, hen,’ she said, ‘but I’ll take your word for it.’
Bella looked around the hall until she found the officer dealing with the accommodation arrangements. ‘These three are comin’ wi’ me,’ she told her.
Peg grasped Bella’s hand as though she would never let it go.
‘A big plate o’ broth is what you’re needin’,’ said Bella. ‘And then a good night’s sleep.’
She took them to her own small house and fed them thick soup and potatoes. Then she chased out two of her own children to stay with their cousins, and tucked Lucy and Peg and the baby up in the room bed.
‘There now,’ she told them, as she turned down the lamp. ‘Off to sleep wi’ ye. The country air is healing air. I’ll see ye and hear all your news in the morning.’
There was still some light in the night sky when the first heavy throb of aeroplane engines sounded overhead. Bella stopped stirring the pot on the fire. She lifted her head and listened. Then she looked at her husband.
‘They’re no’ ours, are they?’ she said.
He shook his head.
They both went and stood outside the front door. All along the miners’ rows their neighbours were doing the same. And they watched without speaking as the Luftwaffe Third Air Fleet passed high over Stonevale. Formation after formation came across. From Holland initially and then Denmark, from Stavanger in Norway, and air bases in northern France, they flew steadily west towards Glasgow and the Clyde.
In the Clydebank Control Centre the telephone rang. The Civil Defence officer picked it up and listened to the voice on the other end of the line. After a few moments he replaced the receiver carefully on its cradle.
He turned to face his staff.
‘They’re coming back,’ he said.
CHAPTER 19
The sirens sound again
THE SIRENS WENT at 8.40 p.m.
Kezzie’s grandad gripped her arm. ‘Listen, lass,’ he said. ‘There’s still time for you to go. No one would blame you.’
She smiled at him. ‘And what about you?’ she asked him. ‘Are you going to leave?’
He began to speak. ‘I …’ Then he stopped. ‘No,’ he said.
Kezzie handed him his tin hat, and picked up her own. ‘I honestly think that we don’t have a choice,’ she said. She pointed round the small hall in which they were sitting. It was situated on the outer edge of the town. Most of the rescue units had been sent out to the relative safety of the perimeter of the burgh to await the calls which would arrive as the raid progressed. ‘Many of these people are volunteers who have chosen to remain,’ she said. ‘And Signoras Casella and Biagi are also staying so that they can open the café tomorrow to help out. We are needed here. You know that. It’s a plain fact.’
Kezzie’s grandad fiddled with the strap of his helmet. ‘This might turn out very bad,’ he said.
Kezzie nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I spoke to Lucy before she left. I think she understands.’
Kezzie watched her grandad. He was ill at ease, buttoning and unbuttoning his tunic, fidgeting with his gas mask. Suddenly he turned to her.
‘Kezzie, I would like you to know this, in case anything happens tonight.’ He took her hand in his. ‘You made my whole world,’ he said simply. ‘You and Lucy. If you hadn’t come back from Canada, then I would have had only half a life. I want to tell you how much it meant to me.’
Kezzie felt her chin tremble. ‘It was the same for us,’ she said.
He drew her towards him and put her head on his chest. ‘I know that eventually you’ll spread your wings. I’m going to tell you this, you mustn’t lose sight of your ideals. You’ve always wanted to be a doctor, so that’s what you must do. Don’t let anything stop you. Not even this war, no matter how long it lasts.’
He stroked her hair for a moment or two. Kezzie didn’t trust herself to speak. Then he gently pushed her away from him, and raised his head. A sudden silence had crept over the little room. Voices hesitated, then spoke in lower tones. Conversations stopped. A steady drone, still some way off, was growing louder by the second. A ragged noise, penetrating the sandbagged walls and reinforced roof, vibrating in the night air. The special Blitzkrieg airborne units were approaching from the east. The Heinkels and Junkers which made up the Luftwaffe bomber squadrons, their engines a throbbing, pulsing underbelly of sound. Now everybody was sitting straight on their benches, alert and rigid.
‘Let’s ha
ve a cup of tea,’ said the ARP officer loudly.
Kezzie and her grandad took theirs outside. It was a beautiful spring night, the moon pale and luminous in a clear sky. The drumming noise of the aeroplane engines closed around them.
‘Those gas mains are blazing away like the fires of hell,’ said Kezzie’s grandad, ‘and there’s an oil tank still burning at Old Kilpatrick that they can’t get doused. They won’t need their pathfinders and incendiaries to mark their way tonight. We’re supplying the bloody beacons for them.’
‘Look, there,’ said Kezzie.
A formation of planes had crossed the river to the south-west. She could see quite clearly the bomb doors opening and the grey IBs with their finned tails begin to fall, dozens and dozens and dozens of them.
‘That’s the Rolls-Royce works at Hillington they’re after,’ said her grandad.
All at once the whole world lit up. Thirty or forty huge searchlights started to sweep the skies, crossing and linking, fusing to form a cone shape. The ground crews swivelling and twisting their beams to hold a great dome of light above the stricken town. Finding the enemy for the gunners to shoot down, desperately trying to dazzle the pilots, keep them to a high altitude, and drive them as quickly as possible away from their target area.
The defence batteries at Duntiglennan roared out, soon joined by the bigger ack-ack guns at Auchentoshan. Shell bursts exploded around and below the aeroplanes. They could hear the thump and crash, the echoes rolling around the Dumbarton hills and out to sea.
The rescue-party foreman came out. ‘Message in,’ he said. ‘There’s a wardens’ post taken a direct hit. Civilians were sheltering in it.’
Kezzie’s grandad slipped on his white armband with ‘CASUALTY COLLECTION’ stitched in black. He spoke to the sergeant. ‘I’ll be right there.’
He turned to Kezzie. ‘’Bye, darlin’,’ he said. He looked her full in the face and his eyes met hers. ‘Thanks, lass,’ he said. And for one brief moment he laid his hand upon her head.
Kezzie remained outside for several minutes after he had gone. The tea turned cold in the mug she held, and she neither heard nor saw anything around her.
She started as someone touched her arm. ‘They need an ambulance at Parkhall.’
All through the night the people of Clydebank fought to save their burning town. The police and the rescue services, nurses, teachers, student doctors, bus conductresses, messenger boys as young as thirteen years old, veterans of the First World War, struggling desperately to survive and preserve their families and homes.
The beleaguered fire services, with little water, faced a hopeless task as oil tank after oil tank was set ablaze at Dalnottar and Old Kilpatrick, illuminating the targets and making the task easy for each following wave of bombers cruising in and unloading their cargo of death.
An immense and suffocating haze of flame and smoke drifted over the Clyde estuary. The blaze could be seen as far north as Aberdeen and as far east as Edinburgh.
Kezzie was helping with the stretcher cases, which had been laid out at the Janetta Street end of the High School, when a parachute mine dropped at the other end. There was a whistling crack, then a thunderous explosion and the walls on the west side caved in. Kezzie picked herself up and looked around. Plaster and glass were strewn everywhere. One of the messenger boys picked up her helmet and gave her a cheeky grin. He looked at the huge hole in the roof.
‘Missed me again,’ he shouted up at the sky.
Kezzie’s hands shook as she replaced her helmet on her head. Earlier on she had seen a parachute mine which had been caught in a tree during last night’s raid. It was a terrifyingly large black cylinder. At eight feet high, much taller than any man, they measured about three feet across. These and the high-explosive bombs usually followed on after the incendiaries were unloaded. She reckoned the main group of bombers must now be directly overhead. She suddenly thought of Michael. His experience in combat must be similar to this. Under bombardment, comrades falling, wounded and dying beside him, he would fight on. He was doing it, and so must she. This realisation gave her a small measure of comfort. She tightened the helmet strap under her chin. Then she got back into her van and drove off to answer the next call.
Men and equipment had come from John Brown’s during the day to cut away the twisted tramway rails and clear roads and streets, but every road was difficult, and some impassable. She was driving along Livingstone Street when an explosion in a building beside her rocked the ambulance and she slewed to a halt. Kezzie noticed the white ‘S’ for shelter painted on the side of the wall. She climbed down from her cab.
‘Need any help?’ she shouted.
Two men ran out. One of them looked her up and down. ‘Hell, it’s a wee lassie,’ he called to his mate. ‘How old are you, that you’re driving that thing?’ he asked her.
‘Old enough,’ snapped Kezzie. ‘This is the ninth run I’ve done tonight. Now do you need assistance or not?’
‘You tell him, hen,’ his friend laughed out loud.
Kezzie helped an elderly couple and a child who was very badly injured into the back of her van and drove on. The nurse who took the child from her at the first-aid post shook her head quickly, and then placed the little body to one side.
Kezzie turned away. ‘Dear God, it must stop soon,’ she whispered.
It was nearly dawn when the head warden of her group spoke to her. ‘You need a change of clothing, miss.’
Kezzie glanced down at herself. She had spatters of mud and blood everywhere, and one of her sleeves was ripped. Her hands were bruised and scarred where she had helped drag people from rubble. She realised she was still wearing Ricardo’s shirt and trousers which she had borrowed earlier.
‘Is there somewhere you can get some clean clothes and maybe a rest for an hour or two?’ he asked.
Kezzie nodded. She would go back to the café. She had driven past it during the night and she knew that it at least had survived. She parked her van and walked the few streets to the Italians’ shop. The murky pall of smoke which now hung everywhere was choking and stung her eyes. She practically bumped into Ricardo before she saw him.
‘Kezzie,’ he cried. ‘I have been searching for you. Everyone I spoke to said you were with someone else.’
‘I know.’ She took her helmet off. ‘I would be sent one place, and then diverted somewhere else. And I couldn’t refuse to take injured people even if I hadn’t been called out for them in particular.’ She pulled her fingers through her tangled hair. ‘Why did you come looking for me?’ she asked him.
He didn’t reply.
Kezzie looked at Ricardo more closely. He had leaned up against a nearby wall. His eyes were red-rimmed and he had an expression on his face that she had never seen before. Suddenly she knew why. He had been sent to tell her the most terrible news.
‘What is it, Ricardo?’ she said. ‘What is it that you have to tell me?’
‘Kezzie.’ He drew her close to him. ‘Your grandfather has been killed.’
She put her hand across her heart. ‘Grandad?’ she repeated.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ricardo, ‘so very sorry. Some people were trapped in the basement of a building. There was an unexploded bomb there. He volunteered to go in.’ Ricardo held her tightly. ‘It went off. No one could save him.’
‘I think he knew,’ said Kezzie unsteadily. She frowned. ‘Earlier, he tried to tell me how much he cared about us.’ She smiled sadly. ‘It was difficult for him. He was so awkward about his feelings.’
‘Why don’t you cry?’ Ricardo said very softly. ‘I don’t understand you British. Why do you not cry?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand,’ he repeated.
And he was crying, Kezzie realised. Tears running down his cheeks as he stood helpless in front of her. She reached out her hands to comfort him, and suddenly there were great sobs tearing at her. From inside her heart and soul, a fierce violent grieving took hold of her, and she wept for her grandad. And not only for him
, but for her father too, and the mother she had barely known. For the loss of their company and love. And for all the happy times, the Sunday School trips, the picnics, the outings and birthday parties and Christmases that had happened, and those that now would never happen.
She couldn’t stop crying. Her exhaustion after the day’s events came rushing in and she was no longer in control.
Ricardo picked her up and carried her to their Anderson shelter. Tucking her up in one of the little wooden-framed bunks, he made her drink some brandy. Then he wiped her face with his handkerchief and knelt down beside her. He held her hand as she lay there and, as Kezzie’s breathing eventually deepened into sleep, the resonant note of the all-clear began to sound across the town.
CHAPTER 20
Greater love
‘I KNEW THERE would be a big turnout to send him off,’ said Bella.
She gathered up the teacups and carried them to the sink at the window. All day people had called at her house in Stonevale to pay their respects to old John Munro.
Many had already spoken to Kezzie that morning, in the kirk and by the graveside. Many more had dropped by later to offer condolences.
Kezzie picked up a tea towel and began to dry the dishes. ‘He had a long life and many friends,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t realise just what a high regard folk had of him.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Bella. ‘I could have told ye that. Straight, he was. Straight as a die.’
His grave was covered in flowers. Piled high with great bunches of spring blooms, from ornate bouquets to simple posies, as well as the traditional wreaths. It had been such a stately occasion. The old man brought home to his own town to rest.
A group of former pit workers, ex-miners, white-haired and silent, stood at the cemetery gates, their heads uncovered in the morning sunlight. His workmates from the shipyard, colleagues in the firewatching and rescue services, his cronies from the local welfare club. Colleagues, neighbours, family, friends, all were there. The man’s own personal dignity reflected in the burial service.
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