Before the Dawn

by Candace Camp

  “I’ll have to write to Alan’s parents and tell them what the pilot said. I’m sure his mother will cling to the hope that he swam to France. He was a good swimmer, but…” Jessica’s voice faltered. She couldn’t bear to say the rest aloud, so she silently shook her head. After a long, shuddering breath, she blinked away her tears and patted Alyssa’s hand where it lay on her shoulder. “You’ve been such a help to me.”

  Alyssa gave her shoulder an extra squeeze. “I’m just glad I’m here. We’ll help each other.”

  Jessica rose to her feet a little unsteadily. “I think I’ll work in the garden.” It was her favorite way to ease pain and she felt an intense urge to get out of the house. As though if she could only put some distance between herself and the walls that were closing in, she could distance herself from the emotions that threatened to collapse her very being.

  Jessica headed into the kitchen with Alyssa trailing behind her uncertainly. She set down the letter on the table but before she could fetch her workbasket, the piercing sound of sirens split the air. Alyssa and Jessica both froze, then swung to stare at each other. “Air raid,” Jessica breathed. They ran for the back door. “Matty! Come on! Into the shelter.”

  Jessica held open the back door for Matty and Alyssa and dashed out after them. Alyssa shielded her eyes and looked up. She turned to the east, and her face went slack. “Oh, my God!”

  Jessica, opening the door of the shelter, glanced back at her, then in the direction where Alyssa stared. Jessica stiffened, and a fear far greater than that induced by the siren sliced through her. The late afternoon sky east of London was thick with planes. She’d never seen anything like it, never imagined anything like it. As they watched, black objects dropped from the bottom of the planes. Seconds later fires erupted from the ground. “Oh, God.” Jessica’s hand shook on the door. “Oh, God.”

  “Let’s get in.” Alyssa broke from her trance and shoved open the shelter door. She helped Matty down into the shelter and thrust Jessica in after her, then went in herself, closing the metal door.

  They stood in darkness. Only the faintest line of light shone from around the upper rim of the door. Outside, the world exploded into noise. As long as she lived, Alyssa knew she would never forget the thundering explosions.

  Jessica took her hand, and Alyssa squeezed it. She wondered how close the bombs were falling. They sounded horribly loud; they must be nearby. Matty edged closer to her, too, and Alyssa reached out to put her other hand around Matty’s.

  They waited for what seemed hours, their ears assaulted by the noise. Alyssa felt sweat trickling down her scalp and neck, running down her sides. It was hot and airless inside the shelter. She wished it weren’t so dark, but she was too frozen by the sounds of devastation outside even to think of the kerosene lamp Jessica had put out here.

  The explosions moved from continuous thunder to single, distinguishable hits, then dwindled away altogether. Now there was only the sound of sirens.

  “Is it over?” Jessica whispered, her voice cracking.

  “I don’t know.” Alyssa waited a few minutes longer. She had never been able to stand not knowing. She opened the door a slit and peered out. She saw only a garden at dusk. She opened it wider and climbed out. The garden and the houses beyond it looked perfectly normal. Her head turned toward the east.

  Black clouds billowed up to the sky, and flames illuminated the growing darkness. The whole East End must be on fire.

  Jessica and the housekeeper scrambled out after Alyssa, their eyes riveted on the eastern horizon, too. “My sister lives in the East End,” Matty said softly.

  They returned to the kitchen, and Matty sat down heavily at the table where the letter from Alan’s commanding officer lay. The open letter stared up at Jessica, a reminder of how quickly and completely her world had fallen apart. She laid a hand on Matty’s shoulder, uncertain how she could offer the woman comfort when things looked so dire.

  “Would you like to call your sister? I’m not sure if the lines will be working, but you are more than welcome to try.”

  “My sister doesn’t have a phone.” Matty was pale and stared blankly at the letter, unseeing. It was worse than if she had started crying; at least then Jessica could embrace her. Instead Matty sat stock-still, looking like a ghost.

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be safe to go look for her right now.” Jessica frowned. “Would it be all right if Alyssa and I accompanied you to the East End tomorrow?” There was no guarantee what they would find there and Jessica was terrified of the prospect of seeing all the carnage close up, but if she had been able to search for Alan herself after she had gotten that first telegram, she would have been there in a second. They had to be strong for Matty. And maybe this time the news would be happier than her news had been.

  Matty seemed to see the letter then with its official RAF seal; she pulled her head up and finally made eye contact with Jessica. Seeing the young woman’s tears, Matty forced a weak smile. “That’s so kind of you, dearheart, but are you sure you’re up to it?”

  Jessica realized she was. After everything that the Nazis had taken from her, things she could never get back, she’d be damned if she’d let them take let them take away her humanity and love for a woman she’d known since she was young.

  “Of course. I’m not sure why I phrased it as a question. I won’t take no for an answer.” Jessica bent over to hug Matty and she returned the embrace fiercely.

  “I’m so sorry about Mr. Townsend, ma’am.” Matty whispered, her voice breaking a little.

  “Thank you.” Jessica gave her another squeeze, then stood up and straightened her shoulders. “I’m going to check on Alyssa.”

  Alyssa was upstairs in the front guest room, looking out the window, and Jessica joined her. They could see the East End. The whole dock area was an inferno.

  “They must have decided to start bombing the cities instead of the strategic targets. They’re trying to break the people’s backs,” Alyssa guessed.

  “They’ll never do that.” Jessica’s voice was so cold and fierce that Alyssa turned, startled, to look at her friend. Jessica’s face was pale, her eyes huge, but the small jaw was set and the eyes blazing with determination.

  Alyssa looked back at the flames licking the distant sky, and the anger within her grew harder, icier, larger. She had to do something, she thought. She had to do something to stop the Nazis. She had been frightened by the air raid, but strangely excited, too. She felt exhilarated, flooded with the adrenaline of danger faced and passed. If there had been an enemy in front of her, she thought she could have picked up the first weapon handy and waded into him, swinging. She wished there were an enemy there.

  They gazed at the distant fires for a few more moments, then went downstairs to listen to the large brown console radio. It crackled with static as the announcer reported major fires and devastation around the dock and East End.

  A little after eight o’clock, the hideous sirens began again. Jessica and Alyssa stared at each other in amazement. “Again?”

  They hurried for the back door, taking a shaken Matty with them. As they ran to the shelter, they could see the approaching formations of planes, the larger bombers below with the fighters above them. It was almost completely dark, and the great beams of the searchlights probed the sky, highlighting the planes for the antiaircraft guns below. Quickly the three women scrambled into the shelter.

  This time they didn’t wait by the door, clutching each other in fear. Alyssa turned on the electric torch she had brought with her. Its beam illuminated the small room weirdly, casing a bright circle of light against one wall, but it enabled Alyssa to find the old kerosene lamp and matches on the shelf, where Jessica had stored them some time ago. She lit the lamp and turned off the torch.

  They looked around at the little room. It was narrow, with two small bunk beds on either side. A shelf on the wall at the back between the bunks held the lamp and matches, as well as several ti
ns of food and an opener. A large bottle of water sat on the floor beneath it. In front of the bunk bed sat a small stool and an old chamber pot.

  Matty perched on one of the bunks. Alyssa sat down on the stool, and Jessica sat on the bunk close to her. Outside, the bombs crashed through the city. “I wonder if they’re closer this time,” Alyssa mused aloud.

  “Are you frightened?” Jessica asked, rubbing her arms.

  Alyssa thought for a moment. “Actually—no. I feel a bit of fear, but it’s not that bad. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but it’s kind of exciting, too.”

  Jessica gave her a wan smile. “I might have known you’d feel that way. It sounds as if the world’s ending to me.”

  “You’re scared?”

  Jessica nodded her head. “Yes. I hate to be such a coward.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being scared. If you think about it, it’s really a greater proof of bravery to stick it out here in London if you’re frightened by the bombs than if you aren’t.”

  Jessica smiled faintly. “Thank you.”

  The raids continued throughout the night, ending, then starting again an hour or two later, so that after a time they elected simply to spend the night in the small shelter. It wasn’t a comfortable night. The beds were narrow and hard, and they were jolted awake whenever a new raid began.

  The next morning they crawled out of their shelter, stiff and sleepy. Jessica turned on the radio again, and they listened to the grim statistics: Woolwich Arsenal, the docks, Beckton Gasworks, the West Ham Power Station, the City, and Westminster had been bombed. A few bombs had fallen in Kensington, close to the area where Jessica lived, but the major portion of the damage had been confined to the East End, near the docks and the business center of the city.

  It was the poor section of the city, and the destruction of its buildings had left thousands homeless, including Matty’s sister, Sarah. Luckily, she was not one of the hundreds believed dead, and after searching the large crowds of displaced citizens, they finally found her. Sarah had grabbed what little possessions she had that were not destroyed and Alyssa and Jessica took them from her, insisting that they would carry them back to Jessica’s house. Matty thanked the women profusely for letting her sister stay, but Jessica just said firmly, “Matty, you are family, so it follows that Sarah is family. And we don’t need to be thanked for helping our family in a time of crisis.”

  No one could deny that this was truly a time of crisis. Fires still burned, and the fire brigades struggled all day to put out the blazes so they would provide no illumination for the enemy bombers when they came again that evening—for everyone expected them to come again.

  And they did. At dusk, later than the evening before, the sirens sounded again. It was to be the second in twenty-three consecutive nights of bombings. Sometimes there was only one raid, other nights several. First a wave of bombers would drop incendiary bombs to explode and burn, giving illumination for later bombers to see their targets. The Luftwaffe came at different times and in different strengths to unnerve the citizens below, for the primary aim of the bombing raids was to break the spirit of London’s people.

  But this they were unable to do. The four women banded together in Jessica’s shelter. When they weren’t tucked away in the bunks they played card games or talked to pass the time. And they were always there to comfort each other when it got to be too much. Londoners without shelters moved below ground at night, taking bedrolls, water, and food with them into the deep underground tube stations, preferring them to the public shelters that the government had built. Volunteers watched for the fires set by incendiary bombs so that the fire brigades could douse them before they provided light for other German planes. Volunteers manned ambulances, driving through the streets, dodging craters made by bombs and toppling buildings, to reach the wounded. By day, crews worked to dig out the rubble of the bombed buildings, searching for signs of life. Stubbornly they refused to let the nightly raids bring the huge city to a standstill.

  Bombs soon fell all over the city, no longer just in the East End but in the fashionable West End as well, hitting even Buckingham Palace. But the buses ran through the raids; it was a matter of pride to maintain their schedules. Workers reported to work each morning despite lack of sleep the night before. The rubble was cleared away, and businesses reopened.

  It became a routine every night for the four women to go down to their shelter when they heard the first wail of sirens. After a while they almost became accustomed to the sound of explosions and they were able to read and sleep much more easily than they had been able to at first. The next morning they would go to Stepney as usual, where they worked for a volunteer canteen, handing out food and drink to the battered, homeless victims of the air raids. Matty and Sarah worked as tirelessly as their younger companions, fueled by the knowledge that if it weren’t for Jessica they could have well been one of the crowd they served. Destruction lay all around them, and sometimes Alyssa thought her heart would break to look at the children, hungry and without shelter, and often without parents as well.

  Sometimes Claire came to visit Alyssa and Jessica. She had quit her job with her uncle and had become a volunteer ambulance driver. She spent her nights speeding through the destruction to pick up the wounded. Thin and pale, she was obviously exhausted by her work, and she could talk of little but the horrors she saw each night.

  With every day, Alyssa’s hatred and bitterness grew toward those who were wreaking this destruction. She ached to do more than she was doing now. She wanted to fight back directly, to do something to actually hurt the enemy. If she were a man, she would have joined the RAF. Alyssa thought she would relish meeting the enemy face-to-face in the sky. She wasn’t made to stand around and watch.

  Jessica wasn’t usually as headstrong as Alyssa, but she now had a fire inside that drove her each day. She immersed herself in the work she was doing so that each night she was so tired that even the uncomfortable bunk beds lent themselves to a dead sleep. The chaotic schedule kept her from having to think too much about what she’d lost. Letting Alan’s parents know what had happened had been heart- wrenching for Jessica, and his mother swore she would not hold any memorial for her son because she refused to believe he was actually gone. Alan had been everything to Jessica for as long as she could remember, and now she didn’t even have a headstone where she could go to feel close to him.

  One day Jessica did not go to work with Alyssa, mysteriously refusing to talk about what she was doing. That evening when Alyssa came home, Jessica told her that she had decided to go to work for Ian Hedley. “I’m going to a school in two weeks to become a radio-telegraphist. Ian says he’ll need quite a few of them, and I’m certain I could learn it.”

  “A radio-telegraphist? You mean, one of those people who sends Morse code?”

  “Yes, as they do on ships.” Jessica went on, “I simply couldn’t bear doing no more than I was. When I think of Alan—all the destruction—well, I just have to fight back. Handing out food in Stepney isn’t enough. And Ian will let me work, really work for him. He won’t shunt me off into something trivial just because I’m a woman. That’s one area, at least, where women are considered competent to do the job.”

  Alyssa looked at her friend for a long moment. Why hadn’t she thought of Ian herself? She’d been wishing she could do something more direct, yet she hadn’t thought of the obvious possibility. Why would Ian want telegraphists? Who would he be contacting at a distance secretly? The answer was obvious—people in occupied Europe. People who were fighting from within the Nazi empire.

  Alyssa’s stomach began to flutter with excitement. She could do that. Once she had laughed at the idea that she could be a spy. Now it didn’t seem so absurd. Death no longer scared her. There had been times the past few months when she would have welcomed it. She was colder now, harder, older in a way that had nothing to do with age. She knew now that she could spy for Ian, that she could risk death and danger. T
hat she wanted to.

  The next morning she told Jessica that she wanted to see Ian herself. Jessica chuckled. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. The only unusual thing about it is why you didn’t join up before I did.”

  Jessica telephoned Claire and arranged for Ian and her to come over that afternoon for tea. “After tea, Claire and I will discreetly slip out to look over the garden or something.”

  Work crawled by that day, and by teatime, Alyssa was jumpy with nerves. When Claire and Ian arrived, the four of them sat down for a superficial chat. Jessica poured tea, and they nibbled at the sandwiches on the plate. There were no cakes. Teatime, like all meals nowadays, was skimpy. With the strict rationing, it was almost impossible to get sugar and eggs, as well as any number of necessities.

  Afterward Claire and Jessica drifted away, as Jessica had promised, and Ian turned to face Alyssa. His expression gave away nothing.

  Alyssa wet her lips. “I want to work for you.”

  Ian said nothing, merely waited.

  “You must plan to have some sort of… operation in France, don’t you? I’d like to help.”

  He gazed at her appraisingly. “Why?”

  Alyssa frowned, surprised. “Why? That’s obvious, isn’t it? I want to stop the Nazis. I want to help end this destruction and pain. There must be something I can do.”

  “Yes, there is. But you have to be willing to sacrifice to do it.”

  “I’m willing.”

  “Willing to set aside your career?”

  “Yes. I’m already doing that.”

  “Your father is in Washington, D.C., isn’t he?”

  “That’s what he planned when I talked to him in Paris.”

  “His daughter, if she were living with him in Washington, would be in a position to hear all sorts of things which I would have difficulty finding out. She could go to diplomatic functions, flirt with young men on the staff of the German embassy. The South American embassies. Talk to wives and daughters.”