Angel of the North

by Annie Wilkinson

  ‘You’re right, Mam,’ said Marie, looking severely at Alfie. ‘I blame myself. I should never have agreed to let him stay at home. Chas warned me what it would be like, and he was right.’

  When she arrived at the infirmary, she found that the hospital hadn’t been quite so lucky this time. The Wilson Wing was still burning after last night’s raid. Marie picked her way over rubble to get to the offices at the back. To her relief Matron was there. She could get her business over with.

  ‘Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, that parachute mine on the shelter in Ellis Street,’ Matron said, when Marie had briefly explained her circumstances. ‘Really terrible. Well, it can’t be helped, Nurse. We’re sorry to lose you, but if there’s no one else to care for your mother, then of course, you must leave. And really, there’s so much bomb damage here we’ll be left with just two wards, as well as Out Patients and the Orthopaedic department.’

  ‘I feel awful,’ Marie said, ‘like a rat abandoning a sinking ship.’

  ‘It can’t be helped. Put your notice in writing, will you? And if your circumstances change, you’ll always be welcome to come back to us and carry on with your training. And now, I’m afraid I’m very busy . . .’

  ‘Of course.’

  Looking at the devastation as she left, Marie wondered whether they’d ever be able to get the place running again.

  Chapter 12

  George looked haggard.

  ‘Have you seen Nancy?’ he asked Marie when she met him coming along Clumber Street.

  ‘No, not for a day or two. I’ve just been to the infirmary to give my notice in. It’s still burning! They say the fire started when an incendiary fell on the Wilson Wing.’

  George spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘No water, couldn’t put the fire out. The pressure’s too low, with all the incendiaries, and bomb damage to the mains. It’s going to take some work to repair all that, after the past two nights. If there’s another raid like that tonight, I don’t know how we’re going to manage. It might finish us.’

  ‘Well, there won’t be many patients treated at the infirmary for a while. There’s hardly anything left of it, everything’s being moved out and all the patients are being transferred to other hospitals. Our beautiful infirmary; I could weep. Even the kiosk’s gone, where I got my goodies, and Nance used to get her cigs. It’s enough to break your heart.’

  ‘It’ll break mine, if anything’s happened to her.’

  ‘Oh, George, you don’t really think it has, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought she was at the hospital but I can’t find her anywhere, and nobody seems to have seen her. That’s why I’m here, asking you. I nearly copped it myself, down near Ranks flour mill on the riverside. There was a blaze and a half there. I was standing watching it, absolutely mesmerized, until I saw the factory wall start coming down towards me, and picking up speed on the way. I ran like the clappers, and I just managed to get behind a lorry before the whole bloody brick façade crashed down on top of it. I’ve had some near misses, but that . . .’ He blew the air expressively out of his lungs and, shaking his head, added, ‘I thought my time had come.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marie, with a shudder. ‘Oh, George, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for a few days, what with Dad’s funeral, and Mam coming out of hospital, and having to get Pam back from Bourne. I didn’t—’ The thought suddenly struck her that Nancy might have been working on the Wilson Wing.

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Didn’t even know what shift she was on. I hope nothing’s happened to her. I’ve got to go to Thoresby Street, to see about getting our Alfie evacuated again just now, but I’ll ask my mam to send her down to your house if she turns up while I’m out.’

  ‘They’ve opened Albert Avenue Baths up as a temporary morgue. Just so long as she’s not there, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, George, she’s not, surely! You’ve been to see her mother, I suppose?’

  He nodded. ‘She said just the same as you, but with her having lodgers Nance stays in the Nurses’ Home most of the time. Have there been any casualties there, do you know?’

  Marie shook her head. ‘There might have been, but I don’t know anything. Ask at the hospital again. It’s chaos but there are still people there; they’re open as a first-aid post.’

  ‘I know, and that’s my next port of call. And then I’ll have to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep. I’m dead on my feet.’

  Poor George, Marie thought, as she closed the door on him, praying to God that Nancy would soon be found, because if she’d been on the Wilson Wing . . . Well, Marie just couldn’t bear to think about it.

  ‘I’m not going,’ Alfie said later on, when Marie demanded he accompany her to Thoresby Street school to see the evacuation officers. ‘If I’ve got to go out of Hull, I’ll go to Uncle Alf s.’

  ‘You’ll have to go a lot further than that,’ their mother said. ‘If we send you to Alfred and Dot, you’ll just keep coming back.’

  ‘I’ll just keep coming back wherever you send me. I’ve already proved that, haven’t I?’

  ‘You’re getting far too cheeky, my lad; you’ll go where you’re sent,’ Marie told him.

  Alfie gave her a defiant stare, arms folded. ‘No, I shan’t. I aren’t going back with that dirty bugger Ernie, or his rotten old mother, or anywhere else like that. You’ve never had to go away from home. You don’t know what it’s like.’

  ‘I’ll wash your mouth out with carbolic if you keep swearing like that, and I did have to go away from home. I went to the Nurses’ Home, remember?’

  ‘That’s not away. You could still walk home if you wanted to, and anyway, you came home more times than enough even when you weren’t supposed to, and always on your days off.’

  They were well into the argument, with Marie threatening and their mother cajoling when George knocked and came in, looking like a broken man.

  ‘There was nobody killed at the hospital, as far as they know, but Nancy’s nowhere,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked everybody I can find who knows her; I’ve looked everywhere she could possibly have gone, and . . . nothing. I’ve even been down to Albert Avenue. It’s just indescribable; some of the bodies there, you can’t tell who they are; I don’t think even their mothers would know them. You can’t even tell by the clothes, if they’re burned. And the stink!’

  Marie’s legs started to shake so badly she had to hold onto the table to prevent herself from falling. She’d vowed not to be miserable, had kept herself determinedly cheerful, kept telling herself to look on the bright side. But now even that prop was kicked from under her. Nancy wouldn’t have disappeared unless something drastic had happened to her, any more than Marie’s father would have. With her dad, she’d kept that little bit of hope alive, in the teeth of all the evidence. She couldn’t do it again. It was odds on that Nancy had gone the same way as Margaret and her dad; she’d better face it first as last, instead of clinging on to vain hopes. There was no bright side to this, but she couldn’t say that to George; it would crush him.

  ‘It’s early days yet. She might turn up. There might be a simple explanation,’ she told him, offering her crumb of comfort with as much conviction as she could summon.

  The sirens went just before midnight, signalling five hours of strain and anxiety before the all clear sounded, but George’s fears about another devastating raid were mercifully not fulfilled.

  Each morning, with a heart like lead, Marie went to see Nancy’s mother after settling her own mother for a sleep. There was no good news, and Nancy’s mother looked more haggard with every passing day. Marie valiantly tried to encourage optimism but it was uphill work, since she herself was convinced that this was a repetition of what had happened to her father. She couldn’t believe that the outcome would be any different with Nancy. In the evenings she went to Aunt Edie’s to see George and ask whether he had heard anything, but the answer was always the same – nothing.

  After three harrowin
g days, on a fine May evening they were in Northern Cemetery, at a mass funeral. Mourners stood four deep beside a moss-lined trench, which held a long line of earth mounds. From where she stood Marie could just see her own father’s grave in the distance.

  Nancy’s mother looked ready to collapse, and George put a supporting arm around her. He looked as devastated as Marie felt, and so did everybody else she could see in that huge crowd. People of all ages and all walks of life were there, including soldiers and airmen in uniform. Almost all these relatives and friends of the dead carried flowers, from simple posies to elaborate wreaths. The tiny children’s coffins were the most heart-wrenching of all.

  On the other side of the trench stood Hull’s civic leaders, resplendent in their chains of office, along with the Anglican bishop and clergy, the Catholic clergy, the priest from St Vincent’s, rabbis, and the leaders of all the nonconformist denominations. The service was short: a hymn, a psalm, and then a message of sympathy and an address from the bishop. Some people were sobbing so sorely that others, who otherwise might have managed to keep a stiff upper lip, began weeping with them. The whole vast crowd seemed to be drowning in an ocean of grief. Marie’s gaze was fixed on the pale face of a little girl, no more than three. Her tiny hand was held by a grey-haired old man, probably her grandfather. Perhaps that baby’s mother was being buried today; it was very probable. Mrs Harding had lost a daughter, and in all likelihood this little mite had lost a mother – just as bad, if not worse. Definitely worse, Marie thought, looking at that bleak-faced old man. How could he soothe a baby’s fears, or kiss her hurts better with as much devotion as her own mother?

  When it was over and the officials were moving off, Mrs Harding stood holding her wreath with its simple little message: ‘God love my Nancy’. She scanned the line of mounds in total bewilderment. ‘Where am I supposed to lay this?’ she asked. ‘I don’t even know where she is.’

  ‘Wherever she is, it’s not here,’ an airman beside them told her. ‘The remains might be here, but that’s all. The people are gone.’

  ‘Let’s find a grave that’s got no flowers, Mrs Harding,’ Marie said. ‘We’ll put ours on that one.’

  ‘I never thought to see my own daughter buried before me, and like this – not even a coffin with her name on it.’

  George surveyed the graves, awestruck. ‘Four hundred people. Four hundred people dead, and thirty-six not identified,’ he said. ‘In two nights. It’s cruel. Poor Nancy, our poor lass. Takes some believing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘My poor bairn. You spend years bringing them up, and it’s all destroyed, your whole life’s work, all your hopes for them gone in one night. Poor little lass. She never did any harm to anyone. I had my differences with her dad, but I’m glad he’s been spared this; she was the apple of his eye. Lucky for him he died before he saw this day.’

  ‘What was that bloody idiot bishop on about?’ George demanded when they were back in Duesbury Street with Nancy’s friends and relations, all sharing a modest cup of tea and a piece of funeral cake. ‘The loss we have suffered will be a gain to the whole world! How does he make that out? What’s the whole world got to gain by people who never did any harm being killed in air raids?’

  ‘Nothing that I can see, but they’ve got to say something, I suppose,’ one of the neighbours said.

  ‘Everybody liked Nancy, poor lass,’ one of her old school friends said, not much to the point.

  ‘I can’t stand these parsons, and the claptrap they spout,’ George said.

  One of the uncles nodded agreement. ‘Weddings, christenings and funerals. That’s always been enough church for our family, hasn’t it, Betty?’

  Mrs Harding nodded. ‘That’s about as often as we ever went. And after having a baby. You went then, to get churched.’

  George’s mouth was turned down in an expression of utter disgust. ‘And the mayor and corporation, dressed up like Christmas trees. They make it look like a bloody pantomime. Then at the end, he says we should dedicate ourselves with “smiles, and gladness and hope”? People have lost husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, fiancées, everything they lived for, their lives completely buggered. Thirty-six people couldn’t even be identified, and he wants people going about with “smiles, and gladness and hope”! It’s obvious to me he’s never lost anybody he cares about, or he’d know better than to say a stupid thing like that. I hope he gets a good dose of what we’re suffering. See how he feels about smiles and gladness then.’

  ‘You should never wish ill on people,’ an auntie said. ‘It only comes back on you.’

  ‘How am I wishing him ill?’ George demanded. ‘I’m just wishing him a good reason for plenty of the smiles and gladness he’s talking about. Maybe his wife or his kids will cop it, to be a gain to the whole world. That should give him enough to smile about. If they all go, he can laugh his socks off.’

  ‘There’s no point being bitter,’ the aunt commented.

  ‘Oh, right. I won’t, then.’ George said, staring into his teacup. ‘Nancy’s dead, and the happy years we should have had together have gone for a Burton, but I’ll just swallow this down, the cup that cheers, and then I’ll be as right as rain, smiling and glad enough to please the bishop.’ He lapsed into silence, not far, Marie suspected, from tears.

  After an awkward pause the conversation resumed with reminiscences of Nancy at various stages of her life. One of the cousins asked to see the photograph album, and Mrs Harding dragged it out of the sideboard, to be passed round the little groups of people, all asking each other – ‘Do you remember when . . .?’ about the half-forgotten times the snaps brought back to mind. Marie thought of all the people buried in that awful mass grave, and imagined hundreds of similar funeral teas held in similar houses to this, and thousands of mourners poring over photos of people who smiled into the cameras with the sun at their backs, mercifully unsuspecting of the brutal and untimely end awaiting them.

  Nancy’s mother seemed comforted by all the reminiscing. ‘It’s nice to think she was so well liked,’ she said, reverently stroking the album.

  ‘You’ve got no lodgers at the moment, then, Mrs Harding?’ someone asked when the album was back in the cupboard.

  ‘I have, but I told them to make themselves scarce for the evening. This is a private family do; I don’t want any strangers about.’

  ‘I don’t blame you; neither would I,’ one of the neighbours said. ‘You’re too soft on them, Betty, you let them have the run of the place. You ought to be like the landladies at Blackpool, chuck the boarders out at ten, and don’t let them back in before five.’

  ‘I can’t do that. They’re theatricals.’

  ‘I’m going to have to do something to earn a few bob myself before long, now I’ve had to give up the hospital,’ Marie mused. ‘I’ve been thinking I could maybe fit a couple of lodgers in the middle bedroom, but I’m a bit dubious. I mean, you never know what type of person you might be letting into your house, do you?’

  ‘If you don’t like the look of them, you don’t take them in. It’s all right if you’re careful, though the ones you’d want, the ones you’d pick yourself, the real charmers – they’re the ones you’ve got to watch, sometimes. That last pair I had – “Ah, you’re looking blooming today, Mrs Harding,” ’ she said, mimicking a charming Home Counties accent. ‘ “If you weren’t wearing a wedding ring, I wouldn’t know which was the mother and which was the daughter!” one of them keeps telling me. And he seemed so genuine I fell for it, as if I were fifteen instead of nearly fifty. I gave him the best of everything, and now the bugger’s run off without paying his rent. It serves me right, for being a silly old woman.’

  ‘You’re not silly, and you’re not old either,’ Marie said, gazing into Mrs Harding’s pretty face, so like Nancy’s except for the crow’s feet around her eyes, and the white hairs almost imperceptible amongst the blond.

  ‘What a rotten trick,’ George said, ‘He ought to be birched. I can’t stand con men.’<
br />
  ‘Con men and parsons, then,’ observed the uncle.

  ‘Much of a muchness, if you ask me,’ George said.

  ‘Six months, with hard labour – that’s what I’d give him – after I’d made him pay his dues,’ a cousin said, grimly.

  ‘Not arf!’

  ‘I’ll string him from a bloody lamp post, if he ever shows his face in Hull again,’ Mrs Harding’s brother promised, and a couple of the other men offered to help him.

  ‘If you take any actors for lodgers, Marie, make sure you get the money off them well before the end of the run,’ Mrs Harding said, when the outrage died away. ‘Either that, or get hold of something of theirs as security.’

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t know how my mother will take to the idea – she’s not well at the moment, as you know – but we’ll have to do something to bring a bit of money in before long,’ Marie said, making her mother the excuse. In reality she had no relish for the idea of taking strangers in. It would be the very last resort, but she wasn’t going to say that to Mrs Harding.

  Chapter 13

  ‘Marie, that window’s all over smears! You never seem to be able to clean a window without leaving smears!’

  Her mother’s plaintive cry brought Marie back into the front room with the bucket of vinegar and water. She stood it in front of the window and wrung out the wash-leather. ‘Where?’

  Her mother pointed. ‘Can’t you see? There! And there!’

  Marie went over the window again, wishing that the nets were ready to hang up to hide any smears she might leave after this second attempt, but they were in the kitchen, waiting to be washed and put out to dry. She shouted loud enough for her mother to hear: ‘There, it’s done again. Will that satisfy you?’

  Her mother looked petulant. ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And there’s no need to shout at me. I’m not as deaf as all that.’