When the Lights Come on Again

by Maggie Craig

  He wondered idly if the baby would be a boy or a girl. He didn’t mind either way - a healthy baby and a happy Helen, that was all he wanted. And surely his parents would come round when they saw their grandchild for the first time. His mother would love to have a baby to fuss over.

  He didn’t suppose he could hope to get home in time for the birth. It was good to know that Liz would be there to help Helen when the time came.

  Although there were to be many reverses later, particularly after Rommel and his Afrika Korps arrived on the scene, the British initially continued to have success in North Africa. On 23 January 1941, British and Australian forces stormed and took the strategically important fortress of Tobruk. The generals considered it a remarkably easy victory. They lost only five hundred men.

  As Eddie had surmised, Liz and Helen got together to share the correspondence from him. Spending the afternoon with the Gallaghers, Liz had been teasing Helen over the way she would be reading out from Eddie’s letter then suddenly stop, blushing.

  ‘Another romantic passage?’ Liz sighed. ‘Dear me.’

  They were laughing over Eddie’s postcard when the knock came at the door. Brendan Gallagher got up to answer it.

  Some sixth sense made Liz turn her head as he came back into the room. He had something in his hand. He was holding it gingerly, as if it were poisonous.

  ‘It’s a telegram,’ he said. ‘For Helen.’

  He handed it to his daughter. Terror raging in her blue eyes, she gave it to Liz.

  She managed two words: ‘Deeply regret...’ Then she broke down. Helen was calmer than she was.

  ‘We have to tell your mother. We don’t know if she’ll have been informed. Eddie said he was going to put me down as his next-of-kin. Come on, Liz. We’ll go to her now.’

  They called at Annie Crawford’s house first, taking her with them to help break the news to Sadie. When Liz’s mother opened the door and saw the three of them standing there, nothing needed to be said. Her daughter and daughter-in-law went into her arms.

  Mrs Crawford disappeared briefly to dispatch another neighbour to the yard with a message for William MacMillan, then returned to hover anxiously around the three women. They were still standing locked together when he came into the house ten minutes later.

  ‘Get those two out of here.’

  ‘William,’ pleaded his wife. ‘This lassie’s carrying Eddie’s baby - our grandchild.’

  There was no emotion in his eyes. Liz thought they looked dead. Like broken glass on a beach, washed opaque by the waves.

  ‘Father,’ she said. ‘Please.’ As she had done as a child being taken to hospital, she turned and stretched her arms out to him. He looked through her. As though she weren’t there.

  ‘William,’ said Sadie again.

  ‘I’ll have no Catholic bastard under my roof.’

  Helen drew herself out of her mother-in-law’s embrace and faced him unflinchingly.

  ‘My child is no bastard, Mr MacMillan. Eddie and I are married.’ She corrected herself. ‘I mean, Eddie and I were married.’ Her face crumpled, the full horror of it hitting her with the use of that one little word. She turned to her friend. ‘Och,Liz!’

  William MacMillan ignored her. It was as if she hadn’t spoken. Liz took Helen’s arm.

  ‘Come on, Helen,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. You don’t belong here.’ She looked at her father. ‘And neither do I. I’ll not set foot in this house again. Sorry, Ma.’

  Thirty-four

  Helen insisted on seeing Liz down to the street when she left. Conor came with them so that his heavily pregnant sister could lean on his arm when they went back up the stairs to the flat. It was March now and she was near her time, but so far nothing seemed to be happening. Liz was reluctant to leave her, but she was covering at the hospital this evening for Cordelia, who was in Edinburgh, attending some family party.

  Liz had made Conor promise he would go to a phone box and call the Infirmary as soon as Helen showed any signs of going into labour. He’d come home late last night, escaping the cold March nights up in the hills. Concerned about his sister, he was also wrestling with another problem.

  ‘Better men than me are fighting for their country,’ he’d told Liz this afternoon, his good-natured face sombre. ‘Better men than me are dying for their country.’ He was in tears at the thought of separating from his beloved dog, but he was seriously considering turning himself in - since he’d heard the news from North Africa.

  Liz and Helen had become closer than ever in the weeks since Eddie’s death, clinging to each other in their shared grief. It wasn’t getting any easier.

  First there had been a paralyzing numbness, a refusal to accept the fact that he was never coming home again.

  Then, for Liz at least, there had been anger. She directed it mostly against governments and politicians and warmongering dictators - the whole German nation, too. She knew very well that it had been an Italian bullet which had killed Eddie, but somehow she didn’t blame them so much. They’d just got themselves into a mess, whereas it was the Germans who had started this awful war.

  She railed against God too. Why had he allowed a boy from Clydebank who hated war to die in the sands of North Africa? It was stupid, a senseless sacrifice of her brother, with his brains and his passion and his hopes for the future with Helen and their baby. Some days Liz feared that the rage would consume her completely.

  It was one emotion Helen seemed not to feel. Devastated as she was by her loss, in the midst of her terrible grief there was a strange calmness about her. She said it was because of the baby. Liz thought she was probably right. The imminent arrival of Eddie’s child was a little pinprick of light in the desolation and darkness which had surrounded them both since the end of January.

  As she stepped out of the close on to the pavement, Liz felt Helen shiver.

  ‘Away back upstairs. Don’t get cold.’ The girls hugged. ‘Look after my nephew or niece,’ Liz said. She stretched up to give Conor a peck on the cheek and patted Finn on the head.

  She was at the end of the street when she heard her name being called. Helen was standing in the close mouth, one hand resting on Finn’s head, the other raised in farewell. Conor stood behind her. They were both smiling at her. She could have sworn that Finn was smiling too.

  ‘Goodbye, Liz,’ called Helen. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Aye.’ Liz returned the smile and the wave, turned the corner and walked the few yards along Kilbowie Road to the railway station. She clattered down the steps on to the platform, hoping the train wouldn’t be late. Stations could be such lonely places.

  As Liz waited on the platform at Singer’s station, two hundred and fifty Luftwaffe pilots in France, northern Europe and Scandinavia were making their final preparations for take-off.

  The German airmen had excellent maps. They showed tonight’s target in minute detail.

  The aerial photographs made by earlier spy flights pinpointed the shipyards and the docks, the industrial and commercial targets, the power station, the oil depots and the munitions factories. They showed the streets and houses of the town too, the tenement buildings and little terraced houses which were home to almost fifty thousand people.

  British civil defence knew the attack was coming. Several weeks earlier they had intercepted and decoded German radio signals which indicated that an air assault on Clydebank was being planned. On the morning of Thursday 13 March 1941 they detected Luftwaffe radio navigation beams over central Scotland. Then individual German planes made reconnaissance flights, checking the weather conditions. That confirmed it. They would be coming that night.

  A decision was taken not to inform the people of Clydebank. They would only panic, probably start trekking up into the hills. That could cause all kinds of confusion, give the authorities some real headaches.

  And these were Red Clydesiders after all. The news might lead to disturbances, riots and civil unrest. Much better to leave them in a state of blissfu
l ignorance about what was heading their way.

  At around 6 pm, about the same time as Liz was boarding her train, the German pilots began taking off from their different airfields. While they droned their way over the sea, gradually forming up into a huge squadron, the people of Clydebank got on with whatever they normally did on a Thursday evening.

  A young man who lived close to Liz’s grandfather in Radnor Street an apprentice at the Singer factory, caught the same train as her, heading for his weekly evening class at the Tech in Glasgow.

  In the Holy City, while Marie Gallagher joyfully prepared a meal for her prodigal son, Helen and her other brothers sat by the fire talking with him. Everyone was making a big fuss of Finn. Conor complained that the dog was getting a better welcome than he was.

  In Queen Victoria Row, Sadie MacMillan was also sitting by the fire, but the scene was far from joyful. Her husband sat opposite her, ostensibly reading the evening paper. He’d been staring at the same page for the past twenty minutes.

  He had refused to talk about their son’s death, denying his grieving wife even the silent refuge of his arms. They slept in the same bed, but there was no physical intimacy between them. There hadn’t been for a long time.

  Sadie yearned for comfort and consolation. William MacMillan gave her none. Not a touch. Not a kind word.

  They had loved each other once. It had been after little George’s death that he had changed. Now they had lost a second son - and Lizzie too, by the looks of it He had forced their daughter to walk out on them - and the bonnie girl Eddie had loved. Not to mention the bairn. Their grandchild. Sadie wondered desperately how much more of this she could take.

  ‘Hi, there,’ said Adam, standing up as Liz walked into the empty casualty department. He’d been sitting at a table poring over a textbook. ‘How’s Helen?’

  ‘Oh, she’s all right.’

  ‘When’s her date - next week sometime?’

  Liz nodded. ‘Wednesday. Nothing happening yet though.’

  ‘Well,’ he said comfortingly, ‘first babies can often be late.’

  Liz nodded again. First babies. There weren’t going to be any subsequent ones, not for Helen and Eddie. Adam put a solicitous hand on her shoulder.

  ‘And how’s Liz?’ His voice was very gentle.

  She managed a tight little smile. ‘Bearing up. Were you swotting when I arrived? Don’t let me stop you.’

  He made a face. ‘My finals do seem to be approaching at a rate of knots. Less than two weeks to go till the first exam.’

  ‘Do you want me to ask you some questions?’

  ‘Yes, if you can be bothered.’

  She sat down in front of the book. ‘It’ll pass the time,’ she said. ‘It looks like it’s going to be a quiet night.’

  At ten past nine the air-raid siren went off.

  ‘Ignore it,’ Adam advised. ‘Ask me another.’

  ‘Aye, we’ve had a lot of false alarms, haven’t we?’ responded Liz, scanning the page to see what topic she could test him on next. ‘There’s a lad lives near my grandfather - he’s an apprentice at Singer’s. I came in on the train with him tonight. He was telling me that they have a sweepstake every day in the factory on when the siren’s going to go off that night.’

  Adam smiled.

  ‘Right,’ said Liz, ‘tell me—’

  ‘—what that noise was,’ he said, straightening up abruptly in his chair.

  ‘It sounds like doors banging,’ said Liz in puzzlement, putting her finger in the textbook to keep her place and lifting her head towards the sounds which had so rudely interrupted them.

  Adam rose to his feet ‘That’s not doors banging, MacMillan. Those are bombs. Bloody hell!’

  Peter MacMillan, as a volunteer ARP warden, had been attending his weekly training night. He had just got home and undressed when the siren went off. Bugger. He’d been looking forward to an early night. He enjoyed his war work, but he wasn’t getting any younger. Ach well, it was back down the road for him, to the control centre in the basement of the public library.

  With a muttered curse, he reached for the trousers he’d laid over the back of a chair. In the blackout that was easier said than done. The material evaded his groping fingers and the trousers slid off the chair on to the floor. It took a few more seconds to locate them and get them the right way up.

  First one leg, then the other. What the hell was the matter with the bloody things? They felt far too tight. They’d been fine five minutes ago. Then he fell over. Fortunately he made it into the chair rather than going all the way to the floor. Feeling more than faintly ridiculous, he realized that he had put both legs down the same trouser leg. He swore colourfully. It was a good job Lizzie wasn’t here.

  As the whooping wail of the siren faded, all hell began to break loose. Flares were the first thing to come down, bathing the whole town in an eerie greenish glow. Then, to make the target yet more visible for their comrades, the German pathfinder units dropped hundreds of incendiaries. They let go of a few high-explosive bombs too, aiming to force the population down below into the shelters as soon as possible. That wasn’t done for any humanitarian reason. The more people there were in the shelters, the fewer there would be to put the fires out.

  Some people came back out to look at the incendiaries dropping, floating gracefully down in a shower of sparks like fairy lights on a Christmas tree. Afterwards they were to wonder if they’d been off their heads, especially when they heard stories of people being permanently blinded by the glare.

  The pathfinder units were followed by the main bombing force. Some were flying up the Irish Sea, carrying their hideous load from Beauvais in northern France. The majority were approaching over the North Sea, from Holland, northern Germany, Norway and Denmark. The drone of their engines could be heard as far south as Hull and as far north as Aberdeen. On the east coast near Edinburgh, people heard wave after wave coming over. Every ten minutes there were more of them.

  By about half past nine the main phalanx of Luftwaffe planes had arrived over Clydebank. Then they started to unloose their deadly cargo.

  The accident and emergency department was busy enough now. A steady stream of injured and shocked people were being brought in. Bombs were dropping not only on Clydebank but on the West End of Glasgow too. A landmine had fallen on Dudley Drive in Hyndland, no distance from the Infirmary. The hospital buildings had shaken in sympathy, and several windows had been shattered.

  Casualty was busy not only with patients, but also with medical staff and students. They were duty-bound to turn out to help after a raid, once the all-clear had sounded, but many of them had headed for the Infirmary as soon as they realised that there was a heavy bombardment taking place.

  A lot of doctors had turned up as well: too many. Adam had been due to go off duty at ten o’clock anyway, but he was considerably frustrated by being summarily ousted from his duties by a qualified doctor. He and his fellow students were left to cool their heels in the corridor. Liz, also now officially off duty, stood with them.

  ‘There’s too many of us here,’ said Jim Barclay.

  ‘We’re just getting in the way,’ agreed another student.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said one of the staff nurses as she passed them, misinterpreting the concern on their faces. ‘Apparently it’s Clydebank that’s really getting it.’

  Liz clutched Adam’s arm. ‘Helen... my parents... my grandfather...’

  He was interrupted before he could attempt to reassure her.

  ‘There’s a girl here,’ shouted Jim. ‘A nurse who’s brought in a badly injured baby. She says there’s no doctors down in Clydebank. I vote we go with her. Is anyone else game?’

  Dominic Gallagher was unable to give much thought to whether the planes overhead were Heinkel 111s or Junker 88s. By quarter to ten, fifteen minutes after the main Luftwaffe squadron had arrived, all of the telephones were out - not to mention the electricity and water supply. Communication was crucial and the team of teen
age messenger was standing by, the boys ready to criss-cross the town on their bikes.

  ‘But Liz! You can’t come with us! It’s not safe.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘Don’t waste your breath, Jim. You’ll get nowhere with this one. She’s stubborn as a mule.’ He gave Liz a swift smile, doing his damnedest to put some reassurance into it. I’ll take my car. Jim, you’ll come with me. You too, Liz. That’ll leave more room in the ambulance for the others.’

  ‘We’ll need supplies,’ she said. Her voice sounded odd. Rusty, as though she hadn’t used it for a while.

  One of the sisters was there before her, making up bundles of bandages and dressings, wrapping them up in hospital sheets like so many washerwomen’s bundles. She put one into Liz’s hands.

  Adam turned to the woman and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Sister MacDonald, you’re a brick. Have we got morphia in here? I imagine pain relief’s going to be quite crucial.’ His voice was grim.

  It was Sister MacLean who answered him. ‘We are not permitted to give you morphia.’ Her voice was carefully expressionless. ‘You’re all students. The Medical Superintendent insists, therefore, that you are not qualified to administer it. Furthermore, he declares that he will accept no responsibility for anything which any of you do tonight’

  The students looked at her for a moment in shocked disbelief. ‘Then may God forgive him,’ said Adam fiercely. ‘Come on, Liz!’

  Nowhere was safe. Not even the shelters. Several of them took direct hits, killing everyone inside. Terrified of suffering that fate, many people had elected to stay in their buildings. Neighbours gathered together, some in their reinforced closes, others in ground-floor flats. They sat in lobbies and hallways if they had them. If they didn’t, they picked a spot as far away as possible from the windows and the awful dangers of flying glass.