The girl was lying on her back, skirt over her face.
Her legs were bent backward and there was a gigantic hole in her stomach. Her blood looked like treacle in the torchlight.
Polly got down on one knee and lifted away the skirt.
Doreen’s face was unmarked except for a frond of blood clinging to her parted lips. She was still dimpled, still pretty. Her eyes were wide open.
‘Doreen?’ Polly whispered.
She expected no answer for even to Polly it was obvious that Doreen Quinlan was dead.
* * *
The German pathfinders had done their work well. Marker fires raged all through Clydebank and across the slopes of the Old Kilpatrick Hills. The oil tanks at Dalnottar released great shawls of black smoke and the pungent odour of whisky stung the throat; the distillery at Yoker was burning too. Across the river in Renfrew incendiaries had taken a heavy toll and the entire horizon, from east to west, was ablaze.
The view from Blackstone Farm was breathtaking.
Dougie leaned in the open doorway of the barn, a cigarette in his mouth, an arm about the boy.
Angus had refused to go indoors and curl up between the straw bales like his sisters. Dougie couldn’t blame him. If he had been Angus’s age he would have been gripped by an experience that was no longer an air raid but more a force of nature, awful and awe-inspiring at one and the same time.
‘Do you really think Ron’ll be all right?’ Angus asked.
‘Well, if he’s wise,’ said Dougie, ‘he’ll be hidin’ in his shed.’
‘Maybe we should go back there, see if he needs anything.’
‘We’re staying right where we are,’ said Dougie.
‘They’re not dropping anything on us now,’ said Angus.
‘It’s half-past four in the mornin’, son,’ said Dougie. ‘This is the longest air attack we’ve had yet. No sayin’ how many more planes are to come.’
‘Look,’ Angus shouted, excitedly. ‘Look, look at that, Dougie.’
‘I see it,’ said Dougie.
‘What is it?’
‘Probably the timber yard at Singer’s.’
‘Whoosh!’ Angus shouted. ‘Whoosh!’
‘There’re people down there,’ Dougie said, ‘remember.’
‘They’ll be okay, though, won’t they, in the shelters?’
‘Not them all,’ said Dougie.
He had extinguished the two incendiary canisters that had fallen into the yard, one with a dustbin lid and the other with a shovelful of slurry from the pit by Ron’s sty. The pig had been nervous and skittery but Dougie had hurled a handful of rotten apples into the sty to give Ron something to chew on before he’d scuttled back to the stables where, tucked among the straw bales under the gallery floor, Margaret had bedded down the girls.
May and June were asleep now, their fears calmed and put aside. There was the smack of adventure about sleeping in blankets in the stable-barn, Dougie supposed, but it would become a whole lot less adventurous if the Luftwaffe made a habit of raiding Glasgow, and the sight of the sky on fire would pall quickly enough when the kids saw the damage that bombing caused. Dougie promised himself that he would keep them away from Clydebank for God knew what horrible sights might greet them there.
‘There!’ Angus pointed again. ‘See the steeple. Is that St John’s?’
‘I dunno. It’s kinda far away. It might be St Jerome’s?’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Over the river, where your mama works?’
Angus swung round. ‘Mum’s not there, is she?’
At last it had dawned on the boy that people were dying.
‘She won’t be at work in the middle o’ the night,’ Dougie said. ‘She’ll be safe at home in the Anderson shelter, with April.’
‘What if she’s not?’
‘She’ll be fine, Angus.’
‘What if she dies? What’ll we do if she dies?’
‘Angus, they’re not bombing Raines Drive.’
‘I don’t want her to die.’
‘Your mama will be fine.’
‘How do you know? Look at it,’ Angus shouted. ‘It’s terrible.’
‘It’s all that,’ Dougie agreed.
‘Why are they doing it? Why are they bombing us?’
‘Because they want to win the war.’
‘But why – why is this the way to win the war?’
‘There are all sorts o’ ways to win a war, son,’ Dougie said.
‘I wish I had a gun,’ said Angus, grimly. ‘A great big gun.’
‘And just what would you do with a gun?’ Miss Dawlish asked.
She appeared behind them with a blanket to drape over the boy’s shoulders and two beakers of tea poured from a Thermos flask.
‘Shoot them,’ Angus shouted. ‘Shoot them all,’ then with a blood-curdling cry, crouched and fired an imaginary weapon up into the burning sky.
* * *
Ten minutes after Babs tucked her into the cot in the Anderson shelter, April gave a little sigh and fell fast asleep. She wakened only once when something big and heavy thundered along Raines Drive.
‘Daddy’s not fighting now,’ she murmured, sleepily.
Babs, seated by the cot, said, ‘No, dearest, Daddy’s not fightin’ now.’
‘Where’s Christy?’
‘He’s takin’ care of Auntie Polly.’
‘That’s good,’ said April, and closed her eyes again.
Christy had drained water from the shelter with a stirrup pump, put candles into holders and a torch with spare batteries in an old biscuit tin. He had even laid out kindling and coal for the stove but Babs didn’t have the sense to light it for a kind of paralysis came over her as soon as April fell asleep.
She wished that Christy was with her now for as the night wore on she became scared and lonely, fretting about Mammy in Knightswood, Rosie in town, even about Polly over in Manor Park. She was less worried about Angus and the girls, whom she assumed were safe in the countryside.
About half-past four, she opened the door and peeped out.
Noises in the Drive: the imperious shouting of wardens and the shrilling of whistles relaying tuneless messages across the moonlit gardens. She crawled up the steps on her knees, glanced up at the sky, navy blue and deep, and at the moon and the flushed cloud that formed a canopy above the rooftops.
She stood up. She could make out the glint of moonlight in the glass of the villas and bungalows round about and, heartened, clambered up the slope of the shelter on to the roof.
‘Get down, woman! Get down from there!’
Babs peered into the shadows by the side of the bungalow and saw a tin helmet, a gas cape, the flicker of a torch.
The warden advanced to the edge of the lawn.
‘Are you tryin’ to get yourself killed?’
Because she was at work all day, she had no contact with Civil Defence groups and didn’t know the warden’s name. She slid down the slope of the shelter and flounced across the lawn. Through gaps between the bungalows she was aware of flames but she saw them out of the corner of her eye, not focusing.
Hands on hips, she said, ‘What’s up? What’s happening?’
‘There’s been no all clear. Get back into your shelter an’ stay there.’
The fiery red sheet behind the man expanded and at that moment Babs realised its significance. She made to move past the warden, heading for the path at the front of the bungalow, but he checked her progress, snatching at her arm.
‘No,’ he said, growling. ‘No, lady, don’t look.’
Babs broke free, ran down the narrow path, and stopped in her tracks.
Everything was on fire, everything. The river, the hills, the townships were all illuminated by great ghastly sheets of flame.
She clapped her hands to her cheeks.
‘Oh God!’ she cried out. ‘Oh God!’
‘I told you not to look, didn’t I?’ the warden said and snaring her by the waist, led her, shocked and un
protesting, back to the safety of the shelter.
* * *
Army mattresses had been laid on the dirt floor at the end of the communal shelter and all the little ones settled down, some of the older women too.
The two children whom Rosie had picked up at the close mouth had been calmed by the arrival of the dark-haired woman, Mrs Lottman, and her children. They were friends of Mrs Mavor, the woman whose baby had been injured. Mrs Lottman was very concerned about Mrs Mavor’s baby and asked for news from the wardens and welfare workers who drifted in and out of the shelter but they could provide no information. The fact that Kenny hadn’t returned yet didn’t worry Rosie. She assumed that he was helping with rescue work or had been summoned back to St Andrew’s Street.
She sat very still by Mrs Lottman’s side and watched the children sleep.
The air in the shelter was clammy and condensation glistened on the walls but at least the floor was dry.
Rosie pressed the pad of lint that a warden had given her against her torn eyebrow. If she took her hand away she felt sure that the lint would remain in place, pasted to her flesh by blood. Her eyebrow hurt hardly at all but the cut cheekbone throbbed. She had a bit of a headache and her vision was blurry but Mrs Lottman peered into her eyes and told her she’d be all right.
Mrs Lottman showed no sign of the panic that had affected her last time. Perhaps, Rosie thought, we’re adapting and will soon become blasé about spending nights out of bed. Perhaps we will become refugees, drifting from place to place and there will be nothing solid left to hang on to except air-raid shelters and community canteens.
She had assumed that working in Merryweather’s would help her make sense of the war. She’d been wrong and if she hadn’t been cursed with a stubborn streak she would have packed in the job months ago. Only Mr Bass and two or three of the younger girls ever tried to converse with her now that Doris Maybury had put it about that Rosie MacGregor wasn’t really the wife of a policeman but the mistress of an Italian collaborator.
If the fiction hadn’t been so vicious Rosie would have laughed it off, but malice and prejudice were home-grown evils that corrupted everyone in time and Rosie was thankful for her deafness and the numbing concentration that assembling small parts hour upon hour demanded.
As the night wore on and the threat of bombing receded, Rosie slipped into a light, not unpleasant sleep. She had no idea what time it was when Mrs Lottman dug her in the ribs. Rosie opened her eyes and read the woman’s lips.
‘That’s the all clear and unless I’m mistaken, that’s your hubby.’
Rosie, stiff and sore now, got up from the bench.
Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to leave the shelter. Mothers were lifting children from the mattresses – sleepy little faces, cross at being wakened – and men were helping the older women to their feet. One old woman was gathering up blankets, shaking and folding them as if the shelter had already become her home. Smoke curled away into the faint pre-dawn daylight through the open door at the far end of the shelter and, looking in that direction, Rosie saw Kenny standing against the light.
He was covered in dust, his hair, normally so neat, standing up about his head as if he’d been electrocuted.
He was grinning, though, and holding up his thumb.
She eased her way along the wall of the shelter to greet him.
He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.
‘You look terrible,’ he said.
‘You don’t look so good yourself. What about the Mavor baby?’
‘She’s in the children’s ward at Yorkhill. They’ve patched her up pretty well. She lost the little finger on her left hand, poor wee lass, and she’ll have some scars on her face when she grows up but her eyes weren’t damaged and there were no major injuries.’
‘Where is Mrs Mavor?’
‘She’ll be back soon.’
Mrs Lottman, her baby in her arms, joined them.
‘How badly are our houses damaged?’ she asked.
‘Most of the windows are out and the gas has been cut off but otherwise they’re just about habitable,’ Kenny told her. ‘Watch out for the glass, though. There’s tons of broken glass everywhere. I’d sweep out the kitchen first, if I were you, and put the kids in there until you can clear the rest of the rooms. The council will send workmen round to board up the windows.’
‘If that’s the case, I’ll take care of Mrs Mavor’s girls,’ Mrs Lottman said.
Rosie said, ‘I’d take them but I have to go to work.’
Kenny put out a forefinger and dabbed the blood-caked pad of lint that clung like a barnacle to her eyebrow.
‘Not with that wound, Rosie,’ he said, ‘not until you’ve seen a doctor.’
‘Listen to your man, Mrs MacGregor,’ Mrs Lottman told her and, gathering the sleepy brood about her, herded them towards the door. ‘Tell Mrs Mavor where they are, will you please?’
‘Will do,’ said Kenny, then with an arm about her shoulder, steered Rosie out into the blackened street.
16
By rights Babs should have been on her knees by breakfast time for she hadn’t slept a wink all night. Instead she was filled with defiant energy and pursued her usual routine as if there had been no air raid at all.
The houses in Raines Drive and Holloway Road had escaped unscathed, and when Babs reached the Millses’ house she found the usual little band of children waiting to be led to the nursery. Mr Mills told her that Clydebank had been severely damaged, though, and many people had been killed. He warned her that she would be lucky to make it as far as Paisley, let alone St Jerome’s. He also asked her to be back before nightfall for predictions were that the Germans would come again to pound what was left of the city and Mrs Mills and he just weren’t capable of looking after children in the event of another raid.
Babs pursed her lips, kissed her daughter and set off for Paisley Road.
She was much more anxious now, fearful for her children, her sisters and her mother. For two pins she would have abandoned her trek to Cyprus Street and headed for Manor Park instead. She passed a telephone box with a queue outside it, hesitated, then walked on. All she had to hang on to was her need to reach Cyprus Street. Archie would be there. Archie wouldn’t let a little thing like an air raid keep him from doing his duty. My duty, she thought, that’s what I’m doing, my duty to King, country and Archie Harding. Hang on to that, honey, and just keep walking.
Babs wasn’t the only worker on the hoof that morning, not by a long chalk. Power lines were down at Govan Cross and no trams were running. The thoroughfare hummed with ambulances, fire engines and military vehicles, and, now and then, a police car hurtled past at high speed.
Babs walked for the best part of a mile and was just beginning to think of giving up when a single-decker bus appeared out of a side street and halted at the kerb to let passengers off.
Babs ran up to the cab and shouted, ‘Where are you going?’
‘Paisley depot – if I can get there.’
‘Room for one more?’
‘Hop in.’
Forty minutes later, having skirted floods from burst water mains, rubble-strewn streets and cul-de-sacs ringed by fire engines, the bus reached Paisley, nosed into the depot and stopped.
Babs and the dozen or so passengers who were left on board got off.
She had seen enough damage to be sure that the news Mr Mills had picked up on his wireless set was accurate. Clydeside had taken a hammering and she felt selfish, almost cruel, about neglecting her family.
She had made it this far, though, and would press on. With luck the office phone would still be functioning and she would be able to contact Polly at home, Bernard at his office in Breslin and maybe even Kenny in Glasgow to make sure that everyone was all right.
She set off down lanes and side streets between passive old tenements and corner shops and at length found herself on Aerodrome Road with an unimpeded view of the shipyards and the river.
Her heart sa
nk.
Dense black smoke coiled over the townships on the far side of the Clyde, and in strengthening sunlight she could make out a mass of ruined buildings.
She headed along the straight with tears running down her cheeks and her legs shaking. It was the worst time, there would never be another quite so bad, for it seemed to Babs then that she had lost everything, her children, her mother, her sister too probably, that everything had gone up in smoke and that all she would have left would be files and telephones and a legion of slackers and shirkers, without pride or shame, demanding their rights.
The Aerodrome Road was remarkably quiet, though.
Tramway tracks shimmered in the sunlight. Gulls were strung out in a long white line across the furrows. In the distance, near the old aerodrome buildings, a barrage balloon, dimpled like a pillow, floated only feet above the ground and, even as Babs watched, collapsed in a flapping heap. A Co-op delivery van passed, heading towards Paisley. It was followed by two Red Cross vehicles, not ambulances but motorcars and, of all things, an open-topped double-decker bus packed with children who cheered and waved as they passed.
Babs wiped her eyes with a soggy handkerchief and tried to pull herself together. She was nowhere, though, going nowhere, running from nowhere to nowhere. She began to cry again, to keen softly for Jackie and all the folk she loved whom she might never see again.
Then far down the road she noticed an ungainly little figure pulling towards her from beneath the smoke cloud’s shadow. Steering an erratic course between the tram rails, head down and tail in the air, Archie Harding pedalled into view and gradually approached.
Sniffing back tears, Babs watched the bike swerve towards the verge and brake. Archie threw one long leg across the handlebars and dismounted, catching the bicycle neatly by the saddle.
‘Well, well,’ he said, panting just a little, ‘what a surprise.’
‘What’s surprisin’ about it?’
Wives at War Page 30
