Then, short moments later, the bombs had fallen, and the shelter had been hit in her absence. Granny had seen the bombs hit, and knowing how risky take-off was, had leapt out of his kite hoping to help. The girls were special to all of them.
Whilst the squadron had been fighting and Rose had faced the Me110s in his own arena, Granny had helped to drag the broken bodies one by one from the earth. And then the headquarters building, in turn, had been hit.
Molly had saved lives, it seemed. She had gone into the burning building, and had guided out the wounded, supporting and encouraging. She had personally saved three men, including the Wing Commander, although he was severely injured, before another bomb had fallen. And this time, her luck had run out. She had been caught by the shrapnel.
But she’s alive, he reminded himself. That’s all that really matters. She’s still warm and alive, not lying out there cold and blue and torn beneath some anonymous sheet of tarpaulin, like those poor girls. With her spirit, and my love, one day she’ll be strong again. She’s alive!
CHAPTER 34
The desk had been removed from the Chief Medical Officer’s office, and dumped unceremoniously upside down outside. Thus cleared, three stretchers had been placed in the office.
The sick ward was already filled, the cloying stench of blood and antiseptic mixing with the ever present smoke and dust. The over-fill of the injured had been laid out on the grass outside, between the sick quarters and the MT pool. The eastern wall of the building had been knocked down, and he could see some of the vehicles, dented and damaged and under debris and rubble.
Beneath their feet, glass and vials and powder and tablets crunched and popped.
The concussion from the bomb blasts had knocked down the neatly arranged mirrored medicine closets, strewing the contents across the floor in a multi-coloured jumble. Blood and soot had dirtied the once gleaming white walls, and dirty, bloodied dressings lay in a pile in one corner.
Doubtless Griffen must have been apoplectic.
It was a far cry from the scrubbed and polished sick quarters in which he had lain so very recently. She had visited him, that time. This time, the positions were reversed. Please God she had escaped as lightly as he had.
Granny stopped and turned to him. His voice was quiet, “She’s in there, mate. She isn’t feeling too good, she’s been given a shot of something. I’ve had a word with the doc. She’s going to be alright. Remember that. You’ve got to be strong for her, OK?” Then he stepped aside to allow Rose in, patted his shoulder. “I’ll be outside, chum. Shout if you need me.”
Rose nodded his thanks, not trusting his voice, the dread squeezing his heart like a vice again.
Molly was on a stretcher pushed up against the filing cabinet that housed the medical records.
She was laying facedown, her slim form covered with a grimy sheet spotted with blood. Her tunic rested by her side.
Her lustrous black hair, now speckled with dust, was spread out around her head. Her exposed, smooth shoulders were scratched and pale, the skin milky white. The word URGENT had been scrawled across them in watery blue ink.
Beside her, there was another WAAF, a corporal according to her accompanying tunic, but the girl’s eyes were closed, her face untroubled and mouth slack, relaxed in the drug-induced oblivion of unconsciousness.
Rose squatted down beside Molly, and reached out, thought better of it, withdrew his hand.
“Molly. I’m here, my sweet love.” His voice fractured, and he sucked in his lips, closed his eyes, as the tears spilled from his eyes. His sinuses and nose were heavy with mucus, so that his voice was thick, as if he had a head cold.
“Harry?” her voice was weak, almost inaudible, the very merest of whispers. “Oh, my Harry, is that you? You’re alive? Thank God…”
Even lying there, semi-conscious, injured cruelly, all she could think of was his safety.
“Molly, my darling, what have they done to you, my sweet girl?” his hands were shaking uncontrollably, and he could not keep the keen of pain from his voice. He bit his lip to still the sob that threatened to escape.
Control yourself, you stupid, bloody fool.
She turned to face him, and he was shocked by the waxy sheen of sweat on her pale (Dear God, so very pale!) face. Her eyes were half-closed, her soft lips devoid of their usual brightness, bruised where she’d bitten them. The swollen dark purple-blue bruise breaking the paleness of her complexion, angry and livid, on the side of her pinched face. The sight of her made him feel as if he had been kicked in the stomach, and he felt the strength drain from his muscles.
He felt he would surely faint when a low moan escaped her lips.
But she was still alive.
Thank you, Dear God, still alive.
Her voice was so low, slow with pain and morphine. “What’s this? Is my brave RAF hero crying? Better stop, you’ll scare the kiddies and the animals…”
“I thought I’d lost you.”
She swallowed dryly and closed her eyes, “I’m not dead, y’know. Still here…”
Thank God! “How do you feel?” he tried to make his voice sound light, but he could not keep the worry from it. What a stupid question to ask! She’s laying there before me with her back torn open, and I’m asking her how she’s feeling like some fatuous moron!
“Like the sky fell on me… I feel so tired, Harry.” Her voice was slurred. “My mouth’s so dry, but they won’t give me a drink…” Above her head was a scrawled note, bearing the legend, ‘Nil by mouth.’
“I must look dreadful. Don’t look at me.” She turned her face away, but not before a tear glistened slowly down her nose.
“Oh, Molly, you’re the loveliest thing in my life. I think you’re beautiful.” Carefully, he bent forward and kissed her hair. She was still fragrant, despite the stench of smoke, blood and open wounds, and the awful experience she had suffered.
Where was the bloody MO? “Molly. I love you. I want you. Have you decided to marry me yet, or must I wait more?”
Rose listened for the sound of unsynchronised aero-engines. The sooner Molly was sent to a hospital, the better, as far as he was concerned.
Lying there, she and the other casualties were terribly vulnerable if the Luftwaffe returned, and frantic apprehension gnawed at him.
“Harry…I love you, too. Always will. Will you hold my hand, please?”
She must have been given something strong, he thought, for she seemed to fade in and out of consciousness. He was content to squat beside her, holding her cold hand, trying to warm it with his. He smoothed back the hair from her forehead, moist with sweat. His knees ached, but he dared not move.
Then she was awake again. “Harry…is that you?”
“I’m still here, my love.”
“Thank God…I thought I’d been dreaming.”
“No, still here, large as life and twice as ugly.”
“I think you’re dashing…wish I could give you a kiss…we’ll have to cancel our weekend in Mayfair…” Another tear coursed down her cheek.
“Tell me about my girls, Harry?”
He was silent, what could he tell her? The truth? That they’re all dead?
“Um, I don’t know, Molly. Granny brought me straight here. I’m sure they’ll be alright, love.”
“Tell me, please. I saw the shelter hit, Harry. I know what happened. I should have stayed with them. They all trusted me. Tell me.”
Still he was silent. What could he possibly say? Helpless, Rose looked round. Where’s that flippin’ MO?
“Oh, Harry…they killed my girls…” Tears began to flow in earnest now; she sobbed bitterly, shoulders shaking, her soft fingers tightening around his.
“They shouldn’t have died alone. I should have been with them…they were my girls, Harry. My responsibility. What right have I to live instead of them? Why them and not me? They were so young and good…”
“Nobody should have died, my sweetheart. I couldn’t bear it if you were gone. I could
n’t go on. Thank God you were spared. I couldn’t bear it if you had gone.”
“Why…?” A despairing whisper, full of hurt and liquid pain.
“I wish I could take it away, my love. I want to take all the hurt from you.”
But still she asked, “My poor dear girls. Why…?”
He could not answer her; the words stillborn on his tongue, the pain in her voice cutting sharply at him like the cold sharp scalpels on the steel tray outside. How could he answer her, when he could not explain it to himself? How could he comfort her, when the sights he had seen, and the injuries to his sweet Molly left him with incomprehension that his home, his world, familiar and friendly, was forever gone?
How does one explain what is impossible to comprehend?
He could only kneel beside her, her hand like ice in his, his eyes staring in apprehension at the raised area where the covering sheet was being kept away from her lower back by a support frame. Momentarily, she had sunk back into unconsciousness.
What had they done to her? What awful hurts lay beneath that sheet?
The cold anger was forged afresh, in those minutes. The young pilot, kneeling beside the battered body of his beloved, felt the bitter stinging hatred burgeoning, tempered and hardened by those bitter tears, by her poor battered form and by the endless sea of pain.
He tried to soothe her, murmuring meaningless nothings, but in the end, it was the tiredness, despair, and her injuries, that had sent her sliding back into unconsciousness, the pain fading, but the wetness of her cheeks and on the fabric of her pillow a remembrance for the departed.
A stained button on her tunic hung loosely from torn thread, the sheen gone, and he ripped it off, pocketed it. It would be his battle talisman.
It would serve to remind him, wherever he was.
He would pay them back a hundredfold for what had been wreaked here today. A thousand fold. He would become like Cynk, living only to kill.
He would kill them at each and every opportunity. Such monsters could not deserve mercy.
They had hurt her, the one thing that mattered most to him in this world. They had gouged his heart, and he would not bear the pain alone. He would hurt them the same way. They had no sense of what was fair, and deserved no fairness in return.
Where was the justness of dropping bombs on girls, or machine-gunning a man beneath his parachute?
There was no honour in it. The swines had no honour.
His shirt was drenched, and he picked it away from his back, struggling with the Mae West he still wore.
She had asked what right she had to live when others did not. He had no answers, but he knew that she had been chosen to live. It had not been her time, not yet. Thank goodness.
He leaned his head against the filing cabinet, and the tears streaked through dirt, and oil, and smoke stains. He cried for what might have been, and for what his world had now become.
For the enormous pains, and for the horrendous hurts, both physical and mental, inflicted upon her.
But most of all, he cried because she had lived through that day of fire, death and damnation, when so many had not.
Whatever else happened, she had lived.
There could be nothing more important than that.
Nothing.
For while they both lived, their dreams still held substance.
He was not aware of how long he had been there, except that he had drowsed beside her, and then he was suddenly alert.
There was a muffled cough, and another tap on the door. Two orderlies stood uncomfortably there, faces tight, a stretcher between them.
Perhaps they were embarrassed to see one of their pilots, one of the nation’s darlings he thought bitterly, kneeling there with a snotty nose and tears on his cheeks.
The smaller of the two orderlies smiled uncertainly, colourless eyes blinking hugely behind thick lenses in the subdued yellow light.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but we’re from the hospital. We’ve come for two RAF ladies. Flight Officer Digby, and, er,” he consulted a clip-board, “Ah, Miss Simons. Is that the young ladies there?”
“Yes, this is Flight Officer Digby. I don’t know if this one of is Simons, sorry. It’s a bit cramped in here. Wait a minute, I’ll come out. Give you a spot of room to work in.”
“Harry, is that you?”
“I’m here, my sweet. Don’t worry, it’s alright, my love, these chaps have come to take you to the hospital. They’ll take care of you. You’ll be comfortable there.”
He gently lowered Molly’s hand, hating to let go of it, and climbed unsteadily to his feet, thigh and calf muscles straining painfully.
The orderly with spectacles deftly squeezed past him, and laid down the stretcher beside her.
In no time at all, they had transferred her gently to the stretcher, and out into the waiting service ambulance, with its great red crosses.
Rose hopped up into the ambulance while the orderlies went to fetch Miss Simons (whoever she was).
The interior, once so light when he had been admitted so recently, was now dark, and the walls seemed to absorb the low pitched words as she raised her head to him.
He leaned forward to listen carefully, but it was difficult with the wheezy breathing of the drugged airman already there.
Her hair hung forward like a curtain, hiding her face from him. “Oh, Harry, I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave you.” In her half-closed drugged eyes, there was at last a trace of fear. “Take care of yourself, please don’t die…”
The last time she had left those who meant something to her, they had died. She had lost her girls, and now she feared terribly for him.
Rose nodded soberly. “I don’t have any plans to, my sweetheart.”
He remembered the madness in his mind as he had raced towards the Me110 so recently, banished the thought to a distant place, “Don’t you worry about me, my darling heart. I’ll be OK, you’ll see.”
He patted his pocket. “Genevieve will take care of me. She’ll see me right. You just concentrate on getting better, agreed?” I should have given her back to you, they could never have hurt you then.
“Be careful?”
He stroked her feverish, moist brow. “I’ll be jolly careful, I promise.” He smiled carefully, “I’ve found you now. I shan’t ever let you go. I intend to live so I can be with you, so you better live for me.”
The orderlies had returned, and the little man with the spectacles had heard her, and he leaned forward, “Don’t need to worry about him, miss, he’s a big lad. I’m sure he can look after himself.” He grinned apologetically to Rose.
Granny was standing outside the ambulance; “I’ll take care of the little sod for you, Molly. You take care of yourself, and leave me to look after him. Fair enough?”
“If you don’t…” she whispered.
Rose put a finger to her lips. “Enough talking. You rest now. I’ll come and see you as soon as I can, but you must know that I love you dearly, and will do forever.”
He bent forward and kissed her lightly, his lips just brushing hers, but already she was slipping back into the protective state of unconsciousness as her body fought the injuries she had suffered.
It was the hardest thing he could do, to step down from the ambulance. He did not want to let her out of his sight, but to hold her close, never let her go.
Together, Granny and Rose stood in the unnatural twilight, and watched the ambulance slowly make its way to the main gate, until it had disappeared from sight through the gloom.
Granny patted his shoulder kindly. “She’ll be fine, Flash. They’ll look after her. Come on, let’s go and scrounge a nice cuppa. I think the planes will have been refuelled and re-armed by now.”
His hand gripped Rose’s shoulder firmly, shook him slightly. “We have to be ready if there are any more attacks.”
“Yes. I’ll catch you up in a moment, Granny, just have to go and check something, OK?”
He picked his way past the wou
nded back to the Chief MO’s office, to discover that the remaining WAAF had also disappeared, and had been replaced with some badly wounded soldiers from the airfield defence unit, plasma bottles snaking from their arms.
Those still conscious watched him silently, with pain-filled faces, and he felt like a trespasser.
Molly’s tunic had been carefully folded and placed in the corner. I’ll keep it safe for her. When I go and visit her, he thought, I’ll take it to her.
Rose picked up her tunic and hugged it tightly, wiped his face with her sleeve. It was then that he saw the great star-shaped tear in the back of it, a good three inches across. The torn fabric edges were caked stiffly with dried, black-looking blood.
Dear God. He held it up to the light. The wound must be terrible. Yet she had lain there quietly. Despite the Morphine, she must have felt such agonising pain.
He felt an urgent desire to go straight to the hospital, to be with her as he should, but he knew that his duty lay here, with his squadron. He had to trust them with her, even if his heart pleaded with him to go to her. He had to defend those who were left behind.
He gathered it up and put it over his arm.
There was a photograph poking up out of her side pocket.
Curious, he pulled it out. There was no one watching, but he felt guilty nonetheless. It was like going through her bag, an invasion of her privacy.
The photograph showed a young man, smart and correct in RAF uniform. Like Rose, he wore the single, thin rank braid of a Pilot Officer, and the silken cream wings of a pilot. He could not have been more than nineteen or twenty years of age.
The face stared up at him, blandly indifferent to his confusion.
What did this mean? Why was it in her pocket? Who was he?
Beneath the photo, a message had been written in a neat copperplate style:
Dearest Molly,
Thinking of you, old girl. Keep your head down!
Love, Teddy.
Teddy? Who in the name of holy heaven was this Teddy?
The photo stared back at him enigmatically, not offering any answers, just a mystery.
To So Few Page 40
