Hettie tried to shake her thoughts loose. Surely her mother was all right. Surely she had found a safe hiding spot with a neighbor or at the church hall. Hettie was probably just letting her thoughts run away from her. She looked up into the oval mirror above the porcelain sink and saw that streaks of soot and ash ran like dark veins across her face. A scab extended along the bridge of her nose. She touched the abrasion lightly with her fingers, then harder, but felt nothing.
Outside, Hettie found her father’s bike leaning against their house. She pushed it along the Whitewell Road and then up the hill to the Antrim Road before hopping on to it and navigating the numerous obstacles of rubble, broken concrete, and shattered glass. Near the rise in the road, Hettie spotted Mrs. Lyttle from down the street and rode toward her. Creases of ash lined her forehead, and her eyes were red-rimmed and fatigued.
“Mrs. Lyttle, have you seen my mum?” Hettie asked.
“Last time I saw her was last night,” she said. “She tried to convince me to go to the Atlantic shelter, but I didn’t want to go.”
The elderly woman began to shake and cry, lifting her glasses and wiping her eyes with a soiled handkerchief. Hettie placed a hand on her shoulder and then took the frail woman into her arms. Mrs. Lyttle felt like a bundle of dry sticks. As she gently rocked the sobbing woman, Hettie thought about what the wireless commentator had said about the city’s shelters, and prayed that the structures had offered true protection against the bombs.
After a minute or two, she stepped away from Mrs. Lyttle, got on her bike, and continued her trip down the Antrim Road. Its tarmac surface was covered in mud, debris, ash, and water; it was slippery and treacherous. Burned-out buildings bordered both sides of the street; their charred shells looked precarious and fragile, as if they might topple over at any second. Tattered bed linens and curtains fluttered from the bare limbs of trees. Stringy roots of a tree protruded from a crumpled roof. Union Jacks poked up from random piles of rubble and ashes, snapping in the morning breeze. Hettie felt as if she were caught in some sort of ghastly nightmare.
Up ahead, she noticed a few women handing out tea in stained, chipped mugs and sandwiches to the continuous waves of strangers heading north on the Antrim Road, fleeing in panic from the city. The most fortunate traveled in cars, but some were on bicycles. Many of the people gripped overstuffed suitcases, baskets, and other parcels, and the hands of trailing, tripping children with bewildered expressions. A few pedestrians pushed along wheeled prams with bedclothes and other belongings strapped to their metal frames. Most were covered with soot, ash, and mud. Some were bloodstained and badly injured. A man walked by with an extra pair of shoes sticking out of his coat pockets. One woman wandered aimlessly up the street; to Hettie’s horror, it looked as if the woman was carrying a dead baby in her arms, the infant’s complexion a shade of pale lavender and her eyes unmoving and expressionless.
“Bottle,” the woman desperately asked. “Does anyone have a bottle? I need a bottle for my baby.”
An older woman stepped out from one of the intact houses and placed her arm around the mother’s shoulder before carefully lifting the baby out of her arms and kissing the infant’s forehead and then drawing the cross over the small body. Wiping several tears away, Hettie continued south on the Antrim Road, swerving around mounds of broken glass. When she glanced down Duncairn Gardens, Hettie noticed that entire rows of homes were obliterated. Despite all the visible destruction she had witnessed, it still felt unbelievable to Hettie that so much of her city could be destroyed. It was as if she were riding her bike through the streets of another city, another landscape entirely, one that didn’t seem to resemble Belfast. It reminded her most of the photographs and films she had seen of towns devastated by shelling on the Western Front during the First World War.
Eventually Hettie turned onto Atlantic Avenue. A group of firemen were gathered around an enormous mass of rubble that used to be the shelter. They were removing large pieces of concrete and tossing aside bricks; some of the pieces were so massive and heavy that they had to be winched up. One of the firefighters was carrying a dismembered arm to the bed of a lorry. Slippery muscles bloomed from the limb and scrubs of auburn hair flecked the lifeless knuckles. Hettie noticed a gold wedding band was still on the hand. Another fireman carried a foot with a dirty sock. Hettie’s stomach pitched. She gagged and bile rose in the back of her throat. Another man tossed a pair of ash-covered shoes into the metal lorry bed.
Mum, she said silently to herself. Where’s me mum?
Hettie pushed her bike toward one of the firemen with a shovel. “Excuse me,” she said. “Sir. Can you help me?”
The fireman, dressed in heavy canvas overalls and work boots, looked up at her, his eyes haunted.
“Where were the survivors from the shelter taken?” Hettie asked, unable to stop the tears that were streaming down her cheeks.
“We’re just digging for remains now,” he said. “The bodies are being moved to the city mortuary, and to the hospitals and funeral parlors. Some are being taken to temporary morgues in schools, church halls, and the public baths on the Falls Road and at Peter’s Hill. I’ve been told that all of the unidentified dead will be transported to St. George’s, where the public can come and try and find the missing.”
“Did everyone—” Hettie started to ask.
“Try the Royal,” he said. “A few of the survivors were taken there.”
Hettie’s chest tightened like a fist.
“I’m looking for my mum,” she said, stumbling on her words. “I need to find me mum.”
“Sorry, miss,” he said, returning his gaze to the pile of rubble. “Everyone is looking for someone right now.” His shovel scraped against the pieces of concrete. An updraft of ashes swirled into his stoic face.
Hettie mounted her bike again. The front wheel wobbled as she attempted to regain her balance. Pedestrians continued to stream up the Antrim Road. Several strangers called out the names of relatives and friends. Near the corner of the Cliftonville Road, the Phoenix Bar still stood, but it no longer had doors or windows. Rows of patrons gathered along its counter, with smashed bottles and debris at their feet, as they tipped back glasses of whiskey.
Hettie pedaled harder until she turned onto the Grosvenor Road and arrived at the entrance of the Royal. She leaned her bike against the wall. Immediately as she stepped inside the hospital, Hettie was hypnotized by the chaotic scene in front of her. A frenzy of nurses, doctors, patients, and strangers occupied the foyer and the corridors. Injured civilians were splayed out on stretchers; others were slumped in wheelchairs; others lay along the borders of the darkened hallways, sprawled out on the floor. Stretchers were in such short supply doors were being used instead. Two young men carried a barely conscious patient between them, his limp arms draped over their shoulders, a stain of blood spreading from his abdomen, as they headed toward the stairwell. Hettie glanced through the open door of one of the operating theaters and shuddered at the sight of amputated limbs lying on a table. A nurse frantically pressed the button for the lift again and again.
“Lifts aren’t bloody workin’,” someone else yelled. “Nothing is going up.”
“Coming through,” another man yelled. “Coming through, people.”
A young boy with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his head lay, unconscious, on a stretcher. A swaddled baby wailed in a nurse’s arms. A paramedic pushed a man with no legs in a wheelchair.
For a second, amid the broken bodies and spirits, Hettie had forgotten who she was looking for. Instead, she felt numb and helpless. A swell of grief rolled through her. She leaned one hand against the wall as she attempted to collect herself. Footprints of blood stained the linoleum floor. A young girl cried for her mother. Hettie looked up, and a pair of nuns, in their nut-brown habits, rushed down the hallway.
Hettie surveyed the frenetic corridor again, trying to locate someone who might be in a position of authority. A nurse with a boat-shaped hat bobby-pinned t
o her hair and a white apron smeared with crimson walked toward Hettie. She held a clipboard in one hand and an IV bag of transparent liquid in the other.
“Excuse me,” Hettie said. “Can you help me?”
“I wish I could—”
“I’m looking for my mum, Rose Quin,” Hettie said, grabbing her sleeve and forcing her to stop. “She was at the Atlantic Avenue shelter. I was told some of the survivors were brought here . . .” She trailed off because she couldn’t bear to go on.
The nurse stared at Hettie for a second and then out at the pandemonium around her. She sighed. “Come back in a few days,” the nurse said flatly. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“But I need to find my mother,” Hettie cried. “I need to find her now.”
She felt compelled to explain to the nurse, get her to understand how her situation might be different from that of other people who were looking for relatives and friends, that her mother was the last remaining member of her immediate family. But then she thought better of it; this nurse probably wouldn’t be interested in hearing her story, she had much bigger concerns today.
“Go home,” the nurse said gently, patting her on the arm. “You won’t find her today.”
Then the nurse turned on her heel and left Hettie standing there, watching what felt like her last hope disappear into the mayhem.
“Dr. Loney, emergency amputation in room 105,” another nurse yelled.
“We need a stretcher over here. Someone fetch me a stretcher.”
Stunned, Hettie wandered back toward the entrance of the hospital. She felt wrung out, like a damp sock, but she knew that she needed to keep looking. She had no choice. With little thought, she mounted her bike and rode eastward, down the Grosvenor Road, and onto May Street and toward St. George’s. Despite being so close to the docks, the sandstone-and-redbrick facade of the market looked the same as when Hettie had stopped by last autumn before paying a visit to the Keegans and baby Maeve. The lions still stood regally above the arched doorway, their paws grabbing at the harsh air. A long line of strangers—many of their faces frozen with shock—waited outside the market’s doors. Lifeless bodies were ferried on canvas stretchers; some bodies were covered in shrouds, others were not. A silver-haired priest, clutching a Bible and a rosary against his chest, silently nodded at Hettie as he maneuvered his way around her. She managed to follow his black habit through the double doors of the market past the others waiting to gain access.
When she entered, Hettie saw that most of the stalls had been removed from the enormous hall. The only evidence of its former state was the rows of tables with their wooden legs pushed up against one of the walls. A rancid stench struck Hettie’s face: It was the smell of the city’s unwashed poor, and of blood and feces. Hettie lifted the sleeve of her coat to cover her nose and mouth, but its scent of smoke and wet wool didn’t do much to mask the smell.
The market’s floor was carpeted with bodies. About half the corpses were tucked inside pinewood caskets, a necessary precaution given the high volume of rats roaming throughout the building. The rest lay bare and exposed—they must have run out of coffins. Hettie met the blank eyes of an already decaying corpse, then looked up at the reticulated roof of St. George’s. Many of its glass panes had been shattered during the bombing. Red Cross nurses, with the familiar red insignia encircling the sleeves of their coats, and clergymen, along with several clutches of people, walked between the lines of coffins with handkerchiefs held up to their faces, lifting the lids one at a time. Personal items were scattered in between the rows. Watches, rings, photographs, wallets. Another priest walked past Hettie, murmuring Hail, Mary, full of grace . . . / Holy Mary, Mother of God / pray for us sinners . . . A man dressed in a work suit and wellingtons swabbed the floor. A disinfectant odor mingled with the fetid reek that Hettie feared was the smell of decomposing bodies. An older couple rocked over a dead boy, praying, their words shapeless and soundless. Hettie felt as if her body was going to crumble like a sandcastle at any second.
“Over here,” a young man yelled. “I found her.”
To the left, there was yet another stack of lifeless bodies—men, women, children. Hettie spotted a woman with the same color hair as her mother lying there amid the dead bodies, but then she quickly noticed the woman’s prominent nose and chin and that the deceased woman looked nothing like her mother. Hettie continued to survey the dead that surrounded her. Their dirt-laced complexions were varying shades of gray green. Their hands clutched nothing. Others were disfigured beyond recognition. Hettie thought of Anna and the last time she saw her, lying in the hospital bed. The jaundiced shade of her delicate eyelids. The stillness of her chest. The damp coldness of her fingertips and her toes. At least her death had been a dignified one, Hettie thought to herself. At least she and Rose had had a chance to hold Anna’s hand within the privacy and quiet of the hospital room before her shrouded body was transported to the morgue in the hospital’s basement. At least they had said goodbye.
As she scanned the room, hoping not to see anyone who looked like her mother, Hettie noticed the navy sleeve and sewn badge of a police officer lying among the corpses. A grimy sheet was pulled halfway over another body, revealing a leg missing from the hip and a bloody tangle of veins, arteries, and cartilage. A tight ball of bile traveled up from the floor of Hettie’s stomach. The image of the dead penguins lying side by side flickered through her mind—their stiff black feet, the blood that stained their white under-feathers and pooled onto the pavement. Hettie stared at the endless rows of bodies and coffins. Some part of her couldn’t look away, but the physical revulsion grew more intense. Muffled sobs echoed up to the market’s rafters.
Hettie ran out and vomited onto the curbside. Strangers’ feet moved around her, paying her no heed as she repeatedly coughed and retched. Acid seared her throat, and her mouth tasted sour. The smell of the burning city continued to press against her face. Her ears rang loudly. Her cheeks were hot. She heaved again.
When she was done, she tried to collect herself and walk in the direction of the river. Her legs wobbled. Her head spun. She leaned her hands against the wall of St. George’s and bent over again. Charred pieces of notebook paper tumbled across the pavement, and Hettie reached automatically for one of the crumpled pages. The handwriting looked like a child’s. Large, loopy, and lopsided between the solid and perforated lines of periwinkle blue against the cream background. All living creatures have square shoulders. Hettie read the sentence to herself again before releasing the burned piece of paper. It tripped down an empty alleyway. She began to cry. She thought of her mother and Mr. Wright and Ferris and Liam and Maeve and Stella Holliday and all the animals at the zoo. She thought of all the dead bodies at St. George’s, all the dead and all the injured at the Royal. All living creatures. All living creatures. All living creatures.
The nurse at the hospital was right: Hettie should go home. There was nothing for her here. Looking for Rose was a hopeless effort. Hettie knew that she wouldn’t be able to find her mother today. She mounted her bicycle and rode slowly through the devastated streets, past the city hall and its manicured lawns littered with broken glass, singed fragments of paper, and loose piles of ashes. Its formerly majestic domed roof now crowned the skeleton of a building, which was barely standing. As she rode up to Carlisle Circus, she saw a steady procession of rats scuttling along the gutters of the Antrim Road; they must have come from the sewers. Her stomach pitched forward again. Hettie turned away and noticed a church without its roof or walls. Only the facade was left, the large arched doorway leading into a hazy veil of nothingness. She cycled around roadblocks, where the streets had been cordoned off, owing to the buildings being unstable and the presence of unexploded bombs.
Hettie continued to climb the Antrim Road. As she pedaled, clouds obscured the road ahead, creating a strange parade of apparitions, shadow people, there and not there. But the people were moving in the thousands, like crowds of football supporters spilling toward t
heir home stadium on a Saturday afternoon, but instead today they were fleeing from their unprotected city. Their collective fear and panic heaved through the streets.
The tinny sounds of a news report came from a wireless perched on a windowsill; the commentator’s voice sounded peculiar and distant and full of urgency. The number of casualties was well past five hundred. A boy waved a miniature British flag as he stood by himself. Dried tears stained his round, grimy cheeks. Hettie squeezed her eyes shut for a second and then flicked them open again. The front tire of her bike rocked over a piece of rubble. She gripped the handlebars harder and regained control, but her hands were shaking.
Before she knew it, Hettie was riding onto the Whitewell Road again. The scene had changed little from when she had returned home from the zoo earlier that morning. A police cordon was now in place in an attempt to foil the activities of looters. The singed couch still sat in the middle of the road, but this time a few of the neighborhood children were perched on its damaged arms. Johnny Gibson wore the Mickey Mouse gas mask strapped over his rosy cheeks, his auburn curls poking out from the elastic strap. Lizzie tried to shove her younger sister, Martha, off the couch. Lily stood on the opposite arm, with her fists raised in the air, as though she had just won first place in an athletic competition. A few of their parents were gathered in front of their homes and waved Hettie over.
“You and your mum all right?” asked Mr. Martin.
“I can’t find her,” Hettie said.
“I hear it’s mad around the hospitals and that large queues are forming at St. George’s,” said Mr. Reynolds, shaking his head. “Utter chaos. I’ve been trying to find a cousin of mine. It’s been next to impossible.”
The Elephant of Belfast Page 20