by Sarah Waters
The streets were deserted, and lightly fogged. In raids, like this, Pimlico had an odd sort of haunted feel—the feel of having until recently swarmed with lives, which had all been violently extinguished or chased off. And when the guns stopped, the atmosphere could be even weirder. Kay and Mickey had once or twice walked along the edge of the river after their shift was finished. The place was uncanny: quieter, in its way, than the countryside would have been; and the view down the Thames, to Westminster, was all of humped, irregular masses—as if the war had stripped London back, made a series of villages of it, each of them defending itself against unknown forces, darkly and alone.
They arrived at the top of St George’s Drive and found a man—a Police Reserve—looking out for them, waiting to direct them to the site. Kay raised her hand to him, and wound down her window; he ran over to the van—ran lumpishly, because of the weight of his uniform, his hat, the canvas bag that was strapped to his chest and swung as he moved. ‘Around to the left,’ he said. ‘You’ll see it all right. Keep well out, though, because of glass.’
He ran off, then, to flag down Partridge and say the same thing to her.
Kay went on more cautiously. As soon as she turned into Hugh Street there began to come, as she knew there would, specks and smuts upon the windscreen of the van: dust, from pulverised brick and stone, plaster and wood. The light from her headlamps—which was poor enough, because the lamps were dimmed—seemed to thicken, to cloud and swirl, like stout settling down in a glass. She leant forward, trying to see, driving more and more slowly, hearing the crunch and snap of things beneath her wheels; afraid for the tyres. Then she made out another faint light, fifty yards ahead: the beam from the torch of an ARP man. He slightly raised it, hearing her come. She parked the van, and Partridge drew up behind her.
The warden came over, taking off his hat, wiping beneath it with a handkerchief, then blowing his nose. Behind him was a line of houses, dark against the almost-dark of the sky. Peering through the swirling dust, Kay could see now that one of the houses had been almost demolished, its front compressed, reduced to rubble and beams, as if under the carelessly placed boot of a roving giant.
‘What was it?’ she asked the warden as she and Mickey got out. ‘HE?’
He was putting his hat back on, and nodded. ‘Hundred pounder at least.’ He helped them get blankets, bandages, and a stretcher from the back of the van, then began to lead them over the rubble, shining his torch about as he went.
‘This place caught all of it,’ he said. ‘Three flats. The top and the middle we think were empty. But the people from the other were all at home—had been in their shelter and were just coming out again, if you can believe it. Thank God they never made it to the house! The man’s pretty cut about with glass from one of the windows. The others were all more or less knocked flying, you’ll be able to tell how badly. One old lady’s got the worst of it: she’s the one I think you’ll need the stretcher for. I told them all to keep in the garden till you arrived. They ought to have a doctor look at them, really; but Control says the doctor’s car’s been caught in a blast—’
He lost his footing, then righted himself and went on without speaking. Partridge was coughing because of the dust. Mickey was rubbing grit from her eyes. The chaos was extraordinary. Every time Kay put down her feet, things cracked beneath them, or wrapped themselves around her ankles: broken window-glass mixed up with broken mirrors, crockery, chairs and tables, curtains, carpets, feathers from a cushion or a bed, great splinters of wood. The wood surprised Kay, even now: in the days before the war she’d imagined that houses were made more or less solidly, of stone—like the last Little Pig’s, in the fairy tale. What amazed her, too, was the smallness of the piles of dirt and rubble to which even large buildings could be reduced. This house had had three intact floors to it, an hour before; the heap of debris its front had become was no more than six or seven feet high. She supposed that houses, after all—like the lives that were lived in them—were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, that counted, rather than the bricks.
The rear of the house, however, was more or less intact. They went through a creaking passageway and emerged, bizarrely, into a kitchen, still with cups and plates on its shelves and pictures on its walls, its electric light burning and its black-out curtain up. But part of the ceiling had come down, and streams of dust were tumbling from cracks in the plaster behind; beams were still falling, the warden said, and the place was expected to collapse.
He took them out to the little garden, then went back through the house to the street, to check on the neighbours. Kay put up the brim of her hat. It was hard to see, through the darkness, but she made out the figure of a man, sitting on a step with his hands at his head; and a woman, lying flat and very still on a blanket or rug, with another woman beside her, perhaps chafing her hands. A girl behind them was going dazedly about. A second girl was sitting in the open doorway of a shelter. She had a whimpering, yelping thing in her arms—Kay took it at first to be an injured baby. Then it wriggled and gave a high-pitched bark, and she saw that it was a dog.
The dust was still swirling, making everyone cough. There was that queer, disorientating atmosphere that Kay had always noticed at sites like this. The air felt charged, as if with a rapidly beating pulse—as if still ringing, physically vibrating—as if the atoms that made up the house, the garden, the people themselves, had been jolted out of their moorings and were still in the process of settling back. Kay was aware, too, of the building behind her, threatening its collapse. She went very quickly from person to person, tucking blankets over their shoulders, and shining her torch, looking into their faces.
Then, ‘Right,’ she said, straightening up. One of the girls, she thought, might have a broken leg or ankle; she sent Partridge to look at her. Mickey went to the man on the step. Kay herself went back to the woman who was lying on the rug. She was very elderly, and had taken some sort of blow to the chest. When Kay knelt beside her and felt for her heart, she let out a moan.
‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’ asked the other woman, loudly. She was shivering, and her long greyish hair was wild about her shoulders; probably she’d had it in a plait or a bun and the blast had ripped it free. ‘She hasn’t said a word since she lay down. She’s seventy-six. It’s all on account of her we were out here at all. We’d been sitting in there’—she gestured to the shelter—‘as good as gold, just playing cards and listening to the wireless. Then she said she wanted the lavatory. I brought her out, and the dog came tearing out behind us. Then the girls started crying, and then he comes out’—she meant her husband—‘with no more sense than to start running round the garden, in the black-out, like a fool. And then—honest to God, miss, it was like the end of the world had come.’ She clutched the blanket, still shivering. Now that she’d started talking, she couldn’t stop. ‘Here’s his mother,’ she went on, in the same loud, chattering, complaining way, ‘and here’s me, and the girls, with God knows how many broken bones between us. And what about the house? I think the roof’s come off, hasn’t it? The warden won’t say a word, wouldn’t let us back into the kitchen, even. I’m afraid to go and look.’ She put a jumping hand on Kay’s arm. ‘Can you tell me, miss? Are the ceilings down?’
None of them had seen the front of the house yet; from the back, and in the darkness, it looked almost untouched. Kay had been moving her hands quickly over the elderly lady, checking her arms and legs. She said now, without looking up, ‘I’m afraid there’s rather a lot of damage—’
‘What?’ said the woman. She was deaf, from the blast.
‘I’m afraid it’s hard to say, in the dark,’ said Kay, more clearly. She was concentrating on what she was doing. She thought she’d been able to feel the jut of broken ribs. She reached for her bag and brought out bandages, and began, as swiftly as she could, to bind the lady up.
‘It’s all on account of her, you know—’ the woman started again.
‘Help me with this, i
f you can!’ Kay shouted, to distract her.
Mickey, meanwhile, had been examining the man. His face had seemed black to Kay, at first; she’d imagined it covered with earth or soot. Once she’d shone her torch on it, however, the black had become brilliant red. His arms and chest were the same, and when she’d moved the light over him it had sent back dainty little glints. He had shards of glass sticking out of him. Mickey was trying to get out the worst before bandaging him up. He was wincing as she did it, and moving his head as if blind. His eyes were half closed, stuck together with thickening blood.
He must have felt Mickey hesitating. ‘Is it bad?’ Kay heard him ask.
‘It’s not so bad,’ answered Mickey. ‘It’s made a bit of a hedgehog of you, that’s all. Now, don’t try and speak. We’ve got to stop up those holes. You’ll never be able to drink a pint again, otherwise; it’ll all come sprinkling out.’
He wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear. ‘How’s Mother?’ he said, over the end of her words. He called hoarsely to Kay. ‘That’s my mother.’
‘Do try and not speak,’ said Mickey again. ‘Your mother’s all right.’
‘How are the girls?’
‘The girls as well.’
Then the dust caught in his throat. Mickey held his head so that he could cough. Kay imagined his cuts reopening as he shuddered and jerked, or the glass that was still in him moving in deeper…She was aware, too, of the buzz of planes, still sounding monotonously overhead. And once there came the slithering, splintering sound of a falling roof, from a street nearby. She worked more quickly. ‘OK, Partridge?’ she called, as she tied off the bandage. ‘How much longer?’
‘Nearly there.’
‘And you, Mickey?’
‘We’ll be ready when you are.’
‘Right.’ Kay unfolded the stretcher she’d brought from the van. The warden reappeared as she was doing it; he helped her lift the lady on and tuck the blanket around her.
‘Which way can we take her?’ Kay asked him, when she was in place. ‘Is there a way to the street through the garden?’
The warden shook his head. ‘Not this garden. We’ll have to go back through the house.’
‘Through the house? Hell. We’d better go right now. Ready to lift? OK. One, two—’
As she felt herself rise, the old lady opened her eyes at last and looked about her in amazement. She said in a whisper, ‘What you doing?’
Kay felt for a firmer grip on the arms of the stretcher. ‘We’re taking you to hospital. You’ve hurt your ribs. But you’ll be all right.’
‘To hospital?’
‘Can you lie still for us? It won’t take long, I promise. We must just get you out to the ambulance.’ Kay spoke as she might to a friend—to Mickey, say. She had heard policemen and nurses address injured people as though they were idiots: ‘All right, dearie.’ ‘Now then, Ma.’ ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
‘Here’s your son coming, too,’ she said, when she saw Mickey helping up the bleeding man. ‘Partridge, are you ready with the girls? OK, everybody. Come now. Quickly, but softly.’
They trooped raggedly into the kitchen. The light made them wince and cover their eyes. And then the girls, of course, saw how filthy and cut about they were—and how dreadful their father looked, with the blood and the bandages on his face. They began to cry.
‘Never mind,’ their mother said, shaken. She was still shivering. ‘Never mind. We’re all right, aren’t we? Phyllis, turn the key in the door. Bring the tea, Eileen. And cover up that tin of corned beef! Just to be on the safe—Oh, my Lord!’ She had reached the door that led from the kitchen and seen the chaos that lay beyond. She couldn’t believe it. She stood with her hand at her heart. ‘Oh, my good Lord!’
The girls, behind her, let out screams.
Kay’s feet slid about again, as she and the warden tried to manoeuvre the elderly lady over the rubble. Every step they took sent up a new cloud of dust, feathers, soot. But finally they got her to the edge of what was once the front garden. They found a couple of schoolboys swinging from the handles of the ambulance doors.
‘Need any help, mister?’ the boys said, to the warden or, perhaps, to Kay.
The warden answered them. ‘No, we don’t. You clear off back to your shelter, before you get your bloody heads blown off. Where are your mothers? What do you think those planes are, bumble-bees?’
‘Is that old Mrs Parry? Is she dead?’
‘Get out of it!’
‘Oh, my Lord!’ the woman was still saying, as she made her way through the wreckage of her flat.
The ambulance had four metal bunks, of the kind used in shelters. There was a dim light, but no form of heating, so Kay tucked another blanket around the elderly lady and fastened her into the bunk with a canvas belt, then put one of the hot-water bottles under her knees, and another next to her feet. Mickey brought the man. His eyes were gummed shut completely now, with blood and dust; she had to guide his arms and his legs as if he’d forgotten how to use them. His wife came after. She had started picking little things up: a single tartan slipper, a plant in a pot. ‘How can I leave all this?’ she said, when the warden tried to get her into Partridge’s car so that she could be driven to the First Aid Post. She’d started crying. ‘Won’t you run and get Mr Grant from out of his house across the road? He’ll watch our things. Will you, Mr Andrews?’
‘We can’t let you bring it,’ Partridge was saying, meanwhile, to the girl with the dog.
‘I don’t want to go, then!’ cried the girl. She gripped the dog harder, making it squeal. Then she looked down at her feet. ‘Oh, Mum, here’s that picture you had from Uncle Patrick, all smashed to bits!’
‘Let her take the dog, Partridge,’ said Kay. ‘What harm can it do?’
But it was Partridge’s decision, not hers; and there wasn’t time, anyway, to stay and debate it. She left them all arguing, just nodding to Mickey in the back of the van, closing the doors, then running round to the front and wiping off the windscreen: for in the twenty minutes or so that the vehicle had been sitting idle in the street it had got thickly coated with dust. She got in the cabin and started the engine.
‘Andrews,’ she called to the warden, as she began to turn, ‘watch my tyres for me, will you?’ A puncture now would be disastrous. He moved away from the woman and the girls and shone his torch about her wheels, then raised his hand to her.
She went cautiously at first, speeding up when the road grew clearer. They were supposed to keep to a steady sixteen miles per hour when carrying casualties—but she thought of the elderly lady with her broken ribs, and the bleeding man, and drove faster. Now and then, too, she’d lean closer to the windscreen to peer up into the sky. The drone of aeroplanes was still heavy, the thumping of the guns still loud, but the sound of the engine was loud, too, and she couldn’t tell if she was driving into the worst of the action or leaving it behind.
In the wall of the cabin behind her head was a sliding glass panel: she was aware of Mickey, moving about in the back of the van. Keeping her eyes on the road ahead, she turned slightly and called, ‘All right?’
‘Just about,’ answered Mickey. ‘The old lady’s feeling the bumps, though.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Kay.
She peered at the surface of the road, trying desperately to avoid the breaks and potholes, until her eyes began to smart.
When she pulled up at the stretcher entrance of the hospital on the Horseferry Road, the reception nurse came running out to greet her, ducking her head as if it were raining. The ward sister, however, followed at an almost leisurely pace, apparently quite unperturbed by the flashes and the bangs.
‘Can’t keep away from us, Langrish?’ she said, over a new burst of gunfire. ‘Well, and what do you have for us this time?’
She was large-bosomed and fair, and the wings of her cap curled into points: they always struck Kay as being like the Viking horns worn by certain opera singers. She sent for a trolley and a wheeled
chair, chivvying the porters as though they were geese. And when the man who’d been cut about by glass came dazedly out of the van, she chivvied him, too: ‘Quickly, please!’
Kay and Mickey lifted out the elderly lady and set her gently on the trolley. Mickey had pinned a label to her, saying where and when she’d been hurt. She was putting out her hand as if frightened, and Kay took hold of her fingers. ‘Don’t worry, now. You’ll be all right.’
Then they helped the man into the wheeled chair. He reached to pat Mickey’s arm, saying, ‘Thank you, son.’ He’d caught a glimpse of her at the start and had thought her a boy, all this time.
‘Poor bloke,’ she said, when she and Kay had got back in the van. She was trying to wipe the worst of his blood from her hands. ‘He’ll be scarred like anything, won’t he?’
Kay nodded. But the fact was, having handed the man and his mother over safely, she was already beginning to forget them. She was fixing her mind, instead, on her route back to Dolphin Square; and she was conscious, too, of the continuing row of aeroplanes and guns. She leant forward again, to peer at the sky. Mickey peered, too, and, after a minute, wound down her window and stuck out her head.
‘How’s it look?’ asked Kay.
‘Not very clever. Just a couple of planes, but they’re right overhead. They look like they’re going round in a circle.’
‘A circle with us in it?’
‘’Fraid so.’
Kay speeded up. Mickey’s tin helmet bounced against the frame of the window; she raised her hand to steady it. ‘The searchlight’s got him, now,’ she said. ‘Now they’ve lost him. Now—Whoops.’ She drew in her head, very quickly. ‘Here’s the guns again.’
Kay turned a corner, and looked up. She could make out the beam of a searchlight and, in it, the shining body of a plane. As she watched, a line of shells rose towards the aircraft, apparently in silence—for though she could hear and feel the pounding of the guns, it was hard, somehow, to attach that clamour to the string of darting lights, or to the little puffs of smoke produced when the lights were extinguished. Soon, anyway, she was distracted by falling shrapnel. It struck the roof and the bonnet of the van with a series of clatters—as if the bombers had brought their cutlery drawers with them, and were emptying them out.