by Annie Groves
They looked at one another in mutual sympathy and understanding.
‘We’re both obviously one-men women, you and I, Katie. More fool us, I dare say some people would say.’
‘Well, what I say is that I wish every man fighting for his country, who worries about his girl, could have heard what I’ve just heard. Girls like you two are true angels, and what every chap wants.’
The sound of the lieutenant’s weak voice had them looking at him, their shared confidences forgotten.
‘We need to get you some proper medical attention,’ Gina told him. ‘Do you think—’ She broke off as the all clear suddenly sounded, she and Katie exchanging relieved looks, which turned to even more relieved smiles when two policemen came round the corner.
In no time at all they were helping the lieutenantto his feet and telling the girls that they would see the lieutenant safely to the nearest first aid post, which was only a matter of a few yards away, leaving Katie and Gina free to make their way back to their hotel.
As they parted outside their respective bedroom doors, Katie knew that she and Gina had forged a friendship that would be with them for the rest of their lives.
Once inside her bedroom, Katie sighed over the state of her clothes, dusty but thankfully not otherwise damaged, washing herself down as best she could in the hand basin in her room, before putting on her nightclothes.
She was so dreadfully tired, but somehow, despite the comfort of her bed, she just couldn’t sleep. Instead her head was full of thoughts and memories of Luke. She would always love him, she knew, but she must still try to get on with her own life and not be one of those women who were always feeling sorry for themselves. She had some pride, after all.
Katie closed her eyes. Images ran through her head, of broken glass, and broken hearts, of Luke’s strong arms round her …
What was that noise? The air-raid siren, of course. Katie was up and out of her bed before she was fully awake, pulling her raincoat on over her pyjamas, grabbing her handbag, opening her bedroom door, to find Gina opening hers.
Together they joined the other guests quickly making their way down to the cellar, the hotel ownerwaiting by the cellar door with a list of their names, which he ticked off as he counted them.
If this building should take a direct hit and collapse, then they would be buried down here, Katie couldn’t help thinking as she went down the steep stone steps.
‘We’ll be safe down here,’ the hotel owner assured them once they were all inside.
The cellar was large, with fresh air circulating in it, and proper electric light. It had obviously been especially equipped for just such an event because there were camp beds and cooking facilities, and even a door marked ‘WC’.
In the end it was gone four o’clock in the morning before the second all clear sounded. As they exchanged weary ‘Good night’s outside their bedroom doors, Katie and Gina agreed that once they had some sleep they would have to discuss cutting their visit short.
‘I doubt that we’d be able to do much to help, and we’ll be extra mouths to feed and bodies to find beds for, especially if the Germans come back,’ was Gina’s opinion, and Katie was inclined to agree.
It wasn’t running away. Had either of them had the kind of skills that could have been put to good use then Katie knew they would have volunteered them, but as it was, as visitors, they would only be in the way, and really could do nothing much to help.
Morning and a late breakfast confirmed their decision.
They were told by their waitress that the gas works had been hit and was still burning, that houses in the Kingsmead area of the city, which they had walked close to the previous night, had been seriously damaged and whole streets flattened. There had been terrible loss of life when the bomb shelter close to the Scala Cinema had been hit, and a doctor had been killed in The Paragon, which was relatively close at hand. In addition to that there had been many deaths, with stories of people thought to be still trapped under the rubble. The city’s officials were evacuating as many people as they could, especially those who were now homeless, sending some of them to a nearby army camp, whilst others were already saying that they planned to trek out of the city for the forthcoming night rather than risk staying in their homes.
As they listened, Katie looked at Gina. After the waitress had gone, leaving them with little appetite for their kippers, Gina told Katie practically, ‘Well, that’s it, then. We can’t stay now. We’ll have to leave.
They were just finishing their second cups of tea when the hotel manager came in, heading straight for their table, bringing a naval officer.
‘Captain Towers has asked me to introduce him to you,’ he explained. He wants to thank you for helping his lieutenant last night.’
The captain, medium height, older than the lieutenant–in his mid-thirties, Katie guessed–his expression rather austere, had removed his cap to reveal neatly close-cut dark hair. Although he was wearing clean clothes and looked as though hehad only recently shaved, Katie could see that he looked tired.
‘Why don’t you sit down, Captain Towers, and have a cup of tea?’ she suggested.
Immediately the austerity vanished from his expression, to be replaced with a grateful smile.
‘As Mr Gale has just said, I wanted to thank you in person for what you did last night. Very quickthinking and brave. The navy is indebted to you, and so am I. You see, Eddie, Lieutenant Spencer, is actually my cousin. I would have thanked you before now but I’ve been at St Martin’s Hospital most of the night, checking up on some of our chaps who were billeted in the area. Dr Kohn and the nurses are doing a fine job but… there have been some terrible tragedies–whole families gone, and one poor chap who’d lost his wife and four children.’ The captain shook his head.
‘Terrible …’
Whilst he had been speaking Katie had poured him a cup of tea, which she now pushed towards him. There was, of course, no sugar to offer him, but he drank it gratefully none the less
‘How is the lieutenant?’ Katie asked.
The captain smiled, small creases fanning out around his eyes as he did so. Even when he smiled there was somehow a shadow of sadness in his eyes, Katie thought, wondering what had put it there.
‘He’s fine, thanks to your quick actions, and he asked me to pass on to you his thanks.’
‘It was Gina who knew what to do.’ Katie felt bound to praise her friend.
‘But knowing what to do wouldn’t have been any use without your … help,’ Gina pointed out, giving Katie a teasing smile.
‘Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me. Eddie did say something about a pencil and, er, a …’
The captain looked so embarrassed that Katie told him immediately, ‘There’s no need to worry about that,’ whilst she and Gina exchanged amused looks.
‘I must go,’ the captain said then. ‘I’ve got two men still unaccounted for, and one poor chap who brought his family here sitting by his wife’s bedside. They don’t think she’s going to make it, and his two children are dead. One has to notify people and write reports and so on.’
‘We won’t keep you, then,’ Katie assured him.
After he had gone, she said to Gina, ‘I’m so glad that the lieutenant is all right, but how awful for that other man, losing his wife and children like that.’
‘Yes, it can’t be easy. The captain seemed a decent sort, though, and concerned for his men. Rather shy, though. He was awfully embarrassed about your slip, wasn’t he?’
‘Very,’ Katie agreed, as they both laughed. ‘Mind you, I’d rather a man be a bit embarrassed about mentioning women’s underwear than too knowing about it, if you know what I mean.’
‘I totally agree. One hears of chaps overseas bringing home for their girls the most unsuitable kind of things. I had a friend whose chap brought her back a belly dancing outfit from Egypt–and tried to tell her how to dance for him wearing it.’
‘Oh, surely not!’ Katie protested, trying to look serious
but not quite managing to do so, with the result that the two of them went off into smothered peals of laughter.
‘She ditched him, of course. Such a dreadful lack of good taste,’ Gina commented, setting them both off laughing again.
‘Should we go out for a stroll and stretch our legs, before we pack?’ Gina suggested when they had calmed down.
Shared laughter was definitely a good way of getting over one’s nerves after the kind of night they had endured, Katie acknowledged to herself as she agreed.
They were not laughing, though, when they stared in shocked dismay at the pall of smoke hanging over the city. They didn’t go very far; there wasn’t much sign of any bomb damage in their immediately vicinity, but the air was full of dust and smoke and the smell of burning, and by the time they had reached The Paragon and seen the gaping hole in the street where the doctor’s house had been, they both agreed that they were ready to go back. Katie wanted to weep for the cruelty of the destruction of something so very special as this city. It seemed impossible that this was the same place they had admired less than twenty-four hours ago.
‘Why Bath?’ Katie asked, choking back her tears.
‘I don’t know,’ Gina answered. ‘Maybe they were aiming for Bristol and the aircraft factory there.’
‘What a terrible tragedy for such a beautiful city.’
Gina agreed, equally upset.
‘It’s a pity that we’re going to have to cut our stay here short and miss the ballet, but it hardly seems reasonable to think about that when so many people in the city are facing what they have to face,’ Gina told the hotel owner when they informed him that they were going to leave.
‘Poor Bath,’ was Gina’s mournful comment when the two girls climbed on board the train that would take them back to London. ‘Jane Austen would be shocked.’
TEN
Lou kicked morosely at the damp grass. It was not really light yet, but she hadn’t been able to sleep so she had dressed quickly and quietly, slipping out of the hut, and had come down here to the end of the runway where it gave way to the surrounding countryside, so that she could be alone with her thoughts and her misery.
Her punishment was over now, but she was acutely conscious of the points she had cost the Hut, and whilst her chums had welcomed her back, she was all too aware of the cool frostiness of the others. It wasn’t that they were ignoring her or had sent her to Coventry or anything like that, but it was because of her that they were not only not the top hut any more, but not even in the top four. She felt bad about that, really bad, though not at all like she had felt when she and Sasha had been in trouble. It was different now. When she and Sasha had broken rules it had been fun, something they had shared, something she had enjoyed doing because she had enjoyed challenging the restrictions the rules had put on them. She hadliked being ‘the naughty one’ and she admitted she had sometimes gone out of her way to be naughty because she had enjoyed being a bit of a rebel.
But now she could understand why Sasha had sometimes been reluctant to go along with her, why she had argued for them to be ‘good’ and not ‘bad’. Now Lou was not enjoying the reputation she had earned for herself. It didn’t make her feel good and that bit braver and more daring than the other girls. In fact it made her feel isolated and alone and miserable.
As a child, when she had seen other girls being praised for ‘being good’, she had mocked them to Sasha, making fun of their goodness, and their curls, and their immaculate white socks, and hair that the ribbons did not fall out of. They had belonged to a group she had had no wish to be part of. Here, though, in the WAAF, the good young women were the ones whose skills earned them the praise of their superiors, young women who were dedicated to being the best they could be, and who were proud of what they were learning. Lou wanted very much to be one of those. For the first time in her life, she wanted to be an insider and not an outsider. She wanted to be part of that group of girls who clustered together after lessons to talk enthusiastically about what they had learned, and who were already looking forward to the postings they would be given where they would be doing a real job, which would be important–work that was needed and valued.
The truth was, Lou admitted, she really liked being in the WAAF. She didn’t even mind the parading orthe rules–not really–because for the first time in her life she had found something that mattered to her. Dancing had mattered, of course, but part of that had been the thrill it had given her when her dad had complained about the music, and the excitement of planning to go on stage when she knew her parents disapproved. Now that she had discovered how much more satisfying it was to do something she loved and work hard at it to be praised for her skill, the thrill of breaking the rules was something that felt not just silly but shameful, pinning on her a label she no longer wanted.
She had liked feeling proud of herself when her tutors had praised her, and now she felt not just that she had let others down, but that she had let herself down as well.
Betty had apologised to her and said that it was partly her fault for starting it but Lou had surprised herself by responding that she had chosen to retaliate and so the blame was her own.
It was like the corp had said to Lou when she had taken her on one side when she had returned to the hut: in the services everyone worked as a team, for the greater good of that team. They put the team first, not themselves. By not doing that Lou had cost the team of her hut something everyone else had worked hard for. Lou sniffed back the tears she could feel blurring her eyes. What she had done this time couldn’t be made right by giggling about it with Sasha. She didn’t even want to, for one thing, and for another, Sasha probably wouldn’t even understand why she felt the way she did.
She had changed, Lou realised; she wasn’t the Lou who had left Liverpool…
The sound of an approaching plane broke into her thoughts.
Lou whirled round and stared up into the sky. The sound was coming not towards her, approaching the end of the runway, but from behind her, sounding as though the plane intended to fly in over the base itself. Halton was mainly a RAF training base; planes, when they did fly, in came in during daylight hours, not with their engine whining like this one.
Lou strained her eyes, searching the sky. From the sound of it, it was a heavy aircraft of the type used by Bomber Command on its nighttime raids on German towns and defensive positions, perhaps. Bomber Command HQ was at High Wycombe, but their airfields were further to the east. For a bomber to try to put down here must mean that it was in desperate trouble.
Then she saw them: airmen tumbling from the grey bomber into the dawn mist, their parachutes opening over the farmland on the other side of the base, whilst the plane flew on, losing height fast. Automatically Lou noted that she was right and that it was a Wellington, one of the older bombers still in use. Her heart was in her mouth as the plane only just cleared the base’s buildings. Then she saw that one of its two engines was on fire and that the undercarriage had been shot away.
Somehow despite her anxiety for the crew who had ejected from it, and the pilot who was still in it, there was still space in her thoughts for a rushof emotional pride in their skill and bravery, their mauled and savaged aircraft witness to the bloody fight they and it had had to survive.
Trailing smoke and flames, the bomber was now lurching to one side as it came towards her. The pilot wasn’t going to make the runway, Lou realised; the plane was diving too steeply and too fast. It thudded down and then lifted so close to her that she could feel the heat from its burning engine along with the draught of its flight.
On the far side of the base, lights were coming on and she could see movement. Soon the rescue squads would be here with a fire engine and medical staff.
Lou heard a terrific thud, the ground beneath her feet shaking, forcing her attention back to the bomber, which had now come to rest with its nose almost buried in the ground, flames licking at the wing and reaching greedily forward. Why wasn’t the pilot getting out?
> Lou started to run, her heart hammering into her ribs. Ignoring the smoke and the flames, oblivious to the risk to her own safety, she reached up to the pilot’s door–unluckily the fire was on the pilot’s side but luckily the plane had slewed to that side, so that it was relatively easy for her to wrench open the door. Coughing and choking on the thick smoke, she could feel the heat of the flames, but she ignored them. Inside that plane was a man who needed her help, a man prepared to risk his life in the service of his country. How could she refuse to risk hers to save him? She couldn’t, Lou knew, as she refused to give in to the heatthreatening to burn her skin and the smoke filling her lungs.
The pilot was slumped over his controls, a trickle of blood coming from his nose, but he was alive, she knew because he was groaning. Alive now, but not for much longer unless she could get him out of the plane.
Their tutor was thorough, and how glad Lou was now that he had insisted their learning every detail of the interior of the RAF’s planes. Miraculously, somehow her fingers were reaching automatically for buckles and fastenings, as she released his parachute harness, the better to get him out of the cockpit.
‘You’ve got to help me,’ she yelled in the pilot’s ear. ‘Come on unless you want us both to be burned alive.’
She could smell aviation fuel. If that caught fire then they would have no hope of surviving. The plane would explode into a fireball. Her stomach cramped with a panic she refused to let take hold of her.
Somehow her words must have reached the pilot because she felt him move with her as she struggled to tug him out. She could smell burning hair and fabric, and her hands were stinging and hot. Every second was so precious and they had so few of them left. The smell of fuel was growing stronger. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the lights of the vehicles racing down the runway towards them.
Gritting her teeth, Lou pulled harder, muttering to herself, now more than to the pilot, ‘Come on. Come on …’ unaware that she had succeeded in pulling him free of his seat until the weight of himfalling against her drove the breath out of her lungs, sending them both tumbling to the ground, and then rolling away from the plane.