Survivor

by Lesley Pearse

  He shone his torch over where the steps were and wondered how on earth she’d managed to get through it. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Help’s on its way, but tell me your name.’

  ‘Mariette Carrera,’ she said. ‘I live in Soame Street with Joan Waitly, she’s one of those still alive. You must get her out, she’s got two children.’

  ‘I will, but first you must tell me what it’s like down there. The more we know about the conditions, the more chance we have of getting them out safely.’

  She tried to get to her feet, but he could see she was in great pain. He lifted her up in his arms, took her over to a low wall that was still left standing, and sat her on it.

  ‘A wooden beam pinned us all down on the right-hand side as you go in. Tom, the air-raid warden, is by the door. He’s dead, and I think the couple next to him are too. Then there’s Joan, my friend. I was on the other side of her. I managed to jack the beam up with some bricks so I could get out, and to take the weight off her. Then there’s a huge lump of concrete in the middle, hiding the people on the other side. And another at the end of the beam, beyond where I was sitting. Aggie and Brenda are on the left-hand side and they both spoke to me. But it sounded like they were in a bad way. The door to the shelter will only open a crack. I managed to wriggle through it, then I climbed up through the rubble on the steps.’

  ‘You’ve done well to describe that so clearly,’ Feanny said. ‘As soon as an ambulance gets here, I’ll get them to take you to the hospital.’

  ‘I’m not going until you get Joan out,’ she said, shaking her head.

  Instinctively he knew there was no point in arguing with her. He signalled to one of the men to bring a blanket for her and then went off to start the rescue work.

  Mariette had no idea what time it had been when she got out of the shelter, but it was likely to have been around three in the morning. Yet, whatever time it was, it seemed like hours before the first rays of light appeared in the sky. Twice she’d been brought a cup of tea, and she’d given the names of everyone she knew in the shelter. Several ambulance men had tried to persuade her to let them take her to hospital, but she’d stubbornly refused.

  ‘I’ll come when they get Joan out,’ she said.

  As the sky grew light, she saw that Soame Street was gone. Nothing remained but heaps of rubble with odd pans, items of clothing and bits of curtain strewn about here and there. She’d seen similar sights dozens of times before, and had felt deeply for the people who had lost everything. But this time they were all people she knew; she’d been in their little homes, knew about their children, their husbands and parents. Tears ran down her battered face at the cruelty of war. What had any of these people done to deserve this?

  The sound of voices wafted through the swirling brick dust and plaster, and she knew it was her neighbours returning from other shelters and the tube stations. Shrieks of outrage filled the air as they saw what had happened, the shrieks turning to wails of despondency as they realized everything they owned was gone.

  Some of these people came over to her, wanting to share their despair with her, but, although she tried to console them, reminding them that they were at least alive, she had her eyes firmly fixed on the rescue workers at the shelter.

  While she understood they had to remove the rubble with caution, they seemed to be moving it at a snail’s pace.

  ‘Mari!’

  She turned her head to see Johnny coming towards her. He’d obviously just finished a shift as he was still in his uniform, and his face was streaked with dirt. She tried to get up, but her legs buckled under her and she was forced to sit down again.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ he exclaimed once he was close enough to see her injuries. ‘I heard at the fire station that Soame Street copped it. Surely you didn’t stay in the house?’

  She explained about the shelter, and how she’d got out. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I know how Joan is,’ she finished up.

  Johnny was well used to the diverse ways people reacted to bombing. The traumatized ones who ran wild-eyed and terrified, the shell-shocked ones who just sat and stared, and others who appeared to take it all in their stride, only to break down later. He knew that there was little anyone could do for them, other than dressing wounds, offering tea and a warm blanket, and kindness; they would eventually find their own way of dealing with it.

  But he knew Mari, and this war had already taken more from her than most people had to face. She needed medical help immediately; if her head and leg wounds were not cleaned and dressed quickly, they would become infected.

  ‘Let me take you to the hospital, before those wounds become infected,’ he said. ‘I promise to come straight back here and help. And let you know the moment there is any news.’

  ‘No, I’m staying,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’ll go in the ambulance with Joan, when they get her out. She needs to know she’s got me at her side.’

  He knew then there was no point in arguing with her. That strong will of hers had always been the problem between them. Perhaps his uncle had been right in saying he’d be happier with a girl from the same background as him, someone who wanted a man to look after her, who wasn’t determined to do everything her own way.

  ‘OK,’ he said, tucking the blanket more firmly around her. ‘I’ll go and help the rescue team. But will you let one of the ambulance men standing by at least clean those wounds and put a temporary dressing on them? You won’t be any use to anyone, if they become infected.’

  ‘Alright,’ she agreed. ‘But you take care in there, won’t you?’

  After sending one of the ambulance crew to see to Mariette, Johnny joined the rescue team and introduced himself.

  They were almost down to the shelter door now, but they had been constantly hampered by further loose masonry falling on to the stairs.

  ‘God only knows how that girl managed to get out,’ Feanny said to him. ‘We could see the hole she’d got through, but it was barely big enough for a cat. Amazing what determination can do.’

  Johnny told him she was his girl, and smiled grimly. ‘Well, I say she’s “my girl” loosely, she’s a law unto herself. All I know is, she won’t go to hospital until we get her mate out. So the quicker we do that, the better.’

  Finally, the door was open and Feanny led his men and Johnny in. But his initial impression was not a hopeful one. The air-raid warden and the elderly couple beyond him were all dead. He shone his torch further, to see the woman he knew to be Joan. But before he could get her out, or the three dead, the beam trapping them would need to be lifted.

  Shining his torch upwards, he saw that further beams were resting precariously on lumps of concrete, and behind these were the other trapped people. One false move and the whole lot could cave in. This was not a purpose-built shelter that had been thoroughly inspected, it was merely a large cellar running beneath three typical East End shoddily built houses. Before the war, it had been used by a second-hand furniture dealer as a warehouse. One of the houses above had already come down, and the other two could follow at any time.

  He called out to tell anyone who was still conscious that he and his team were in there now and would reach them soon.

  A faint response came from two women who identified themselves as Brenda and Aggie.

  Crouching over, Feanny made his way carefully along beside the beam and reached over to Joan to feel for a pulse. She had one, but it was very faint, and if she was to be saved he would need to get her out fast. He could see the bricks Mariette had told him she’d used to jack up the beam and get out, and he marvelled that she’d found the strength to do it.

  Feanny looked back at his men, signalling where they were to take up their positions. ‘On the count of three, lift the beam and move it backwards out of the door,’ he said. ‘Once it’s out, you, Johnny, get your girl’s mate out and up to the ambulance. There isn’t room enough here to use a stretcher. Ready! One, two, three, lift!’

  A small amount of rubble moved as the beam was
lifted, but the men carried on undeterred. As soon as they had lifted it clear of Joan, Johnny darted forward, picked Joan up in his arms and carried her out.

  Mariette rushed towards him as he emerged up the steps. An ambulance man had got as far as cleaning her face, but she’d pushed him aside when she saw Johnny.

  ‘Is she still alive?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, but only just,’ Johnny said as he carried her to the ambulance. ‘Now go with her, Mari, and no more excuses.’

  21

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Carrera, but there is no question of you leaving here today.’

  Mariette looked up at the stern face of Sister Charles, who had been called by the nurse because she was being difficult.

  She hadn’t meant to be, but the moment she stepped into the London hospital in Whitechapel, the smell and the injuries all around her made her feel sick. Then, when she was ordered to take off her clothes and get into bed in a cubicle, she became frightened too, so she asked the nurse to patch her up quickly and let her go.

  Sister Charles was well over forty, tall and slender with the regal air of a woman who expected to be obeyed. She pulled back the sheet covering Mariette’s legs and winced at the sight of them.

  ‘I take exception to the term “patch up”,’ she said crisply. ‘I would never allow one of my patients to leave here knowing he or she hadn’t received the right care to allow their wounds to heal well.

  ‘Both your head and leg wounds need thorough cleaning and stitching, and I understand there is barely an inch of your body without a laceration. You also need bed rest to recover from the ordeal you’ve been through.’

  ‘I only wanted to leave quickly because I need to help my friends,’ Mariette explained.

  ‘Well, you can’t help any of them in the state you are in. From what the ambulance driver told staff here on your admittance, I understand that you were the one responsible for alerting the rescue workers to your friends’ plight in the shelter. I can see by your injuries what you put yourself through to get them that help, and that was very courageous. But I am in charge here, and you are going to do what I tell you.’

  Strangely enough, that firm order made Mariette feel easier. She didn’t actually know why she had insisted she wanted to leave. It wasn’t as if she had a home any longer, and Johnny would turn up before long with news of the other people in the shelter.

  So she managed a weak smile. ‘You sound like my aunt back home. She’s very fond of telling me I must obey her. But can you just find out how Joan Waitly is? She’s the friend I came in with, and she was in a bad way.’

  Joan hadn’t regained consciousness in the ambulance, and Mariette didn’t have to ask if her condition was serious – that much was obvious. The nurse who travelled with them in the ambulance said she was afraid she had internal injuries.

  Sister nodded. ‘I will send someone to make inquiries. But now I’m going to get all those bits of dirt out of your wounds myself.’

  A couple of hours later, Mariette had been washed, stitched up and given pain relief. She was in a bed on a ward full of women who had been injured in the night’s bombing. She felt so much more comfortable that she even managed to convince herself no news of Joan was good, not bad. She fell asleep and only woke at evening visiting time, when Johnny arrived.

  He had washed, shaved and changed into ordinary clothes, but she could see by his drawn face and red-rimmed eyes that he hadn’t had any rest.

  ‘Brenda and Aggie are here in the hospital now,’ he told her. ‘It looks as if Brenda might have a spinal injury, but Aggie has only cuts and bruises.’

  ‘And everyone else?’

  ‘All gone, I’m afraid,’ he said wearily. ‘If it’s any consolation, the doctor who came into the shelter to see them thought they were all killed instantly. They say there will be an inquiry as to why that cellar was approved as a shelter. But that’s just shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.’

  ‘And Joan? Do you know how she is?’

  Johnny took her two hands in his. ‘I think you must brace yourself for bad news,’ he said sadly. ‘The force with which the beam hit her damaged a lot of organs. There was extensive internal bleeding, and although they’ve done an operation to try to save her, they aren’t very hopeful.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Mariette began to cry. ‘Her poor children and her husband!’

  ‘I know,’ Johnny said. ‘It’s terrible, but then it is terrible for the families of those killed. You know that better than anyone.’

  ‘There’s no sense to any of it,’ she sobbed out angrily. ‘That family had everything to live for, they deserved a better life together after the war. Why wasn’t I taken too? That’s twice now I’ve survived, when people I loved were killed.’

  ‘My gran, who was religious, would have said that God has special plans for you,’ Johnny said gently. ‘I’ve seen lots of my mates die fighting fires, and I’ve thought the same and asked why I was so lucky.’

  ‘I don’t feel lucky at all.’ She turned her face into the pillow and cried hard.

  ‘I never do either, when I lose someone I care about,’ he said, and he reached over to stroke her hair back from her face. ‘But I am so very pleased you were spared. I couldn’t bear it, if I lost you.’

  The emotion in his voice was unbearable. She couldn’t let him go on thinking of her that way and imagining his feelings were returned.

  ‘Don’t say that, Johnny,’ she said. ‘I can’t be what you want me to be. I love you as a person, but I’m not “in” love with you, if that makes any sense.’

  She stole a peep at his face and saw he looked stricken. She knew it was a terrible time to tell him such a thing, but if she didn’t speak out now he’d be wanting to take care of her, finding her a place to live, and before she knew it she’d be in too deep to ever get out.

  ‘I’m sorry, Johnny,’ she said. ‘You are the best friend a girl could have. You are kind, warm, funny and strong, everything a girl wants from a man. But I know you want much more of me than I can ever give you.’

  For a moment or two, he was silent.

  She prepared herself for his pleading, expecting that he might insist she was only saying such things because she was upset.

  But when he did speak, his tone was very curt. ‘Well, I have to say, your timing stinks. But they do say the truth comes out with drink or trauma. I’ll be off now. No point in spinning it out any longer.’

  He turned on his heel and just walked away.

  And Mariette cried even harder.

  Sister Charles, who had attended to her that morning, came into the ward just before ten, when the nurses were doing their last rounds before turning down the lights for the night.

  Mariette had been crying ever since Johnny left, and she knew immediately she saw the sister that this was going to be bad news.

  ‘She’s died, hasn’t she?’ Mariette said.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ the sister said, her voice soft with sympathy. ‘I’m told she regained consciousness fleetingly after her operation, and asked the ward sister to give you a message. She asked that you be there when her children are told of her death because you’d know how to be with them.’

  Further tears welled up in Mariette’s eyes. She knew that message had been repeated word for word as Joan had said it. She could almost hear her cockney accent and her desperation that Ian and Sandra should never be in any doubt that her last thoughts were of them.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Sister Charles said, and took one of Mariette’s hands in hers. ‘Have her children been evacuated?’

  Mariette nodded. ‘I went with her to meet them recently. Ian’s eleven and Sandra is nine. Joan’s husband is in North Africa.’

  ‘The hospital will inform the army, and they’ll get a message to him.’

  ‘The children are in Lyme Regis. Joan wanted to move there, when the war’s over,’ Mariette said brokenly. ‘She used to daydream of a little cottage by the sea all the time. They are such lovel
y, happy children and I so much wanted for her dream to come true.’

  ‘I can see why she wanted you to be with them,’ the sister said. ‘You have a big heart, and no one could have done more than you did today to try to get help for Joan. When you feel a bit better, write down all the things you loved about Joan, and when Ian and Sandra are a bit older you can give it to them. It helps children who lose their mother when they are young to know how other people felt about her.

  ‘I have to go now, I’m on duty again at six tomorrow morning. But you’ll be in my thoughts and prayers, Mariette. God bless you.’

  ‘You are as wise and kind as my Aunt Mog, back in New Zealand.’ Mariette sniffed back her tears and tried to smile. ‘That’s twice today you’ve said something just as she would say it.’

  The sister leaned forward, her starched apron crackling, and kissed Mariette on the forehead. ‘I’d be very proud to have a niece like you. Now try to sleep, my dear. You’ve had a day of terrible shocks and sadness.’

  The lights in the ward went out, except for the one on the desk in the middle where a nurse sat writing up her notes. Her back was to Mariette, but it was comforting to see her there, in her starched cap, uniform and white apron, the guardian of all the badly injured women on the ward.

  Thinking about what nursing meant brought back a memory of her mother and Mog discussing it as a career for her. Mariette had certainly wanted to go to Auckland, but she’d turned up her nose at the thought of bedpans, blood and vomit. Back then, she never thought beyond her own needs.

  Would she make a good nurse now? Somehow, she doubted it. She might feel for other people now, but she was still squeamish about wounds. Even looking at her own legs today had made her feel sick.

  At eighteen, she would have thought it was the end of the world to be scarred. But now she wasn’t unduly concerned. She had had six stitches in her forehead, there was a bald patch on her head where they’d cut away her hair to put ten stitches in there, and there were a further eighteen on her right calf and sixteen on the other. But as long as she could walk and wasn’t in any pain, it didn’t matter.