Into the Storm

by Lisa Bingham

  When the door opened again, he quickly shut his lashes. The last thing he wanted was for Elizabeth to worry about him now. She’d had a long day, made longer by caring for him.

  She approached the bed—probably to check on whether or not he was sleeping. Instead, she opened his fist, pressing a sheaf of papers into his palm. Then, she slipped noiselessly from the room.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, he glanced down, not recognizing the import of what he held until his gaze slid to the handwriting. Handwriting that was more familiar to him than his own.

  Emotion and exhaustion and pain all rumbled together, welling up inside him with an equal measure of regret and shame.

  Sobs rose thick and strong in his chest, rough unmanly sobs that threatened to rip him asunder. But he could not stop them, could not tamp them down.

  He could only pray that someday soon he would have the opportunity to make amends.

  • • •

  London, England

  As the tragic news of the torpedoing of the S.S. City of Benares and the rescue of its few survivors trickled in, Susan felt as if she were a rubber band being pulled, pulled, pulled, in several directions until she feared she would snap.

  Somehow, in all of the confusion and grief, Susan had more than just her work demanding her attention. She’d also unwittingly become the “mother” of the home. Sara sank into a deep depression. When she wasn’t training for her new position with the Women’s Transport Corp, she spent most of her time curled up in bed, staring at the wallpaper as if it held the secrets of the ages. Phillip, on the other hand, had clearly taken leave of his senses. The moment he returned from school, he began drilling and marching with the rest of the Home Guard, sporting a broomstick on his shoulder as if it were a rifle and bayonet—all the while asserting that soon, soon, he would receive proper armaments and a woolen uniform.

  So it remained to Susan to keep a level head, see to it that food was kept in the larder and coal in the scuttle. She couldn’t let on that she’d lost her mind as well, reading and rereading Paul’s letters until they etched themselves onto her consciousness and she need only close her eyes to see the looping, spidery script. Worse yet, she’d begun to write back, explaining the tragedies which had befallen her family and the challenges she now faced. She didn’t allow herself to think of the gravity of her deceit—not just to Paul, but to her sister. Instead, she signed her letters with an “S”, then resolutely refused to think of the consequences. And to further seal her punishment, she forwarded the picture her father had taken of the two of them the night of the fancy dress party.

  Quickening her step, Susan glanced at her watch. If she hurried, she would have time to make herself a bite to eat before going back to work. Thankfully, the Meade Ironworks had been able to find a new location for their plant—one that was actually closer to home. It meant that she could still make her daily trips to intercept Paul’s letters, but give her ample time to check on things as well.

  Running the last few steps, she reached for her keys, but when she touched the latch, she discovered the door wasn’t locked. Frowning, she let herself in, her heart pounding, wondering if Sara had come home unexpectedly. Her stomach flip-flopped. What if she’d discovered one of Paul’s letters?

  But as the door swung wide, Susan found the mail on the runner where it had fallen from the slot. Seeing at a glance that there was nothing from Paul, Susan tiptoed forward.

  Noises were coming from the kitchen, low murmured voices. An odd smell hung in the air.

  Looking around her for a weapon, Susan grasped an umbrella from the stand. Holding it firmly in both hands like a cricket bat, she crept toward the kitchen. Rations were tight and lines were long. Had someone broken into the house to raid the larder?

  A floorboard creaked beneath her feet and the noises in the kitchen suddenly hushed. She heard whispers. Low whispers. Moving swiftly now, she burst through the kitchen door, the umbrella raised high above her head like a club.

  The click of a revolver being primed reached her ears at the same time the door slammed against the opposite wall and two male figures gaped at her wild-eyed, one of them sighting down the barrel of a gun.

  Susan screamed. Phillip squeaked. His companion, a boy about the same age, whirled and dodged out the back door, thundering through the garden to disappear over the back wall into the yard of their rear neighbor.

  Phillip quickly dropped the revolver, his hands shaking so badly he could scarcely unarm it.

  “Good Lord, Phillip! You could have shot me!” Susan shouted, her heart pounding a rough tattoo somewhere in the vicinity of her neck before plummeting to the tips of her toes. Then, her eyes widened as she took in the sight on the kitchen table.

  Bottles of all shapes, sizes, and hues had been lined up on newspapers. Most of them were filled with a noxious liquid, then tamped with corks while a half dozen still waited their turn. Empty square cans and jugs littered the floor. Susan caught only a few of the labels: kerosene, turpentine, wood alcohol…

  Her jaw dropped. “Are you trying to blow this house to kingdom come?”

  Phillip’s expression became mulish as he tucked the pistol into his waistband.

  “You’re being overly dramatic.”

  “Overly dramatic,” she repeated, her voice rising. “You leveled a pistol at me!”

  “I wouldn’t have shot you. I only have one bullet.”

  “It only takes one!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have wasted it on you,” he said, his voice dripping with scorn. “I merely meant to scare you.”

  Her knees were trembling so violently she sank onto a chair. “In that respect, you succeeded.” She waved an arm to the mess on the table. “What’s all this?”

  “Never you mind. It’s Home Guard business.”

  She gaped at him, the contents of the table, then back at her brother again. He stood with his arms folded tightly, daring her to make a comment.

  “What sort of…business?” she asked, the last word lingering scathingly on her tongue.

  “Protection.”

  “Protection?” Try as she might, she couldn’t manage more than to repeat his outrageous statements.

  “From tanks.”

  “Tanks.”

  “German tanks,” he added when it became clear she was too dull-witted to fathom his meaning. “The invasion is bound to happen soon enough and the Home Guard plans to meet the Germans with a fight. I’m doing my bit.”

  “By making…”

  “Petrol bombs.”

  Susan jumped to her feet. “No. No, no, no!” She jabbed her finger in the direction of the table. “You get rid of this…this…mess. Then you clean yourself up and march yourself over to whomever is in charge and tell them you’re underage and you will not be participating in this…in this fool’s enterprise!”

  Phillip stiffened. “No.”

  For several seconds, Susan was so stunned, she couldn’t speak. When she finally managed to find her tongue, she whispered, “What did you say?”

  “I said ‘no’!” he repeated more forcefully. “I will not clean up this ‘mess,’ as you call it, until I’m good and ready. Then, when I’m done, I’m going to store them under the floor in the tool shed with all of the others I’ve made.”

  “Others?” She was back to parroting him, but she couldn’t help herself. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No! No I haven’t lost my mind! I’ve lost my father and my mother and my baby brother—and little Margaret too! And it’s their fault!” he exclaimed, flinging an arm toward the window.

  Susan was torn. More than anything, she wanted to keep him safe. Her family was shrinking and she didn’t think she could survive another loss.

  But she couldn’t stop him from doing his part, no matter how much she might object or how much his involvement would add to her worry.

  Standing, she drew her brother close, holding him tightly as he wept, his heart seeming to break. He clutched at her with bo
th hands, crying with frustration and grief—and yes, from the weight of keeping his activities a secret from her.

  Finally, when his emotions had spent themselves and he stood trembling in her arms, she handed him a handkerchief.

  “Wait here,” she said, her own voice husky from unshed tears.

  Moving into the hall, she called the Ironworks, explaining to Mr. Meade that she was needed at home for a minor emergency.

  Dear, sweet Mr. Meade didn’t ask any questions. He simply stated, “Of course, Miss Blunt. We’ll muddle through without you, never you fear.”

  Taking the pin from her hat, Susan returned to the kitchen. Putting her hat and her pocketbook on the counter, she took one of her mother’s aprons from the hook on the door and slipped it over her head before tying the strings tightly around her waist.

  “Now. What exactly needs to be done?”

  • • •

  “So what did you do then?” RueAnn asked after Susan had related her encounter with Phillip’s Home Guard preparations.

  “What do you think I did? I put on Mum’s apron and helped him build the blasted bombs.”

  RueAnn snickered, trying to imagine pragmatic, no-nonsense Susan huddled over Molotov cocktails spread out over her kitchen table.

  “Where did you put them all?”

  They were working in the Tolliver’s garden, picking what ripened vegetables they could find to feed the Royal Engineers. As promised, the men had come back to RueAnn’s home time and time again to work on the Anderson—and they were nearly finished. Each visit, they brought a few items to augment a meal—cheese, a bit of bread, vegetables, and sometimes a precious tin of fruit.

  “They’re hidden beneath the floorboards of the toolshed for now, but I’ve made Phillip promise that they’ll be moved by the end of the week.”

  RueAnn grinned. “I don’t know whether I should feel safer since there’s an armory nearby or more terrified that the whole block could go up in flames.”

  Susan rolled her eyes. “If we take a direct hit, we’ll go up fast enough.”

  RueAnn offered a careless shrug. “If we take a direct hit, it won’t really matter.” She still found it difficult to believe that in only a few weeks of arriving in England, she’d not only become inured to the constant bombardment, but that she’d begun to joke about it.

  “It wouldn’t matter if we did have a bomb drop nearby. You’d be just fine in that Anderson,” Susan said, dropping radishes into a basket and pointing to where four Royal Engineers packed sod on top of the shelter they’d built. They’d since learned from Sara that the men were part of a new unit that specialized in disarming the unexploded bombs that littered London after each raid. The job was dangerous to the extreme. Yet, for some reason, the men found an outlet for their stresses by puttering in her back garden—although RueAnn thought the fact that a home-cooked meal and the presence of the unmarried Blunt twins might have something to do with it.

  Whatever the reason, the Anderson they’d built was a sight to behold. Long ago, RueAnn had realized that engineers had a different mindset from most folk, because they’d worried over drainage and water tables and tensile strength—and so many other things that escaped her completely. All she knew for sure was that her shelter was the wonder of the neighborhood. Moreover, she had two lodgers already, Captains Carr and Rigdon, two soldiers from the UXB unit, who would share the larger upper room of the house. A Mr. Peabody, who had seen the placard during his daily commute, was coming to look at the second room at the end of the week.

  Rather than disturb Charlie and Edna’s quarters for the moment, RueAnn had decided to test the arrangement for a month or two, before looking for more lodgers. In the meantime, she’d also begun taking in laundry for the men in the UXB unit and Louise had passed cards around to friends and neighbors announcing that RueAnn was available to take in sewing and mending as well.

  Not for the first time, RueAnn discovered that her upbringing, however difficult it might have been, had equipped her with a set of skills that allowed her to scrape by for the time being.

  “Have you heard anything from Matthew?” RueAnn asked as they gathered up their tools and headed toward the house.

  “No. And I’m really concerned. He’s always been good about writing.” She bit her lip. “I’ve been sending him a letter every week, but I still haven’t told him about Mum and the wee ones. I figured that if he was out there somewhere, hurt, or exhausted, the last thing I should do is worry him more.”

  RueAnn squeezed her hand. “Give it time.”

  Time. If only time could be the cure-all. RueAnn kept telling herself that soon things would right themselves, the bombardments would stop, Edna would recover, Charlie would return. But she wasn’t sure if she believed such platitudes any more.

  Time, she’d learned, wasn’t always on her side.

  • • •

  The Anderson Shelter was finally finished, and feeling the need for a ceremony to christen it as their second home, RueAnn had invited the Blunts and the men of the Royal Engineers to a special celebration.

  Slipping through the hedge with her brother and sister, Susan was pleased to see that Edna was also in attendance. The older woman grew a little stronger each day—enough so that she could sit for a few minutes in the ancient mobile chair that the men of UXB had liberated from who knew where.

  Standing just a little apart from the group, Susan’s gaze drifted again. She watched as her sister approached the Royal Engineers with an ease that she would never possess. Not for the first time, she felt a pang of envy.

  Why had God seen fit to make them so different? Why was Sara able to move around the yard like the Queen Mum while Susan stood rooted to the outskirts of the party like an interloper?

  Sadly, she realized that she’d only felt completely comfortable in the presence of one male. Paul Overdone. Her sister’s beau.

  Well, one of her beaux. Sara had a plethora of male friends—Bernard Bidiwell and most of the UXB engineers.

  A twinge of shame came swift on the heels of that thought. Sara wasn’t promiscuous, merely friendly. The men around her knew she saw them all as a herd of adopted big brothers. But that didn’t stop them from trying to change her mind.

  RueAnn approached with a wide grin.

  “You look so serious.”

  Susan shook her head, forcing a smile. “Merely woolgathering.”

  RueAnn nodded, turning to survey the group from Susan’s vantage point. Her head dipped in the direction of Susan’s twin.

  “Is Sara feeling all right?” she asked, handing Susan a mug of tea.

  “What do you mean?” Susan asked, folding her fingers around the warmth of the cup.

  “She looks pale.”

  Susan watched as her twin took a handkerchief from her belt and patted at her lips and brow. She took two quick breaths, before pasting a quick smile on her face. And for the first time, Susan had to admit that Sara’s carefree expression looked forced.

  The ever-present weight of responsibility that Susan wore like a leaden cloak grew heavier still. She had to admit that Sara had been preoccupied lately. Her work schedule had become so erratic, that Susan rarely knew when to expect her sister—which was odd in and of itself. Surely the WTC would be more structured than that.

  Even the Germans were keeping to a schedule. The RAF had begun to take such a toll on the German aircraft that, more and more, their raids were shifting to the evening hours. But as if to compensate for the lack of daylight raids, the ordinance they used became more deadly. Or perhaps, they’d simply improved their aim.

  These fresh new worries combined with those that already plagued her—Susan’s uncertainty about Matthew, Phillip’s madcap involvement with the Home Guard, and that unspeakable fear that came each time the sirens sounded and they all trudged to the public shelter, wondering what new horrors would befall London before morning.

  If it weren’t for Paul’s letters, Susan didn’t know how she would survive. Sh
e watched for them each day. Then, in the dark of the night, as bombs exploded around London and she hunkered in the dank, sweaty confines of the concrete bunker, more often than not, she ripped them open and devoured them, reading them again and again like an addict with a measure of opium.

  She could trace the path of his thoughts with each missive—the chatty letters before his leave in London, his concern when she hadn’t responded as she’d promised, and then, as if a hidden dam had been broken, the notes after she’d finally written to him in return. At that point, Paul’s letters changed, blossoming with sudden ardor.

  Love letters.

  The man had begun to write her love letters.

  “Susan, is something wrong?”

  Susan shook her head, damning the way that tears threatened to fall.

  “No, I’m…I’m just tired.”

  RueAnn nodded sympathetically. “What I wouldn’t give for a night, a single night of uninterrupted sleep.” She took Susan’s hand. “Now that the Anderson is finished, you won’t be going to the public shelters anymore.” Her eyes grew kind, knowing. “I appreciate all your help these past few weeks, and now it’s time for me to extend a bit of my own. The gap in the hedge goes both ways, you know. Edna ordered the largest shelter possible. I see no reason why our families shouldn’t share it.”

  “No, really, I—”

  “I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer,” RueAnn said firmly before moving back toward the kitchen for more tea.

  • • •

  It didn’t take long before the Anderson was put to use. Less than an hour after their party broke up and the Engineers began making their way toward the pubs for the evening, the shrill call of the air raid siren split the evening air.

  This time, instead of trying to hunker down in Edna’s bedroom, RueAnn and Susan lifted the woman into her mobile chair and pushed her out into the back garden, easily navigating the ramps the engineers had built for them, and rolling her into the shelter and from there transferring her onto one of the lower built-in bunks.

  For the first time since Edna’s stroke, RueAnn saw her settle into her pillow with something akin to relief rather than abject fear. And miraculously, long before the bombers actually arrived, she drifted into a heavy sleep.