‘I married him because I was carrying you. I thought I loved him, that it would be all right, that he cared for me but he was just doing what he thought was right. He always blamed me.’
‘For what? Getting pregnant? It takes two, Mother. I always guessed that I wasn’t premature, as you claimed. It’s hardly unusual, is it? What does it matter?’
The tears dried instantly on the sagging cheeks, as if scorched; the mouth so twisted with loathing that the once handsome face became distorted and ugly. ‘It matters because it’s contradictory to his beliefs. He says we might have married, or we might not; that I lured him into breaking his vow of chastity before he’d made up his mind. He sees you as a child born out of sin, that you are tainted in some way. He says that a child conceived out of wedlock is a child without purity.’
‘What a terrible thing to say! Is that how he sees me, as someone impure? Dear God!’ Gracie felt numb, unable to take in the full import of her mother’s words.
‘That’s why he’s so determined to keep you at home, to protect you.’
‘To protect himself more like, and his precious reputation.’
‘That too, I dare say. He’s always been fiercely determined to be a “pillar of society.” But he means it for the best. It’s just how he is. He says that if you come home, he’ll forget all about this bit of rebellion, pay you the going rate for your work in the shop and make you a partner in the business the minute you turn twenty-one. How would that be, love? If you don’t want to be a teacher, at least that’s better than roaming across the country in the freezing cold cutting trees, isn’t it? At least we could support each other.’ The tears were flowing once more, eyes puffed up, face blotched red.
‘You can’t do this to me, Mother. You can’t lay the blame for Father’s bigoted attitude on me. It isn’t fair. I didn’t ask to be born and I don’t see myself in the least bit impure or tainted. I need to make my own life, away from him, away from you both.’ Despite her brave words, Gracie was still reeling from these revelations, still struggling to make sense of it all. ‘He gets worse as the years have gone by, becoming increasing cold and remote. I could never do enough to please him.’
‘Because he’s afraid you’ll turn into a whore, like me.’
Gracie leaned over the sink, feeling suddenly wretched and sick. ‘How can he make such judgements, as if I’ve no control over my own behaviour. It’s so cruel.’
‘I’m sorry, love. I shouldn’t have laid it on you so bluntly. I’ve kept it quiet all these years and now, out of selfishness I’ve let it out and spoiled things for you.’
Mother and daughter looked into each other’s eyes with new understanding. Gracie said, ‘No, you were right to tell me. You should have told me before. I’m glad I at last understand why he has always seemed to hate me, hated us both in a way. Why do you stay with him?’
Her mother’s expression was raw with pain. ‘Because at first I loved him and thought he would change. And then because I was weak and couldn’t find the courage to break free. Not like you.’
‘You have Aunt Phyllis. Go and live with her for a while. I’m sorry Mother but I can’t ever come home. I’ve my own life to lead, and I’m even more determined to live it to the full now that you’ve told me - all of this.’
Brenda opened her bag, drew out a comb and with a rock steady hand took off her hat and began to tidy her hair. She freshened her lipstick, powdered her nose, pinned back the hat, then snapping shut the clasp of her handbag, as if in that way she could shut away the pain of her past life, she turned to face Gracie. ‘Maybe it’s time a few things changed, eh? Time for new beginnings for us all.’ Her tone had altered, taken on a harder edge, a new resolve.
For the first time in a long while, her mother actually smiled. ‘You’re absolutely right to leave home. Howell’s the one who’s tainting you, with his nasty notions of what’s right and proper, and his twisted way of thinking. I’m glad you’ve joined up and that you’re happy. You do what you want, love. I reckon I just might go and visit our Phyllis. She drives me scatty with her potted plants and endless tales of woe but it can’t be any worse than life behind that bloody shop with your father.’
It was the first time Gracie had ever heard her mother swear, and it made her laugh. ‘Good for you.’ They held each other close for a moment, then Brenda patted Gracie’s shoulder, tugged her hat into place and winked.
‘We’d best go or he’ll think one of us has fallen down the lavatory pan.’ Face serious again, she said, ‘When you go love, go quick, and don’t ever look back.’
As they emerged from the public lavatories her father was waiting outside, as Gracie had known that he would be. He stood, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, face scowling with impatience as rain dripped from the brim of his trilby hat. Hating herself, Gracie threw one last apologetic smile to her mother who was nodding encouragingly to her and, before he’d realised what she was about, Gracie turned and ran. She heard his shout but did not pause for a second. She ran, as if her life depended upon it. Nor did she once look back.
Matron was standing in her favourite spot by the door on the dot of nine-thirty as usual. Lou was lying beneath the covers fully dressed, having just this second hurtled through the door and taken off nothing but her lipstick. Going to bed this early didn’t trouble her unduly, since they’d be up at first light as usual, but leaving Gordon certainly did. It was always hard. Tonight, they’d strolled through the woodlands by the River Fowey, dawdling by Respryn Bridge and then making their way back to the seclusion of the old summer house, which seemed like their own private kingdom.
She closed her eyes and relived those precious moments. The hardness of his body against hers, the hot demands of his kisses, the trail of excitement left by his exploring fingers; such utter bliss, just thinking about it made her stomach tie itself into knots. Whatever would she do if she couldn’t see him every week, speak to him every day? It would be purgatory.
‘And where is madam?’
The familiar stentorian voice at her side brought Lou from her reverie with a jolt and only at the last second did she prevent herself from shooting out of bed; which would really have given the game away, since she was still fully dressed in her glad rags, right down to her shoes. ‘Matron?’ Eyes wide in pretended innocence, Lou gazed with trepidation upon the moonlike face before her which seemed to quiver with rage, the eyes rock hard.
‘I said, where is she?’
‘Who? Me? I’m here. As you can see.’ Lou offered a tremulous smile of reassurance, aware of the stillness of her comrades in the beds close by, who seemed to have stopped breathing.
Matron hammered one fat fist on the upper bunk. ‘I mean this little madam. Your bossy friend. Where is she?’ Lifting the large watch which dangled upon her massive bosom, Matron consulted it with a narrowed gaze. ‘It is now twenty-one, fifty-seven, which means that Freeman is long overdue.’
Lou lifted her eyes to the bunk above, where she had assumed Gracie would already be ensconced and dead to the world. With great dexterity and no small degree of athletic skill, she held the blanket tightly to her chin while wriggling sideways to gain a better look. It was difficult to be sure but she saw enough to confirm that the bed above was indeed empty of its occupant. Even the blankets were still tightly tucked in. Her heart plummeted. Where on earth could she be? This wasn’t like Gracie at all.
Lou looked helplessly at Matron. I haven’t the first idea where she is. Do you think something could have happened to her?’
Unmoved by this genuine concern, Matron merely made a snorting sound deep in her throat, which wasn’t at all pleasant. ‘Something is definitely going to happen to her, if she isn’t back soon. The moment she arrives, the very moment she gets back, do you understand? You send her to me.’
Matron called at hourly intervals during that long night, each time growing more and more irate. Lou began to hope that Gracie never would come home, that way she might manage to survive.
&nbs
p; When she felt it safe to stop running, Gracie stood bemused in the empty street, breathing hard, striving to ease the stitch in her side. What now? She bent over till it had eased slightly and she’d got her breath back. She couldn’t bear to think about how her father’s narrow minded attitude had stifled any love his wife had felt for him. For the first time in her life, Gracie felt sorry for her mother. And she couldn’t begin to consider how it might have coloured her own view of life. How dreadful to accuse an innocent child of being tainted, through no fault of her own. But now wasn’t the time to worry about all of that. Gracie urgently needed to get back to camp, without delay. After that, she could only hope that her charm with Matron still held.
To one side lay the city, row after row of featureless houses; to the other what appeared to be open country but could well have been nothing more than ruins laid waste by the bombing. It was hard to tell in the darkness. The small, hooded torch, which she’d learned to always carry in her pocket, could pick out few actual features in the blackout and Gracie was afraid to leave it switched on for too long in case she used up the precious batteries or somebody shouted at her ‘put out that light’. Deciding she’d no option but to continue along this road until she could thumb a lift from some passing motorist, as Gordon seemed to do with comparative ease, she set off again with fresh resolve.
She walked for miles, or so it seemed, till her feet were hot and tired and her shins bruised from tripping over the rubble that littered the streets. At length her eyes grew used to the darkness, aided by the moon as it sailed out from behind a bank of clouds and she walked with greater ease. But since she didn’t know Exeter, any landmarks which did stand out against the lighter sky, were useless to her. Thankful for the warmth of her WTC greatcoat, Gracie felt quite alone in the world, the hollow echo of her heels on the damp pavements the only sound in the darkness. There was an eerie stillness in the air, every door shut fast, the occupants no doubt huddled within the erroneous safety of four walls. Almost as if they were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.
The next second she knew what it was. It began with the whine of the air-raid siren, quickly followed by that stomach-churning drone of enemy aircraft above. Within seconds, doors were flung open and where there had been emptiness and solitude now came a heaving mass of people, their arms loaded with precious belongings, children clinging to their mother’s skirts, all silent and businesslike, all hurrying in one direction, all with one single thought in mind. To survive.
The Baedeker raids, named after the famous German guidebooks had begun earlier in the year, Exeter suffering the first attack in this series of raids in April. Bath had come next, killing hundreds of people in just two consecutive raids. York, Norwich, Canterbury had all taken a battering in the weeks following, along with other historic cities. And now, months later, the residents had grown used to leaving the city night after night to sleep in the open countryside, in tents or barns, or even under hedges. But with the coming of the colder nights and more sporadic raids, many had grown careless or over optimistic, believing they would be safe. Now they knew different.
As they hurried through the night, Gracie ran with them. If there was to be salvation in the form of a shelter nearby, they would know where to find it.
Even as the thought formed in her stunned brain, she saw that it was already too late. First came the flares, lighting the skies with a deadly radiance. Then the incendiary bombs, followed by the high explosives which dropped with frightening swiftness out of the dark heavens. Explosion after explosion rent the air like a cataclysm, flattening buildings, bursting gas and water mains, pitting the road upon which she ran with smoking holes in the broken stone. She felt that the whole world must be on fire, falling apart before her very eyes.
Gracie saw walls crumple like paper, whole houses collapse like a row of dominoes, burying everyone within; the light of the explosions starkly brightening the grim little streets into a glorious Technicolor of death and destruction. In one breath, hundreds of lives were blown away on clouds of stinging, suffocating smoke. It made her eyes stream, caught at her throat, making her cough and choke, stumble and fall to her knees. Then it seemed as if the earth split in two, as if the very jaws of hell had opened and Gracie was looking down at a mass of screaming people buried in its dark red belly. Dozens fell into the pit and all she could see was a writhing mass of helpless bodies.
Her last conscious thought was that if she survived this night, it would be a blessed miracle
‘Are you all right dear? Need a stretcher or are you walking wounded?’
Her head felt as if a thousand axes were splitting her skull. Lights cascaded and danced behind her eyes then finally swam together, settled and formed themselves into a kindly face topped by a tin helmet. ‘I’m OK. I can walk, I think.’
The ARP warden helped Gracie to her feet, dusted her off, checked her briefly before turning away to the next victim. She called after him. ‘I can help. I’m in the WTC.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘The Timber Corps but we’ve had air raid training.’
‘Right. Get on with it then. We need all the help we can get here.’
How long the raid had lasted she never discovered, minutes had seemed like hours, and the remaining hours of that long, horrific night dragged by in the length of a lifetime.
Gracie had witnessed the worst that man could do, now she observed the best. She saw firemen, Red Cross and auxiliary workers, bleary-eyed and filthy, some cut and bleeding themselves, exhausted yet resolutely determined to stay on their feet and do the job they’d been trained to do. Some plunged into burning houses to carry out lifeless or half dead bodies, placing them on stretchers to be driven away in an endless stream of ambulances. One man, having gone inside, never returned as he too became trapped by the fires. The devastation was total, yet not for a moment did anyone lose the will to salvage what they could.
Gracie held the blue waterproof bags as they slipped in severed body parts. She helped a WVS woman deliver a baby as its mother went into sudden, urgent labour, and carried away its tiny, half formed body in a flour sack. She watched in awe as family members found each other and wept or stared, dry-eyed, at the heap of rubble where their loved one had last been seen before methodically and calmly starting to remove it, piece by piece, endlessly searching, never giving up hope. Others sat in shocked, silent groups, uncertain what to do next or where to go, all the possessions they had once owned now gone, perhaps their entire family with it; yet their dignity and resolve not to weaken remained firmly intact.
When it seemed that the worst of the raid was over, the mass exodus began. As of one mind, the people got to their feet, gathering together whatever possessions they could find, and began to walk from the city.
Gracie did not go with them. She picked her way gingerly through the rubble and detritus which had once represented the homes and lives of these people. She listened intently for the slightest sound as she had been taught to do, the narrow beam of her torch invaluable as she searched for any sign of life. With every step she feared masonry might fall upon her, that she too might be burned alive or blown to bits by a landmine or unexploded bomb which could choose this precise moment to go off.
She saw a heap of rags, lifted the edge of it and looked into the staring eyes of a child. Head gaping open, blonde plaits matted with blood, one handless arm flung out. For a moment Gracie thought that the girl was dead, even so she quickly probed with her fingers and found the flicker of a pulse, just below her ear. ‘Help! Stretcher here. Quickly!’ In an instant the child had been bundled into a blanket and borne away to either live or die as a result of her horrific injuries, but at least she would have a chance now.
If she thought this was bad, minutes later Gracie found a baby, its tiny puckered mouth still clinging to its mother nipple, but were there any milk left to draw, this baby would suckle no more. She drew a blanket over the pair and walked away, too traumatised even
to weep.
‘It was a nursery school, love,’ said a kindly voice in her ear. ‘Took a direct hit. There were thirty-six children in there, plus nursery nurses and mothers.’
Gracie looked about her with closer attention and saw that she was in a school playground. Eerily, a swing creaked as it moved to and fro in the night breeze but there were no children left to play upon it. They would never play anywhere again for they lay buried beneath a heap of black stones that had once comprised the walls of their school, or were scattered in pieces across the cracked playground, respectfully draped in old sacking. There came the sound of soft weeping, while other women screamed as the remains of their children were gathered up and removed. More poignantly, here and there stood a lone figure, silently grieving.
Gracie had a natural distrust of emotion, having seen too much of it in both her parents. But not revealing her feelings didn’t mean that she didn’t have any. She cared deeply. Sharing the devastation with these people she felt that their tears were her tears; their sorrow, her sorrow. She desperately longed to do something to help. Yet there was nothing she could do.
‘Oh dear God. Why kill babies? Why?’
‘There’s no answer to that one, dearie.’ Firm hands attempted to draw her away but Gracie refused to go.
‘No. There must be some still alive. I need to look. I must find them.’
‘There’s nothing left. I reckon they’re all goners.’
She searched for hours, painstakingly examining every broken body, assisting the auxiliaries as best she could but the woman’s guess proved to be correct. Not a living soul remained. It couldn’t be right, she thought, fierce in her anger, sticky with sweat and desperation and sickened by the waste of it all. The stink of cordite seared her nostrils. War shouldn’t be like this. War was an adventure, a lark. It should be something that took place elsewhere, many miles away in the skies, on the seas, between huge armies, trained fighting men. Not in their own back yards. Not on school playgrounds.
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