by Jenny Holmes
CHAPTER THREE
The distant bells of St Wilfred’s broke the early-morning silence as Jean, Bobbie and Angela stood in the main doorway of Burton Grange and looked out over the bombed grounds.
No one spoke as they took in the havoc wreaked by the German bombers the night before.
Smoke still rose from burnt-out vehicles and deep, jagged craters scarred the once-smooth lawns. Tall redwoods at the edge of the estate had toppled and their straight trunks lay criss-crossed on the ground. Closer to where they stood, a pile of rubble from the remains of the stone portico prevented the three young women from walking down the broad steps.
Angela sighed then turned away. As she went back inside, she was forced to step over shards of broken glass and noticed for the first time that the banister to the main staircase had collapsed and that a huge portrait of a Lady somebody or other in powdered wig and wide crinoline hung in tatters, slashed by shrapnel from top to bottom.
Bobbie and Jean lingered in the doorway. They had been awake all night, helping nurses and porters from the convalescent wing to stretcher their patients to the relative safety of waiting field ambulances that would transport them to hospital in Highcliff. A direct hit on the sprawling mansion had destroyed the roof of two of the wards and it had been immediately apparent that a full evacuation was necessary. It was only when some of the rubble had been cleared that two bodies had been found underneath: one in pyjamas, one in a nurse’s uniform but otherwise unidentifiable. Bobbie had been the one to discover the nurse. She’d seen a hand amongst the dust and debris and started to scrabble at the loose stones, uncovering an arm and then a bloodied female torso, hoping against hope that the person buried beneath would still be alive. Douglas had helped her by scraping away the grey plaster dust from the nurse’s face and trying to breathe air into her lungs. In the end Bobbie had pulled him away and told him it was no good. The woman’s skull had been crushed. There was nothing to be done.
‘At least they missed their main target.’ In the grim, grey dawn Jean was the first to relay the news she’d just received from Stan about the state of play at the airfield. ‘All three runways are still in one piece. So are the two hangars. None of the aircraft were damaged.’
Bobbie nodded. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Both women felt crushed by the horror of last night’s events, unable to decide what to do next until Angela returned with urgent news.
‘Hilary has ordered a roll-call. We’re to assemble in the stable yard. Come quickly.’
So they dashed through the house, out on to the back terrace and then down a flight of narrow steps and round a corner into a courtyard flanked by rows of stables, all still intact. Bobbie and Angela joined one end of a line of officers standing nervously under the clock tower while Jean inserted herself in the middle of the row.
‘Where’s Douglas?’ Bobbie whispered, having failed to spot him in the line-up.
‘Coming now.’ Angela pointed to where he emerged from a side door of the main house, limping heavily as usual, without his glasses and covered in dust.
‘What about Cameron?’ Bobbie looked up and down the line to find there was no sign of their second in command.
Angela’s and Bobbie’s hearts sank. Hours had passed since the bombs had dropped. Had anyone seen Cameron since then? Perhaps he’d been unlucky enough to have been strolling in the grounds when the Germans began their attack. He might, even now, be lying wounded in the parkland or in the woods beyond.
New boy Teddy came along the row with clipboard and pen, calling names and ticking them off as he went but not making eye contact. He kept his expression businesslike – tick, tick, tick.
Spotting Hilary standing under the arched entrance into the courtyard, Angela broke ranks. She sprinted down the line and almost crashed into her commanding officer, letting Cameron’s name tumble from her lips.
Hilary paused to give her time to pull herself together. There was not a hair out of place or a speck of dirt on his uniform. ‘Yes, First Officer Browne; what is it?’
‘No one knows what’s happened to Cameron,’ she gasped.
‘Sir,’ he prompted with a touch of impatience.
‘Sir,’ she echoed faintly. How could Hilary be so unmoved? Two peas in a pod, he and Cameron had been at Oxford together, had played rugby on the college playing fields and joined the RAF at the same time. They were part of the crowd that had inhabited the London clubs in the early years of the war.
‘For your information, Flight Lieutenant Ainslie elected to help drive three badly wounded patients to the King Edward Hospital in Highcliff. There was some urgency in the situation. He himself was unhurt.’
Hilary’s formal reply was intended to put Angela in her place. She inhaled sharply then lowered her head to let out a long, slow breath. As Teddy joined them with his clipboard, she withdrew silently and looked so crestfallen that at first Bobbie imagined that she brought bad news.
‘Cameron’s all right, thank heavens. He drove injured men to the hospital,’ Angela reported. ‘And I’ve made a proper charlie of myself.’
‘Cameron’s safe?’ Bobbie asked for confirmation as the orderly line disintegrated and Jean rejoined them. Feet shuffled off over the cobbles and voices expressed murmured opinions as to whether or not the Rixley officers would be allowed to remain in the undamaged wing of the Grange.
‘Yes, panic over.’ Angela ran a trembling hand through her hair and repeated the good news. She reached automatically for a cigarette, slipped it between her lips then left it unlit.
‘Mary Holland went with him,’ Jean informed them.
Bobbie and Angela looked at her in astonishment. ‘You knew!’ Bobbie gasped.
Jean nodded. Every bone in her body ached and her hands bled from tearing at the rubble. ‘Stan told me. He happened to be walking in the wood with Mary when the bombs dropped. Mary saw she was needed to help drive the wounded to hospital. Cameron volunteered to go with her.’
‘So all’s well.’ Bobbie’s sigh of relief was loud and heartfelt.
‘Until the next time,’ Angela said with uncharacteristic solemnity, eyes glazed, cigarette forgotten.
Silence descended on the empty courtyard once more. Rooks rose from the clock tower, borne on the wind high over the ruined wing of Burton Grange.
Mary had driven the only available vehicle – a kitchen supplies lorry – at breakneck speed along roads without street lamps, her headlights dimmed and dipped as required by wartime regulations, tyres squealing as she braked for hairpin bends then speeding helter-skelter down a one-in-four hill on the final descent into Highcliff.
In the back of the Tilly truck, which was still loaded with sacks of potatoes, Cameron had done what he could for the patients from the convalescent wing. He started by stemming the flow of blood from a corporal’s leg wound with an improvised tourniquet – a strip of cloth fashioned from the man’s pyjama jacket. He’d propped the poor blighter up against the sacks and instructed him to keep both hands pressed firmly on the wound. A second man, a petty officer in the Royal Navy, had been in a worse state. He had burns to his face and chest and had cried out in agony during the ten-mile journey. The third had no evident injuries but lay unresponsive on the floor of the truck, flung like a wooden puppet this way and that as the lorry careered around bends.
On the outskirts of town, close to where the funfair had been set up a week before, Mary had been unsure of the way and had stopped to ask for directions from two fishermen emerging from a pub in black oilskins.
‘Carry straight on until you can’t go any further,’ one had instructed. ‘You’ll see the harbour ahead of you. King Edward’s is the big building on your left.’
Inside the lorry the burned man had carried on screaming. Cameron had thumped on the cab partition and yelled for Mary to get a move on. The noise had jerked her into action and she’d driven on, hands gripping the wheel and sitting forward in her seat until the stark hospital building came into view. She’d parked as c
lose to the main entrance as possible then sprinted to find help.
Inside the hospital she’d been met by chaos: patients lying on stretchers or on the floor, nurses and porters running in all directions, doctors yelling orders. Apparently there’d been a second direct hit on Maltby Bay, a tiny fishing village three miles away. Several of the terraced cottages lining its narrow main street had been demolished and rescuers were still pulling survivors out of the rubble. Mary had seen a mother lying on a stretcher clutching a very young child and had been unable to tell if either was still alive. An old man had wandered down the corridor calling out in a thin, lost voice for Rhoda – over and over again; the name and nothing else. Sick at heart, Mary had dashed outside and told Cameron that they must do their best to carry their three injured men inside unaided.
Nodding, Cameron had spoken to the patient with the leg wound. ‘You hear that, Keith? Do you think you can make it by yourself? Good chap. Mary, join me up here.’ He had offered his hand to pull her inside then arranged how they would carry the burns victim into the building. ‘Too late for him, worse luck,’ Cameron had said, indicating their third patient lying motionless on the floor.
The screams of the burned man had subsided by this time but he’d groaned loudly as Mary and Cameron had stood to either side of him, slung his arms around their shoulders and hauled him out of the lorry. They’d dragged him into the building where a nurse had assessed the situation and immediately taken charge. ‘Is either of you injured?’ she’d asked Mary and Cameron as porters arrived with yet another stretcher.
‘No, but we’ve a dead man outside,’ Cameron had replied calmly.
Mary had felt herself shoved to one side as more of the injured Maltby villagers had been carried in. She’d watched with her head spinning as Cameron and the nurse continued to organize then suddenly, without knowing how it had happened, she’d sunk to her knees then fainted. She’d regained consciousness to find herself sitting on a bench outside the hospital entrance, drinking water from a tin mug that Cameron had offered her. The night sky was pitch black and full of noises: car engines whining, doors slamming, feet crunching over gravel, men crying, women and children wailing – but all happening as if at a distance.
‘You passed out,’ Cameron had explained. His tie was undone and his shirt open at the collar. His jacket was around Mary’s shoulders. He’d cut her off before she could speak. ‘No need to apologize. Your driving was first class, by the way. But we have a problem.’ He’d explained that their vehicle was practically out of petrol.
‘So we’re stuck here?’
‘It looks like it. There’s probably enough juice left in the tank to get us a short distance so I suggest we drive a little way out of town then park up overnight. It’ll be morning before we can find a garage that’s open.’
Still woozy, Mary had climbed into the passenger seat of the kitchen lorry while Cameron had taken the wheel. They’d made it up the hill to the church ruins overlooking the harbour before the engine had pinked then stalled. He’d free-wheeled off the road and into the churchyard at the edge of the cliff.
‘You stretch out in the cab; I’ll sleep in the back.’ Before she’d had time to argue, Cameron had left her with his jacket for warmth.
She’d opened the window and gazed down at the dark, glittering sea. Then she had fallen asleep and woken to gulls crying and the sight of Cameron’s lithe, loose-limbed figure approaching between the weatherworn graves carrying a jerrycan full of petrol.
‘Don’t worry; that’s one of our boys.’ He pointed to a plane passing overhead before unscrewing the petrol cap and filling the tank. ‘A Lancaster, by the look of it.’
The sky was blue and cloudless. A small speck crawled from east to west.
‘No; on second thoughts, a Wellington,’ Cameron remarked as he climbed into the cab. He took off his glasses and wiped them fastidiously with a clean rag stored under the dashboard.
‘How can you tell from this distance?’
‘Easy. Aircraft identification – it’s one of the first things you learn at Torquay, along with swimming and dinghy training. Here; I managed to scrounge this off the bloke at the petrol pump.’ He handed Mary a thick slice of bread and dripping and kept one for himself.
She took it and continued to watch the plane as she ate. The pilot was approaching land and making a gradual descent, most likely heading for the nearest RAF station. ‘Why is he by himself?’ she asked.
‘Probably returning from overnight reconnaissance – taking pictures, and so on. How are you feeling? Did you get any sleep?’
Mary chewed and nodded. For the first time since she’d arrived at Rixley she recognized that there was a real person behind Cameron Ainslie’s uniform. Until now all she’d seen was a cardboard cut-out: a typical clean-shaven, short-back-and-sides officer with a nasal voice and a way of looking a few inches over a person’s head whenever he deigned to speak – someone to be wary of.
‘Good show.’ Swallowing the last of his bread, he turned on the engine and reversed between the graves. ‘You’ll be able to have a shower and change your things as soon as we get back. I’ll fill in all the paperwork and so on; no need for you to worry about that.’
‘Thank you.’ Cameron’s remark made Mary wonder what they would find back in Rixley. There was a great deal of damage to Burton Grange for a start. But what about the ferry pool and the people she knew at the base?
‘It hasn’t been too much for you, has it?’ Cameron glanced sideways at her as he steered the Tilly through the church gates on to the road. Mary appeared to be exhausted; she had a look in her eyes that could only be described as faraway, as if removed from the present situation.
‘No; I’m fine.’
‘Good; that’s all right then.’ Natural curiosity made him want to learn more about Mary’s circumstances but he held back as he worked up through the gears until they crested the hill and began a long descent into the next valley, hugging the coast as they went. ‘Remind me; how long have you been at Rixley?’
‘Four and a half months.’
‘Longer than me, then.’ Cameron had arrived midway through June, after a gruelling tour of duty over Belgium and France. ‘The powers that be made it clear that I was living on borrowed time. Officially we’re only supposed to fly six missions before we can expect to cop it.’
‘Why? How many missions did you fly?’ Taken aback by his familiar tone, Mary turned her head to study her companion’s profile with its high forehead, long, straight nose and clean, square jaw.
‘Thirty, not counting gardening sorties and nickelling raids.’
‘What are they?’
‘Leaflet drops over enemy territory. Propaganda and such like.’
‘Is that why they posted you here? To take you away from the main action for a while?’
‘That’s it; I’m officially “resting”. After this, they’ll probably send me on to RAF Training Command to pass on my so-called expertise. “Make the RAF supreme”, and all that.’
‘“Never in the field of human conflict …”’ Mary reacted to Cameron’s breezy bravado by quoting a memorable speech given by the prime minister during the Battle of Britain.
Cameron picked up the thread. ‘“Was so much owed by so many …”’
‘“To so few,”’ she concluded, then smiled.
They were deep in a valley, with glimpses of the sea’s flat horizon to the left and expanses of stubble fields to the right. ‘You do have plenty to say for yourself after all.’
Shifting in her seat so that she looked out of the side window, Mary frowned and fell silent.
He noticed the sudden change in her demeanour. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was talking down to you.’
He had, though. Men of his class couldn’t bloody well help it, when all was said and done. Her brief conversation with the second in command had been like a sudden gleam of sunlight through thick clouds, vanishing almost as soon as it had appeared.
Mary stared out of the window, hands tightly clasped in her lap and lips pressed together as the Tilly turned away from the coast and they drove inland in awkward silence.
In the officers’ quarters at Burton Grange the big clean-up had begun. Members of Rixley ground staff had arrived with mops and buckets, brooms and dusters and had spent the whole morning putting things to rights.
‘Bloody stone dust gets everywhere,’ Gordon Mason complained to Harry and Stan when they stepped outside for a cigarette.
New recruit Harry, looking all of twelve years old, with his mop of curly brown hair and freckled face, coughed into his handkerchief then blew his nose vigorously.
He too had breathed in clouds of muck as he’d swept and dusted. He was covered from head to foot in a pale grey powder. It clogged his nostrils and caught at the back of his throat but at least he felt they’d dealt with the worst of it and could soon expect to be let off the hook and sent back to base.
Stan eyed them both with amusement; the innocent recruit who looked fed up to the teeth and the older mechanic. He was about to make a joke about Gordon’s dark skin being lightened by the thick layer of dust (along the lines of, ‘Blimey, mate – you look like one of us!’) but then thought better of it. Knowing Gordon, it would have led to a sock in the jaw and a scuffle; probably quite right, too. So Stan stubbed out his cigarette then picked up his mop and bucket and returned to the lounge where he found a few of the officers with their sleeves rolled up, doing their bit to get the bar back in working order in time for the normal evening gathering.
‘Hilary has informed the top brass that he wants us to stay where we are.’ As usual, Angela was the one in the know. She was dressed in dark green slacks and an oversized white shirt, with her shiny dark hair concealed beneath a crimson scarf tied neatly around her head. Alongside her, Bobbie polished and buffed the bar top, kitted out in a borrowed beret and navy blue overalls with the trouser bottoms rolled up.