by Annie Groves
Several fire engines were drawn up close to the shed where Jess had worked, soaking it with arcing plumes of water to try to put out the flames.
Dodging the busy men, Jess finally made it to where the munitions workers were standing.
‘I work in number three shed,’ she told them, demanding anxiously, ‘What’s happened?’
‘Number three shed?’ one of the women responded. ‘Well, you won’t be working there no more, love,’ she told her. ‘Blown sky high, it’s bin. And as to what happened, you know as much as the rest of us, doesn’t she, Doris?’ she asked the woman standing next to her, raising her voice above the sounds of the hoses and the running engines, and men shouting commands.
‘Oh, aye, that’s right. Mind you, I’ve just heard summat about one of them women working there starting it all by sneaking out for a smoke. Chucked her fag down when she thought she were going to get caught by the foreman, right into some ruddy TNT.’
Jess knew, of course, that what she was being told was only supposition but, even so, a chill of horror ran down her spine. One small explosion of TNT would have led to more and bigger ones, and the girls in the shed wouldn’t have had a chance, especially if it was true and the girl who had caused the initial explosion had been standing just outside the doorway. Unwanted and violent images were already forming inside her head, the faces of those she knew she would never see again, not laughing and joking as she knew them but instead contorted with horror and fear, knowing what they were facing. How many seconds of that terror had they had before that final explosion that had blown them to pieces? Ten? Twenty? She had gone icy cold but sweat was pouring down her body. And what if there hadn’t been one final explosion but several smaller ones, whilst they ran screaming and desperate, seeking some way of escape…?
As though she had read her thoughts, Mabel suddenly told her grimly, ‘Lord knows but they must have bin desperate, trapped inside there. I know how I would have felt. We was in number five shed when we heard the explosion and our foreman had us outta of there that fast, and thank God he did.’
‘I heard one of the women from six shed saying as how she’d heard that they was taking women down to the ambulances wot had tried to get through the fire. She said that they was coming all on fire and that their skin was hanging off their bones, and that the smell…’
Jess put her hand to her clammy forehead. She felt sick and faint and filled with a huge, furious burning anger. She lurched away from the women, ignoring their calls to come back as she dodged past an ARP man, who had turned away to talk to an exhausted fireman.
‘Called in the bomb disposal lot, they have. Much good they can do,’ Jess heard the fireman saying grimly. ‘If this fire gets round to that shed where they’ve got all them shells stocked the whole of ruddy Liverpool will be going up in smoke.’
‘We was told they’d brought in as many lorries as they can to get them shells out,’ the ARP man was saying.
‘Aye, well, they’ve sent the bomb disposal lot round that side. Rather them than me. They’ll be the first to cop it if the fire spreads over there. If we get a ruddy early onshore evening wind, that will be it. It will fan the flames and we’ll have no chance.’
The bomb disposal men. That meant Billy.
Oblivious to everything and anyone else, Jess started to make her way round to the storage area for the shells, muttering under her breath as she did, ‘That Billy, he’s got no more sense than to go and try to be a ruddy hero. What does he know about TNT or shells? All he’ll be thinking about is going down the Grafton and telling some daft girl about how he saved the munitions factory. Huh, how he blew himself to bits, more like, although how he’s going to be telling anyone that once he’s gone and got himself killed I don’t know…’
The men working to control the blaze were too busy to notice her, and her knowledge of the factory enabled her to reach the shed where the shells were stored without being stopped.
As she rounded the corner of one of the other sheds and looked towards it, she came to an abrupt halt. Where she had expected to see the familiar sight of several of the factory buildings, there was now only rubble and an empty space into which fire hoses were pumping arcs of water.
On the other side of this devastation she could see where several men, wearing the insignia of the Royal Engineers, were grouped together. One of them was bending over, fastening his shoe laces.
Jess’s heart turned over slowly and painfully inside her chest. It was Billy, she was sure it was, but she still didn’t let her breath out until he straightened up. A huge rolling wave of relief picked her up, carrying her with it so that she had no awareness of running towards the men, no awareness of sobbing out Billy’s name, no awareness of anything at all really until Billy turned round and then started to run towards her, snatching her up and then holding her so tightly that she could hardly breathe whilst he said chokily over and over again, ‘Ruddy hell, Jess…ruddy hell. I thought you was dead.’
He kept on hugging her tightly whilst Jess hugged him equally tightly back. She could taste the salt of his tears mingling with her own and see the tracks they had made on his smoke-blackened face.
‘Ruddy, ruddy hell…Jess,’ he kept on saying brokenly until she told him breathlessly, ‘Give over saying that, will you?’
‘I thought you was in that number three shed,’ he told her. ‘I thought you was gone like them other poor things.’
‘Poor things. Daft things, more like, for getting themselves killed like that,’ Jess contradicted him angrily. ‘Why did they have to go and let summat like that happen to them? I only have to turn me back for a couple of hours, and they go and get themselves killed.’ She could feel the anger bubbling up hotly inside her, like jam in her mam’s jam-making pan, suddenly boiling upwards in a surge of unstoppable fury. Deep down inside herself she knew that what she was feeling was unreasonable but somehow she couldn’t stop the angry words from spilling out whilst Billy held her as though he would never let her go.
‘There must have been a couple of them wot’s alive, Billy,’ she pleaded, ‘and that had the sense to get out in time?’
His arms tightened round her, giving her the answer before his gruff, ‘I’m sorry, Jess.’ He wiped one hand across his eyes whilst still holding on to her with the other.
‘I thought you were dead, an’ all, I really did. Felt like me own life was over, I did,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘Didn’t seem as though there was any point to it any more wi’out you to scrap with. You must have had someone up there looking out for you – ruddy hell, you must,’ he swore, looking skywards meaningfully.
‘It was on account of Ruthie. I had to take Ruthie home. She had an upset,’ Jess stumbled over the words and then broke off and pulled back from him, fresh tears filling her eyes.
‘Oh, Billy, I’d almost forgotten. Poor Walter…he’s dead.’ The way Billy was looking at her hurt her physically for him. ‘It’s all right,’ she heard herself telling him shakily. ‘Me and Walter, we were only friends really, but I still feel on his account, dying like that after he’d been beat up by that Myra’s GI. Oh, that poor girl he was sweet on, Billy. I hope that someone thinks to let her know what’s happened to him.’ She shivered. despite the heat from the still burning fires.
‘’Ere, Billy, stop that canoodling and get yourself over here. Orders are we’re to get back to base, seeing as there’s nowt else we can do here now that they’ve got the last lorryload of shells out of the way,’ one of the other men called out.
Immediately Billy’s hold on Jess tightened as though he didn’t want to let her go.
‘You’d better do as he says.’ Jess gave him a little push and, disengaging herself from him, suddenly started to feel more like her normal self.
‘And you’d better take yourself off back home. Your mam will be at her wits’ end worrying about you,’ Billy reminded her with a sternness with was almost proprietary. And she realised how much she liked it.
TWENTY-NINE
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br /> Diane tried not to think of the reason for the acrid taste in the air as she walked up the path to her digs. A sombre mood of mourning had enveloped the whole city following the explosion at the munitions factory, and it seemed that everyone you spoke to knew someone who had died in that inferno. Every day one heard heart-rending stories of young children who had been left without mothers, parents left without daughters, husbands without wives and serving men without sweethearts.
‘Here, there’s a letter for you,’ Myra told her as she walked into the kitchen. Taking the envelope, Diane turned her back on her without speaking. Myra had made several attempts at getting her to act as though nothing had happened, but Diane was too disgusted by what she had done to want to have anything to do with her.
‘Still on your high horse, are you?’ Myra sniffed now. ‘Well, suit yourself then.’ When Diane didn’t respond she added sharply, ‘Anyway, I don’t see why you get so hot under the collar about something that doesn’t affect you.’
Diane put down her letter and turned round. ‘When someone tells the kind of lies that mean that an innocent man’s whole future is put at risk, then it affects everyone who knows about it, whether or not they are personally involved,’ she told her curtly, adding in exasperation when Myra shrugged sullenly and turned away from her, ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that Glen is being accused of something that was nothing to do with him because of your lies?’
‘I never said I’d told any lies,’ Myra denied. ‘It’s you that’s said that.’
Refusing to respond, Diane picked up her letter and headed for the stairs. Myra was quite plainly already dressed for going out for the evening, which suited her because she was going out herself – to the Grafton to meet up with Lee. Her heart thudded with guilty excitement.
Her letter was from her mother, which rather surprised her because she didn’t normally write mid-week. She sat down on her bed and opened it, quickly scanning the first few lines almost absently and then staring at the letter in disbelief, as she went back to the beginning and read it again.
Darling, I have thought long and hard about telling you this but your father and I have talked it over and we feel that we can’t not tell you.
Kit came to see us over the weekend. Of course, your father was all for refusing to let him step over the threshold to begin with but in the end he gave way.
Kit asked us to pass on to you his apologies for the pain he caused you. He said he couldn’t explain himself fully to us without having explained himself fully to you first, which of course we could both understand. However, he did say that there is an explanation he wants to make to you and an apology he needed to give to you.
Oh, my dear, if you had seen him. He was still very much our dear familiar Kit and yet at the same time he has changed, become more thinking and less carefree, I would say, more a man who has gone through the awful experience of war with all that that means rather than a boy who sees it as a kind of great adventure.
He asked – so humbly and sweetly that it moved me almost to tears I have to admit -if we would give him your address so that he could write to you. Your father and I talked this over and we decided that we could not do that without asking you first what you yourself wanted. We know how hard these past few months have been for you and what you must have suffered, even though you have been so very brave and kept this to yourself.
We cannot advise you, darling, your dear old parents who have never had to face what you modern young people are having to live with day in and day out. Daddy and I both liked Kit very much, but what is important to us is that our darling girl is happy, and that when she marries it is to a man who puts her happiness before everything and anything else. My feeling as a mother is that your happiness is more important to me than anything else. You have not said so to us but as your mother I have detected in your recent letters a certain note of light-heartedness I was beginning to fear you had lost for ever, and I have wondered if this is because you have met someone special.
Much as we like Kit, it is you, my darling, who is closest to our hearts. If you want us to give Kit your address then that is what we shall do. If you don’t then you may be sure that we shall respect that.
Your loving mother
Diane’s hands had started to tremble.
She put the letter down on the bed and walked over to the small window, looking out of it but not seeing anything other than the images forming inside her head – Kit’s face, Kit’s smile…She closed her eyes, but now she could hear his voice, soft with love, warm with laughter…and cold with rejection, she reminded herself fiercely. She opened her eyes. She must not give in to sentiment and let Kit back into her life. He had hurt her so badly…so very badly. What was to say that he would not do so again if she was foolish enough to let him? And besides, what about Lee? Lee, whom she was due to meet at the Grafton in less than a hour, she reminded herself firmly, picking up her mother’s letter and putting it back in its envelope.
The queue outside the Grafton had started to move forward. Jess reached for Ruthie’s hand and held on to it tightly. Neither of them had wanted to come here tonight, the night they had planned to celebrate Alice’s birthday, but both Ruthie’s neighbour and Jess’s parents had insisted firmly that they must.
‘It’s the only way, lass,’ Jess’s stepfather had said gently. ‘I know how much the loss of them as you worked with grieves you, Jessie girl, but sitting at home cryin’ won’t bring them back. Life is for livin’, Jess, and, ruddy hell, that’s what we all have to do these days. Look at them wot’s just gone…’
‘Don’t, Uncle Colin,’ Jess had protested, her eyes red from the hours she had spent crying.
‘Your uncle’s right, Jess,’ her mother had backed him.
‘I can’t go out dancing with them not even in their graves yet – what’s left of them,’ Jess had stormed.
‘I’m not saying that it is not right and proper that you should mourn them,’ her stepfather had told her, ‘but what I say is that from now on it’s up to you to do their living for them, Jessie. And that’s a big responsibility. But if anyone can take on that responsibility then it’s you. It will need a strong pair of shoulders to carry them with you through life, lass, and a big strong heart to go with them. The day you get wed, the day you hold your first kiddie in your arms, those days you’ll be thinking of them young lasses that will never do those things, and in a way you’ll be doing it for them and in honour of them. That’s what happens in wartime, Jess. Them wot dies can only live on in the memories and the living of them wot lives. So you just dry your eyes and go out there and dance for them all, my girl, because that’s the very best thing you can do for them.’
It wasn’t just them feeling the sombreness of what had happened, Jess acknowledged, as she looked at the shadowed expressions of the others going into the dance hall. And what about poor Ruthie, standing next to her? She might have survived but her Glen was still accused of Walter’s death. She reached for Ruthie’s hand and squeezed it.
‘I feel awful coming here,’ Ruthie told her emotionally. ‘It seems so wrong.’
‘I know,’ Jess agreed, ‘but we have to do it for Alice, Ruthie, and especially all those lost souls. How’s your mother taken it?’
Ruthie gave her a weary look. ‘She’s bin bad but not as bad as she could have bin. She hasn’t been doing any of that going out wandering around looking for Dad, but she was sitting in her chair last night, just rocking to and fro, and staring into space just like she did when we first lost Dad. She keeps asking for Glen as well. She’s got it into her head that he was at the munitions factory. She was asleep when I came out. I wasn’t going to come, but Mrs Brown said that I should.’
Jess squeezed her hand sympathetically, wondering whether or not to say what she was thinking.
‘You know, Jess,’ Ruthie told her huskily, ‘I can’t help thinking about that watch of Alice’s and how it went missing and wondering…’
Jess squeezed her h
and more tightly. ‘I’ve bin thinking exactly the same thing meself,’ she admitted. ‘And you know what else? I reckon I know who stole it.’
Ruthie stared at her.
‘I’ve bin thinking about it a lot. I reckon it was Maureen.’
‘No! She wouldn’t,’ Ruthie denied, but even as she spoke she knew deep down inside herself that Jess could be right.
‘She was scratching at her wrist, wasn’t she, just like Alice had been doing, and, well, I allus thought there was summat a bit “off”. Look at the way she let you tek the blame for that stuff she’d got hid in your locker.’
‘But even if she stole Alice’s watch she would never have taken it into the cleanway,’ Ruthie protested.
‘No, not deliberately, but mebbe summat happened and she had no choice, or she forgot about it. I’m not saying what happened were on account of her, mind, I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised.’
It was a horrible thought but Ruthie couldn’t deny that it was a possibility.
‘So you did come. I was just about to give up on you.’
Diane whirled round. ‘Lee!’ And then wished she hadn’t as she realised how close her small movement had brought her to him.
‘Watch out,’ he warned her, as he reached out, placing his hand on her shoulder to draw her out of the path of a group of men making their way to the bar.
‘Do you know how much I wish that right now I had you all to myself?’
‘You mustn’t say things like that to me,’ Diane protested.
‘No? Then what should I say? What a surprise, Wilson. I never expected to see you here.’
‘We shouldn’t be here together like this, Lee,’ Diane told him huskily. ‘We both know that.’