‘I’m well aware of that,’ Maggie snapped, far more sharply then she’d meant to. Instantly contrite, she reached across to squeeze Jo’s arm. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just want to get home, that’s all.’
They quickened their footsteps, but they had gone no more than two streets on when the sound of the ack-ack and Bofors guns burst into life as the first planes droned overhead in the moonlit sky. All around them, doors were opening and banging shut as people scurried past them to seek the safety of the shelters, and in no time at all the previously deserted streets were echoing with the sounds of children crying as distraught parents tried to soothe them.
‘We need to get to a shelter,’ Jo gasped as she pressed her hand into her side to ease the stitch there. ‘I don’t think I can run much further.’
Maggie felt as if she were being torn in two. She longed to get home to her mother and Lucy, yet didn’t want to leave Jo all alone. Even as she struggled with her dilemma, the sky suddenly lit up with parachute flares that the planes had dropped to highlight the city below. They hung above them like great white iridescent chandeliers. Maggie gazed up in wonder, which quickly turned to horror as the first phosphorus exploding incendiary bombs came hurtling towards them. They looked like falling stars but Maggie knew that once they hit the ground they would burst into flames, which would act as targets for the planes overhead to drop the more deadly bombs on.
‘’Ere, you two. Don’t get standin’ there like lumps o’ lard. Do yer want to get yer ’eads blown off? Me an’ the missus are goin’ to the shelter at the end o’ the street. Yer can tag along with us.’
The speaker was an elderly man with his braces dangling round his waist, accompanied by an old woman whose head was covered in a brightly coloured head-square.
Without waiting for a reply, he grasped her elbow and she felt herself being tugged along behind him. By the time they reached the end of the street she was breathless. He shoved her into the communal shelter in front of him before turning to usher his wife and Jo in after her. The shelter seemed to be teeming with people, as Maggie tried to adjust her eyes to the gloom. The air smelled damp and the children’s cries echoed off the cold stone walls as the old man struggled to pull the shelter door shut. The sound of it clanging to sounded like the closing of a prison cell door and Maggie began to sob as she thought of her mam and Lucy all alone back at home.
Jo placed her arm around her as the second wave of planes sounded in the sky overhead. Then suddenly the children’s cries were drowned out and the shelter seemed to shake as the first bomb exploded nearby. The Coventry blitz had begun, and for most of the people huddling there that night, life would never be the same again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As Maggie and Jo huddled together, a continuous stream of bombers passed overhead and they felt their city shake with the force of the raid. They had assumed that the main targets would be the industrial factories, so were shocked to hear the bombs falling so close to them. Some minutes later they heard a hammering on the door and the same old man who had led them to the shelter struggled to open it. A young man almost fell into the shelter before the door clanged shut behind him.
‘They’re targetin’ the city,’ he gasped. ‘Saint Michael’s Cathedral has taken a hit already. The fire-fighters are there but the roof’s on fire an’ they reckon it’s useless. The centre is like an inferno; some o’ the fire-fighters are dead already.’
A horrified silence settled on the people in the shelter as they tried to absorb what the young man was telling them. To everyone there, the Cathedral was the heart of the city and they couldn’t envisage the fall of such a fine building.
‘It’s mad out there,’ he went on with a catch in his voice. ‘There’s houses goin’ down like nine-pins. Whole streets wiped out just like that, as if they’d never been.’ A particularly close explosion silenced him as the shelter shuddered again. But once it had settled the young man gabbled on, ‘They’re usin’ landmines now an’ all. At this rate there’ll be nothin’ left standin’ by the time we get out o’ here.’
‘Shut up!’ The old man saw that the young man was becoming hysterical. Somewhere at the back of the shelter, a woman began to pray, and for Maggie the whole event took on an air of unreality. She knew only too well the devastation landmines could cause. They took the form of a large metal box that would slowly and silently float down on a parachute to explode above ground level with a deafening roar, flattening anything and everything that happened to be beneath it. What if one of them was to fall on her house? Would the shelter be enough to protect Lizzie and her mam?
Suddenly she knew that she couldn’t just sit there. She had to get home to them. Pulling herself away from the wall, she began to wade through a sea of people towards the door as ear-shattering explosions sounded in her ears. But when she reached the door and attempted to open it, hands reached out to stop her.
‘What yer tryin’ to do - get us all killed?’ a man barked at her accusingly. ‘Move back there an’ try to stay calm, can’t yer?’
Maggie sagged against the damp wall as tears slipped down her cheeks, and in that moment she felt totally useless. All she could do now was add her prayers to those of the woman at the back of the shelter.
The raid went on and on, and as the hours passed, the spirits of the people in the shelter sank lower and lower.
‘What time do yer think it is?’ Jo whispered in her ear after what seemed like a lifetime.
Maggie shrugged. It was too dark in the shelter to see the face of the cheap watch on her wrist, even with the flickering candles that someone had managed to light.
As the night wore on, there was little resistance from the ground, for many of the defence stations had run out of ammunition, but still the raid continued with no let-up.
By now a silence had settled in the shelter. Outside, the only sounds were the fire engines’ sirens mixed with the crash of explosions.
At last, at around five o’clock in the morning, the first bombardment began to abate and at six fifteen, the all clear finally sounded.
Slowly, the people in the shelter began to emerge into the streets, or what was left of them. Shocked and tired they stood silently in the drizzle as they tried to take in the aftermath of the attack. What was left of their once fine city lay in ruins beneath a great black cloud of smoke. The city centre was ablaze, and many of the factories had been burned to the ground. In parts, flames as high as a hundred feet licked into the sky, and all around, the suburban streets were littered with rubble that only hours before had been people’s homes.
As they stood there gazing about them in stunned disbelief, an Army truck rumbled towards them and troops began to pour out of the back of it armed with picks and shovels.
On legs that felt as if they had turned to jelly, Maggie staggered towards a weary-looking soldier and grasped his arm. ‘Please - can you tell me, is Clay Lane still standing?’
Hearing the urgency in her voice he sadly shook his head. ‘I couldn’t tell you, love. We’ve just come from trying to put out the fire at Saint Nicholas’s Church, or I should say what’s left of it, in Radford. I ain’t never seen nothing like it in me life. There were people shelterin’ in the crypt there, for Christ’s sake. Huh! Some sanctuary that turned out to be, didn’t it? Even the House of God ain’t safe from this bloody war. They were still diggin’ out the dead when they ordered us to come here.’ He shrugged Maggie’s hand from his arm and staggered away, leaving her to stare after him in open-mouthed horror.
The houses on one side of the street were completely flattened, and injured people sat on the kerbs in a daze waiting for the ambulances to arrive. Others were wailing and digging at the rubble with their bare hands as they frantically searched for loved ones.
‘Come on, love.’ Jo’s voice brought Maggie out of her trance-like state. ‘Let’s try an’ get back home. Happen everything will be fine there. There’s nothing we can do here.’
‘Don’t get goin’ near the centre,’
a man who was standing nearby warned. ‘The whole place is like an inferno an’ the trams are destroyed. If you’ve far to go you’d be best to wait here for help.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I have to go. Me mam an’ me little girl will be worried sick about us.’ So saying she set off at such a pace that Jo had to almost run to keep up with her. As they turned from one street into another, Maggie tried to close her eyes to the horrific sights. Bodies were being carried from the ruins of homes and laid on the pavement. The clamour of ambulance bells, fire engines and children crying were ringing in her ears, but she dared not stop to offer help. She had to get home to her mam and Lucy - to some sort of normality.
The journey took almost twice as long as it should have, for the pavements were strewn with bricks and rubble. More than once she stumbled, and soon her hands and knees were cut and bruised, but Maggie didn’t feel a thing. The overpowering need to see her family safe and sound seemed to somehow block out all other sensations.
Jo stumbled along behind her as a feeling of foreboding settled around her heart. The nearer they got to their destination, the more the feeling grew, for there seemed to be no let-up in the devastation anywhere along the way. Whole streets had fallen prey to the air raid. Only a day before they had been neat rows of terraced houses, now they resembled nothing more than a demolition site.
At last they turned the corner into Clay Lane and only then did Maggie stop as her hand flew to her mouth. The houses on the side of the street where her mother lived were still standing, though the glass had been blown from the windows. But on her side of the street there was nothing but smouldering piles of bricks and rubbish.
‘Nooooooooo!’ The sound that issued from her mouth was so heart-wrenching that Jo would hear it in her worst nightmares for the rest of her life. She reached out to try and touch Maggie, but her friend was running like the wind in the direction of where her house had stood.
Troops were frantically digging through the rubble as she approached, and one of them stepped forward and tried to prevent her from going any further. She fought him off like a wildcat, her eyes standing out from her strained face.
‘This is my house,’ she gasped as she struggled in his arms. ‘My baby an’ me mam . . . they’re in the shelter out the back. I’ve got to get to them.’
The soldier hastily barked an order at a young lad, who immediately began to scramble across the bricks towards the place where the yard would have been. Maggie could just make out the roof of the shelter and she began to pray as she had never prayed before as she watched him slipping and sliding across the bricks. Eventually he disappeared behind the pile of rubble that was all that was left of her home and time stood still as she waited for him to reappear.
After what seemed an eternity she saw him clambering towards them again and she held her breath. As he slid down the slope in front of them he called out: ‘The shelter’s still intact - but there’s no one in there.’
‘Oh, my dear God.’ Maggie’s eyes began to sweep back and forwards across the rubble. ‘I told her to use the shelter. I told her!’
Jo, traumatised by the scene, and by all the raw memories of her own tragedy, had begun to cry as she realised what had happened. Ellen had refused to use the shelter since the night Maggie’s father had died, and it appeared that last night had been no exception. Which meant . . . Ellen and Lucy were somewhere beneath that wicked-looking pile of bricks.
Like someone possessed, Maggie sprang forward and began to dig amongst the rubble with her bare hands. Seeing that there would be no stopping her, the soldier joined his efforts to hers as Jo looked on in horrified fascination.
Twenty minutes later, Mrs Massey appeared from one of the houses that was still standing across the street and hurried over to them.
‘Maggie, for the love of God come away,’ she implored the young woman, as tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Come on over to Gwen’s with me. There’s no gas or electric but she’s set the kettle on the fire so you can get somethin’ warm inside yer.’
Oblivious to everything but the need to find her family, Maggie worked on as Mrs Massey eyed her with consternation. Stepping closer, she tried again. ‘Please, love. There’s nothing you can do here. Leave it to the troops. They’ll come and tell you if they find anything.’ She placed her hand on Maggie’s arm and tried to draw her away but Maggie rounded on her so furiously that it was all Mrs Massey could do to stay on her feet.
‘Get off me - do yer hear?’
Jo steadied the woman as she stared at Maggie in shock.
‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Jo defended her.
‘I know that, love, an’ me heart is breakin’ for her,’ Mrs Massey replied as she took a step back. ‘May God help her through the trials that lie ahead.’ Seeing that Jo looked dead on her feet, she gently placed an arm around her waist.
‘Come on pet. You look like you could do with a good strong cuppa.’
Jo looked towards Maggie and opened her mouth to refuse, but Mrs Massey was having none of it. ‘There’s nothin’ you can do to help her by stayin’ here. This is somethin’ she has to go through alone, more’s the pity.’
With dragging steps, Jo followed the kindly woman across the street.
Within no time at all, the unrelenting drizzle had soaked Maggie to the skin and her hands were raw and bleeding, but still she worked on side-by-side with the troops.
Later in the morning, Ministry of Information vans began to slowly tour the city telling the people who had become homeless where to obtain food and shelter. Canteens sprang up, and slowly the dispirited souls who had nothing but the clothes they stood up in could be seen trooping towards them.
Maggie ignored the loudspeakers as she worked diligently on. She would find them; she had to. Perhaps her mam had had the sense to shelter under a table or something? In her mind’s eye she could see Lucy leaping towards her unhurt when they finally freed her from her prison; could feel her little arms about her neck, and smell that sweet baby scent that was hers and hers alone. Maggie would scold her mother for not using the shelter then embrace her and promise to never, ever leave her alone again.
The picture in her mind drove her relentlessly on, even when the troops stopped occasionally for a well-earned cup of tea supplied by one of the neighbours who was still fortunate enough to have a home.
Just before lunchtime, she found the photograph of the twins that had stood in pride of place on the mantelpiece. The frame and the glass were broken but their smiling faces spurred her on as she tucked the photo into the pocket of her ruined coat. Just a few more feet to go and they would reach the solid oak table that had stood in the centre of the room.
The force of the blast that had rocked the house had sent the bedroom furniture crashing into the kitchen below. The men had thrown what remained of it into the street and now they were unearthing kitchenware. It was at this point that Mr Massey appeared. He was still wearing his tin hat and looked drained and tired, but nevertheless he set to with a will and added his efforts to theirs.
Maggie flashed him a brief grateful smile before turning her attention back to the task at hand.
Suddenly a shout went up and a silence settled as the men all looked towards it. Mrs Massey and Jo had just appeared with yet more trays of tea in their hands and they hurried across the road just in time to see one of the troops stand with a little doll in his hand.
‘Over here!’
Time seemed to stand still as Maggie felt the world sway. On hands and knees, she crawled across the debris towards him but once she was close he looked away from her with tears streaming down his soot-blackened cheeks.
With a feeling of dread she looked down and there they were. Lucy wrapped tight in her grandma’s arms on what had once been the floor of her kitchen.
Lucy had learned to crawl on that floor. She had taken her first steps across it. She had played with her dollies on it for countless hours - but she would never play on it again, for at a glance Maggie kne
w that both Lucy and her mother were dead.
She could feel a scream building in her throat, but somehow it seemed to lodge there though it echoed in her head, far louder than any of the bombs she had heard during the night before.
Somehow she managed to gently disentangle her child from her mother’s arms and as the men looked soundlessly on she sank onto the debris and began to tenderly rock her to and fro as she crooned her favourite lullaby.
‘Rockabye, baby, on the tree-top.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
And down will come baby, cradle and all . . .
A hush fell on the people assembled there, and then they all bent their heads and openly wept as the sweet strains of the lullaby floated on the air.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eric rapped sharply on the door and was rewarded seconds later when it inched open and Mrs Evans’s face appeared.
‘Why, Mr Sinclair. Come away in.’ It was impossible to keep the surprise from her voice as she stood aside for him to pass her.
Once in the immaculate little kitchen he removed his cap, acutely aware of her eyes on the scars on his face. Irritation laced his voice as he explained, ‘I thought I ought to come and see you. Have you had the wireless on this morning?’
She shook her head. ‘Indeed, I haven’t had a moment to listen to it. Should I have?’ As she spoke she ushered him towards the table and uncomfortably he sank down onto one of the chairs.
‘It seems that Coventry, where the twins come from, was heavily blitzed last night. According to the papers, the raid caused utter devastation. There are hundreds dead and injured, by all accounts, and the city centre is in ruins, including the Cathedral. Three-quarters of the city’s factories were destroyed and thousands have been made homeless.’
When she stared at him uncomprehendingly, he went on, ‘It seems that Swanshill, which is where the twins lived, was badly bombed too.’
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