Avalanche of Daisies (33 page)

Britain's front line at home is under fire again – from a stratosphere rocket that is dropping on us from 60 to 70 miles up in the air, a rocket that travels faster than sound and flashes across the sky like a comet trailing fire. Weighing about 12 tons, it carries a ton of high explosive, has a range of 210 to 250 miles, travelling at speeds of up to 4,000 mph, and is probably being launched from sites in Holland.

‘An' there's no defence against it,' Phossie Fernaway added sourly, when he'd read the paper and passed it to Victor. ‘Which they've conveniently forgot to say. We're just bloody sitting targets.'

‘I'm off out of it, if thass the case,' Victor said, propping the newspaper against his newly acquired pot of marmalade. ‘I shall go down Essex way an' milk a few farmers.'

‘For the Skibbereen?'

‘Nope,' Victor said easily. ‘On my own account. I've made some good contacts. He ain't the onny cock a' the walk. And there's a brickworks I want to see. There'll be some very good pickings from the brickworks with all the bomb damage there'll be.'

‘You wanna watch it,' Phossie warned, spreading butter on his toast. ‘If he finds out …'

‘He won't. You worry too much.'

‘Anyway, I thought you was courting,' Phossie said. ‘What about this girl of yours?'

‘She's patient,' Vic told him. He'd made a good impression with those sheepskin coats and he didn't want to waste it, but a courtship was one thing, profit and self-preservation another. ‘I hain't stayin' here to be blown to pieces by blazing comets. Sod that for a game of soldiers. I'll come back now an' then to sell the goods an' see if the Skibbereen's got a job for us.' He was doing the odd job on his own but he still needed the Skibbereen if he was to live in any style. I can see her then. ‘I mean to say, it'll only be for a little while. It can't go on for ever.'

‘I bloody hope not!' Phossie said, as another explosion rattled the windows. ‘I'm not cut out fer this sort a' life, am I.'

But cut out for it or not, most Londoners had to accept it. As the weeks and the explosions passed, they settled into a weary resignation, living stoically, one day at a time. Food was in shorter supply than ever, there was always dust in the air, always fear just around the corner. Sis grew angry, Mabel and Heather jittery, Bob and Sid worried quietly, Hazel and Joyce were more quarrelsome. Only Betty and Barbara stayed resolutely themselves. If your number's on it …

‘We ain't seen Vic for quite a while,' Betty observed. ‘D'you reckon he'll turn up to the dance Sat'day?' She and the others had invited Barbara in for a cup of Camp coffee after their cold walk home from the pictures. Now they were sitting round the kitchen table warming their hands on their nice full mugs and gossiping, except for Joyce who was standing in front of the fireplace, putting her hair in curlers for the night.

‘Shouldn't think so,' Barbara said. It didn't worry her whether he joined them or not. She was grateful for the coat but that was as far as it went.

‘I'm going shopping, Sat'day morning,' Joyce
announced from the mirror. ‘It's only a month till Christmas.'

‘No it ain't,' Hazel scoffed. ‘It's weeks yet.'

‘That's all you know,' Joyce said. ‘It's a month exactly. 25th of November. N'yer!'

‘Why must you two argue all the time?' their mother said, putting her mug down with a sigh. ‘It don't matter what day it is. If you want to go shopping, go. Only don't keep fightin' one another in my kitchen.'

‘You can come in to Woolworths an' have a cuppa with me an' Lionel,' Betty said, ‘if you don't fight. What about you, Bar?'

‘I'm at work.'

‘What time's your dinner hour?'

‘Half past twelve.'

‘Come across then,' Betty instructed. ‘We'll wait for you, won't we kids. It'll be a laugh.'

So their Saturday was arranged.

It was a horrible day, cold and grey and dispiriting. It had been snowing in the night, so they woke to icy roads and pavements dusted white. Sis and Barbara wore thick jerseys under their uniform jackets, looked out their fingerless gloves and their thickest woollen socks and wound scarves round their necks, on the principle that it didn't matter what they looked like so long as they were warm. And Betty went to work in her new sheepskin coat.

The depot was freezing cold so the trams started sluggishly and, because the points were frozen, every journey took longer than it should have done. By midday all services were running late.

The Saturday shoppers grumbled as they pushed their way aboard, bulky as bolsters in their extra clothes. ‘We got enough to contend with without snow an' you lot late all the time.'

‘I'm glad it's dinner time,' Barbara said to Mr Tinker, as they turned into the depot after their last run of the morning.

‘Snow's gone,' Mr Tinker said. ‘That's one good thing.' The white fall of the early morning hadn't settled, cold though it was. ‘I'm for a cup a' char. You coming?'

But Barbara didn't get a chance to answer. At that moment there was a sudden roaring, rushing noise and a flash of light so bright and blinding that it hurt her eyes. For a second she stood where she was, leaning against the side of the tram for support as the ground rose and fell under her feet as though it was no longer solid. The roaring noise was so loud it felt as though it was pummelling her eardrums and there seemed to be less air, for she was fighting for breath. She knew it was a rocket but she was too frightened to scream or to move. It was as if her mind had been blown away.

It wasn't until the noise had faded, that she came back to her senses and looked around her. The depot was full of whey-faced people all looking at one another but Mr Tinker was lying beside the tram, groaning. He must have fallen and she hadn't noticed. He had a long cut on the side of his face which was bleeding profusely and he was totally confused.

‘What is it?' he asked, dabbling his fingers in the blood. ‘What have I done?'

But all Barbara could think about at that moment was that it was a rocket, that it must have gone off close by, that Sis was in the station, that the kids were out shopping and Betty was in Woolworths, and that she had to go and find them. Mr Threlfall was walking towards her, pale but in command. He would deal with Mr Tinker. She had to go out and help at the incident. She found her energy again and ran into the road.

What she saw there was so dreadful that for a few seconds she was too stunned to take it in. The air was thick with dust, clouds of it, thick and brown and swirling like something in a nightmare, and through it she could hear people crying for help and groaning in extremes of pain, and a child screaming, ‘Mummy!
Mummy! Mummy!' over and over again. It took time for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light and then she realised that there were things falling out of the sky, tumbling and turning in the air and thudding down onto dirty pavements and a littered road – bricks and bits of concrete, torn rags, half a chair, lumps of flesh. At first she thought they were joints of meat and that a butcher's had been hit, but then, with a shock of such horror it brought the gall into her throat, she realised that they were bits of arms and legs, torn and bloody, but hideously recognisable. And as she watched, a small white hand fell before her eyes and landed at her feet, a baby's small white hand, curved and tender and still in its woolly sleeve. Oh dear God! A baby's hand!

The screams and cries were still going on, and now there were other sounds too, feet running and voices calling, ‘Derek! Where are you?' ‘Joan! Joan! Joan!' And a man ran past her, heading towards the station.

‘Where is it?' she called to him.

‘Woolworths,' he called back, his face fraught. ‘I can't stop. My old lady's there.'

No, she thought, it can't be Woolworths. It mustn't be. Betty's in Woolworths and the kids. We're going to meet there for our dinner. And she ran towards it, dodging the horrors, her heart beating so painfully it felt as though her chest was going to split.

The dust-cloud was rising ominously right over the corner of Goodwood and New Cross roads and as she got nearer she could see that the traffic had stopped and that both roads were full of bodies, some crawling and crying, some lying still and silent in pools of blood, some running about in a terrible aimless terror, all of them covered in brick dust and with slivers of glass stuck in their clothes and hands and faces. There was blood everywhere, smeared against the kerb and over the tramlines, puddling the road, streaked across torn clothing, gushing from wounds. It was as if there'd been
a battle, as if someone had turned a machine gun on the street.

Such an excess of horror seemed to have turned off her emotions. She noted that there was a burnt-out bus in the road. It had been crushed by the blast as though someone had squashed it together like a concertina, its red paint burnt back to the bare metal, and it was full of passengers, all of them dead where they sat and looking more like statues than people because they were smothered in dust. And she hardly felt anything for them at all. She looked across at the Town Hall, broken glass crunching under her feet, and saw that there were bodies spread-eagled across the steps, but she felt nothing for
them
either and she couldn't stop to help them. She had to get into Woolworths and get Betty out. And the kids. That was all that was important. She had to get into Woolworths.

But when she reached the corner she saw with a renewed shock of total stomach-churning terror that there was nothing left to get into. Nothing at all. Just a vast crater ringed by enormous piles of bricks and rubble that spilled out over both roads. She could see right through the dust to the houses in the street behind and the looming shape of Childeric School, huge and stranded like a beached ship. But even though the familiar smell of a bombing was filling her nostrils and she could hear people screaming underneath the wreckage, she couldn't, wouldn't believe it. ‘Oh please!' she said. ‘Please don't let this be happening. Please don't let them be dead.'

There were men and women rushing past her, clawing at the rubble, hurling chunks of masonry aside. Yes, she thought, get them out! Quick! And she joined the scrabble, pulling at the nearest pile of brick and concrete, frantic with grief and shock. There was a fire blazing in the crater and she knew it was right over where the cafe had been and that she would have been there herself if the tram hadn't run late. But that was
nothing to the terrible need to find Betty and the kids and to get them out alive.

More people were arriving, clambering over the rubble, calling and crying. She could hear the bricks slipping away from their feet and the crunch of glass. And then, immediately beneath the rubble she was lifting, she heard the faint sound of someone crying for help.

‘I'm coming!' she called. ‘I'm coming, Betty! Hold on!' But the next lump of masonry she seized was too big for her to shift on her own. ‘Help me please!' she cried to the nearest shape. ‘Thass too heavy for me.'

Worn hands moved into her line of vision, pulling and tugging. She could see a trodden-down shoe pressed against the wreckage, taking the strain, and then a pair of black boots, coated with dust.

‘There's a bit a' wood there,' a man's voice said. ‘We could use it as a lever.'

Someone collected it and handed it down, and then they were all pushing it under the mass of brick and concrete, struggling to get it into position, heaving together – ‘One, two, three, heave!' – their hands covered in grime and brick dust. And the lump shifted, moved, was lifted up. They could see a shoulder, covered in filth and streaked with dark blood. And at that they worked like wild things, hauling and pulling, until a woman's head was uncovered, pushed down against her chest by the weight of the brickwork that had fallen on her. It wasn't Betty but that no longer had any relevance. She was a neighbour and she was injured, in pain and so shocked she simply stared at them and couldn't even tell them her name. They dug until they'd uncovered her entire body and lifted her out, limp and floppy, as though she were a doll. And by then the ambulances were arriving and two nurses ran to take over.

Barbara was still full of frantic energy. She'd found one casualty. Now she had to find another. She had to
find Betty and the kids. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes and looked across at the nearest person, ready to thank her and ask her to help again. And found herself staring into the anxious blue eyes of her mother-in-law.

She was too fraught to feel any surprise. Their quarrel was a petty irrelevance now. There was only this dreadful driving need, this dreadful aching terror. ‘Oh Mrs Wilkins!' she said. ‘Betty's in here. An' the kids.'

‘I know they are,' Heather said briefly. ‘I came straight across.'

‘We must find them,' Barbara said, urgently. ‘I was going to meet them in the cafe. They were in the cafe.'

Someone was yelling on the other side of the crater. ‘Over here! We've found something!' It was a young man in RAF uniform and there were others digging beside him. What are
they
doing here? she wondered as she ran. Whatever it was she was glad they'd come. There was something reassuring about a man in uniform and they were all working hard, shovelling the bricks aside with spades, and tossing great lumps behind them as they dug deeper into the mass.

And they
had
found something. Just underneath the concrete there was a torn shred of heavy cloth. She could see it as soon as she reached the pit and it wasn't long before they pulled it out. It turned out to be the empty arm of a winter coat – but underneath it was the long brown edge of Betty's new sheepskin.

‘Oh quick!' Barbara said, reaching for the nearest chunk of masonry. ‘That's my cousin. Is she breathing? Can you see?' The relief of finding her was so acute she was weeping. She was there. Inches away. They only had to dig and they'd get her out and she'd be all right. Oh please, please God, let her be all right.