Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Yes, I shall explain to Mrs Weber that it was a tragic accident – a fall from the rocks – into the sea.’

  ‘I see. Yes, I’m sure she’ll understand.’

  But Helen did not. She did not understand when the vicar told her that the telegram was true. That Heine was dead, drowned before he could be rescued. His body had been recovered and he had been buried yesterday. That the delivery of the telegram must have been delayed due to the bombing. That she would never, ever see him again.

  She walked up and down the kitchen, listening to the kettle, seeing Marian taking it from the stove with a tea towel round the handle. She watched the steam rise from the teapot before the lid was put on and then it escaped from the spout. She watched Marian’s hands holding the pot, watched the vicar fetch cups from the cupboard.

  And then she said, ‘They’ve won,’ her voice calm and cold. ‘They’ve won. I thought when we took the camera through that we had won. But we hadn’t. They have.’ Because now she knew. Somehow she knew that they had killed him.

  She turned and walked out of the house and down the path, and then she ran; hard, fast, past the Heavy Rescue Truck which was jagged and torn – jagged and torn – jagged and torn – like her life was now. Her legs were running in time to this until she was home, back in the flat, back in their bedroom and then she lay on the bed which would never feel his weight again.

  Marian came and bathed Helen’s face and the cloth was cold on her skin but it did not touch the pain inside. Marian left at four because the vicar wanted to prepare the crypt. Helen watched her leave the bedroom, heard the front door click. Her arms felt heavy, her legs too. Her mouth was dry and in the silence she thought of his arms, tanned and strong, that would never again hold her. His voice, slow and deep, which would never again speak to her. His skin which would never smell of the summer, never feel the sun. Skin which had been made wet and cold by the sea, and she thought she would die.

  The light faded as the minutes passed. How many minutes, how many lifetimes? She had to move at last because there was banging on the door and it wouldn’t stop. It pounded and pounded, and wouldn’t leave her to die too. She pushed herself from the bed, feeling old and tired and still the banging continued. Didn’t they know the bombers would come soon and then the pain might go because the bombs might find her? Her hands hung limp at her sides and her feet seemed too heavy to move towards the door but then there was the sound of a key in the lock.

  ‘Heine,’ she called, turning to the door.

  It was Mr Simkins who held out her hurricane lamps and told her that she had things to do. He was kind but his voice was firm as he brought her coat, guiding her arms into the sleeves.

  ‘You must not give up,’ he told her. ‘Heine would not want that. He was a good man. I liked him and I am so sorry he’s dead. But the raids will begin soon and you have a son to live for.’

  He took her to the crypt, walking in silence with her, and she was grateful for that because she was listening to Heine’s voice inside her head. She could see his face, so tanned; his hair so fair.

  The vicar and Marian were gentle when she arrived and she knew now that they had arranged for Mr Simkins to come for her. They asked where they should set up camp beds, benches, chairs, and somehow she knew, pointing to an area well away from the door. She reminded them that they must make definite aisles between the rows but to her own ears her voice sounded dead.

  The vicar held her hand and asked, ‘Would you rather just lie down, my dear?’

  ‘No,’ she said because then she would have time to think and then she might cry and her mother had taught her not to cry, hadn’t she?

  The vicar had brought down two old paraffin stoves which they lit to try to build up a bit of heat before the sirens began.

  ‘We’ll have to turn them out when the raid begins. How much paraffin is in them?’ Helen’s voice was quite level but slow, so slow. Her lips could hardly form the words but nobody seemed to notice and she wondered how the world could keep on as though nothing had happened. But what else was there to do?

  ‘Not much, Helen. So it should all burn through by six. It would be a fire hazard.’ The vicar heaved at a pile of blankets, walking down the rows of camp beds, dropping one on to each.

  Helen nodded slowly. ‘It would help if we had some old carpeting or something to stop the cold seeping up from the floor. And what about the chemical toilets?’ She could still hear Heine’s voice and she hugged him to her.

  The vicar handed the blankets to Marian and stood looking towards Helen, his face thoughtful.

  ‘Let’s get back to the house. There are carpets and rugs up in the spare room at the top. Quick though. It’s five-thirty.’

  They passed people coming in through the door. Helen wondered how she could be quick, her legs were so heavy. She stopped near two women of her own age.

  ‘Can you come and help?’

  They did and two others joined them. They carried three carpets back and Helen asked Marian to organise a party of people to unroll and lay them before placing the camp stools and benches on them, watching herself work as though she were outside her body. Others came to help and soon there were carpets beneath some of the camp beds too. But there were no chemical toilets, the vicar said, because so far they were not a designated shelter.

  As the siren started Helen slung the stage curtains used in the peacetime pantomimes over bamboo poles which she tied horizontally between two pillars. She tipped disinfectant into three buckets and lined them up behind the curtains listening to Heine.

  ‘There’ll be a bit of a bloody performance going on behind there soon,’ cackled Ruth, the old woman from last night who had brought her knitting again.

  ‘Just so long as there’s not a round of applause every time,’ Helen replied, smiling, and was surprised that words like these could come while she was listening so hard to him.

  The vicar came and stood behind her. ‘Helen… what about the men?’

  ‘That’s a point, ducky,’ Ruth said, cackling again, her arms waving as her hands wielded needles and wool.

  Helen sighed, then looked up at the vicar and smiled. ‘Come on, you can help.’ But she didn’t want him to talk because then she would not hear Heine.

  She bent and picked up the remaining two curtains from the floor, collecting up twine and another bamboo from the storage area. The vicar carried the ladder to the other end of the crypt, walking in front of her. She could hear his breathing, heavy and laboured and knew this man of sixty felt much older because of the sights he had seen over the last few months and remembered then that her grief was one amongst many, but somehow even that did not give her any relief.

  The raids had begun now. They could all hear the bombs, feel the earth as it juddered, see and taste the plaster as it fell in narrow streams from the ceiling but the conversation continued as before. Or almost as before. There were moments of silence, of tension when some of the crumps were too close, too loud, too violent, and they had drowned Heine’s voice for the moment and she couldn’t bear it. Helen stopped, her hand to her mouth because she mustn’t cry or she would go in the cupboard.

  She must follow the vicar, she must reach forward to move that chair from his path and slowly it was all right again. She coughed as plaster dust fell on to her head, catching in her throat. It itched on her scalp but she had no hands free to scratch and it was important that she did. Why was it so damned important? Her husband was dead, wasn’t he? Dead. And she wanted to scratch. Her head was aching now, throbbing, and her mouth was dry and again Heine had gone.

  The vicar looked behind.

  ‘Whereabouts, Helen?’

  She pointed to the two pillars over in the corner and he opened the ladder as wide as the rope would allow then started to climb, but she shook her head.

  ‘I’ll do it. I know how to fix the pole.’ His breathing was laboured. He was too tired.

  He held the ladder while
she climbed on legs which felt like lead but she tied the bamboo, then hung the curtains, listening while he told her that the Red Cross had been very pleasant but they would just have to manage for now.

  Helen shook her head. ‘Oh well, we’ll see about that,’ she said, anger surprising her, raging through her, cracking in her head, making her hands clasp the ladder, bringing sweat coursing down her back. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Marian walked down the centre aisle carrying one bucket which she had found by the bamboo poles. It would not be enough.

  ‘There are more in the vicarage,’ the vicar said.

  Helen put her hand on his arm as he moved to the door. ‘Let me,’ she said, because in the vicarage she might hear Heine again and when she heard his voice it was as though he had not left her.

  ‘But surely we’ve enough?’ Marian asked. ‘There’s a raid going on. It’s dangerous.’

  Helen listened. It was drawing away. There had been no plaster trickling down for the last ten minutes. She looked at the people sitting and talking. At the two young children running up and down the aisles.

  ‘No, it’s not going to be enough,’ she said. For her there would be no danger, but there would be peace. The vicar put his hand on her arm.

  ‘Wait until it is quite quiet,’ he said and so she did. Sitting on a camp stool watching Ruth knit, finding comfort in the regularity of the needles. Counting the stitches because it filled her head with numbers, not his poor, lonely, cold, wet body which had begun to nudge at her mind.

  Ruth handed her a red jumper and scissors. They were rusted but sharp and Helen picked away at the sewn seams until it was in sections and then she pulled the kinked wool, watching row after row unravel, winding it round and round her hand; red upon red. Had there been red on his face? Had he felt pain?

  ‘It should be all right now, Helen,’ the vicar called.

  She rose then, smiling as Ruth smiled, but her face felt stiff and unreal. She nodded to the vicar and slowly edged in front of the curtain in the doorway, then opened the door, knowing that there would be no light showing. She could not run, there was no strength in her legs. She watched the searchlights stabbing the skies, saw the puffs of flak, and drowned in the noise of the aeroplanes, the bombs and shells away to the south. Had he been afraid as the water entered his lungs?

  She heard the revving of the auxiliary fire engines from the yard behind the vicarage but then she was inside the house, feeling her way down the hall, into the kitchen where there was a sort of peace and she stood for a moment but his voice did not come back. But neither did the image of his body.

  She dragged two pails from beneath the sink and then a third from the scullery, searching for him in her mind, feeling her way back into the darkness of the hall, hearing the bombs, not him. And then as she moved past the telephone table there was a hush, a silence, a moment of utter calm, and she called his name then but there was no answer, just a tearing endless sound that filled the space around her and the ceiling dropped, and great timbers crashed to the ground and Helen was swamped with a blackness which took all pain, all thought away.

  It took the rescue party over two hours to pull her free and take her to the first aid point where nurses pulled splinters of glass from her hands and arms, for the wedged timbers had protected her. It was now that she cried and cried and thought that the whole world must hear over the sound of the bombs and shells and alarm bells. But it was not for the pain and the blood, but at last for Heine.

  Her leg was not broken but badly cut and bruised and by the time it was dressed the all-clear had sounded and Marian helped her back to the flat where the vicar was waiting. His house was ruined and so Helen asked him to use her spare room and was grateful when he agreed because she did not want to be alone any more. Marian came too and used the studio because she could travel more easily from here and she too was lonely.

  The vicar put a hot-water bottle in Helen’s bed but she was not ready for sleep yet because there was something to be done. She walked steadily back down the stairs, pushing aside for now the pain in her leg, hugging close to her the thought of her husband.

  ‘I could have died and I didn’t. I thought I wanted to die but now I know I don’t,’ she told Marian who had tried to stop her. ‘I felt fear when I had thought I would not feel anything but grief again. They mustn’t think they’ve beaten him or me.’

  At first the woman at the Red Cross was annoyed at Helen’s interruption, at her dust-covered clothes, at her description of scrubbing out dirty buckets. Helen lifted her hands; the blood from her splinter wounds had seeped through the bandages.

  ‘I want those chemical toilets. The vicar has been assured that we are to become an accredited shelter. I want those toilets and I want them now.’ Her voice was still and slow. She stood in front of the desk; her leg was throbbing and her hands too.

  ‘I will not leave until I have them.’

  The woman came round the desk then, taking Helen’s arm, drawing her to a chair, calling for a drink.

  ‘My dear, you shall have them.’ Her voice was kind and her face was too, and Helen’s anger was gone again and only the despair was there, coming out in endless tears, and she wondered if grief was always like this, hard and fast, then ebbing for a moment leaving life to run on as usual until the next bout of tears. She cried on and off all that night in the crypt, lying on a camp bed while more than sixty people sat or slept around her.

  Ruth came and held her. ‘You ’ave a good cry, my dear. It helps you know. My old Albert never came back from the last lot. My grandson’s in this one. His dad’s dead.’

  Helen told her then that Heine was German and had not been a soldier but a prisoner because it seemed unfair to accept sympathy unless she was honest. Ruth just smiled.

  ‘They’re all young, poor little buggers. They all bleed just the same and we cry, just the same.’

  Helen lay in the dark, feeling the pain of her hands and arms, of her leg, wanting the comfort of the only person who could not give it. Thinking of the bombers who flew over London, dropping their bombs, thinking of the bombers who flew over Germany, and wondered how she could tell Heine’s parents that their son was dead.

  The next morning she received a letter from Willi.

  Dear Frau Weber,

  I ask a friend of mine who is being today released to post this to you when he reach the mainland. I want you to have knowledge of how Heine is killed. He had stood against the Nazis you see, too loudly, too strong and in the end they hurt his friend. Martin now is insane. It is something which makes him want to fight them with more effort.

  We walk near the sea on a cold rough day. He had been sent the death sentence but it not stop him from speaking out on that walk too. The guard was in front. I was behind Heine and was pushed to ground from behind. I saw these men come to Heine and push him hard, over edge, on to the rocks, into the sea. They had promised they would, Frau Weber, and I do not tell you this to pain you further but to tell of his courage.

  I was with him the night before he died. Perhaps he had knowledge of it in his heart. He said, if he die, I must tell you that he make his gesture as you did in Hanover with the old man on the ground. That these years are just a fragment of time in the great age of the world and that they will pass. Tell her it will all pass, he said to me. And tell her that I love her.

  Your husband was brave man, Frau Weber. We shall miss him, miss his spirit. He was honoured amongst us. He was loved.

  Your obedient servant,

  Willi Weiss

  Helen was late into work. She walked in the icy drizzle of that Monday before Christmas to the Red Cross and spoke to the woman who had brought her tea and kindness. She was able to assure Helen that a message could be conveyed through the Red Cross to Herr Weber informing him of his son’s death in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. It was 23 December and Helen wondered whether there would be carp for the Christmas Eve dinner in Hanover or just bombs and tiredness as there was here. She
wondered how long love lived when there was no one to accept that love.

  She felt the drizzle turn to rain on her face and was glad she had sent presents for Christoph two weeks ago: a carved catapult for knocking targets off the wall as he had asked and books which she had bought from the stalls which still opened down many side streets. It seemed too much of an effort to think of Christmas now. Before Heine’s death she had hoped to travel down for two days but the vicar had rung the rector in Greater Mannenham to tell him to pass a message on to Laura that the trains were too difficult. But it was not travelling that was too difficult, it was the knowledge of Heine’s death which would be too hard to hide from her son and he should at least have peace this Christmas. It would be time enough in January to tell her son of his father’s death. She stood still and looked at a smouldering ruin, pushing a brick with her foot. Who knew if there would ever be another Christmas free of Hitler’s rule?

  On Christmas Eve people still came to the shelter although raids had almost ceased for forty-eight hours. They had found companionship and safety down here beneath the church and had no wish to spend Christmas alone in houses, flats or Anderson shelters. Helen dragged out old bunting and everyone helped to hang it round the crypt. There was no midnight service in the church but beneath it they sang carols and Helen found that her voice was too uncertain to sing ‘Silent Night’. The vicar said prayers for all those under attack; those in the provinces, those in Germany. Afterwards he pumped the primus and as a light raid continued outside they made tea and soup, using goods that people had brought.

  They ignored the crump crump of bombs and Helen pushed the pain of her leg and her hands from her as she listened to the groups talking softly. Sometimes they laughed and sometimes they cried because a father, a son, a husband had died and Helen did not feel alone in her suffering any more and there was some comfort in that but still each day and night seemed to last a lifetime.