Blitz Next Door

by Cathy Forde

  Pete felt himself screaming too; at least his mouth was open, his throat straining. No one in the shelter seemed aware of him, though, as they clustered together, heads huddled close, arms squeezing shoulders, eyes meeting eyes, mouths moving. Praying.

  And then it came.

  The most deafening blast of all. And the closest. The very closest. Pete felt rather than heard the thud and tumble of masonry crumbling nearby. Glass shattering.

  BOOM!!!

  And then silence.

  Pete, like everyone else in the shelter, had his hands to his ringing ears, when Beth broke from the huddle on the bench and rushed to the shelter door.

  “That was here. That was us.” Her cry pierced the muffle inside Pete’s head. “Mummy. I need to find Mummy.”

  Both men and the young woman, baby Jamie in one arm, hurried to restrain Beth.

  “You’re not going out there, darlin’.”

  Pete watched Beth tussle and wrestle, the others in the shelter catching her arms, trying to coax her to sit and wait the air raid out. But Beth flailed. “Let… me… go! My mummy’s out there.” She was punching, thrashing, kicking at the young woman. “Please, Aunty Mary.”

  As the adults overcame Beth, her alarm grew. She was breathing too fast, gasping. Hysterical. Pete could feel his own heart racing, wishing he could help, knowing he couldn’t. Wishing he could let her out. Because this was too much.

  Pete was breathing too fast himself now, his head tight and swimmy as Beth’s panic infected him.

  Except Pete could leave, and when he flung the door open, no one tried to restrain him.

  He stumbled outside, gulping fresh air, just glad to be in the garden. Free. Not even caring, just for that moment, as he filled his lungs and looked up, that he would be standing in the eye of the Blitz.

  Chapter 21

  Except there was nothing up there but a darkening evening sky. Pete gulped air in the light of it, watching Dad’s silhouette scything a pathway with his arms through the garden.

  “Power’s sorted, Pete.” Dad seemed cheery again. “Jamie called in with his mother, and knew what to twiddle on the circuit board. Well, she didn’t. El Honcho to the rescue again.”

  Dad’s arm was round Pete’s shoulder. “Sorry I went off there, pal. Long day. Some soup on the go if you fancy. You cold? You’re shaking. You alright?”

  No. I’ve just been in an air raid.

  “I’m fine.” Pete handed him the torch but hung back when Dad went inside.

  Had he really just watched Beth trying to escape from the shelter into the dangerous night to see the Luftwaffe strafe Clydebank?

  What happened to you? Pete was whispering to himself when the boom of Mr Milligan rang out from the kitchen.

  “I see him, Steve. Taking the air. You don’t mind us borrowing him for a bit?” Mr Milligan clapped Pete’s back in greeting. “Mind your step there, Mother.”

  “So this is the young man here?”

  Pete’s first thought when he saw the old lady leaning on Mr Milligan’s arm was that she was one of those creepy ventriloquist’s dummies. So tiny next to El Honcho, and so ancient. She took Pete’s hand as if they already knew each other.

  “Here’s my mammy, Pete. And, Mammy, this is…”

  “…yon who knows Beth.” Mrs Milligan was smiling up into Pete’s face.

  “Yon who knows Beth,” Mr Milligan repeated as if there was nothing unusual about what either of them had just said. “I knew she’d be desperate to meet you, Pete, especially tonight.”

  “The night us Bankies never forget,” said the old lady. Still holding Pete’s hand, and with Mr Milligan supporting her on the other side, she was already shuffling through the garden towards the shelter.

  “Just before nine o’clock, 13th March 1941, it was Beth’s hand I was holding. Jamie here in my arms. Hurrying for our lives. God love her, the wee pet lamb.” Mrs Milligan sighed. Her voice was so sad that Pete waited until they were outside the shelter door before asking the question that had been swirling inside his head all day.

  “So did she die in the Blitz?” Pete was holding his breath.

  “Of course she didn’t, darlin’.” Mrs Milligan squeezed Pete’s hand. “Her Aunty Mary here made sure of that.”

  The weary groan as Mr Milligan swung the door of the shelter open masked Pete’s “Yessssss” of relief.

  “Mother, this place is far too dark and cold,” Mr Milligan was saying. “Come away back up to the house. Talk there.”

  “Change the record, Jamie. He says the same thing every year.” Mrs Milligan pushed ahead of her son, still holding on to Pete. “I canny see in the light any more, never mind the dark, and I’ve not missed an anniversary yet. Mind you, if we still had yon wee brazier we’d be snug as bugs. You won’t remember, Jamie.” Mrs Milligan’s voice quavered in the darkness.

  “You tell me that every year,” Mr Milligan tutted, though his tone was patient, “and I tell you I don’t.”

  I do, thought Pete. He helped the old lady ease herself onto the bench, then slid beside her. Although he could see nothing, it was odd; Pete couldn’t say he felt spooked. He was too busy being delighted Beth had survived the Blitz. All the same, when Mrs Milligan rapped his knee, he did jump.

  “You’ll be wondering why you see her, same as Jamie did,” the old lady said. “Fair wish I could see her again. Felt like my own, I minded her that much for Jean.”

  “Beth’s mum, Pete,” said Mr Milligan.

  “Jean was my chum. And of course my Archie was a great pal of her older son.”

  “Would that be Hugh?” asked Pete.

  “Hugh.” Mrs Milligan bumped Pete’s knee with his own knuckles. “Near eleven years between him and wee Beth, and he fair doted on her, so he did.” She chuckled. “My Archie says he spent half his shore leave and money buying her trinkets—”

  “Archie was my father, by the way,” Mr Milligan interrupted his mother. “Pair of them in the Navy together—”

  “Till Archie was invalided home with a chest wound and pneumonia and was never the—”

  “Mammy,” Mr Milligan leaned across Pete to tap the old lady’s knee, “Pete doesn’t need to know Dad’s medical history.”

  “I don’t mind,” Pete said. He was actually thinking about Beth’s diary and the Valentine. How much her and her big brother meant to each other. Would he and Jenny be the same?

  “Is Hugh still alive?” he asked.

  “Passed away a couple of years ago,” said Mr Milligan. “In his sleep, we heard…”

  “God rest him. And he survived the war to become a doctor overseas. There was nothing for the man to come back here to, after all. The Blitz saw to that.” Mrs Milligan’s voice was barely a whisper, her hand trembling in Pete’s. “Nothing prepares you for sitting where we are now. Helpless. Waiting for the bomb with your name stamped on it. Knowing it’s your people – friends, children, neighbours – taking the shells that missed you. The guilt of that…”

  “You wanted to tell Pete about Beth, Mother,” Mr Milligan coaxed. “Really don’t want to keep you down here too long.”

  “She wasn’t for staying down here the night of the Blitz too long herself. More or less had to force her when yon siren went off because Jean…” Mrs Milligan hesitated, “Jean decided to go to the surgery: ‘Couldn’t live with myself sitting safe in here doing nothing and folk wounded,’ I still mind her saying.”

  “Tough call that,” Mr Milligan said. “Doubt my sense of duty would have trumped my daughter. If I had one.”

  Me neither. Or Mum… Despite Jenny driving Mum up the wall, Pete was thinking, he couldn’t imagine Mum ever choosing to leave her baby. When both their lives were at risk.

  “But this was no ordinary night. Folk had to make hard choices,” Mrs Milligan piped up as though she could read Pete’s thoughts. “Jean could hardly take the lassie with her to see the sights she saw that night. Could she?”

  The old lady let her question hang before she a
dded, “I won’t hear a word against Jean Winters. She only ever did what she thought was best, and that’s all a body can do.”

  “And was Beth’s dad working too?” Pete asked.

  “Glasgow, all night. Praying none of the casualties they brought into the Western for him were anyone he knew… That’s what he told me the next day when he came to my door, near mad with worry…”

  Pete heard Mrs Milligan trying to control the quaver in her voice. “That was a reunion. Dr Aidan finding Beth safe and sound. He’d muddled his way back to Clydebank convinced she was dead. Seeing all these churches and factories and tenements along Dumbarton Road from Glasgow flattened to rubble. Mile after mile. Burning and smouldering. And the silence of those people searching among the ruins, looking for their own. ‘Right, M’lady!’ Dr Aidan says to Beth, once they’ve had their cuddle. And he whisks her off to the station.”

  “So she did leave?” asked Pete.

  “In the clothes she stood in. And my good winter coat,” said Mrs Milligan. “Breaking her wee heart. Was all for sifting through the bomb site of Number 14 to look for things she said she couldn’t leave without, but Dr Aidan was having none of it. Site was creaking and shifting and groaning—”

  “So she couldn’t take anything her mum packed?” Pete had to interrupt. Along the bench Mr Milligan caught his breath, then cleared his throat as if he was going to speak, but his mother went on.

  “Not a dicky bird,” she said. “Dr Aidan wanted her out of Clydebank and that was that. Without even saying ta-ta to Jean…”

  Imagine leaving anywhere without saying bye to Mum or Dad. In the dark Pete’s eyes prickled.

  “Doing the right thing he was too, because we suffered more of the same the next bally night,” Mr Milligan chipped in. “Fewer casualties because folk had left in droves.”

  “And then there were the ones who stayed. Weren’t so lucky…” Mrs Milligan paused. Pete heard her voice break as she said, “Like poor Jean.”

  “Beth’s mum died? No!” Pete didn’t want this to be true. He wanted Mrs Milligan to have made a mistake. But he could sense the old lady nodding next to him.

  “They found her body under a collapsed…” Mrs Milligan had to stop and clear her throat. “These big walls we had,” she said when she went on. “They were put up in front of the tenements to protect them from blast. Baffles they were called. A menace. And one fell on poor Jean; buried her. Dear God…”

  Pete had to wait a few moments before Mrs Milligan carried on.

  “Dr Aidan said she’d ignored the air raid to come and find yon box because she knew how much the wee things inside meant to Beth. And they got her,” Mrs Milligan whispered. “Not the only undeserving soul to die in someone else’s war—”

  “Then or now,” Mr Milligan chimed these words with his mother.

  The shelter fell silent after that. It was so quiet Pete could hear the rustling tune of the leaves on the hedge that led to Dunny’s garden. He wondered what Dunny was doing right now. What he’d say if he wandered down to play with his footie figures and found Pete, his dad’s boss and a very old survivor of the Clydebank Blitz sitting in silence in the dark.

  Sitting in silence in the dark for a long time. Until Mrs Milligan spoke, her voice clear and strong. Matter-of-fact.

  “And now you understand why wee Beth keeps coming back.” She gave Pete’s hand a few taps. Pay attention. “Needs to deal with her mother’s unfinished business—”

  “By finding the box,” added Mr Milligan, his voice matter-of-fact too. “I should have done it myself, Pete.”

  “But he was a big tumshy.” Mrs Milligan leaned into Pete to nudge him. “Too feart of a wee lost lassie.”

  “Guilty as charged.” Mr Milligan almost sounded sheepish. “Of course this is when I was round your age, Pete, and I’d be in your room. ‘Jamie?’ she’d call me, all hours of the night.”

  “Course he never told me. I’d be asleep and there he’d be standing, white as a ghost over my bed: ‘Mammy, I’ve had a bad dream’,” Mrs Milligan tutted. “I only find out what he’s been running away from all these years when he decides he’s not scared any more, and he’s in that room with his Elvis and his Chuck Holly blaring—”

  “Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly.” Mr Milligan’s sigh was good-natured. “Waiting for Beth to call me, but she never came back.”

  “No wonder: yon racket,” Mrs Milligan tutted.

  “She’s been complaining about my taste in music all her life,” Mr Milligan chuckled. “Anyway, Pete, even when I moved into my own place in Glasgow, I’d come back and stay in my old room for a few nights round the anniversary of the Blitz, just in case Beth…”

  “And she didn’t?” asked Peter.

  “Never.” Peter sensed Mr Milligan swirling his hand about in the air. “Just had this feeling of… nothingness on the other side of the wall. I knew she was gone.”

  “Gone like dead?” Pete’s voice was tiny.

  “Not a bally bit of it!” Mr Milligan rapped his hand hard off the bench. “Gone like living. Stayed up north till after the war—”

  “And then emigrated in the early fifties, with her daddy. New Zealand they went,” interrupted Mrs Milligan. “Still alive—”

  “As far as you think or like to hope,” Mr Milligan interrupted his mother. Then he sighed. “We used to get letters, Christmas cards.”

  “Because I’d write to the wee lassie. Sent her an Arran wool tammy I knitted one year.” Mrs Milligan leant into Pete and nudged him. “Jamie said it’d look like a plate of lumpy porridge on Beth’s head but I mind she wrote me a lovely thank you. And then, over time…” The old lady tutted.

  “Lost touch, didn’t we?” said Mr Milligan.

  “Maybe the memories from home we were stirring up were too painful for the poor wee… That’s what I think myself. Who knows?” said Mrs Milligan, her voice small and sad.

  All this was too much for Pete. “But how can she be away over there and here at the same time?” he blurted.

  In the dark shelter, Pete heard Mr Milligan draw a long breath through his nostrils. “That’s the bally question I kept asking myself—” said Mr Milligan.

  “Instead of asking the poor wee lost lass herself when she came to see him and doing something useful.” This time it was Mrs Milligan doing the interrupting. “Too feart to help her, James Milligan; that’s what you were.”

  Pete couldn’t help himself; he felt a bubble of mirth rising up his throat and escaping as a choked giggle when Mrs Milligan scolded Dad’s big smoothie boss like he was still in short trousers.

  “It’s no laughing matter, letting that lassie down. And her mother.” When Mrs Milligan cracked a smack off her son’s knee, Pete actually felt sorry for El Honcho.

  “Mother’s right, Pete. But seeing the ghost of a girl you know full well is as alive and kicking as you are on the other side of the world made me think I was going bally off my chump. And I’ll put my hands up,” Mr Milligan admitted. “I was too scared out my wits to be of use to anyone when Beth came calling for help.”

  “But you’re here now, son,” Mrs Milligan gripped Pete’s arm and began to lever herself up from the bench, “and that Matron’ll be sending out a search party if Jamie doesn’t get me back to the Last Chance Saloon before my bedtime sherry.”

  “That’s me getting my marching orders, Pete,” Mr Milligan chuckled. “Let’s be having you then, Mammy.”

  At the door of the shelter Mrs Milligan cupped her hands round Pete’s face. “Mind you do what yon big tumshy of mine never managed. Help Beth so her mother can rest.”

  Chapter 22

  Pete had spent so long in the shelter with the Milligans, he expected Mum and Dad to bombard him: What were you talking about? What were you doing? Instead, he found them snoring on the sofa in front of the telly, Jenny sound asleep between them.

  Could’ve run away and they wouldn’t have noticed, Pete had thought. This was while he spooned cold soup from the pot and sw
igged milk straight from the carton since there was no one about to tell him he was being disgusting.

  Now, back in his room, he had his head against the wall. He was moving his ear from place to place like a doctor pressing a cold stethoscope to sound different parts of his chest.

  “Hello?”

  “Beth?”

  “Are you there?”

  But all he could detect was… What was Mr Milligan’s word?

  Nothingness.

  Pete could almost hear it whooshing. A shored-up, derelict gap site. That was all that remained on the other side of the wall. Beth was gone.

  Pete slumped onto his bed. As he pulled his duvet over his legs, he spotted Beth’s notebook. It had fallen open on two pages bordered with dozens of drawings. New ones. Pete was sure. Men, women, children, their likenesses all created in a few clever strokes.

  Mummy, Beth had written underneath the sketch of a smiling woman with dark curling hair. Beside her a solemn man with a pencil moustache leaned on a cane and stared out at Pete with stern eyes: Dr Aidan, my daddy.

  There was a chubby baby next to Dr Aidan whose eyes were screwed up and whose mouth gaped in misery. Beth had drawn flying teardrops and exclamation marks all around the baby’s head and filled its mouth with the words, Jamie Wah-wah!!!!! instead of teeth.

  Looking up at this picture and wearing, Pete thought, the same frazzled expression as Mum after an all-nighter with Jenny, was a young woman with long, loose hair.

  Aunty Mary, was written on the apron she wore.

  Mrs Milligan. Pete wondered if the very old lady who’d kissed him goodbye would manage to see this young version of herself if the light was good enough. Or if she would recognise the uniformed sailor grinning beneath her, raising up a salute. His image was framed in a pencil love heart: Captain Hugh.

  Looks like a hero, or a film star, Pete thought, moving on to the column of smaller drawings running down the margin of the other page. These were all boys and girls about his age: Simon’s age, Alfie’s, and Beth’s. Dark, fair, speccy, cute, smiley, swotty, chubby: all different and detailed. Like they’re real people, not cartoons. Around three of these faces Beth had drawn thick, black tombstone-shaped lines and written beneath: