Mariette had gone into the tube a few times at the start of the Blitz, but she’d hated it. People used the tunnels as lavatories in the absence of proper sanitary arrangements, and they stank. She’d seen fights break out when someone stood on someone else’s bedding. There were drunks, constant noise, babies crying, and it was said that pickpockets abounded there. She knew that wooden bunks and proper lavatories had been installed since then, and there were also canteens where you could get a drink and a snack. But she and Joan were happier either in this shelter at the end of their street, or in the one at Greville’s old factory.
However tired Joan claimed to be, she always perked up in a crowd, and tonight was no exception. She was soon in full flight, telling the neighbours about their visit to Lyme Regis, so Mariette put a cushion behind her head, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.
As so often happened, Johnny came into her mind. She was still plagued by the continuing problem of how to make it plain to him, without being hurtful, that he wasn’t the one for her.
It was a puzzle to her why she kept meeting men with major flaws. First there was Sam who, apart from his looks, had turned out to have nothing else to offer. Morgan had had the looks and the sex appeal, but there was no excuse for trying to force her into letting him have his way with her. Gerald had been lovely, dependable, good-mannered, and he’d have made a wonderful husband, but he didn’t make her light up. Johnny might be great company, and he had a great sense of humour, but aside from having little sex appeal, she couldn’t stop thinking that he had an ulterior motive for hanging on to her.
She had met women who had vicious brutes of husbands, yet they still loved and fancied them. She’d met other women who had married for security and were often bored stiff with their reliable husbands. If it wasn’t for her own parents, and Lisette and Noah, she might have been tempted to think you had to go for one or the other – great sex or a great provider – and that it was impossible to find both in one man.
There was, of course, Edwin too. He didn’t appear to have any flaws. He was good-looking, well mannered, intelligent, kind and good company. But then, she’d only spent one evening with him and, in view of the dramatic events of that night, she could hardly form a reliable opinion of him.
Perhaps she should have telephoned him at the base? But she hadn’t, because of where she was living. And she didn’t want to look as if she was chasing him either. But maybe she could write him a letter. Keep it light, ask how he was, and tell him about her new job. That wouldn’t look like chasing him, would it?
She glanced around the shelter. The light was too dim to see most of the people clearly, but she noticed the brightness of Clara’s red hair; Aggie, still wearing her yellow pinafore, was knitting frantically. The old couple opposite her, Ernie and May Forrest, were sitting so close together they looked welded to one another. They were holding hands, and each time a bomb dropped in the distance, Ernie used his spare hand to draw May’s head close to his shoulder. Mariette knew from a past conversation she’d had with them that they had married when May was eighteen, when Ernie returned from the Great War. They had eight living children, and two had been taken with diphtheria. Only recently they’d received a telegram to say one of their sons had been taken prisoner in North Africa. But there they were, love for one another shining out of them. Mariette knew she wanted a love like that too, one that would last for ever.
The shrill whine of planes was coming closer now, the thud of dropping bombs much louder. As always, no one commented on it. They had long since learned to be stoic and outwardly calm; it was a matter of pride. Joan opened up the Thermos and poured cocoa for her and Mariette, but their eyes met in a silent signal of resignation at what might be a long night ahead.
People had become very knowledgeable about bombing in the past months – some could even pinpoint where the bombs were dropping, just by the sound.
A bomber passed low overhead. The crump, crump sound of the bombs hitting a target was clearly very close by. Dirt from the shelter roof showered down on them all.
‘That’ll be my house,’ Clara said, and laughed nervously.
Usually, when a bomb hit close by, the next was further away. But before anyone could relax, there was an almighty thump right above them and the lights went out. Lumps of masonry and timber beams crashed down on to them.
‘God save us!’ someone yelled out.
That was the last thing Mariette heard.
20
Mariette came to, choking. Her mouth was full of dirt. She coughed and spat it out, but just that small movement brought on a fierce pain in her head. It was too dark to see anything, but she became aware that she was on the floor and something heavy had fallen on her legs; they hurt, and she couldn’t move them.
For a brief moment, she thought it was a nightmare – she’d had them before, like this – but the pain in her head and the choking dust were all too real. The shelter had received a direct hit.
Her hands were free, so she lifted them to her head and felt the stickiness of blood. She then moved them down to whatever it was that lay across her legs, and found it was a wooden beam. As she’d been sitting on the bench before, something must have struck her head a glancing blow, knocking her from the bench, before the beam fell on to her legs.
‘Joan!’ she called out. ‘Can you hear me?’
There were muffled moans coming from somewhere, but too far away to be Joan. She reached out with her right hand, sweeping in the darkness beside her, and her fingers met the familiar feel of Joan’s cable-stitch cardigan. She too was on the floor. But, as Mariette felt with her fingers, finding her friend’s head, shoulders and torso, she realized the same beam which pinned her to the floor was lying across Joan’s stomach.
They always packed a torch in the emergency basket, which had been by her feet earlier when Joan poured the cocoa. She managed to sit up halfway, to extend her reach, and found the basket trapped beneath the beam.
‘Can anyone hear me?’ she called out. ‘I’m trying to reach a torch, and people will be here soon to get us out.’
‘Is that you, Mari?’
She recognized Aggie’s voice, but it sounded very weak and distant.
‘Yes, it’s me, Aggie. How bad are you hurt?’
‘I don’t know. I hurt, and I can’t move at all.’
‘Help will be here soon,’ Mari said as she concentrated on trying to get into the trapped basket, pulling at the wickerwork on the side. ‘Anyone else want to tell me how they are?’
‘My head and shoulder hurt,’ a faint voice spoke out. ‘It’s Brenda.’
‘Anyone else?’
There was no response, and Mariette knew that meant they were either dead or unconscious. She fervently hoped it was the latter. There had been eighteen people in here including old Tom, the air-raid warden – he had counted them before closing the door – and her blood ran cold at the thought of them all buried under the rubble.
Finally, she managed to make a hole in the side of the basket. She put her hand in, felt around gingerly for the small torch, found it and drew it out carefully. She knew only too well from rescues she’d observed that one hasty move could bring down more rubble.
She switched on the torch. It was a pathetically small beam of light, just enough to see through the swirling dust that she, Joan and the three people sitting on the other side of Joan, right up to the shelter door, had all been knocked down by the same timber beam. Those nearest the door appeared to have taken the full brunt of it.
Examining Joan as best she could, she found her friend was still alive, but unconscious. The way she was twisted under the beam didn’t look good. There was a great deal of blood on the ground beside her, but Mariette couldn’t see where it was coming from.
The beam ended just after Mariette and, ironically, the basket had prevented it falling with its full force on to her legs. They hurt badly and they were bleeding; her shoes were gone, b
ut she could move her toes, which was a very good sign. To her left, and beyond the end of the timber beam, there was just a huge heap of rubble. Mrs Heady, her husband and her daughter had all been sitting there and were presumably buried.
Between Mariette and the other side of the shelter was a huge lump of concrete, beyond which were Brenda and Aggie, also Clara, Ernie and May, and Edna, plus a few other people whose names she didn’t know. She couldn’t see any of them.
Mariette had often heard Civil Defence rescuers shouting to people buried under bombed buildings to keep still and try not to panic. It was easy enough to keep still, but very hard not to panic. She shone the torch upwards and saw a huge hole in the ceiling. This was where the lump of concrete which now lay in the centre of the shelter had come from, but the beam of the torch wasn’t strong enough to see what was above the hole. There may be more loose concrete or beams which could come crashing down too.
‘Brenda! Aggie!’ she called out. ‘Can you see the torchlight?’ She jiggled it a bit to make it more obvious.
‘Just a few pinpricks,’ Brenda called back. ‘Not enough to see anyone over here.’
‘I’m going to try to get help,’ Mariette called back. ‘Keep still and don’t panic. Try talking to the others near you, they may just have been knocked unconscious.’
‘I’m scared, Mari,’ Aggie called back, but her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘Me too,’ Mariette said. ‘But we’ve all seen the rescue people get folk out of worse places than this, so don’t despair.’
It was true what she said. But, as bombs were still dropping nearby, they couldn’t expect the Civil Defence people to come until the all-clear had sounded. And even then, they might not come straight here unless someone had reported that this shelter had been hit. She had to get out and tell them people were trapped in here.
After reassuring Brenda and Aggie again, she surveyed the beam. Even if she could manage to lift the end of it and get her legs free, that would put further weight on to Joan. She needed to jack it up with something.
Scrabbling around with her hands, she found first one brick and then another. If she turned a brick on to its side, it was thicker than a leg. If she could just push one in beside her own legs, where they were trapped, then lift the beam enough to turn the brick on its side, she could get her legs out and then add a second brick for extra support.
Sliding the brick down beside her legs was easy enough, but in a sitting position it was well nigh impossible to lift the heavy beam enough to turn the brick. As she strained to do it, blood ran from her head wound into her eyes and the pain in her legs intensified.
She gritted her teeth, told herself she could do this, and tried again. Her arms weren’t long enough to get a good grip on the beam from above, so she had to put her hands under it and push up. After several tries, she managed to lift it slightly. Holding it with just her right hand, she attempted to turn the brick with her left. Nothing had ever been so hard, she felt as if the muscles in her arm were being torn out, but she finally managed it.
Leaning back for a rest, she panted out to Brenda and Aggie what she’d done. ‘Just got to get my legs out now,’ she added.
The effort of pointing her feet downwards hurt like crazy, and she had no room to shuffle backwards to make it easier to get her legs free. But she had to do it, however much it hurt.
Her legs, when she finally got them out, were a mess; from the knee down to her ankle they looked like a bloody joint of meat in Smithfield Market, and the pain was incredible, making her feel sick. But somehow she managed to get to her feet. There were more bricks on the ground, and she managed to ease the beam off her unconscious friend and slide bricks beneath it to take the weight from her pelvis. Joan moaned just as she’d finished.
Mariette bent down to her, and smoothed her face with her hand. ‘I’m going for help, Joan. Just hang on,’ she said.
‘Ian … Sandra,’ Joan muttered weakly.
‘You’ll see them soon,’ Mariette said, fighting back tears. Even by the dim light of the torch she could see her friend was in a very bad way.
It sounded as if the bombers were moving away now, and she had to get help fast. With just a quick word to Brenda and Aggie to tell them Joan was conscious and to keep speaking to her, she crept forward towards the door, shining the torch on the floor to check where she was putting her feet for fear of dislodging any more rubble.
Tom, the air-raid warden, lying next to the door was definitely dead. His head was half caved in where the beam had struck him. The older couple next to him both looked dead too, but she couldn’t see their hands to feel for a pulse.
She had known even before she got to the door that the concrete stairs beyond might be blocked – and there was a fair chance she wouldn’t be able to open the door anyway – but, surprisingly, it did open just a little, enough for her to squeeze through.
Flashing her torch up the stairs, she saw they were blocked by huge chunks of rubble, and the metal handrail at the side was twisted like a big snake. But she could feel fresh air on her face, and she could see there was a gap in the middle of the rubble. She had to hope that it was like a chimney and continued all the way to the top.
She shouted for help at first, at the top of her lungs, because she knew that climbing up the rubble could bring it all down on top of her – or, even worse, she might find that the hole she could see was blocked further up – but every minute she delayed meant there was less chance for her friends. She had to try to climb out.
Climbing was something she’d always been good at. It was often said that she was like a mountain goat, but she had never before had to climb with two badly damaged legs and a head wound, or up through a hole barely wide enough for her to squeeze through. She took the belt off her dress, tied the little torch with it, then secured it around her head, tying the belt tightly under her chin. Where it touched her wound it hurt really badly, but she had to bear it; there was no alternative, if she was to have light and both her hands free.
Slowly and very carefully she began to climb, testing the rubble with her hands first to make sure it was stable. Once she was inside the narrow tube-like hole, she had no room for manoeuvre and had to wriggle like a snake, arms above her head, digging her fingers and elbows in to support herself, while she used her toes to find a foothold to lever herself up another few inches.
It was terrifying because each time she got to a large jutting-out piece of rubble, she feared she’d become stuck in there. As this debris of chunks of concrete and bricks had obviously fallen from the house next to the shelter, it was likely to become even more unstable as she got higher.
From time to time she heard an ominous rumble, and stones shifted and fell beneath her feet. Smaller pieces rained down on her, cutting her arms, hands and shoulders or catching on her lacerated legs, but she refused to think that she could fall, or be buried alive, and she crept on like a snake, ever upwards.
Then, from up above her, she saw an orange glow. She knew it had to be a fire nearby, and she was viewing it through a gap in the rubble. It was the street, there would be people there.
She’d nearly made it.
Patrick Feanny was with the first group of Civil Defence workers to reach Fairfield Road in Bow, after reports of extensive bombing in some of the neighbouring streets. There were a number of small fires from incendiaries still burning. But as the all-clear hadn’t yet sounded there was no sign yet of the usual air-raid wardens, young lads and other public-spirited people out with their stirrup pumps dealing with them.
Standing in Fairfield Road, looking down what had been Soame Street, a narrow road lined with tiny terraced houses, he surveyed the scene of total destruction before him. All the houses had been destroyed, some thirty in all. There was just one wall left standing at the start of the terrace, and he could see a picture still hanging on it.
Thirty houses meant upwards of another 170 people made homeless, and his heart went out to them. Feanny h
ad served in the last war and, at nineteen, had survived the battle of the Somme. He had enlisted for this one too, not because he wanted to fight, but because he felt it was his duty. He was turned down for active service, so he joined the Civil Defence instead. When he joined, he thought it would be a soft option, but it had proved to be anything but that.
He couldn’t count how many people he’d pulled out of bombed buildings, many of them seriously injured but even more dead. Maybe people had finally realized Hitler meant business and, as the shelters were now much improved, most had the sense to use them. But in a street like Soame Street there was always someone too stubborn, or convinced of their own immortality, to go to the shelter, and, as he looked at what remained of it, he wondered where the body or bodies would be tonight.
A shout for help from the end of the road made him climb over the rubble in the road to go to investigate. Usually it was when the all-clear went that someone would alert the rescuers that they hadn’t seen Mr or Mrs So-And-So in the shelter tonight.
As he got to the end of Soame Street he saw the girl, doubled over as if in pain. By the light of one of the fires he could see she was covered in blood.
‘The shelter,’ she shouted, pointing to the corner where the steps led down to it. ‘There were eighteen of us in there. But I know at least three are still alive.’
The all-clear sounded then, and she dropped to the ground in a faint.
Feanny blew his whistle to call the rest of his team, and ordered one of his men to call for ambulances. As he waited for help he went to the girl, to help her.
Her legs were a mess, her feet bare. She had a small torch tied around her head, which was bleeding quite badly. She was covered in brick dust, and her dress was torn and filthy.
She came round as he removed the torch from her head, and offered her some water from a bottle he carried. She drank a little, then struggled to get up. ‘We’ve got to get them out,’ she said. ‘I managed to climb up through the rubble on the steps, but you’ll need to clear that first.’