by Anne Bennett
‘Why should I?
‘To please me,’ Daniel said, ‘and to say you’ve tried it, and therefore are allowed to pass judgement. You might even get to like them.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Connie said, and not giving herself time to think about it much, she took the morsel Daniel offered her and put it in her mouth.
Daniel laughed at the look of disgust that flooded over Connie’s face, for the jellied eels tasted just as slimy and disgusting as she thought they would. Only good manners prevented her spitting them out. ‘I’ll pay you back for that,’ she said to Daniel when she had eventually swallowed the offending fish.
Daniel didn’t seem the slightest bit worried and had a big grin on his face as he asked, ‘How?’
‘Well, I don’t know yet,’ Connie admitted, ‘but I’ll think of something.’
That made Daniel laugh even louder. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll make it up to you. Let’s have a baked potato.’
‘Oh, yes please,’ Connie said. ‘I like those.’ And they bought the potatoes from a little man standing in front of something that looked remarkably like the picture of Stephenson’s Rocket that Connie had seen in one of her books. The man dropped the potatoes in little triangular bags he’d made out of greaseproof paper, and Daniel and Connie tossed them from hand to hand till they were cool enough to eat.
Connie could never remember feeling so happy. She lived for Sunday, for there was no work, and the day was theirs after Mass. Sometimes they went further afield, taking a train to Sutton Coldfield and exploring Sutton Park or crossing over the town and taking a Midland Red bus to the Lickey Hills.
‘Where does your mother think you are?’ Daniel asked Connie one day. ‘As you are forbidden to see me, it couldn’t be the truth.’
‘She doesn’t always ask,’ Connie said. ‘If she does, I tell her I’m out with friends from school.’
‘Does she believe you?’
‘I think so,’ Connie said. ‘Till we started going out together, I wasn’t in the habit of lying to my mother.’
‘You saying I’m a bad influence?’
‘If the cap fits,’ Connie said with a smile.
‘Maybe then we should do as your mother wants and I won’t see you any more?’
‘That wouldn’t please me one bit,’ Connie said. ‘Let’s say I like you being a bad influence.’
And Daniel gave a whoop of laughter and put his arms around Connie and held her tight.
FOUR
Daniel met Connie on the road one morning to tell her the first job that morning was clearing out a shell factory. They had done this a few times before, but he said, ‘This one is a little bit different. As you know, usually all dangerous machinery and materials are carted away before we start, but Dad said this factory must have been missed, so there are likely to be a fair few shells still in there. Obviously, our first priority is to get them all out, and carefully, because some might well still be active. I don’t want you involved in this, Connie. Leave this factory to the rest of us.’
Connie remembered the pride she felt for her mother and the way she had provided for them all and her granny too, choosing dangerous work making shells because it was the best paid. She wondered if she was a lesser woman than her mother, the sort to scuttle away at the first sign of danger. No, she wasn’t, she decided, and she turned to Daniel and shook her head. ‘Are you mad? There is no way I’m going to stay away from that factory.’
‘You must,’ Daniel said. ‘You’re too young. I mean, it really might be dangerous.’
Connie knew her mother’s work had been deadly dangerous, not that her mother said much about it, but her granny had told her how Angela had never flinched from danger. ‘Dangerous?’ she said to Daniel. ‘Working with live shells – you mean, like my mother did throughout the war? I’m sure I can cope.’
Daniel shook his head. He remembered what his father had said about keeping an eye on Connie, and knew he would more than likely not approve of him letting Connie get involved, so he said, ‘I can’t let you do this.’
‘You can’t stop me.’
‘Maybe,’ Daniel said, ‘but my dad can. He’s the Gaffer and you’ve got to do what the Gaffer says. He told me you’re not to do stuff like this. If I tell him …’
Connie fixed Daniel with a gimlet eye as she said, ‘You tell tales to your father, and I won’t ever speak to you again. Anyway, have you time to look for your father? Thought you said the factory was high priority, no one can do anything till we take out the shells and make sure the place is safe.’
Daniel bit his lip in consternation and might have argued further, but he recognised the stubborn note in Connie’s voice and knew he’d be wasting his time. And she did have a point about emptying the factory quickly. ‘All right, but for God’s sake take care!’
Connie suddenly remembered what her mother had said on the rare occasions when she’d spoken about her work in the shell factory: ‘We had to wear dungarees and rubber boots to prevent a spark igniting the shells and causing an explosion. And a spark was all it took sometimes. Live shells have to be treated with respect. Every bit of metal on our person had to be removed before we went on the factory floor, even wedding rings and Kirby grips.’
Connie looked round, and though she was wearing dungarees, like she had every day since working with Daniel, she saw that none of the other safety precautions were in place. But she was the youngest worker, and one of the few women, so she didn’t want to be the one to make a fuss. Besides, Daniel might say again that it was too dangerous for her and, despite what she’d said, send for Stan. And anyway, she realised it might take some time to get protective clothing and rubber boots for everyone. Daniel had advised her to take care, and she thought grimly, I’ll make damned sure I take care. She shouted back to him, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep my wits about me. Now let’s get on!’
Working with the miners, she and Daniel carefully moved the heavy, dirt-encrusted, greasy shells out of the factory, one by one, loading them onto a truck outside. After hours of this work, Connie was hungry as well as tired, but she said nothing about it. Suddenly Daniel was aware of a crackling sound and said urgently to Connie, ‘Put that shell down very slowly and carefully.’
Something in Daniel’s tone alerted Connie and she replaced the shell very cautiously, but just as she did so, the shell started to spark and wisps of smoke came out of the top of it. Connie felt paralysed with fear. She knew she had to move, but her legs seemed frozen to the ground.
Then she saw Daniel lean over a railing and shout to the miners below, ‘Run, run for your lives!’ She felt herself being hauled to her feet as he spoke and pulled towards the stairs. Connie could see in his eyes that he didn’t think they had a hope of reaching safety in time. She knew it too and gave a whimper of fear as she watched, horrified, as a smouldering shell shot upwards and exploded as it reached the roof beams.
Masonry hit Connie from all angles as she felt herself falling as if into the pit of Hell. She opened her mouth in a scream, but the scorching heat burnt her throat as her mouth filled with brick dust, and little sound came out. Eventually she stopped falling and she landed on a heap of assorted rubble. For a while the world around her went from scorching red to black as the darkness of the smoke engulfed her.
Connie’s eyes fluttered open, but she couldn’t see a thing. She was frightened, very frightened, but gradually what had happened came back to her, and from what she could hear it seemed, she thought, that the worst was over. All she had to do was wait for rescue, and she focused her breathing on trying to control the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. Then suddenly she heard a roar from above her. She could see very little, the only light was from the flickering flames of the burning debris, but she feared the whole roof was about to collapse on top of her. Instinctively she wrapped her arms around her head and began to sob in fright. Her last thought was about her mammy, and how terrified she’d be for her beloved daughter, if only she knew where she
was …
The workers outside the building heard the roar too and saw the whole structure drop down a few feet. They looked at one another in shock and alarm, fearing that anyone who had managed to stay alive so far wouldn’t survive the collapse of the building.
‘What are we doing just standing here?’ one of the miners asked.
‘You saw the second fall,’ another said morosely. ‘No one could be alive after that!’
‘Let me tell you,’ the first miner said, ‘I’ve worked in mines where there have been more than two falls, and we still found people alive under them. So are we going to dig down and try to reach these people, or are we just going to give up?’
A murmur of support went around the waiting crowd. ‘Hear, hear!’ said a fellow miner. ‘Ted’s right. We’ve never given up on our mates, so let’s put our backs into finding anyone trapped in this little lot.’
The miners’ words galvanised the men, and they began shifting the wreckage with vigour.
Below them, inside the factory, neither Connie nor Daniel could hear a thing; it was as if they were enclosed in a dark and silent tomb. Connie was almost consumed by a terror such as she had never felt before, forced to lie silent and rigid, pinned down by a roof beam.
Daniel thought she must be dead, for since that first strangled scream, he had heard no sound from Connie. Aware of the charred and fractured roof beams, slates, shards of glass, broken bricks, and brick and plaster dust that had rained down on them, he knew it was very unlikely she would have survived. Until his ringing ears picked up a sound that he thought might have been sobbing, although he told himself he could have imagined it. Clearing his throat as best he could, he croaked out in a low, scratchy and hesitant voice, ‘Connie?’
Connie was drifting in and out of consciousness and she wasn’t sure if she’d heard right either, so her voice, husky from the dust, was little more than a whisper as she asked anxiously, ‘Daniel? Are you in here too?’
The relief when she heard Daniel’s voice was immense, for it had been horrible to think that she was buried in the rubble all on her own. Yet she wondered how she could be glad Daniel was there too, because she’d never want anything bad to happen to him.
But when she admitted this out loud, Daniel seemed surprised. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you, Daniel,’ Connie said. ‘You must be aware of how much I care for you?’
‘As a big brother?’ Daniel said. ‘You referred to me as that once.’
‘I was a child then.’
‘You’re not much older now.’
‘I will be sixteen in May.’
‘And I am ten years older than you,’ Daniel said. ‘And I should never have let you get involved with this shell factory clear-out, whatever you said.’
‘Too late to worry about that now,’ Connie said, trying to make light of the situation. ‘And anyway, what do years matter?’ She paused as if gathering both strength and courage to speak her next sentence. ‘I am old enough not to think of you as a brother any more,’ she said, and then went on: ‘I told you that because we might die in here, and then you’d never know.’
‘Well, I’m very glad you told me,’ Daniel said, and added, ‘How are you feeling? I know you must be worried, but at least we’re in this together and we can keep one another company whilst they send in people to look for survivors. After all, at least they know where we are.’
‘Yes,’ Connie said doubtfully, ‘but there’s a lot of stuff over us.’
‘They have teams trained for rescuing people,’ Daniel said. ‘Dad said there were a fair few explosions in the munition factories during the war years.’
‘Were there?’
‘Didn’t your mother tell you? I’m sure she’d have heard about things like that, working in a shell factory all that time.’
‘No, she never told me anything like that,’ Connie said. ‘I often asked her about what she did in the war and things like that, but she always said the past should stay in the past. I mean, I never knew you even existed. I overheard people talking of the tragedy, your mam dying whilst giving birth to you and everything, but no one talked of what had happened to you, so I thought you must have died as well. Not even Granny told me you had survived, and then Mammy opened up and told you about things I had wanted to know for ages.’
‘I should say she probably told us because she felt her past coming to meet her,’ Daniel said. ‘You know, finding my father when she thought him dead, me turning up on her doorstep out of the blue. I mean, she started telling me all about my father and how it was that we had been separated, so I suppose the memories she might have tried to bury rose to the surface.’
Connie sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just that Mammy is so open about most things, except her past … Sometimes I wonder if she has some murky secret!’
Daniel gave a wry laugh. ‘Oh Connie, how can you think that about your mother? I would say that it’s just that thinking about those dreadful war years could easily drag up painful memories she’d rather not dwell on. And really, who can blame her?’
Connie thought again Daniel was probably right. Thinking about her mammy had distracted her momentarily from their situation, but it all suddenly came flooding back, and she fought the feeling of panic that threatened to engulf her again. ‘Do you really think we might get out of here alive?’ she asked Daniel in a voice so quiet, he had to strain to hear.
Daniel knew Connie was no child to be given false reassurances, and so he answered, ‘I don’t really know, Connie, but like I said, I hope so.’
‘I don’t want to die,’ Connie said, choking down a sob. ‘Do you?’
‘Of course not,’ Daniel answered. He had always intended to take it slowly in moving things forward with Connie, but now they were entombed in this wreckage, and it might be his last chance to confess his feelings for her. So he took as deep a breath as his smoke-filled lungs would allow and went on: ‘The fact that we might never get out of here has forced me to tell you how I really feel about you now. I have held back for so long because I didn’t dare think you felt the same, and also because you are still so young, but I have loved you for years. I can’t remember when it changed from the love a brother might have for a young sister, to the deep abiding love a man has for a woman who he wants to share his life with, always.’ Daniel snaked his hand across the littered ground as he spoke and eventually his fingers entwined with Connie’s, and then his hand was grasping hers firmly and he heard her sigh, and they lay together and listened, hoping to hear sounds of rescue, but they could hear nothing.
Daniel thought time seemed to have no meaning, in that deep intensely dark grave. Sometimes he could hear Connie’s even breathing and sometimes he could not. The first time she had grown silent he had been worried that she had died, but there was no way of checking, for it was far too dark to see anything clearly, and so he lay as near to her as he could and held his own breath until she began to breathe again. Sometimes he was overcome by weariness himself, but he fought it valiantly, for he did not want to leave Connie alone. But eventually his eyes began closing despite his efforts to keep them open, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Stan had gone into shock when he was told that Connie and his son were among the people who had not been accounted for. He looked at the mangled structure and his heart sank. He could scarcely believe he might lose the son he’d only recently found and loved dearly. He knew if his son had died his heart would break. Stan had seen enough death to last him a lifetime in the Great War. Most were lads as young as or even younger than Daniel, and he had grieved for each and every one. As an NCO, it was often his job to write letters of condolence to grieving parents, who were told only the stark details of their son’s death by a telegram or letter from the War Office. He told the parents what they really wanted to know: what kind of man their son had been, and that the manner of his death meant he had given his life for King and Country. Stan always hope
d his letters gave grieving parents some comfort in the bleak days that would lie ahead.
He thought he understood death, but the possible loss of his own son crushed his very soul and caused a pain so sharp, he struggled not to cry out against it, for it seemed to pierce his heart. Then he thought of Angela and how she would cope when she learnt that her daughter might be lying there buried too, presumed dead, in the ruins of the collapsed factory – and he felt guilt wash over him. He had known Connie’s age and he shouldn’t have allowed her anywhere near the site.
What in God’s name had he been thinking of? He knew that if Connie was injured – or Heaven forbid, dead – he would never forgive himself, and if Angela ever found out, she wouldn’t forgive him either. He wouldn’t blame her one bit. He groaned as he realised the hammer blow about to be inflicted on Angela when she found out what had happened to her daughter. Connie was all she had to live for.
Bobby Gillespie was a young miner who was small for his age but strong and wiry, and he looked at Stan’s face and said, ‘I know where Connie lives. I’ll go and tell her mum, if you like.’
Stan hesitated, because Daniel had told him Angela had no idea what Connie was doing, but he knew he couldn’t protect Connie any longer, her mother simply had to know what had happened to her daughter. ‘All right,’ he conceded to Bobby at last. ‘Don’t say anything to Angela about Connie being buried. Just say that there was an explosion in the shell factory they were working on in Walsall. We don’t want her worried unnecessarily until she gets here.’
‘Right-oh,’ Bobby said before scampering off as quickly as his legs would carry him.
Angela, of course, thought Connie was safe and sound, working at the library, so when a young boy arrived at the door to say there had been an explosion in the abandoned shell factory her daughter had been working in, she initially thought he must have the wrong house.
‘There must be some mistake,’ she said. ‘My daughter is working in the library.’
The boy shook his head. ‘No she ain’t,’ he said. ‘I know it’s Connie. She’s clearing the bomb sites. Been doing it for days now.’
