by Lizzie Lane
It was only a little before six forty-five and it was far darker in the narrow alleys of the ancient market than in the streets around it. Before war had been declared, wall-mounted gas lights threw pools of light over the uneven flagstones. Even late in the afternoon, it was like entering a dark cave. Now the darkness was total, the gnarled stone slabs beneath their feet dependent on the muted light of a torch.
Bridget came to an abrupt standstill. She held up her finger and bade them listen.
They stopped, glanced to either side of them, as if that might help them hear anything any better than they could see anything.
Bridget reached out her hand. On her left, she touched Maisie’s arm, on the right Phyllis.
The sound was enough to set their teeth on edge. Starting from a low whine, the sound of the air-raid siren soared to an ear-screeching wail.
‘Oh my God. Please say it’s a false alarm.’ Phyllis’s voice began as a tremble but ended up a whine.
‘I’ve got a feeling it’s not,’ said Bridget. ‘In which case we must get to the nearest shelter…’ Her need to do something positive outweighed her fear and her mind worked quickly. She recalled seeing a map of air-raid shelters. ‘The nearest is between Fairfax Street and Castle Street in the old castle wall. Come on, follow me.’
Hampered by the impenetrable darkness, they stumbled and slid over the old flagstones. They didn’t see the man they bumped into, but they did see his uniform in the light of his torch, his shouted warning that they should take shelter.
Bridget informed him where they were going.
‘No time for that.’ His torch arced through the air as he swung it back and forth, urging them to follow.
The few people who were out and about all seemed to converge in the alley, sweeping them back in the direction they’d come.
‘Down in the cellars,’ somebody shouted.
‘Where do we go?’ shrieked Phyllis, who had never really believed this could happen – not in the middle of Bristol. Up at the aircraft factories or in the docks, but not here.
Bridget grabbed hold of her arm. She’d half expected this reaction from Phyllis. ‘Come on, Phyl. Do as the man says.’
Pushed from behind by other people caught in the raid, they descended a set of rough stone steps. What with the press of the crowd and the darkness, they were unable to see their feet, feeling their way slowly and surely. Fresh air was replaced by a mustier, more enclosed smell that told them they had left the outside behind and were now possibly below ground.
‘Crikey,’ said Maisie, who was right behind them. ‘I can smell sherry.’
Some grumbling, some stunned by fear to silence, the small crowd spilled into an old and dimly lit wine cellar, where huge wooden casks loomed dark against distempered walls. Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there were benches to sit on and bare light bulbs threw a welcome but gloomy light. This was one of many such stores built in the eighteenth century where the wine fermented in cool temperatures accorded by being below ground.
‘Bristol Cream,’ said Phyllis after taking a big sniff. Maisie was right. Even though the barrels might be empty, the sweet smell of sherry, a beverage Bristol was famous for, still prevailed.
‘It would be,’ said Bridget, her interest aroused. ‘Port wine especially. It became popular during the war against Napoleon when no French wines could be imported. Fortified wine, what we call port, travelled better.’
Maisie rolled her eyes. ‘Bridget Milligan, I used to think you’d have made a good teacher. Isn’t it vicars that give sermons from the pulpit?’
‘Take no notice,’ said Phyllis on seeing the sudden hurt look on Bridget’s face.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ said Maisie.
The current of fresh air from outside was cut as the door in the arched entrance slammed shut.
Once the benches were filled, people sat on the floor, or the luckier ones on upturned casks bearing names like Jerez, Amontillado and Ruby Port and still smelling of what they had once contained.
Talk became whispers and even whispers became muted. Frightened eyes turned towards the door as the sound of anti-aircraft guns intensified. Bridget put an arm around Phyllis. who was, like many others, staring wide-eyed at nothing in particular, but waiting for whatever it was that might happen next.
Maisie was looking around her with great interest. Something about this place, possibly because of its age, reminded her of the Llandoger. The ceiling was low and barrel shaped. The smell was alluring and oddly exciting, as were the shadows.
As the guns got louder, Phyllis began to shake. ‘Are those bombs?’ Her voice was brittle and as tremulous as her body.
‘No,’ answered Maisie. ‘I’ve already told you. Just anti-aircraft guns.’
‘Better times ahead, Phyl,’ Bridget said quietly. ‘They give the guns names,’ she added brightly, in an effort to take Phyllis’s mind off things. ‘The biggest is named Purdown Percy.’
The Information aroused no response. Phyllis’s eyes were round as marbles. She was scared.
‘Makes you wonder, all these barrels,’ Maisie piped up. She jerked her pert little chin at the biggest barrels sat on wooden trestles lining the walls. ‘They looks as though they’ve been ’ere for years.’
Bridget had merely glanced at the barrels, but now she too looked at them in more detail. Telling a bit of a story might help. ‘Wine’s been coming into Bristol since the Middle Ages, if not before. Five hundred years at least. It wasn’t so busy when wine was coming in from France, but got busier once England lost Gascony and a lot of wine began coming up from Portugal and Spain. For some reason, it made the port of Bristol more convenient…’
‘Because of the winds,’ Maisie pronounced. ‘Some of the sailors in the pub told me that. If you’re coming from the Atlantic, it’s easier to go with the wind up the westerly approaches – less trouble than sailing into the Bay of Biscay.’
Before Bridget had chance to make comment further, there was a huge explosion. A shower of loose plaster and fine dust fell from the arched ceiling. A toddler clasped to its mother’s breast began to wail. Women screamed and men, some haunted by the events of a previous war, threw themselves to the ground and covered their heads.
The three friends crouched but, gradually, once they were sure it was only dust that was falling on them, they straightened, though still held on to each other.
The sound of another explosion came and again everyone covered their heads.
‘That was close,’ said the ARP warden. His bloodshot eyes looked up at the ceiling, perhaps fearing it might collapse, or even that he could see through it.
‘I was quite fancying doing a bit more window shopping before we headed home,’ Bridget said as brightly as she could. ‘Not that my clothes coupons are likely to buy much round here, but still, a girl can dream.’
More explosions and the crashing of buildings sounded close by. People covered their ears and closed their eyes. Some prayed. Others were more defiant, determined to rise above what was happening outside and keep doing the ordinary things, to speak loudly and not huddle with fear.
‘Well, I was ’oping to get enough stuff to make a Christmas pudding. I likes to make mine early.’
The woman who spoke had a round face, her hair tucked into a black beret with a small feather on one side.
‘My cook makes the pudding very early too,’ said another woman in a more refined voice, suggesting she had strayed from Clifton or another of the upmarket suburbs north of the River Avon. ‘She’s been collecting ingredients since August and we did save some plums from those we picked in the garden. No doubt we’ll manage, but it isn’t going to be easy.’
Listening to the conversation about Christmas made Bridget think of her brothers and sisters. It would be the first time ever that the family had not been together at Christmas. She wondered at the chance of travelling down to Devon. It wouldn’t be easy but worth it to see their smiling faces – and there was James of course.
; It seemed in that moment that the bombs were no more than the hammering on a base drum like the ones the Salvation Army used in their marches. Concentrating on James and that warm day in a barn smelling of hay took her mind away from where she was now. She told herself that she really was attracted to him and that it had nothing to do with the last letter she’d received from Lyndon telling her about his family arranging a marriage for him. He’d hurt her and she’d reacted. Should she feel regret or triumph? She wasn’t sure.
‘I sometimes wonder what the baby would have been like,’ Phyllis suddenly whispered into her ear. ‘But being born into this… and no father?’ She flinched at the sound of another explosion. ‘I’m starting afresh and reckon that Sam’s the one. In fact, I’m sure he is.’
Although she sounded breathlessly determined, Bridget had seen her infatuated before. Sam seemed nice, but he was away in the army and she wondered whether being apart might dent Phyllis’s feelings. Still, she thought, at least she’s away from the Harveys. She couldn’t blame her for not regretting that.
An old man curled half asleep in the corner began playing the hymn ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ on a mouth organ. When somebody suggested he played something more cheerful, he began playing ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’.
Somebody who lived in one of the apartments above the cellars defied what was going on and brought down a bucketful of tea.
‘No sugar and go easy with the milk.’
It was a familiar statement and nobody complained. In the meantime, the building trembled with each blast.
‘I wonder how long it will go on,’ said Maisie, clutching an enamel mug of hot tea with both hands.
Nobody chanced an answer.
The old man who’d played the mouth organ, took a pocket watch on a bright silver chain from his waistcoat, sighed, shook his head and put it away again.
It was hours later when a tinny chime from the old man’s pocket watch announced it was midnight. Just seconds after its chime faded, the all-clear sounded.
The steps up from the wine cellars were dark. The air was full of smoke and the sound of fires raging out of control thundered in air that seemed devoid of moisture. The fiery glow lit up where the alley met Corn Street so no torch was needed to see their way.
‘Looks like a long walk home,’ said Maisie as they eyed the devastation, the three of them still as statues.
Men shouted at them to stand back.
‘But I need to get home,’ cried Phyllis. ‘I need to get back to York Street.’
‘It’s past Old Market,’ explained Maisie.
The man’s face was black with soot. ‘No chance. Castle Street, Mary le Port Street and everything around ’as gone up in flames. If you can’t get ’ome, a relief centre’s been set up in a tent in Queen Square. And stay away from Park Street. It’s an inferno.’
‘We can make it home,’ Bridget declared. ‘I’m sure we can.’
Sombre and feeling a deadness inside, they looked one more time behind them at a city in flames. Vast fires had taken hold of so many ancient buildings, some of which had been in existence even before Queen Elizabeth the First had declared St Mary Redcliffe the finest parish church in all England. It was now difficult to identify the once charming facades of black and white, the later buildings of the Georgian and succeeding ages were now like giant bonfires, monstrous flames lighting up the sky.
The orange glow lit their way for a considerable distance. Everywhere heaved with people, some armed with nothing more than buckets and stirrup pumps, faces black, tin hats perched lopsided on their tired heads.
They sprang between road and pavement. Above them, people hung out of first-floor windows, staring to where the great fire consumed the heart of the city.
Phyllis began to sob. ‘Poor Bristol.’
Her two friends hung their heads, sorrowfully silent.
They made their way along East Street, the bells of fire engines and ambulances jangled as they raced past them and towards the city centre.
Suddenly Bridget stopped in her tracks. ‘We should have asked whether there were many casualties.’
Maisie shrugged. ‘Why? What could we have done?’
Her mind went back to the day she and Bridget had gone in disguise to visit Phyllis. She’d liked wearing that uniform but didn’t think she could ever be a nurse and get used to the sight of blood. She sighed as she faced what seemed an incontrovertible fact that somehow saddened her; she was just a tobacco girl and always would be.
It was a hard slog home from a city centre smelling of smoke, the air full of cinders, being diverted away from the chaos, the red sky like a halo above burning buildings.
It was gone three in the morning before they made it to the Milligan house in Marksbury Road.
Bridget wasn’t surprised to find her father waiting up for her and Maisie, no more than a shadow in the doorway.
‘Where the bloody hell, do you think you’ve been? It’s gone three.’
Bridget opened her mouth to say something, but it was as though her tongue had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. Phyllis and Maisie stood behind her.
Suddenly there was the thudding of feet coming downstairs and there was her mother, an off-white shawl thrown round her shoulders.
‘Oh thank God!’ Mary Milligan brushed Bridget’s dirty hair back from her face. ‘We heard the bombs and your father…’
Once they were inside the house and the light was lit, she saw copious tears streaming down her father’s face. He didn’t bother to brush them away but hugged his wife and daughter for dear life, then threw back his head and closed his eyes. On opening them again, he declared that her mother had prayed that night. ‘And so did I,’ he added. ‘Though the bombing was in the heart of the city, not out here.’
Mary Milligan smiled through her tears. ‘The first time in years,’ she said as she wiped the wetness from her face. ‘Now look at me going on like this. You and Maisie are safe and so’s Phyllis. It’s lovely to see all three of you together again. Make the most of it, girls. There’s some tonight who’ll never be seeing the one they love again,’ she said sadly.
‘I can’t get home,’ said Phyllis, her glossy hair now smelling of smoke and clinging damply to her face.
‘Of course you can’t. Don’t we have plenty of beds here,’ stated Patrick Milligan, now swiping at his eyes with a man-size handkerchief. ‘Thank God the kids are in Devon.’
‘Thank God,’ his wife added.
23
The Three Ms
They slept like logs and in the morning were awakened by the smell of something frying and the low murmur of the wireless. Bridget stretched her arms as she tried to dissemble what was real and the dreams she’d had. The smell of smoke was fainter now thanks to the wash she’d had before going to bed, but the fire was still vivid in her mind.
Pushing both images and bedclothes aside, she switched on the small table lamp beside her bed and got dressed more quickly than she usually did. She enjoyed her job, but today its place in her life was going to be even more welcome. It was her firm belief that the routine of stripping the tobacco leaves and the company of her workmates at the factory would help her forget the sight of a city in flames.
When she got downstairs, her mother was frying bread in the kitchen, the sound and smell of beef dripping both appetising and, in a strange way, almost sickening. There were bound to be some this morning that would not wake up to a tasty breakfast, some indeed who would not wake up at all.
Her father stopped fiddling with the knob on the Bakelite wireless and looked up.
At first there was moistness in his eyes before his whole face shone with affection.
‘You’re up bright and early. I thought you might not go in.’
‘I have to.’ She fiddled with her hands. On tying back her hair, she noted that a little at the side of her head was singed, though she couldn’t recall noticing it before. ‘I’d better give Mum a hand.’
‘No need,’ he said with boyis
h merriment. ‘Your friend’s already out there.’
She heard Maisie call from the kitchen. ‘Be ready soon. Pull up a chair.’
Bridget laughed sheepishly. ‘Sounds as though she’s taken over.’
Her father said nothing but frowned at the dance music playing on the wireless. He wore a troubled frown. Not for a minute did Bridget believe he was listening to the music.
‘What did it say on the news?’ she asked cautiously, hoping against hope that thousands hadn’t been killed by the bombs or burned alive.
He clenched his hands and kept his eyes fixed on the wireless. ‘Two hundred killed and over a thousand injured. It would have been more if it hadn’t been a Sunday and all the shops closed.’ He shook his head. ‘The buildings in the old city are all gone. St Peter’s Hospice, the Dutch House. A lot,’ he said sadly. ‘Course, they were old, half-timbered and burned easily, but still… part of this city’s history.’
She glanced out to where Maisie was chatting to her mother nineteen to the dozen between taking bites out of her fried bread. Despite a harrowing night, Maisie had retained her appetite.
A creepy, scary feeling churned in Bridget’s stomach as though she was looking down from a great height and afraid of falling; she’d never liked heights, but that wasn’t what this feeling was about. ‘What about the Llandoger Trow? It’s in the heart of the city.’
Her father shook his head. ‘Not mentioned, but…’ he shrugged. ‘Who knows what’s been destroyed until the heat’s died down and they sift through what remains.’
Hopefully no more bodies, thought Bridget. She thought of those like her father who had seen the destruction of war first-hand. To those left behind, it had seemed a world away, but in this war, it had come home to roost.
‘Glad I’m living here with you,’ Maisie sad with a shudder. ‘I bet a few bombs fell ‘round York Street what with it bein’ close to the marshalling yards.’ A wistful grin appeared. ‘Shame Frank Miles ain’t inside it if it’s gone up in flames.’