No Shelter from Darkness

by Evans, Mark D.

  Whether related or not, her sinuses were annoying her, too. Every now and then she got a whiff of an odor that she was sure was just in her mind. She'd persuaded herself that when she had smelled her own blood, it was a fabrication … an imaginary smell. She must have also imagined the smell of soot from the chimney, which she caught when she was halfway up the stairs. The smell of antiseptic that seemed to emanate from her mother's head-cap lying on the armchair was all in her mind. And it was pure coincidence that she'd asked Oliver what he'd been doing in Mr. Henderson's shop, having smelled its distinctive aroma soaked into his clothing.

  The most worrying development was that she no longer needed to exert herself to feel tired. Upon waking that morning she'd noticed the dull ache that permeated every bone and muscle in her body. It was a mild annoyance at first, but throughout the day it got progressively worse. She occasionally caught herself rocking her head from side to side, or stretching her arms out and then upward. She'd bend over and touch her toes to stretch her back and legs, but nothing eased the discomfort.

  All these flashes of worrisome happenings muddled her mind, and the thought of swallowing another mouthful of dry, tasteless vegetables brought the nausea back. With heavy feet she excused herself from the table and went to her room. Sleep was now the only thing she thought might ease her troubles and pains.

  * * *

  Beth wondered who came up with the highly original title of “Sports-in-Support Day”. It was two weeks away and until recently, she had been looking forward to it. Organized by her school, advertised by her classmates and held in Victoria Park, it was another in a long list of events that were designed to raise money for various military services, or other efforts related to the war. It was the Royal Air Force that would benefit from Bonner Street School's fund-raiser. Over the past month, the park had already been the site of a fête, a play, and a dance with a big brass band that had threatened to break the curfew of blackout—or so Beth had been told.

  Walking along the road with the rest of her class, Mary by her side, she yawned and rubbed her eyes. She'd fallen asleep as soon as her head had hit the pillow the night before, and with no raid she'd been able to sleep straight through until morning. Yet she felt like she'd had barely an hour's sleep and the aching throughout her body was already a mild aggravation. Her mother blamed everything on growing pains and teenage years, but Beth wasn't convinced.

  Whatever it was, it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

  Athletics had been Beth's refuge. She did okay in class, but she excelled on the field; it was the only thing that brought her a modicum of acceptance and respect from her classmates—not including Susan Pullen. She dreaded the thought of not winning, of not being the best at the one thing she had the chance to. But the way she was feeling now forced that thought into existence. Unable to walk any other way, she continued to mope somewhere in the middle of the line as the class started to file through the main western entrance to the park.

  Victoria Park was like a chameleon, always changing to suit the needs of its community. Going across Bonner Bridge over Regent's Canal, Mrs. Humphries ordered everyone to stay in the middle for safety; the iron railings that normally lined the sides having long been taken away and melted down for munitions.

  Once over the bridge, the children were officially in the park and in one of the few parts that was still open to the public thanks to the dense areas of woodland and foliage. From west to east the park stretched for over a mile, but it was the western quarter of it—on Beth's side of the East End—which now served the public. Most of the rest belonged to the War Office and the Ministry of Works.

  The teacher instructed the tidy line to veer off to the left, up toward Shore Place Field. It was a small area in comparison to the entirety of the park but plenty big enough for events like theirs. To the children's right, below the field, was a lake that also remained open to the public. Beyond that, however, was the wire that barricaded off most of the park. Over that fence, large anti-aircraft batteries and searchlights lay waiting. Hutments and military buildings had been built in quick and efficient succession. Way out of sight on the far side of the park were the allotments, and beyond them the deep trenches and public shelters that served that side of the East End. Around the entire perimeter, barrage balloons had been anchored and they floated above, creating the swaying shadows mistaken for clouds.

  Beth rolled her head around to the left and then to the right before stretching her arms out. She was unable to stop another yawn, but at least she could appreciate the scent of grass with a fresh lungful of air. Here, there were no fallen buildings or piles of slag. With the trees approaching full bloom, it was easy to pretend that on the other side of them their corner of London remained unscathed, looking as fresh and untouched as this small corner of comparative paradise.

  The racing lines had not yet been painted on the grass, so Mrs. Humphries ordered the class to start jogging around the edge of the field while she marked the corners of the starting and finishing lines with wooden conical blocks.

  “Come on,” said Mary, scowling back at Beth.

  She usually didn't have the chance to look back, let alone scowl back. Beth leaned forward and broke into a trot, but her legs felt heavy, and she had to concentrate to keep her step. She tried to loosen up, but nothing seemed to take the edge off her sloppy form.

  When the teacher was satisfied with her four points of an imaginary rectangle, she blew the whistle and called the girls over for the first practice race. Beth hung her head. She'd hoped for a little rest between the warm-up and her race, but instead fell in with the other eleven girls at the invisible starting line. Crouching slightly with one hand and opposing foot before the other, they all waited, frozen mid-step. The whistle shrilled around the field. The girls all leapt into a sprint.

  Pure determination seemed to work in Beth's favor as she willed herself off to a relatively good start. But the good feeling that came from the refreshing breeze through her hair was short-lived when, not even halfway to the finish line, she realized that she was panting. Her legs slowly turned to jelly. To her right, she could see Susan was already a stride ahead. And from the corner of her eye to the left, she saw the black blur of a plimsoll thump the ground at regular intervals. With every stride, she could see more of the footwear and then the dirty white sock that disappeared into it.

  Beth held her head high and grimaced as she forced herself along, breaking into a sweat, her lungs aching. The exertion was already taking its toll, and the soreness that had been pushed aside by adrenaline was back with a vengeance. As the finish line loomed closer, she could hear the blood forcing its way around her body. Her head throbbed as if her heart and brain had swapped places.

  Strides ahead, Susan thrust her arms up in victory while Beth gasped for air in the remaining few yards. For the first time in her life she had to concede defeat. With Audrey to her left, she realized she hadn't even come in second. She stomped her feet to a thundering halt before doubling over, panting like she'd just run a marathon. Spots danced across her field of vision. Her legs suddenly gave way, and she collapsed on the grass.

  Over the thumping of her own pulse in her ears, Beth could hear Susan's gloating already. Anyone would think she'd just won the Olympics. Mary jogged over, panting, but not even half as hard as Beth.

  “Bloody hell … what's going on with you?”

  Beth swallowed hard, breathing erratically as she blurted a reply. “I told you … I wasn't … feeling well.”

  FOUR

  ALMOST A WEEK HAD PASSED since Mary witnessed her best friend losing the first race she'd ever lost. She sat at her all-in-one desk and chair in the silence of the classroom, dipped her pen in the ink well and continued to write. An early summer sun warmed the room, but as the morning snuck into afternoon, its beams lit only the desks closest to the wall through its high windows.

  Behind her and to the right, a boy coughed. Mary knew that with the silence of the room interrupted,
Beth would use the opportunity to fidget and change her position in her seat. The wood of her chair creaked and the feet of the desk moved slightly on the wooden floor, creating a quick fart-like sound that amused everyone, except Mrs. Humphries. And Beth.

  “That's enough, children. Elizabeth Wade, you will cease disrupting the class or you will find yourself disrupting Mr. Nichols.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Humphries.” Beth's voice was almost unrecognizable from its lack of energy.

  With the small class settled back down, Mary gingerly turned her head to the side and watched her friend. She seemed able to write only a few words at a time before she'd roll her shoulder back or look up briefly to stretch her neck. She held her hand over another silent yawn.

  It had been the same story for the whole of the week, though the fidgeting had definitely grown worse and the yawns more frequent as the days went by. There'd been two raids in the past six days, neither very heavy and neither doing any local damage. But they all had to share the same shelter regardless, and Beth's fidgeting made for a trying couple of nights.

  By now, the rings under her eyes and paling skin had become cause for concern for her mother. After a few questions asked over dinner the night before, Mrs. Wade had said it was most likely a summer cold. Mary had wondered if either of them believed it. And that morning, she'd barely made it downstairs in time to leave for school, skipping the measly breakfast altogether.

  The school bell rang for lunch and inside of a minute the room was empty, save for Beth. She was on her feet, busy making the act of hanging her gas-mask box around her neck more strenuous than it needed to be. Mary walked over and picked up her lunchbox for her. Leading the way, she went out of the door, up one flight of stairs, down the hall and out of the double-doors at the end. With Beth panting slightly, they walked out onto a walkway about a yard wide that ran the width of the playground. In front of them were the few steps that led down the three-foot drop. These past few days, Beth hadn't gotten even that far, instead going off to the right-hand side and sitting on the walkway with her back against the wall. As any good friend would, Mary stayed with her. Today, as had become usual, Beth groaned like an old woman as she lowered herself down to crossed legs, took her lunchbox from Mary and placed it before her. She took the lid off and groaned at the small sandwich and apple.

  Mary shook her head. “You need to ask your mum if you can stay home.”

  “Maybe I will … but there's nothing obvious wrong with me.” Beth groaned again, put her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand and stared at the half-empty square tin. “I'm so hungry,” she said, almost to herself.

  Mary looked at her friend, down at her tin and then back up with a frown. “Well … eat then.”

  “I can't.”

  “Why?”

  Beth shrugged. “I don't want this, I want … I want …” Beth closed her eyes and made the motion of biting into something, then opened her eyes and huffed in frustration. “I don't know,” she whined, her shoulders slumping further as she sighed deeply.

  “Just try it. Try the apple. You've got to eat something.” Mary picked up her own sandwich and bit into it, chewing the dry mouthful while Beth picked up her apple and studied it as if it had a verse of confusing poetry etched into the skin.

  Down on the playground in front of them, feet skipped and hopped and jumped and ran. One girl came straight toward them. Mary looked up only in time to see that it was Julie, one of Susan's worker-ants, before a handful of squashed blueberries had been thrown toward her. The splaying juice sprayed across her dress like someone had flicked a paintbrush, and Mary's head flinched and she squeezed her eyes shut as stray drops spattered across her face.

  When Mary opened her eyes, Julie was already halfway back up the playground. She looked toward the end of the walkway at Mrs. Humphries, unsurprised to find her looking the other way. A couple of girls gasped and giggled as Mary got to her feet and walked shamefully toward her teacher.

  “My goodness, Mary. How did this happen?”

  “Don't know, Miss. Someone threw it.”

  “Who?”

  “Didn't see, Miss.” Everyone knew better than to tell on Susan or her so-called gang. The punishment simply wasn't worth it.

  Mrs. Humphries hummed to herself, clearly doubting Mary's honesty. “Well, we'd better get this cleaned up before it sets. Come on, child.” The teacher passed her and walked to the doors with unspoken instruction for Mary to follow. As they both entered the short hall to the staircase, Mary glanced at Beth. She was tentatively biting into the apple.

  The lavatories were in a separate block outside, downstairs by the boys’ playground. The main building was a simple construction and difficult to get lost in, but it was some kind of rule that children weren't allowed inside without supervision.

  When they'd gotten to the bottom of the three-story building, Mrs. Humphries held the door open for Mary to go through. “Once you've cleaned yourself up, ask Mr. Nichols to bring you back through.”

  “Yes, Miss,” replied Mary, and turned toward the toilet block. Behind her she heard the door squeak as it began to close, but before it clicked, a shrill scream came from above, echoing over the rooftop.

  It was joined by a second.

  And a third.

  Mary spun around and looked up as the door opened again and the teacher stepped out. Mrs. Humphries followed Mary's gaze upward as if all would be answered. They looked back down at each other, and a second later they were both rushing back up the stairs, Mary leading the teacher. “Slow down!” she heard coming from behind, but Mary powered on up the stairs as quickly as she could, knowing in her gut that Beth was involved in the ruckus. Reaching the top out of breath, she carried on regardless, down the corridor and bursting through the doors at the end.

  She stopped herself at the top of the steps that led down to the playground. A group of girls circled something, and when Mary looked to her right and saw Beth's discarded lunchbox and gas-mask case in a puddle of water, she knew that the something was a someone. Panting, Mary shuffled down the steps and barged into the thin circle of bodies, looked at the ground … and gasped.

  Beth sat upright, the shoulder of her dress torn and her elbows grazed. Her right leg was stretched out in front of her, her left was bent at the knee and propped up slightly. Girls around the circle carried on, groaning and turning away, while Beth sat silently, mesmerized by the deep-red line that ran down the side of her shin.

  It looked like her leg had been held down and dragged across stony tarmac, and in the middle of the mess was a definite gash from which blood oozed. It trickled in lines like bright red paint down the side of her leg, finding the lowest point before running down and soaking into an off-white sock. The fibers tried to keep up with flow, but the red patch on the cloth grew in the sunlight and soon glistened just as much as the cut on her leg.

  Mary bent down, looking at Beth. She put a hand on her shoulder. There was no acknowledgement; she didn't turn, didn't flinch. She didn't even blink. She just continued staring in wonder. There was no sign of tears, and Mary knew that not one of the screams she'd heard came from her. If the blood hadn't been enough to unsettle Mary's stomach, Beth's disturbing reaction surely was.

  “Out of the way! Out of the way!” Mrs. Humphries frantically burst through the doors, out of breath. As the circle broke and scattered, Mary stayed with Beth, looking up to catch Susan's smug face as she left the scene.

  FIVE

  BETH WASN'T ASLEEP, but her whole body flinched when the front door was closed. Her mind had been drifting through various scenes from her recent past, thoughts now altered by the presence of people who hadn't been there or things happening that hadn't taken place. She'd been walking down the road to school with Oliver and Mary, acutely aware that her father was following. She'd won a race but still felt sad, not realizing until she'd been pulled from her cozy daydream that she hadn't been running over lovely green grass, but through the empty shells of bombed-out houses.
>
  Back in the here and now, she remembered that she was sitting in the parlor, that it was Tuesday, that her mother had just left to do a hospital shift, and that the house was now empty. With the wireless quietly on in the background, she propped her leg up on a chair from the kitchen and leant forward in the armchair to look closer at her bandaged shin.

  A rather neat line about two inches long and so darkly red it was almost black ran beneath the gauze, like a seam running through marble. The grazed area surrounding the wound no longer bled, but the gash still oozed slightly through the stitches—or at least it had; the bandage hadn't been changed for two days.

  The accident, as Beth had described it to her mother, had put a definite end to her school attendance, at least for the foreseeable future. The bruising around the wound meant she was still limping slightly, but even if her leg were healed completely, Beth was now too weak to get herself to school, let alone last the day. The air raid the night before had highlighted how slow she was, even in an emergency.

  Her mother was certain she had some kind of summer cold or fever, made worse due to the wounded leg straining her immune system. She'd given her some antibiotics to be sure her body could handle any infection. Now all Beth could do was sit or lie down and wait for this strange virus to pass.

  Another sharp, deeply unpleasant whiff caused her to scrunch her nose and flick her head away. She knew what it was immediately: her leg. It smelt un-fresh, not-living. Dead. She realized it wasn't so much her leg, but the bandage that covered it. It was repulsive, and for a few seconds it quashed the constant craving that had almost become part of her. Leaning back into the chair brought a small surge of relief through her aching spine, but only for a moment. After it passed, her back ached just as much as the rest of her. She closed her eyes, trying to think of something—anything—to distract herself.