by Anne Bennett
She also had to deal with the aftermath, like the children orphaned, or people who would be disabled for life. There might be women mourning the loss of family members, perhaps badly traumatised by this, and also knowing they had no house for any of the survivors to return to, no clothes for them to wear for, no means of support and no idea what to do about any of it.
By five o’clock that evening, Matron had gone home at last. Lack of sleep and sadness had drained Carmel. She knew she could be no good to anyone if she didn’t get some rest. She was just about to suggest to Lois that they go home when the sirens blared out again. No one could quite believe it at first, and then terror and panic set in.
Carmel swallowed her own fear and helped console and reassure and ferry as many patients as possible down to the basement. And then, despite the explosions, the barrage of ack-ack fire, the ringing of the bells of the emergency services and the little yelps of terror or the keening of the already injured, exhaustion eventually drained her and she lay on the floor and slept. Lois, beside her, did the same.
They woke stiff and cold some hours later to the comforting sound of the all clear. However, as it was the early hours of the morning and no trams would be running, the two girls worked on until seven, settling people back in wards or in corridors and serving breakfast, before setting out for Aston in the hope of catching a tram to take them home.
The next day the girls were once more on duty, and though Carmel worked harder than she had ever worked, she felt it wasn’t enough. Some of the people who had been incarcerated in the ruins of bombed buildings were only just coming in now, and some they had treated on the previous day were no longer there. The images of them rose up in Carmel’s mind and she pushed them down lest she give way altogether. She knew she owed it to those who had survived to take a grip on herself.
Carmel and Lois’s shift ended officially at six o’clock, but there were so many to see to, neither felt she should just up and leave.
‘Ruby will understand,’ Carmel said. ‘After such a devastating raid a few days ago, with so many injured and needing help, she’ll know I can’t just walk out because my shift is over.’
‘Me neither,’ Lois said.
So when the siren shrilled at seven o’clock that night they were still at the hospital, and again they sat the raid out in the basement.
It was six o’clock in the morning before the all clear sounded. Carmel declared herself too tired to be of any use to anyone and then she and Lois found they had to walk the entire way home as the bombing had made the roads impassable. Behind them as they walked, the sky was blood red with flames.
It was the next day before Carmel and Lois found out the extent of the damage. It was one of the ambulance men who told her.
‘Whole city centre was blazing,’ he said. ‘Out of control, like. They drained the canal like they did on the nineteenth, but it weren’t enough, because them buggers had hit the water mains, like, ’adn’t they?’
‘How d’you know all this?’ Carmel asked.
‘This fireman told me, d’ain’t he?’ the ambulance driver said. ‘Three trunk mains on the Bristol Road got it and in places the tar was so bloody hot it went alight and they just had to let it burn. Let everything burn in the end. If the Germans come back tonight we’ve had it. Birmingham will burn to the ground ’cos this bloke reckoned it would take four or five days to fix the mains proper and they has had a pretty good pop at us already.’
The public were not told about the fractured water mains, and it was kept out of the papers, and yet everyone seemed to know. That night and the next they waited anxiously for the raid that they knew would wipe their city off the map. It didn’t come. Hitler’s forces began pounding the South Coast instead and Brummies breathed a little easier.
Eventually, though, while no one could get blasé about the raids, people began to feel that life had to go on. Carmel, feeling she had neglected her child for far too long, applied to have time off over Christmas and took holidays tagged on to it so she would be off straight through to New Year.
Lois did the same. Chris had a spot of leave due as well and he suggested spending the festive season at his parents’. He still felt awkward around Carmel, almost guilty to be alive when Paul was dead, and thought she might feel excluded and lonely, seeing Lois and him together.
Lois could quite see his point of view, but hesitated to leave Carmel alone at such a time and for the first Christmas after Paul’s death, and she mentioned the dilemma she was in to Ruby.
‘Well, ducks, you can go with an easy mind,’ Ruby said. “Cos Carmel won’t be alone, will she? Fine neighbour I would be if I just let her rattle around in that house all by herself at Christmas. And your man has got a point. Carmel might feel it if she was to see you two together, because it is sure to bring back memories and that in turn will put constraints on you. Chris won’t be at all happy with that, when after this he might not see you for some time. It would be better all round if Carmel comes in to us. It will be a full house too, for our Bertie has a spot of leave and our Chrissie will be on her own with her man away, so she is coming in as well.’
Ruby and George had another guest too they didn’t anticipate and that was Jeff, who called round the week before Christmas and was invited to join them. He thought of the cheerless meal in the silent room that he would eat opposite his frosty wife, for Matthew either couldn’t get leave or said he couldn’t, and Jeff could hardly blame him; he didn’t want to be there either and so took Ruby up on her offer.
‘On one condition only,’ he said, ‘and that is that I bring the food.’
‘You mustn’t do that,’ Ruby said. ‘Not with rationing the way it is.’
‘None of this food will be rationed,’ Jeff said, with a large wink. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘take that disapproving look off your face. Look at the way Carmel has been working just lately. How will it hamper the war effort if she has decent food for one day in the year? She looked absolutely worn out when I saw her the other day.’
He had been quite shocked. He hadn’t seen her properly for some weeks as she had worked such long and strange hours at the hospital while the raids were at their height. At the times he had called she was usually working or asleep. Now he was determined to build her up over Christmas. On Christmas Eve he called around with food Ruby had hardly seen since the war began: a small turkey, sausages, bacon, best ham, a dozen eggs, a plum pudding, a Christmas cake and mince pies. Then there was a tin of sweet biscuits, and one of cheese biscuits and a large lump of Cheddar to go with it.
Ruby stared open-mouthed at the stuff Jeff had unloaded on the kitchen table, almost afraid to touch it. ‘Where did you get it all?’ she gasped.
‘That would be telling.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Look, Ruby, the stuff is all paid for and no one is going to come flying round here to take it off you.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘All I ask is that you serve me a meal tomorrow fit for a king,’ Jeff said. ‘And we’ll call it quits.’
‘You’re on,’ Ruby agreed.
The food alone would have ensured the day was wondrous. Although Carmel had met Bertie and Chrissie before, it had been fleetingly, and she found them very good company. They were both entranced by Beth and seemingly determined to make this a Christmas for Carmel and her baby to enjoy.
Carmel had been dreading it. She had spent the previous Christmas without Paul too, but he had been alive then. She knew this year would be worse because she had to face the fact that that was how it was going to be always, but for Beth’s sake she knew she had to make an effort, though when she found herself laughing and joining in with the rest she felt a little guilty at first.
The good mood was helped by the chocolates, silk stockings and bottle of Chanel perfume Jeff presented to each woman, and the cigars and whiskey he had for the men. For Beth, the undoubted star of the show and impeccably behaved, he had a truckful of bricks. The child cl
apped her hands in delight. She had been crawling for a month or so and had just started pulling herself up on the furniture, and she knew just what to do with the truck.
‘Before you say one word about spoiling her,’ Jeff said to Carmel, watching the baby in delight, ‘let me tell you the truck isn’t new, as you can see, though as you said before, the child won’t mind. I found it in this huge cupboard in the nursery and it is right she should have it because it probably was her daddy’s once.’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything anyway,’ Carmel said. ‘Christmas is the time for spoiling children a little, if you have the means to do so. But whatever money you had at the moment, there is so little in the shops to buy that plenty of children will have a lean Christmas this year. And now,’ she said, scooping the child up, ‘this very lucky girl is going to be put up for a nap or she will turn into a weasel.’
Later, after a cup of tea and Christmas cake, and the King’s address on the wireless, Carmel, knowing Ruby was becoming drowsy, insisted on washing up. Jeff offered to dry, a novel experience for him, but he wanted to talk to Carmel alone.
Barely had the door closed behind them that he said, ‘You have been working too hard, Carmel. And in the teeth of those raids too. You have had me worried to death.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Carmel said. ‘Everyone is the same and I know I need to be there. There is so much to do, so much suffering, you have no idea.’
‘I do understand,’ Jeff said. ‘I just don’t want you to become ill or injured yourself. What would Beth do then?’
‘What she has been doing all the time I have been away,’ Carmel said. ‘And that is stay with Ruby. I do feel guilty about that. I worry whether I am doing the best thing for us both, because it breaks my heart to leave her sometimes. Then at the hospital I look at the wee children, not much older than her, who are so badly damaged or who don’t make it at all, or who have lost all before them. I am so thankful for what I have—that Beth is in little danger here—that I feel I owe it to them, not just the children, but all the injured, to do to the best of my ability the job I am trained for.’
‘Oh, my dear!’
‘I’m all right, Jeff, really,’ Carmel said. ‘But there is one thing I do want to discuss with you. Maybe Christmas Day isn’t the right time, but time of any sort isn’t something I have a surfeit of just lately and it is important.’
‘Go on.’
‘During one of those devastating raids at the hospital I began to fret about who would look after Beth if anything happened to me. I wanted it to be Ruby, but knew, if she was agreeable, I would have to draw it up legally. Anyway, she was delighted and I went to the solicitor recommended by the hospital that lots of nurses use. In the event of my death, or if I am incapacitated to such an extent that I can’t care for my child, Ruby and George will be her carers and you her legal guardian, if you wouldn’t mind that?’
‘Mind that?’ Jeff said gruffly, strangely hurt that his daughter-in-law should look outside the family for this type of thing. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that you thought of me in any capacity at all.’
‘You’re not offended?’ Carmel said in surprise. ‘Surely not? I am disappointed that you are looking on it that way. Look, I did this to protect Beth from my father and your wife, who would both harm her in their own way, and I thought you would see it that way too. I am trying to do the best for my child, and the way anyone else feels about it is secondary.’
Jeff hung his head. He knew that Carmel spoke sense and was ashamed of himself and his initial reaction. He said so and apologised.
‘It’s all right,’ Carmel said, kissing him on the cheek as she dried her hands. ‘I know how you love Beth, but I am relying on you, because if anyone tries to overturn this, then it will be your job to stop them. Course,’ she went on, ‘this is only if something happens to me and I haven’t any plans that way. And if you have finished those pots, we will join the others and I will get her ladyship up from her nap or she will never sleep tonight.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Despite the raid in the very early hours of 1 January 1941, as the winter turned into spring, people were becoming more hopeful, for there was a lull in the bombing and any raids there were, were light and sporadic, reminiscent of those early in the war.
‘That’s it, I reckon,’ Sylvia said one day as the four friends sat eating their dinner in the canteen.
‘What d’you mean?’ Jane asked.
‘Well, I reckon Jerry has finished with us now,’ Sylvia said. ‘Threw all he could at us and couldn’t break our spirits.’
‘I flipping well hope you are right,’ Jane said. ‘The last thing I want is for some raid to spoil my wedding day.’
‘Yeah,’ said Lois with a laugh. ‘Maybe we should send a directive to Herr Hitler. Hold your hand on Saturday, 19 April, there’s a good chap, because our friend Jane Firkins is hoping to become Mrs Meadows.’
‘Oh, very funny.’
‘We’ll need one before that,’ Sylvia laughed. ‘We don’t want him muscling in on the hen night either.’
‘Oh, we are having a hen night then?’ Lois asked.
‘Course we are,’ Sylvia maintained. ‘However spartan and brief the wedding, Jane is going to be sent off by us in good style. What d’you say, Carmel?’
‘I say, hear, hear,’ Carmel said.
‘You won’t have any trouble getting a baby-sitter?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Carmel said. ‘Both Jeff and Ruby will likely be fighting each other for the privilege. Between the two of them they would have the child ruined if I didn’t put my foot down now and again.’
‘And you missed out on your own hen night, as I recall?’ Lois remarked.
‘Yeah, well, if you remember, Mammy and Sister Frances had just arrived and we were all staying at the convent and I didn’t think I could just go off.’
‘You mean they would have taken a very dim view of you coming back roaring drunk?’ Jane said.
‘Yeah,’ Carmel smiled. ‘Something like that.’
‘Ah, well, you’ll have to make up for lost time then,’ Sylvia said. ‘What d’you want to do, Jane, a meal, a pub crawl or what?’
‘Oh, I think both, definitely,’ Jane said. ‘If I can’t have the fairy-tale wedding I wanted like Carmel and Lois had, then I am determined to have a send-off to remember.’
‘If it is a good enough send-off there is a good chance you won’t remember the whole of it at all,’ said Sylvia with a sardonic grin.
The girls laughed together as Jane said, ‘You’re right, there.’ She raised her cup in the air. ‘Here’s to oblivion.’
The cups clinked together. ‘To oblivion,’ they chorused.
Jane’s eyes were suddenly moist as she looked around the table and she said softly, ‘I would just like to say here and now, and when I am stone-cold sober, that you are the best and dearest friends I have ever had. And now,’ she went on, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, ‘I best go back to the ward before I end up blarting my eyes out.’
Carmel knew exactly what Jane meant, for she too thought the world of the girls and regarded it a great thing that the first friends she had ever had should prove to be so stalwart and loyal.
When the sirens went again on 9 April at half-past nine at night, everyone went into air-raid mode without any sense of panic.
‘He’s giving out one of these every so often,’ said Jane, as she began erecting the cages over the bed-bound patients, with Aileen. ‘It’s just in case we should get complacent.’
‘Well, I hope he gets this one over early,’ Carrmel said, as she began rousing the patients that could walk, many of whom had begun to settle down for the night. ‘My shift should finish at eleven, and if Lois and myself are much later leaving here, we may have to walk home. It is quite a hike and not something I relish after a day here.’
‘Don’t blame you either,’ Sylvia said as Lois and Carmel began leading the way to the basement where the people soon set
tled to play cards, or read, or sit chatting together and waited for the raid to pass. However, it soon became apparent that this raid was no short skirmish. The people in the basement began listening intently, glad of the depth and thickness of the walls that muffled the whine and whistle of the descending bombs, the crash and boom of the explosions and the barking of the anti-aircraft fire.
And then there was a sudden enormous crash just above them, the walls shook, bits of masonry from the roof spattered down on them, the light flickered and went out, and people began to scream and panic. Carmel couldn’t blame them for being scared. It wasn’t pleasant sitting there in the pitch-black, tasting the plaster and brick dust from the ceiling and wondering if the whole building was going to collapse and entomb them. She ferreted feverishly in her bag for her torch.
Other nurses were doing the same and soon thin pencils of light were piercing the gloom, showing the faces of the people petrified with fear. Carmel played her torch on the walls and roof and saw that they seemed solid enough. It seemed safer to stay where they were for the time being, at least. She said this to the patients and tried to calm them as Lois and others lit the hurricane lamps left in the basement for just such an event. Soon the area was dimly lit by the lamps’ soft glow.
Carmel longed to know what had happened above them, but could hardly leave her distressed patients to go to find out. She would have to wait like everyone else.
After fifteen minutes or so, which seemed like an eternity, the door opened and a young nurse ran down the stairs, lamp held aloft. ‘Are you all right down here?’