To Have and to Hold (31 page)

‘So I believe,’ the conductor said. ‘And we can’t promise to deliver you to the door but we’ll take you as far as we can get. Will that do?’

‘You bet.’

As the blacked-out tram trundled off, the conductor told them of the destruction he had witnessed as he had rode his bike to work that morning.

‘Whole areas have been laid waste—streets and streets of houses and gigantic mounds of rubbish. A bloke down the garage was telling me they got a load of big factories, like BSA and Lucas’s, as well as tons of smaller factories and workshops, all making stuff for the war effort. And then, of course, there will have been huge numbers of people killed and injured.’

‘I know,’ Carmel said. ‘That raid must have been dreadful. We have a cellar we hid out in, but not everyone would have been so lucky. I am actually nervous of what I’ll find at the hospital.’

‘And did you notice the orange in the sky?’ the conductor said, and the girls nodded grimly. ‘That, I think, must be Birmingham burning.’

The tram could get Lois and Carmel no nearer than Aston and the two girls had to walk the rest of the way. Although the blackout was as bad as ever, and the pencils of light from their torches barely pierced it, the sky was alight with flames and in its light they saw with shock the extent of the damage.

They saw too what the conductor had spoken about: the vast seas of rubble tumbling on the pavement and road. Those roads themselves often had great craters in them, buckled tramlines, and lumps of melted tar that had slid to the kerbs. The girls slipped and slid over mangled iron bars, twisted and fractured beams and plaster boards, splintered slates from roofs and broken bricks, mixed with the crushed and ruptured contents of dwellings, factories or workshops, glass constantly cracking beneath their stumbling feet.

Some mounds were glowing, smouldering or flickering with small flames, wisps of smoke escaping into the semidarkness to mix with the smell of burning, acrid stink of cordite, definite whiff of gas and the smell of the brick dust.

Others had people on top of them, searching for possessions or moving the rubble with the aid of the glowing sky and shielded flashlights, searching for survivors. They called to the girls, and when those nearest saw that they were nurses, a cheer of support was given by those weary people. It was so grim, so depressing and sad that the girls had few words to say to each other as they trudged along.

No one and nothing could have prepared them for what Carmel and Lois met that day in the hospital. The place was packed, the injured still coming in while others lay on trolleys, or sat on chairs awaiting attention. Some shambled around, shocked and dazed, their eyes filled with anxiety and fear as they waited for news of relatives or friends.

Most of them were covered in grey dust. It was coating their faces, their eyes rendered bloodshot because of it. It even gilded their eyebrows and eyelashes and was ingrained in their hair and clothes, which often were in tatters. The air stank too with that dust, mixing with the smells of vomit, blood and charred flesh overriding the usual odour of antiseptic. The fetid air reeked with human misery and helplessness.

There was also a cacophony of noise: heart-rending sobs, moans and groans. Some cried or screamed or shrieked out in pain, while others just wept wretchedly. Nurses didn’t try to keep order, for it was futile. They moved amongst the patients, trying to soothe and reassure, and occasionally covering the face of one who had died before they could get even the offer of help.

Carmel knew exactly why George had felt guilty about the treatment he had received. She would have felt exactly
the same. Though there were plenty of doctors and nurses, they were all needed. Many who should have gone off duty had stayed, and others had done what Carmel and Lois had, and come in regardless of their shift. Matron, whose shift should have finished at eight the previous evening, was still there and had no intention of going home yet, there was so much still to do. She was delighted to see the Carmel and Lois.

She moved her arms expansively as she told them, ‘You can see how we are placed. Every hospital is the same and we have had to direct some to Lewis’s basement or Ansells. You two will be a great help.’

Carmel and Lois worked as hard as any there, but there were just so many people to see to. Some of the injuries sustained and the courage and stoicism displayed reduced the nurses to tears, most particularly when the patients were children. Carmel dealt with victims of crush injuries and those with bad burns and lacerations, knowing that sometimes, if the internal organs were crushed beyond repair, the burns severe enough, or the lacerations deep enough, the chance of the patient’s survival was remote. She saw and dealt with more deaths, often traumatic and painful, that day than she had seen in all her years on the wards.

She also had to deal with the aftermath, like the children orphaned, or people who would be disabled for life. There might be women mourning the loss of family members, perhaps badly traumatised by this, and also knowing they had no house for any of the survivors to return to, no clothes for them to wear for, no means of support and no idea what to do about any of it.

By five o’clock that evening, Matron had gone home
at last. Lack of sleep and sadness had drained Carmel. She knew she could be no good to anyone if she didn’t get some rest. She was just about to suggest to Lois that they go home when the sirens blared out again. No one could quite believe it at first, and then terror and panic set in.

Carmel swallowed her own fear and helped console and reassure and ferry as many patients as possible down to the basement. And then, despite the explosions, the barrage of ack-ack fire, the ringing of the bells of the emergency services and the little yelps of terror or the keening of the already injured, exhaustion eventually drained her and she lay on the floor and slept. Lois, beside her, did the same.

They woke stiff and cold some hours later to the comforting sound of the all clear. However, as it was the early hours of the morning and no trams would be running, the two girls worked on until seven, settling people back in wards or in corridors and serving breakfast, before setting out for Aston in the hope of catching a tram to take them home.

The next day the girls were once more on duty, and though Carmel worked harder than she had ever worked, she felt it wasn’t enough. Some of the people who had been incarcerated in the ruins of bombed buildings were only just coming in now, and some they had treated on the previous day were no longer there. The images of them rose up in Carmel’s mind and she pushed them down lest she give way altogether. She knew she owed it to those who had survived to take a grip on herself.

Carmel and Lois’s shift ended officially at six o’clock,
but there were so many to see to, neither felt she should just up and leave.

‘Ruby will understand,’ Carmel said. ‘After such a devastating raid a few days ago, with so many injured and needing help, she’ll know I can’t just walk out because my shift is over.’

‘Me neither,’ Lois said.

So when the siren shrilled at seven o’clock that night they were still at the hospital, and again they sat the raid out in the basement.

It was six o’clock in the morning before the all clear sounded. Carmel declared herself too tired to be of any use to anyone and then she and Lois found they had to walk the entire way home as the bombing had made the roads impassable. Behind them as they walked, the sky was blood red with flames.

It was the next day before Carmel and Lois found out the extent of the damage. It was one of the ambulance men who told her.

‘Whole city centre was blazing,’ he said. ‘Out of control, like. They drained the canal like they did on the nineteenth, but it weren’t enough, because them buggers had hit the water mains, like, ’adn’t they?’

‘How d’you know all this?’ Carmel asked.

‘This fireman told me, d’ain’t he?’ the ambulance driver said. ‘Three trunk mains on the Bristol Road got it and in places the tar was so bloody hot it went alight and they just had to let it burn. Let everything burn in the end. If the Germans come back tonight we’ve had it. Birmingham will burn to the ground ’cos this bloke reckoned it would take four or five days to fix the mains
proper and they has had a pretty good pop at us already.’

The public were not told about the fractured water mains, and it was kept out of the papers, and yet everyone seemed to know. That night and the next they waited anxiously for the raid that they knew would wipe their city off the map. It didn’t come. Hitler’s forces began pounding the South Coast instead and Brummies breathed a little easier.

Eventually, though, while no one could get blasé about the raids, people began to feel that life had to go on. Carmel, feeling she had neglected her child for far too long, applied to have time off over Christmas and took holidays tagged on to it so she would be off straight through to New Year.

Lois did the same. Chris had a spot of leave due as well and he suggested spending the festive season at his parents’. He still felt awkward around Carmel, almost guilty to be alive when Paul was dead, and thought she might feel excluded and lonely, seeing Lois and him together.

Lois could quite see his point of view, but hesitated to leave Carmel alone at such a time and for the first Christmas after Paul’s death, and she mentioned the dilemma she was in to Ruby.

‘Well, ducks, you can go with an easy mind,’ Ruby said. “Cos Carmel won’t be alone, will she? Fine neighbour I would be if I just let her rattle around in that house all by herself at Christmas. And your man has got a point. Carmel might feel it if she was to see you two together, because it is sure to bring back memories and that in turn will put constraints on you. Chris won’t
be at all happy with that, when after this he might not see you for some time. It would be better all round if Carmel comes in to us. It will be a full house too, for our Bertie has a spot of leave and our Chrissie will be on her own with her man away, so she is coming in as well.’

Ruby and George had another guest too they didn’t anticipate and that was Jeff, who called round the week before Christmas and was invited to join them. He thought of the cheerless meal in the silent room that he would eat opposite his frosty wife, for Matthew either couldn’t get leave or said he couldn’t, and Jeff could hardly blame him; he didn’t want to be there either and so took Ruby up on her offer.

‘On one condition only,’ he said, ‘and that is that I bring the food.’

‘You mustn’t do that,’ Ruby said. ‘Not with rationing the way it is.’

‘None of this food will be rationed,’ Jeff said, with a large wink. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘take that disapproving look off your face. Look at the way Carmel has been working just lately. How will it hamper the war effort if she has decent food for one day in the year? She looked absolutely worn out when I saw her the other day.’

He had been quite shocked. He hadn’t seen her properly for some weeks as she had worked such long and strange hours at the hospital while the raids were at their height. At the times he had called she was usually working or asleep. Now he was determined to build her up over Christmas. On Christmas Eve he called around with food Ruby had hardly seen since the war began: a small turkey, sausages, bacon, best ham, a dozen eggs,
a plum pudding, a Christmas cake and mince pies. Then there was a tin of sweet biscuits, and one of cheese biscuits and a large lump of Cheddar to go with it.

Ruby stared open-mouthed at the stuff Jeff had unloaded on the kitchen table, almost afraid to touch it. ‘Where did you get it all?’ she gasped.

‘That would be telling.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Look, Ruby, the stuff is all paid for and no one is going to come flying round here to take it off you.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘All I ask is that you serve me a meal tomorrow fit for a king,’ Jeff said. ‘And we’ll call it quits.’

‘You’re on,’ Ruby agreed.

The food alone would have ensured the day was wondrous. Although Carmel had met Bertie and Chrissie before, it had been fleetingly, and she found them very good company. They were both entranced by Beth and seemingly determined to make this a Christmas for Carmel and her baby to enjoy.

Carmel had been dreading it. She had spent the previous Christmas without Paul too, but he had been alive then. She knew this year would be worse because she had to face the fact that that was how it was going to be always, but for Beth’s sake she knew she had to make an effort, though when she found herself laughing and joining in with the rest she felt a little guilty at first.

The good mood was helped by the chocolates, silk stockings and bottle of Chanel perfume Jeff presented to each woman, and the cigars and whiskey he had for the men. For Beth, the undoubted star of the show and impeccably behaved, he had a truckful of bricks. The child
clapped her hands in delight. She had been crawling for a month or so and had just started pulling herself up on the furniture, and she knew just what to do with the truck.

‘Before you say one word about spoiling her,’ Jeff said to Carmel, watching the baby in delight, ‘let me tell you the truck isn’t new, as you can see, though as you said before, the child won’t mind. I found it in this huge cupboard in the nursery and it is right she should have it because it probably was her daddy’s once.’

‘I wasn’t going to say anything anyway,’ Carmel said. ‘Christmas is the time for spoiling children a little, if you have the means to do so. But whatever money you had at the moment, there is so little in the shops to buy that plenty of children will have a lean Christmas this year. And now,’ she said, scooping the child up, ‘this very lucky girl is going to be put up for a nap or she will turn into a weasel.’

Later, after a cup of tea and Christmas cake, and the King’s address on the wireless, Carmel, knowing Ruby was becoming drowsy, insisted on washing up. Jeff offered to dry, a novel experience for him, but he wanted to talk to Carmel alone.

Barely had the door closed behind them that he said, ‘You have been working too hard, Carmel. And in the teeth of those raids too. You have had me worried to death.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Carmel said. ‘Everyone is the same and I know I need to be there. There is so much to do, so much suffering, you have no idea.’

‘I do understand,’ Jeff said. ‘I just don’t want you to become ill or injured yourself. What would Beth do then?’

‘What she has been doing all the time I have been away,’ Carmel said. ‘And that is stay with Ruby. I do feel guilty about that. I worry whether I am doing the best thing for us both, because it breaks my heart to leave her sometimes. Then at the hospital I look at the wee children, not much older than her, who are so badly damaged or who don’t make it at all, or who have lost all before them. I am so thankful for what I have—that Beth is in little danger here—that I feel I owe it to them, not just the children, but all the injured, to do to the best of my ability the job I am trained for.’

‘Oh, my dear!’

‘I’m all right, Jeff, really,’ Carmel said. ‘But there is one thing I do want to discuss with you. Maybe Christmas Day isn’t the right time, but time of any sort isn’t something I have a surfeit of just lately and it is important.’