‘Next month.’
‘Good for Huw. I’ve always liked him, he’s a fair policeman and a nice bloke. Are you pleased?’
‘For Myrtle, yes. Both of them really, they seem very happy,’ he added with a touch of bitterness.
‘Diana thinks a lot of Myrtle.’ Ronnie fell silent as he realised who he was talking to. He picked up his tea and carried it over to the table Wyn was sitting at. The canteen was so crowded and time so short, he couldn’t have sat at another one, even if he’d wanted to.
‘I never really knew Maud,’ Wyn said, as he stirred the grey-brown mess in his cup. ‘I saw her, of course. In fact I picked her up off the floor once when she fainted, but that’s not really knowing someone. Was she like Diana?’
‘In some ways,’ Ronnie agreed. ‘She was incredibly gentle, kind and considerate, but once she’d made up her mind to do something, nothing would shift her: argument, logic, bribery and I suspect, though I wouldn’t know, blows.’
‘A bit like Diana. Once she makes a promise, she never breaks it.’
‘No matter how much it costs her?’ Ronnie raised his eyes to Wyn’s to let him know he understood exactly what he was telling him.
‘It’s not the cost to her, but the cost to other people she’s concerned about.’
‘That’s what I was afraid of.’ Ronnie pushed his cup aside. The tea suddenly tasted even worse than usual.
The whistle blew again, and they began filing out. Ronnie wondered if it was worth the effort of moving. He decided he’d probably feel more refreshed if he lay down on the floor next to the machine and did without the tea. Perhaps he should try it next time.
He glanced at the clock. They were heading into the final three-hour stint of the shift. The assembly lines had already started up. Three hours and he’d be leaving, four and he’d be in the White Hart, six and he’d be home. Drink, eat, sleep, get up and repeat the day again … and again … and again.
Nothing to look forward to except chance meetings with Diana like the one in Bethan’s house. Meetings that caused more pain than pleasure.
Jane picked up a fuse, and a detonator. Just before slotting it in she called out for a supervisor.
‘This doesn’t look right.’
Myrtle took it from her. ‘Well spotted. I’ll put it to one side.’ Holding it out at arm’s length she walked down towards the X-ray machine at the end of the line.
Jane picked up the next fuse and another detonator from her box. As she slotted the detonator into the fuse, the world burst before her eyes, erupting in a cascade of fire, smoke and blinding white light.
Everything fell quiet, too quiet, just as it had when the bomb had fallen on their house in London. A merciful darkness blacked out everything as she was flung headlong into nothingness.
Chapter Twenty-three
One minute Ronnie was lifting the finished casing from the machine, the next he was thrown against the press as an explosion rocked the ground under him. Landing flat on his face he cowered as a ball of flame roared overhead, scorching the air and singeing the back of his overall. He closed his eyes tightly, waiting for it to either recede or roast him. He didn’t have to wait long. A gust of freezing air followed. Opening his eyes he saw that half the outside wall of the factory was engulfed in flames; the other half was no longer standing.
‘What the hell happened?’ He looked to Wyn, but he couldn’t even hear the sound of his own voice above the crashes, bangs and sirens screeching into action.
‘A minor incident.’ Wyn had lip-read the question. He had been in the factory longer than Ronnie, and had become accustomed to the management’s euphemisms.
‘Mother of God! The whole damn place is coming down on top of us!’ Ronnie rolled on to his back and pushed himself under the inadequate shelter of the press he and Wyn had been operating. The whole roof was swaying, rocking from side to side like a cradle. Kicking Wyn further beneath the machine, he covered his head with his hands as shards of sheet metal splintered apart and hurtled downwards.
They remained there, huddled together while all around pieces of what had been the factory hailed down, blanketing the fires.
After an eternity Ronnie gradually became aware of people screaming. He looked out from under the machine. The wall that had separated their section from the assembly lines had gone. In its place was a vast dome of bent and twisted metal. A man stood next to it, shouting for help to get the bins of ammunition and shells out of the flame path.
As he rose hesitantly, a second explosion knocked him to his knees. He couldn’t hear himself think. He had a sudden, overwhelming craving for peace and quiet without even being aware of the continuous, ear-shattering wail of the alarms. Everywhere he looked he saw bodies, flung into untidy heaps of lolling arms, legs and heads, like broken mannequins.
Wyn crawled out behind him and hauled him to his feet. They looked at one another. It was useless to even try to talk, but they both knew what needed to be done. Slowly, carefully, they picked their way across the floor, stamping out sparks with their boots until the rubber melted and burnt the soles of their feet. They headed in the same direction. Towards the bins of gunpowder and cordite that stood miraculously intact next to the roof that had caved in on the assembly lines.
Someone grabbed his arm and pointed to the right, where the ramp to the canteen stood unscathed.
‘Go out and tell them to shut off those bloody sirens,’ Ronnie shouted illogically into the man’s ear, before continuing resolutely towards the bins.
He stumbled, looked down and saw a girl lying at his feet. Picking her up, he carried her past the bins and handed her to a fireman who was standing at the head of a line of water bucket carriers. Flames licked at his feet and around a bin of finished fuses. He kicked the bin, rolling it out of the fire path as he stumbled into the loading bay.
Bodies and people were everywhere. Girls sat, slumped with their backs to the wall, their overalls covered in smoke smuts and powder burns, nursing scorched fingers and faces while the factory nurse and emergency first-aiders concentrated on the more serious cases laid out on blankets hastily thrown on to the tarmac.
Wyn was ahead of him, handing over a girl he’d helped outside to a first-aider. The yard was awash with battered, blackened corpse-like figures. He didn’t know where to start. Another team of factory firemen ran past with a hose.
‘Either of you hurt?’ the deputy manager asked. ‘No? Good, over there with the others.’ He pointed to the wall.
‘I’m going back in to see if anyone’s alive beneath that roof.’ Wyn turned round.
‘Don’t be a fool man. Leave it to the professionals.’
‘My sister worked there.’
‘I forbid you. You are not allowed -’
‘The hell we aren’t!’ Ronnie bellowed. ‘You can’t just leave them.’
‘Help is coming …’
Ronnie didn’t waste any time pointing out that it might come too late. As Wyn headed back towards the smoking ruins of the factory, he followed.
Maggie recognised Wyn and Ronnie as she sat leaning against the wall, nursing her bloody and battered hands and shivering with cold. She watched as they worked steadily, side by side, picking up the injured, handing them out to the firemen behind them, pushing aside twisted girders and bins of explosive material.
‘I never took those two to be heroes.’ Sally slumped beside her.
‘You all right?’ Maggie moved her head carefully. Her neck hurt and she was too shocked to explore the pain.
‘Do I look it?’
‘You’ve lost your eyelashes, but they’ll grow back. You seen any of the others?’
Sally shook her head and looked at the mess around her. ‘I’d give anything for a fag and a beer.’
‘Have to wait until the end of the shift.’ Maggie tried to smile but it hurt her face. ‘The way it’s looking now, we’ll be doing overtime.’
Dr John called Bethan minutes after he received the message that all the med
ical personnel and able-bodied men who could be spared from the town were to go to the munitions factory immediately.
She threw on her uniform, kissed her children goodbye, said a hurried farewell to Maisie and Liza, warned Alma not to have her baby before she got back, jumped in Andrew’s car and raced down the hill. Turning right up Graig Avenue she did an emergency stop outside her father’s house. Leaving the engine running, she dashed up the steps and opened the door, shouting for Haydn.
‘Sis?’ He appeared in the kitchen doorway with Anne in his arms.
‘Is Phyllis in?’
‘Here, Beth. What’s wrong?’
‘There’s been an explosion in the factory.’
‘Jane!’
‘I don’t know any details, but they’re asking for all the help they can get.’
She turned and ran down the steps. Haydn handed Anne over to Phyllis, grabbed his coat and dashed out after her.
He had no time to shut the passenger door before she pressed the accelerator to the floor. Slamming the car into reverse, she careered backwards, turning into Illtyd Street before driving out of the Avenue on to Llantrisant Road.
‘What happened?’
‘Explosion, dead and injured. That’s all Dr John told me.’
‘No numbers?’
‘No nothing. And even when they know, they won’t be broadcasting them. Accidents like this don’t happen. They’re bad for morale.’
‘I thought that maxim only applied to military disasters.’
‘You seen any civilians since this war started? Because I haven’t. Sometimes it feels as though the whole country is fighting. Men, women and children.’
They saw the smoke long before they reached the factory. The police had barricaded the road and were waving through all the ambulances, and stopping the cars. Bethan tore off her nurse’s veil, opened the window and held it aloft.
‘Nurse John, straight through. Follow the ambulance.’
She recognised the sergeant from the police station.
‘How bad is it?’
‘You’ll see,’ he answered, tight-lipped as he signalled the car behind her to stop.
‘Oh dear God!’ Haydn stared at the rows of blanket covered corpses laid out on the concrete apron of the loading bay.
‘Find out who’s in charge, and ask what you can do to help.’ Bethan dived out of the car and looked for Dr John. He was injecting morphine into a patient so badly burned, Bethan couldn’t determine age or sex.
‘Twenty dead so far, but it’s still burning and there’s a risk of explosion. Initial estimates are sixty missing, but some of them could be working to clear the explosives from the area. The most severely injured are in this line. There’s morphine vials in my bag for the burns victims. Don’t send any to the hospital without it, or they might not survive the trip. Check for damaged limbs and severed arteries. I’ve had to amputate two arms already.’
Bethan turned to see Haydn behind her.
‘I can’t find anyone.’
She knew that by ‘anyone’ he meant Jane, not whoever was in charge, but this was no time to look for individuals. ‘Huw’s behind you. Ask him.’ She was already cutting the sleeve of a smouldering overall from a young girl. He heard her murmuring soft words of comfort as he walked away.
‘Huw?’ Haydn had to touch his arm to gain his attention. ‘What can I do?’
‘Do?’ Huw asked blankly. ‘Do you think I’d be handing out tea if there was something I could do? The roof’s caved in over the area that housed the assembly line. We know there’s at least ten girls trapped beneath it, what we don’t know is whether they’re alive or dead. Ronnie and Wyn have been trying to get them out since I’ve been here. The firemen are doing what they can, but they won’t let anyone else get near because the whole area’s riddled with bins of explosives that could go up at any moment.’
‘Jane …’
‘She worked with Myrtle, close to Jenny Powell. They think, although they’re not sure, that they are the ones trapped under there.’
‘Can you shift it?’ Wyn gasped, sliding the torch they had borrowed from a fireman ahead of him, as he slithered sideways on his back. He stopped to push a girder beneath the edge of the section of roof that covered them in the hope that it would raise it higher above their heads.
‘This is worse than trying to throw a fat woman out of bed, when you’ve a ton of eiderdowns pressing down on you.’ Ronnie summoned all his strength to push up a section of roof so he could see what lay beyond it.
‘You’ve had experience of pushing fat women out of bed?’
‘Only in my dreams.’ Ronnie had no difficulty in hearing Wyn’s voice. After the din of factory sirens, ambulance bells, and screams in the loading bay, it was miraculously quiet beneath the roof. He tried not to think about the bins of explosives and the fires that still smouldered on what was left of the factory floor. His face contorted as he bared his teeth and steeled his muscles to make one last superhuman effort. ‘It’s no good. I can’t shift the bloody thing.’ He reached up, hitting his elbow painfully on the metal ceiling that hung a scant three inches from his face, as he wiped away the sweat that was pouring from his forehead.
‘Let me try to get round it.’ Wyn slipped his arm into a narrow gap between a bench and a girder. ‘I can feel something. An overall, an arm. It’s warm.’ Bracing his feet against the bench, Wyn pushed upwards, inching his way over the thick carpet of shattered shell casings and splintered metal that surrounded the top of the bench. ‘Hand me the torch.’ He stretched his arm out behind him. Ronnie pushed it in his direction. ‘I can see Jenny’s face. Jenny?’ he called loudly. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Is she injured?’
‘Not that I can see, but I can only see her arm and head. She’s breathing, and there’s another girl behind her.’
‘Who is it?’
‘God only knows, I can’t see a bloody thing beyond the torch beam, and I can’t move an inch.’
‘Do you think the fire’s on top of us? I feel as though I’m being roasted for Sunday dinner.’
‘Go back and get a couple more metal bars. If we can prop this section up and get the firemen behind us to form a chain, we might be able to get at the girls and hand them out from one to the other. What do you think?’
‘It’s better than my idea.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Getting everyone out there who can walk to play sardines under here.’
‘Are you ever serious?’
‘On the rare occasions I’ve tried, I’ve gone mad.’
‘If you’re going, go.’
‘Try singing to whoever’s trapped. That should wake them up.’ Ronnie crawled out backwards from beneath the roof. As he climbed to his feet he saw that he hadn’t been far wrong about the cooking. A pile of overalls had blown on to the roof from the tailor’s shop and were smoking in a foul-smelling heap of melting rubber buttons and smouldering wool.
‘Any luck?’ a fireman asked.
He explained what they intended to do. A few minutes later, the fireman and three of his colleagues came up with a couple of almost undamaged girders and an extra torch.
Taking a deep breath, Ronnie lay on his stomach and bulldozed his way back beneath the roof. The firemen pushed one of the girders alongside him, waiting for his confirming shout that he’d guided it, before lending it any more momentum. It took him ten minutes to reach the spot where he’d left Wyn. He flashed his torch and called out.
‘I’m behind the bench. Don’t touch it whatever you do. It’s the only thing that’s stopping the roof from crashing down on the girls. Go to the top of the bench.’
‘My top could be your bottom.’
‘I’ll push my torch up as far as it will go: work your way towards the light.’
‘Hi there, you look good in a spotlight, particularly with a dirty face. Are you going to sing “Mammy”?’
‘Ronnie …’
‘I’ll be serious.’
&
nbsp; ‘If I pass a girl to you, would you be able to get her out?’
‘There’s four firemen behind me.’
‘Right, first one coming.’
Ronnie heard the murmur of women’s voices. ‘They’re alive?’
‘And arguing. Tell them it’s easier to get the able bodied out of the way first.’
‘Definitely. And I hate to put a damper on a good argument, but there’s a fire on top of us. If we don’t move soon we’ll end up grilled, and it will be well-done, not rare.’
Ronnie held out his arms as Wyn thrust Jenny towards him. Her arm was at a peculiar angle and her face was red raw, but her eyes were open. He turned his head and shouted to the fireman behind, waiting for his answering cry before using the girder as a guide and pushing her down the line.
Haydn was handing out tea and hot soup from a WVS wagon when he saw Bethan racing across the yard. He looked across and saw a fireman carrying a girl. Her dust cap had fallen from her head and he recognised her. There was only one girl in Pontypridd with hair that colour.
‘Jenny,’ he breathed, remembering Huw’s assertion that she worked with Jane. Handing the tea to the person nearest him, he tore across the yard.
‘Have you seen Jane?’ he demanded breathlessly.
‘Steady, Haydn,’ Bethan warned. ‘She’s in shock.’
‘There’s more alive under the roof,’ the fireman confirmed. ‘We’re getting them out just as fast as we can.’
‘Jenny, have you seen Myrtle?’ Huw stood beside Haydn.
She tried to focus on them, but the effort proved too much.
‘That’s enough.’ Bethan took charge. ‘Get her over to the ambulances,’ she ordered the firemen. ‘I’ll show you the way.’
Ronnie waited. The creaking and groaning of their metal cocoon resounded, more alarming with every passing minute. Wyn had handed out three girls so far. Jenny, Judy, and one he hadn’t recognised, but Wyn hadn’t said a word for at least two minutes and he was beginning to wonder if there were any more survivors.
‘Careful, this one’s badly injured.’
Ronnie steeled himself, hoping it wasn’t burns. Judy’s hand had been burnt, and flakes of her skin still clung to his fingers.
Past Remembering Page 39