It was only then that Rose came out of the stupor she had been in. ‘She’s in the East End?’ she said incredulously. ‘I thought she was down in Sussex near you.’
Honour felt she had to explain how it came about. ‘She was in Hastings nursing at the Buchanan until she broke off with her young man. The London Hospital, Whitechapel, is where she went to.’
Rose stopped drinking then and wanted to know the full story, and Honour felt a kind of release in sharing with her the details and the terrible anxiety she’d felt when she didn’t know where Adele was. ‘I still don’t know the real reason why she broke it off with Michael, they were so happy together. But I can only suppose it was something to do with what happened in that children’s home.’
Rose didn’t say very much as Honour went on to tell her that full story too, but she supposed Rose felt too guilty to comment. As they were sitting in the two deckchairs in the gloomy light of just one weak bulb, she couldn’t see her daughter clearly enough to note her expression, but Rose was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, and when she finally spoke her voice was shaking.
‘I’m so sorry, Mother, I had no idea. I got the idea she’d somehow gone straight from Euston to you. I didn’t know she was sent first to a children’s home. How could a man do something like that to a child?’
‘There are a great many evil people in this world.’ Honour shrugged. ‘I know you won’t thank me for reminding you of your failings as a mother, but it has to be said. If you had taken real care of your child, given her love and a feeling of being worth something, that man could never have sucked her into his nasty web.’
Rose cried openly then. ‘How was I supposed to do that?’ she sobbed. ‘You’ve got no idea, Mother, what it was like for me. Living in hideous squalor with a man who had never known anything else, stuck with a baby I didn’t even want. It was hell, and Adele was a constant reminder of everything I’d lost. I couldn’t help but hold it against her. I loved Pamela though, I never felt that way about her. Then when she died, I couldn’t bear to look at Adele. But I was sick in the mind. I couldn’t help it.’
Honour listened patiently as Rose poured out the misery of her life with Jim, and of the black mood which she couldn’t shift.
‘I do sympathize,’ she said when Rose had finished. ‘I suspect I was in a similar place after Frank died. But you can’t blame it all on some sickness, you have to admit to yourself that everything that happened to you was your choice, your fault. It’s only once you do that, and really believe it, that you can find the way to make amends.’
‘It’s too late for that now,’ Rose said brokenly.
‘It’s never too late for some things,’ Honour insisted. ‘Adele has a big heart. You find some way to make her proud of you and I’m sure she will forgive you. But maybe we ought to say a little prayer together for her safety tonight?’
‘It’s all right, you’re safe now,’ Adele said comfortingly to the elderly woman who had just been brought in with a bad leg wound. The woman was still whimpering with terror, and from what Adele had seen in her brief glimpses from the upper windows of the hospital, she was surprised that she wasn’t screaming.
The air raid had caught everyone by surprise. It was a beautiful warm Saturday afternoon, and people were happily strolling along Mile End Road anticipating the evening ahead, when suddenly the sky grew dark with bombers.
Adele hadn’t been up more than an hour, for she was on night duty and not on again until six o’clock. She was just about to go out to buy some envelopes when the air-raid warning went off. There had been hundreds of false alarms in the past year, and many people now ignored the warning. Yet there had been a few bombs in south-east London recently, on 25 August some incendiary bombs in the City, and most recently, just two days earlier, the oil installations at Thameshaven and Shellhaven at the mouth of the Thames were set alight, so Adele wasn’t so complacent.
Like most people, she believed the Germans were only interested in bombing airfields and ships, but she went out to see what everyone else was doing about this warning.
She got as far as Mile End Road when she heard the drone of aircraft and looked up to see what looked like hundreds of planes. As there was no anti-aircraft fire, for a second she thought they were English, until she saw Spitfires and Hurricanes speeding towards them. It seemed as if everyone suddenly realized this was the real thing, for all at once they began to scream and run for it.
Adele ran too, back to the nurses’ home to put on her uniform. She was in her room when she heard the high-pitched scream of the first bomb, and she dived for cover as the windows shook with the blast.
She was so frightened she could hardly get her cap on straight, but she knew she must get to the hospital at once. A feeling in her gut told her this was going to prove the most demanding night of her nursing career.
Running down the corridor, other nurses joined her, but there was no time for any discussion about what was happening. Their frightened faces and caps askew said it all.
More bombs dropped as they ran full tilt to the hospital, but they were behind them in the direction of Silvertown and the docks – a glance back showed a cloud of grey dust rising up into the sky. Above the air-raid warning sirens they could hear ambulance and fire-engine bells, and a truck screamed round the corner loaded with Civil Defence men.
In contrast to the noise and tumult outside, the hospital was eerily calm. Matron appeared as the night nurses flocked through the doors. ‘Well done,’ she said, with an approving nod of her head. ‘I’m very glad you all had the sense to come immediately. I think we are going to need every available pair of hands tonight.’
To Adele’s surprise she ordered them all to go downstairs to the canteen for food. On seeing the expression on their faces, she half smiled. ‘The first casualties won’t be here for a while. You might not get another chance to eat tonight.’
She was right of course, it was over an hour before they began to trickle in, and all that time the bombing was almost constant. Minor injuries were dealt with at first aid posts, so the first patients were mainly those beyond the scope of volunteer workers, those who had been knocked out by falling masonry and had serious lacerations or broken limbs.
At six, the time the night staff would normally have come on duty, the all-clear came, but though they had respite from the noise of the bombing then, it was short-lived. At seven-thirty the sirens went off again, and bombing recommenced.
Slowly, as the Civil Defence teams began to dig out people buried under rubble, the injuries grew even more serious and the trickle became a stream, quickly turning to a river of wounded.
The nurses and doctors had to work at great speed, hardly able to hear one another above the jangling of ambulance bells, the whine of bombs, and the sobs of hurt and shocked people. Every one of the wounded was covered from head to foot in brick dust, their eyes red-rimmed and wild-looking. Many of them pleaded with nurses to get someone to find out if their children, husbands, wives or parents had been rescued.
From those still articulate enough to give an account of what had happened, the nurses learned that whole streets in Silvertown had been destroyed. They heard of dead bodies lying in the streets, and one woman had seen her own daughter’s dismembered arm, which she recognized by a bracelet she’d given her. The rest of her daughter was probably buried beneath the rubble of their house, and it was believed many hundreds of others could be similarly entombed.
Each time a thud came close by, small pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling; Adele tried very hard not to think what would happen if the hospital got a direct hit. One nurse slipped upstairs and reported back that fire watchers were being ordered up on to the roof. She was told by one of them that the Surrey Docks were ablaze and fire engines from all over London had been sent there to help put it out. She said she thought the paint factory had gone up too for there were terribly acrid, choking fumes.
Time ceased to have any meaning for any of the nurses as they
rushed from one casualty to the next. The floor was splattered with blood, and as fast as orderlies cleared it up, it became just as bad again. The most serious cases were operated on, then taken to a ward, but beds were filled in no time, so lesser injuries were dealt with and the patients then had to sit or lie down wherever they could out of the way of the medical staff.
Many of them were distraught because they feared for the rest of their families. In some cases there were children lost and feared dead. One woman with her arm almost completely severed was trying to get off the stretcher she’d been brought in on to go back and find her little boy.
Adele lost count of the different stories she heard of what these people had been doing when the raid began. ‘I was just thinking about getting the tea.’ ‘I was out in the lavvy.’ ‘I’d just put the kettle on and the whole house shook and suddenly the roof was gone.’
Adele couldn’t help thinking that if a raid like this had happened the previous September, right at the outbreak of war, everyone would have been ready for it. But the Phoney War had lulled them all into a false sense of security. People had given up carrying their gas masks and ignored the instructions of the air-raid wardens, because they felt they were bossy and self-important. Some people were barely aware of where the shelters were any longer. And Adele didn’t expect that there was enough room in the shelters for the vast numbers who would need them tonight.
She and the other nurses weren’t really competent to deal with injuries like these: whole legs smashed, backs full of broken shards of glass, crushed hands and feet. No amount of theory lessons had prepared them for such horrible, terrifying wounds.
Miles of bandages, tons of swabs, lint and sticking plaster, pints of antiseptic and gallons of water turned crimson with blood. Hastily preparing patients for theatre, rushing with kidney dishes to catch someone’s vomit, applying pressure to a wound that pumped out blood at an alarming rate, and all the while trying to console and comfort the victims.
‘Where will we go?’ one poor woman with a bad head wound and a baby in her arms asked Adele pitifully. ‘Our ’ouse is gone, with all our stuff, even me money. Where we gonna sleep? I ain’t even got a dry nappy for the little ’un.’
It was two in the morning before Adele got a break for a cup of tea and a sandwich. Joan, who had been on duty all day, and stayed on as all the day staff had, joined her for a few moments. ‘To think I had a date tonight with that fireman,’ she said, drawing deeply on a cigarette. ‘First bloke I’ve really fancied in over a year, and I might never get to see ’im again.’
Adele couldn’t reassure her she would, for news had come in of how bad the blaze in the docks was. Everything was alight, and firemen were getting trapped as buildings on all sides went up in the blaze. Rotherhithe and Woolwich on the other side of the Thames had been badly hit too. One sixteen-year-old Fire Service messenger boy had been brought in with bad burns received as he cycled down a burning street with a message from one fire officer to another. He had bravely ridden on with his clothes alight to deliver his message before collapsing, and even as he lay on the stretcher he was worrying how the fire officers would manage without him.
Stratford Hospital had received a direct hit, but an ambulance driver had said the nursing staff were still working behind screens. There were many bombs dropped close to the London Hospital too, and still the bombers kept coming. With fires all along the riverside lighting up the whole of London, the Germans could easily pick out any target they fancied.
Again and again during the night, Adele heard people asking where the RAF had been in all this and why they hadn’t stopped the bombers. She thought how easily people changed their allegiance. A few weeks ago in the Battle of Britain, fighter pilots were the most popular men in England; now they were being blamed for letting these German planes through.
But she had seen those bombers coming over. Three hundred of them, it was said. She’d also seen the Hurricanes and Spitfires tearing into them, and they were well outnumbered.
After the carnage of this day and night, she couldn’t offer up a silent prayer for Michael. Not because she no longer cared, but it seemed wrong to pray for just one person when millions were in equal danger.
‘Mother, it’s madness to go there,’ Rose said, trying to prevent Honour going out at eight the following morning. ‘The bombers could come back at any time.’
‘I have to see Adele,’ Honour insisted stubbornly. ‘You hold on to Towzer, because I’m not leaving him outside if I have to duck into a shelter.’
‘But I doubt you’ll get through,’ Rose argued. ‘There surely won’t be any buses or Tubes.’
‘Then I’ll walk,’ Honour said. ‘Now, just you take good care of Towzer.’
They had heard on the early morning news that the East End had been hit, but presumably to save panic, or keep up morale, no details were given of how many casualties there were. Honour had heard bombs dropping all night, and at one point she’d gone up to the bedroom at the top of the house and stood for some time watching the red glow of the flames. She couldn’t just wait to hear from Adele, she had to see for herself that she was unhurt. She couldn’t possibly go home without knowing for certain.
Honour managed to get a Tube train as far as Aldgate. A ticket collector told her the section of line beyond that was being checked for bomb damage, but said it wasn’t too far to walk to Whitechapel.
As soon as Honour came up on to the street her nostrils were assailed by the smell of burning, and the air was thick with dust. Everywhere looked as if it had been sprinkled with talcum powder or flour.
She hadn’t gone far beyond the Tower of London before she saw bomb damage. The buildings were intact, but glass, lumps of masonry and roofing tiles lay in the road, and people were out with brooms sweeping it up.
But as she got further down Whitechapel High Street, the damage gradually grew more serious. Most shop windows were broken, sharp shards of glass dangling dangerously over the goods exposed inside. As she progressed further still, she saw her first bombed house, reduced to a pile of rubble. Grotesquely, the side wall was still intact, a picture of some swans on a lake still in place. A wizened old lady was standing in front of it crying, as two younger women desperately tried to find belongings amongst the rubble.
From that house onwards there were many similar sights. The direct hits were mainly on the side streets, whole terraces knocked down and white dust still swirling around in the breeze. Huge lumps of masonry blocked the gouged and pitted roads.
But it was the people who affected Honour the most, many with sticking plaster or dressings on stricken faces, staring at their former homes in bewilderment. One woman she saw with tears running down her face was pointlessly trying to sweep the street.
A group of Civil Defence men were clearing rubble from the Mile End Road, and Honour asked them what would become of these homeless people.
‘They’s letting ’em sleep in church halls and schools,’ one burly yet ashen-faced man replied. ‘But what you’ve seen ’ere, love, ain’t nothin’ to what went on down at Silvertown. They’re still digging out folk trapped under the rubble. We’ll be going on there soon as we’ve got this road cleared so more rescue trucks and mortuary vans can get through.’
‘Is the London Hospital still standing?’ Honour ventured.
‘Yeah, that’s okay. You got someone in there?’
‘My granddaughter’s a nurse there,’ Honour said, her voice faltering. ‘I was just going to check on her.’
‘They’ve bin angels in there,’ he said, giving Honour a comforting pat on the shoulder. ‘I was in and out there half the night taking injured folk. It were like Bedlam, but they did us all proud.’
It was still like Bedlam in the hospital. Honour hadn’t seen anything like it since the first war when she went to the hospital in Dover to find Frank. But then it was all wounded men, and mostly cleaned up and patched up ones at that, glad to be back in England for some respite from the hell they’d b
een through. Here there were women and children too, some with such shocking injuries she had to avert her eyes. Nurses with bloodstained aprons, fatigue showing in their young faces. Doctors in equally bloodstained jackets looking as if they were close to collapse, heads bent over their patients.
Honour stopped a nurse as she passed her. ‘Can you tell me if Nurse Adele Talbot is here please?’ she asked.
‘She was until an hour ago,’ the nurse replied. ‘A few of them were sent off for a rest for a couple of hours.’
‘Does that mean she’ll be back later?’
‘Oh yes, to relieve some of us. Are you a relative of hers?’
Honour nodded. ‘She’s my granddaughter. I just wanted to know she was all right.’
‘She’ll be fine after a bit of a rest.’ The nurse smiled sympathetically. ‘We all will be. You go on home. I’ll tell her you asked after her.’
Honour left the hospital and began to walk back up the road towards Aldgate. But as she walked she felt she couldn’t just get on the Tube, collect Towzer and go home. There had to be someone around here dealing with all the distraught homeless who could do with a helping hand for a few hours.
Seeing the Civil Defence man she’d spoken to earlier about to get back in his truck and drive away, she marched purposefully up to him.
‘Find your granddaughter, did you?’ he asked.
Honour explained that Adele had gone for a rest and that she thought perhaps she could make herself useful in the meantime.
‘Hop in,’ he said, opening the truck door. ‘I know the very place.’
Honour could hardly believe what she was seeing as she was driven towards Silvertown, swerving round potholes and over debris. Whole streets were gone, rescue workers toiling away at the dust-covered rubble looking for both buried survivors and bodies. Beside the road lay bodies waiting for collection, some covered in sacks, others by blankets and old curtains. There were men and women digging desperately into the rubble with their bare hands, clearly searching for a family member who was missing. Honour saw what she thought was a mannequin from a shop window lying at the top of a staircase which was still intact but had come adrift from the wall which had once supported it. All at once she realized it was a dead woman.