Keep the Home Fires Burning (32 page)

When she suggested staying where they were, though, Richard frowned. ‘I don’t know, Mom,’ he said. ‘Listen to the drone in the sky.’

Marion listened to the rumble getting louder every minute and she shivered as Richard said,
‘I don’t think it’s worth taking a chance. Anyroad, didn’t you say you promised Dad?’

Marion had. She looked at Sarah, Peggy and Violet. ‘What do you think?’

‘Well,’ Peggy said, ‘I’ve no desire to go down to the cellar, but as Richard said, maybe it’s best not to take chances.’

‘Yeah, I feel the same,’ Violet said. ‘Anyroad, if it is a short sharp one like the last few we will be back here in no time.’

‘And a promise is a promise,’ Sarah said.

Marion gave a groan and got to her feet. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’ve convinced me. Sarah, will you see to the twins, and, Richard, can you see that Tony is up and carry the blankets down for me?’

‘Yes, ‘Richard said. ‘That’s no problem, but get a move on. There certainly seem more planes than there have been in the last few raids.’

The children grumbled initially, but when they heard the first crashes the twins at least were anxious to get underground where the frightening sounds would be somewhat muffled. Tony was trying very hard to be brave, especially as Richard said before he left, ‘All right, Tony it’s up to you now. Remember you’ll be man of the house once I enlist so you take care of everyone down here.’

Tony felt puffed up with pride. Richard had told him that before, and it had made Tony feel a bit scared but also excited. After all, he was very shortly going to be eleven and not a baby any
more, so when Richard said, ‘Think you can do that?’ he said with all the assurance he could muster, ‘Course I can.’

Tony took the other blankets from Richard as he spoke and then with a cheeky grin said, ‘Best get yourself away if you’re going.’

Richard smiled as he cuffed his young brother lightly around the head. ‘I am going, so you all look after yourselves.’

‘Who is he talking to, anyroad?’ Marion said as the door closed behind her elder son. ‘He’s the one going out in the teeth of the raid, not us. We at least have a cellar to shelter in, and at least it’s not as cold down here as it has been.’

‘No,’ Violet agreed. ‘But there’s a sort of dampness in the air just the same.’

‘There is,’ Marion agreed as the first bomb blasts were heard. ‘I think I will light the paraffin stove anyway.’

Everyone was all right at first. The planes seemed far enough away not to trouble them, and they played dominoes or chatted together. Then, as the droning rumble got nearer, Peggy opened her gramophone and wound it up, and soon the stirring music of Glenn Miller filled the cellar.

The sounds of the raid almost overhead could still be plainly heard, though, and when there was one terrific explosion very close, Missie gave a yelp.

‘We are really safe in here, aren’t we?’ she asked her mother.

Tony felt sorry for his young sister because he
saw she was really scared and so before his mother could find an answer, he said, ‘Course we are. Have been so far, ain’t we? Anyroad, Dad always said we’d be as safe as houses in the cellar, dain’t he, Mom?’

‘He did,’ Marion said as confidently as she could. She realised now that this was no quick skirmish but another full-blown attack. She listened to the scream of the ever-descending bombs and the ack-ack guns barking into the sky, and she felt fear clutching at her as some bombs fell extremely close and shook the cellar walls.

She tried to hide her fear from the others and instead delved into her shelter bag. She had a packet of biscuits she gave to the children to share and she poured tea for the adults with hands that shook.

‘I really did think we were over all this,’ Violet said.

‘And me,’ Sarah agreed. ‘It’s awful isn’t it? Just as you start to relax it starts all over again.’

‘Oh God, I hope you’re wrong about that,’ Peggy said. ‘I’d hate to think that this is the forerunner of another blitz.’

‘So would I,’ Marion said. ‘And there’s no way of knowing. We’ll just have to wait and see, though it’s nerve-racking waiting for the sirens to wail out night after night.’

‘Richard said some of the lads he works with listen to someone called Lord Haw-Haw,’ Tony said. ‘And he says what’s going to happen sometimes. He don’t do it in a nice way or anything, though. Richard said he’s horrible.’

‘He is, Tony, and a traitor. He takes pleasure in terrorising people, prophesying what the Luftwaffe have planned next. I would never listen to him on principle.’

‘Quite right too,’ Peggy said. ‘People aren’t supposed to listen to him, anyroad.’

‘I don’t see why anyone does,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t think it will do morale any good. I mean, through all these raids and everything we’ve got to keep thinking that we’re going to win this war, and from what Richard told me this Lord Haw-Haw doesn’t help.’

There was a sudden shattering explosion right beside them. The cellar walls shook and Marion saw mortar dribble out from a few of the bricks. The adults looked at other in sudden fear and the children’s eyes looked as if they were on stalks.

‘God, that was close,’ Peggy said.

‘Yes,’ Marion said, and to Tony and the twins: ‘You must be worn out. It would be better if you could sleep for a wee while.’

‘I don’t think I could sleep,’ Magda said. ‘It’s too scary and noisy.’

‘I couldn’t either,’ Tony said. ‘Them planes are all round us, and above us and everything.’ Peggy packed the gramophone away as she said, ‘I wonder if them ack-ack guns ever shoot any of them planes down. It doesn’t seem to make any impression on them.’

‘Maybe it’s just done to make us feel better,’ Tony said. ‘Like fighting back, you know.’

‘It doesn’t make me feel any better,’ Missie said.

‘Come on,’ Marion urged. ‘Let’s sit on the settee together and I’ll read you a story.’

Marion had a big book of bedtime stories that Bill had bought when he had been home, and with the twins either side of her and Tony sitting cross-legged on the mattress, Marion began to read. Snuggling against their mother, with the lateness of the hour and her soothing voice, the twins soon grew very drowsy. Three loud bombs dropped in quick succession and very close jerked them awake.

Then Magda sat upright and said, ‘What’s that pong?’

Marion sniffed too and she knew what it was straight away. ‘Gas!’ she cried. ‘Get out, quick.’ She knew it was better to take their chance outside, even in the raid, because gas was a certain killer.

They all knew speed was essential and were soon pounding up the cellar steps, Marion behind them all. She was almost at the top when she remembered the lit paraffin stove. She knew when the cellar filled up with enough gas it would cause a massive explosion. She would be all right for a few minutes, as long as she could hold her breath, she told herself as she turned without a word to the others and began to go back down the steps.

Tony had been directly in front of his mother and the only one to be aware of what she had done. He opened his mouth to tell Sarah or one of the others but then he shut it again. He knew Richard wouldn’t have let his mother return to a
gas-filled cellar all alone and he had charged him that night to look after them all and so he followed her. By the time he had reached the bottom of the steps Marion had sprung across the room and turned off the tap of the stove. Her lungs felt as if they were bursting and she knew she had to get up the steps quickly, but as she turned she saw Tony and she felt fear grip her as he opened his mouth and said, ‘What’re you doing?’

Marion let out the breath she had been holding and cried in alarm, ‘Get out of here, quick. Run! Go on!’

She saw Tony put his hand to his head and begin to cough and retch as poisonous fumes filled his lungs. He swayed on the steps and she fought to reach him through cloying blackness as she too began to cough and splutter, stinging water streaming from her eyes.

‘Tony, run,’ she pleaded huskily, but he was doubled over, choking as he fought for air and seemed incapable of doing anything. Desperately she groped for his hand, intending to drag them both up the steps. But it was too late. She felt a burning in her lungs and then blackness suddenly surrounded her and she fell into a heap on the floor of the cellar.

Outside, Sarah, though desperately worried about her mother and brother, and frightened by the bombs still cascading around them, had her hands full trying to prevent her sisters from going back into the house. They were shouting and screaming at her, and trying to push her restraining
hands away. She didn’t know what to do; none of them did.

She was incredibly relieved to see an ARP warden walking towards them, alerted by the noise the twins were making.

‘What’s up?’

‘My mother and brother are inside,’ Sarah cried in panic. ‘We smelled gas.’

Events moved swiftly after that, and when the stretchers with the unconscious forms of Marion and Tony were brought out of the cellar there was an agonising wait for an ambulance. It was probably five minutes or less but it seemed longer as the family stood in the street in the middle of the air raid.

The bell of the ambulance had never been such a welcoming sound, and when the stretchers had been gently placed inside, the driver said, ‘One of you had better come with us. We’ll make for the General Hospital as it’s closest, but we could be directed anywhere.’

Sarah wasn’t sure where her duty lay – to go with her mother and brother or care for her sisters – and Peggy, seeing her dilemma, said, ‘You go with Marion and Tony, Sarah. We’ll take care of the girls, don’t worry. I think our first priority is taking shelter somewhere.’

Sarah nodded dumbly and watched them all being shepherded away by a warden while she climbed into the ambulance and the doors shut behind her.

Many fires made it nearly as bright as day, and as the ambulance moved through the streets, Sarah could plainly see the black arrows of death shrieking down from the droning planes. The never ending rattle of the guns seemed to make no impression on them. She heard shouts and screams and cries, heard the ringing bells of the emergency services, saw buildings exploding in clouds of dust, or crumple with a shuddering thud, and the ambulance driver trying to negotiate potholes, buckled tramlines and piles of masonry and debris spilled into the roads.

When they reached the General Hospital, it was to find that it had been bombed too and parts of it were extensively damaged. Doctors and nurses, as well as patients, had been killed or badly injured, and some were still trapped. The ambulance was directed to Lewis’s, a big department store close by, where the cellar had been offered for the injured. An acrid smell hit Sarah’s nose and lodged in the back of her throat as soon as she entered the building. As she watched the ambulance men carry the stretchers down the wide staircase, she noted each side of it was crammed with blood-stained clothing.

She had been told to remain where she was, but she leaned forward to look down and saw the stretchers almost covering the floor. Many of the faces were a reddy brown colour from the brick dust, and most patients were obviously badly injured. She noted the doctors and nurses moving amongst the stretchers, stopping now and then to minister to a patient. There were so few of them,
though, to deal with so many people, and they had so few facilities that any medical attention would have to be minimal. Sarah trembled in fear; her mother and Tony had both been incredibly still since they had been lifted out of the cellar.

She wasn’t aware how long she had been there when her Aunt Polly joined her. ‘Peggy and Violet took the twins to Atkinson’s Brewery, knowing they’d find me there,’ she said in explanation. ‘They were trying to find Richard and alert Mammy and Daddy when I left. I came here to support you.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad you did,’ Sarah said earnestly. ‘I’m so frightened, Aunt Polly.’

‘I know, pet,’ Polly said. ‘It would be hard for you to feel any other way. I suppose there is no news?’

Sarah shook her head.

‘So what actually happened?’ Polly asked.

‘We smelled gas and Mom told us to get out quick,’ Sarah said. ‘And we did. Least, I thought Mom was behind us. I don’t know what made her go back down to the cellar. Tony must have followed her because she was lying on the cellar floor and Tony was at the bottom of the steps. That’s what the ambulance men said, anyroad.’

‘But they got them out real quick?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sarah. ‘But was it quick enough? That stuff is terribly poisonous.’

There was no answer to that, and the words hung in the air.

Richard had arrived before they saw a white
coated doctor coming up the steps towards them. Sarah noted his grave eyes and the black bags beneath them.

‘Whittaker?’ he said questioningly and Richard stepped forward.

‘I am Richard Whittaker.’

‘I am very much afraid that we have been unable to save your brother,’ the doctor said. ‘He had inhaled too much gas.’

Richard’s stomach gave a lurch and behind him he heard his aunt gasp and begin to cry. ‘Dead?’ Sarah burst out. ‘Tony is dead?’

‘It was too late. I am so very sorry,’ the doctor said.

Richard’s head was reeling, his mind shouting a denial. ‘And my mother?’

‘She is holding her own at the moment.’

‘Can we see her?’

‘There would be no point. She’s still unconscious,’ the doctor said. ‘Come back later today. We will likely know more then anyway. You can see how we are placed at the moment.’

They could, of course, and numb with shock they made their way outside. It was full daylight now and though the all clear had sounded they were hardly aware of it and as they made their way up Corporation Street they saw devastation all around them. They smelled the smoke still swirling in the air from the many fires that were raging all around the city and saw the mangled and crushed remains of what had once been shops and offices.

They were almost too shocked to talk. They each had their own memory of Tony, and Richard in particular felt ashamed of the number of times he had lost patience with his young brother. He was so young to lose his life, and Richard felt as if he had a sharp ache in his heart.