Home Front Girls

by Rosie Goodwin

  They walked on a little further and Lucy’s eyes filled with tears as she saw a bloodstained teddy bear lying in the middle of the road next to yet another bombed house.

  ‘My God, it must have been blown out through a window when the bombs struck,’ she wept. ‘Some poor child must have been holding it.’ She couldn’t help thinking about her little Mary. In fact, not a second passed when she didn’t think about her. Lucy broke down and dropped to her knees, sobbing as her small frame rocked in distress. Annabelle reached for her and held her, rubbing her back in comfort. And then at last Lucy managed to pull herself together enough to proceed and they moved on.

  When the church hall came into sight they pelted towards it, but the sight that met their eyes when they opened the door made them all stop in their tracks. Injured people were lying on the floor on blankets everywhere they looked, as the women from the WVS darted between them trying to do what they could. And then Dotty’s eyes settled on a tiny figure and she gasped. An ambulance man was leaning over it but she knew instantly that this was Mrs Cousins’s baby. She would have recognised her anywhere.

  ‘I know this child,’ she told the man breathlessly. ‘But where are her mother and her brother and sister?’

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ he breathed sadly. ‘But I do know it’s too late for this poor little mite.’ Even as he spoke he gently closed the baby’s eyes and Dotty began to cry.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she sobbed. ‘Stop it! She can’t be dead. She’s just a baby.’

  He rose wearily and patted her arm. The sights he had seen that night would stay with him forever – and the night was far from over yet.

  ‘I’m afraid she didn’t stand a chance,’ he said. ‘The terrace of houses where we found her took a direct hit.’

  Dotty’s heart sank. That could only mean that Mrs Cousins and the other two children must have been inside too. Mrs Cousins hated the shelters and made no secret of the fact that if a raid came she would rather stay put and take her chances. Now her decision had cost her dearly and Dotty also realised that her own little flat must be gone. But there was no time to worry about that for now.

  Miranda was already helping the women, carrying drinks of water to the wounded and putting temporary dressings on their wounds as the ambulance men and women gingerly walked between them trying to see who needed to get to the hospital first.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ Miranda told them. ‘It’s time to put your first aid training into practice. All the bandages and dressings are on a table over there, look. Just do what you can.’

  And so began the longest night of the girls’ lives.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As the night progressed, things in the church hall became even more chaotic as ARPs, ambulance men and women and Army personnel carried more injured into the hall on makeshift stretchers.

  Those who were beyond help were carried to a far corner which was curtained off, and they were covered with a blanket until they could be identified. For now, everyone’s attention must be centred on the living. Above the hall searchlights still swept the sky and people held their breath, praying that there would be no more raids that night. Even more people arrived; those who had emerged from their shelters to find their homes nothing more than a pile of rubble. White-faced and dazed, they were served tea from the large urns that had been set up at one end of the hall, and wrapped in warm blankets. Some of the luckier ones had friends and neighbours who came and took them into their own homes. The less fortunate would stay the night in the hall once all the injured had been transported to hospital, until they decided where they were going to go. And through it all the fire engines struggled to bring the flames of the various fires under control whilst the soldiers continued to dig amongst the debris for survivors.

  At one stage, Miranda paused to see what the girls were doing. She was binding a badly fractured leg and was shocked to see Annabelle cradling an old woman in her arms as she gently poured water into her mouth. Miranda’s heart melted at the sight of her normally selfish daughter showing such compassion, and her chest swelled with pride. Annabelle had enjoyed the first aid classes, and now what she had learned was being put to good use. Lucy was serving tea to the homeless and Dotty was cradling a child of no more than five years old in her arms as he cried pitifully for his mother.

  And then the door opened and two Army corporals appeared carrying two small children who lay limply in their arms. The men’s faces were blackened with soot and one of them was crying unashamedly.

  Miranda instantly turned to another WVS worker and once she had taken over binding the man’s leg, Miranda crossed to the curtain at the end of the room and held it aside as the soldiers carried the little bodies behind it.

  Dotty saw them from the corner of her eye and vomit rose in her throat as she hastily passed the child she was nursing to the woman nearest to her. She hurried across the room and as the soldiers gently laid the children down with the rest of the dead, she began to cry.

  ‘It’s Mrs Cousins’s other two children,’ she choked. ‘But wasn’t there a woman with them?’

  One of the soldiers answered her wearily. ‘If there was, we haven’t come across her yet.’ He looked ready to drop with fatigue. ‘But we’re still digging, so we could still find her.’

  Dotty squeezed her eyes tight shut, knowing full well that if she hadn’t gone to Annabelle’s for tea she too might well have been lying with the bodies behind the curtain. And then suddenly a woman erupted into the hall and began to wail.

  ‘My babies . . . where are my babies?’

  Dotty blinked, scarcely able to believe her eyes as Mrs Cousins staggered towards her. She was dressed in her Sunday best although she looked decidedly dishevelled now, and when she saw Dotty she grabbed her arms and began to shake her.

  ‘Did yer get the message I left taped to yer door?’ she asked desperately, her eyes wild. ‘An’ what have yer done with the kids? Are they safe?’

  Dotty stared at her in confusion. ‘I didn’t go home after work tonight,’ she told her as calmly as she could. ‘So I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mrs Cousins. But I’m afraid . . .’ she gulped deep in her throat before forcing herself to go on. ‘I’m afraid the children are all in here. These soldiers have just brought the older two in.’

  The woman pushed past her and as her eyes settled on the two little broken bodies she started to shake as she dropped to her knees at the side of them.

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘I’m afraid she is here too. Over there.’

  ‘This is all my fault,’ the woman muttered brokenly. ‘I had to go out to earn some money, see? Otherwise the kids would have had nowt to eat tomorrow. So I thought, if I go now, young Dotty’ll keep her ear open for ’em when she gets in.’ Her head wagged from side to side in shocked disbelief. ‘But Dotty didn’t come in, which meant the kids would ’ave been all alone when the raid started. They must ’ave been so scared! An’ when the warnin’ went off I were over the other side o’ the city, but I told meself, “They’ll be all right, Dotty’ll get ’em into the shelter.”’ When she looked Miranda in the eye, Miranda saw the light of madness shining there and she took the woman in her arms as tears started to her own eyes. What comfort could she give her under such horrific circumstances?

  ‘I might as well ’ave killed ’em meself,’ Mrs Cousins said in a voice barely above a whisper, and then she laughed – a horrible, grotesque laugh that grated on the nerves of everyone who heard it. ‘I left me kids to die alone. What sort o’ mother does that make me, eh?’

  ‘I’m sure you had good reason for doing what you did,’ Miranda soothed. ‘But now please come away. I’ll get you a nice hot drink.’ The words seemed so inadequate. This poor woman was almost beside herself with grief, and quite understandably so. It would have been tragic if she had lost one child – but to lose all three? Miranda couldn’t even begin to imagine the suffering she must be going through.

  Mrs Cousins allowed M
iranda to steer her through the sea of people as if she were in a trance, and Dotty watched with tears pouring down her grimy face. Poor Mrs Cousins. First she had lost her husband and now her children. Knowing how much the woman had loved them, Dotty wondered how she would bear it. If only she had gone straight home after work and seen Mrs Cousins’s message, she might have been able to get the children into a shelter.

  ‘Someone will have to fetch more water from the stand-pipe,’ one of the volunteers shouted then. ‘The tap’s run dry. The water-pipe in the road must have ruptured.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Dotty said as she took a large tin bucket from the woman and headed for the door. Right then anything was preferable to having to watch the look of absolute misery on Mrs Cousins’s face. Once outside she stumbled through the debris until she came to the temporary standpipe that the Army had set up at the end of the road. On one side of the road a woman was digging through the rubble of her home with bare hands trying to find any undamaged possessions and Dotty thought it was one of the most desolate sights she had ever seen as she quickly averted her eyes. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Once she had filled the bucket she staggered back the way she had come, wishing with all her heart that she could be a million miles away.

  As the first light of dawn tinged the sky the last casualties were finally transported to hospital. Many of the homeless had already fallen into an exhausted sleep right where they sat but the women then made up makeshift beds for those who were still awake. And then, at last, when they were quite sure that there was nothing else they could do for now and other WVS helpers had come in to take over from them, the four women walked out into the early morning light, bone weary and sick at heart at the sights they had witnessed, promising that they would be back as soon as they had had some rest.

  Miranda had spent most of the night trying to comfort Mrs Cousins. A doctor had seen her and given her a sleeping draught, and at last the poor tormented woman had slept from complete exhaustion. Miranda had fussed over her like a mother hen and now she was drained both mentally and physically.

  There was no thought of the girls turning in to work for that day at least. One of the Red Cross workers had managed to get the address of Mrs Cousins’s sister, who lived in Wales, and Dotty was hoping that she would come to fetch her once the Red Cross were able to contact her. Meanwhile, she would be cared for at the church hall. There was nowhere else for the poor woman to go, and although Dotty was aware that there were those who would condemn her once they found out that she had left her three children in alone, Dotty knew that she had only done it out of desperation.

  ‘I must phone Robert,’ she said now, rubbing her eyes, which were gritty from lack of sleep. ‘He’ll be worried sick if he hears on the news that Hillfields has been bombed. But first I need to go and see what’s left of my flat.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise, dear?’ Miranda asked. ‘It can only upset you and you’re more than welcome to stay with us for as long as you like.’

  Dotty shook her head. ‘No, it’s something I need to do. But I do appreciate your offer.’

  They walked in silence through the shattered streets, appalled at the sights they witnessed. Soldiers, who looked almost dead on their feet, were still frantically digging amongst tons of bricks, their ears strained for the least sound that might tell them that a survivor was buried beneath the mess. They had worked tirelessly throughout the long night and Miranda couldn’t help but admire them.

  ‘If our boys at the front are half as good as these men, we’ll win this bloody war eventually,’ she declared defiantly, hoping to give the girls a sliver of hope. Annabelle raised her eyebrows, surprised to hear her mother swear. It was a first, but then so was what they were witnessing.

  Fire engines were still damping down fires, and ash floated in the air, settling on their clothes and making them all appear a ghostly grey. And then at last they turned the corner into Dotty’s road and her flat, or what was left of it, came into view.

  She pressed her knuckles into her mouth to prevent a sob from escaping as it came to her that she now had nothing more than the clothes she was standing up in. The house was merely a towering heap of smoking rubble.

  ‘Come away now.’ Miranda placed her arm about the distressed girl’s shaking shoulders. ‘We’ll go and find the car then we’ll go home and have something to eat and a short rest before we come back to the church hall. We’ll need to get changed as well. We all stink of smoke.’ She refrained from mentioning the bloodstains on their clothes from the many wounded people they had helped during the night. And all the time her mind was firmly fixed on her husband. If things were so awful for them, who were only left to deal with the aftermath of the attacks, what must it be like for Richard and his comrades, who were fighting on the front line? She could only pray that he would stay safe.

  ‘There’s one problem with your suggestion,’ Dotty said wryly. ‘What do I change into?’ Her heart broke afresh as she thought of the one beautiful outfit she had possessed, hidden now beneath tons of rubbish. Thank God, she thought, that she always wore the locket, and that most of the stories were safe in the London offices of Woman’s Heart. Ah, but her precious typewriter . . .

  ‘That’s not a problem,’ Annabelle assured her, squeezing her hand. ‘I’ve got loads of clothes you can have.’

  They were back at the end of the road by now, and Lucy told them, ‘I’m going to head home now, if you don’t mind. Mrs P will be worried sick and I need to let her know that I’m safe. But I’ll see you all back at the church hall this afternoon, shall I?’

  ‘I doubt that there will be any buses running yet,’ Miranda said. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a lift home on our way back.’ And so they all trooped on until they came to the car, which was covered in a thick layer of ash and brick dust.

  *

  When Dotty managed to find a telephone box and rang Robert later that afternoon, she heard the relief in his voice when he answered.

  ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. In fact, I was about to see if the trains were still running normally and to come up to try and find you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Dotty assured him. ‘But my flat isn’t. It was razed to the ground unfortunately, so I’m going to stay with Annabelle and her mother for the time being.’

  ‘But you could come here,’ he suggested quickly, and Dotty’s heart warmed at his obvious concern for her as she fingered the gold locket he had given her, which was hanging safely about her neck. When he had first given it to her, she had been almost afraid to wear it, it was so precious. But now she was glad that she had chosen to, otherwise it would have been lost forever beneath the shell of her burned-out home.

  ‘I appreciate the offer, Robert, but I’m all right, really. And I still have my job to go to, which is something.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He didn’t sound too happy about things. ‘Then I shall come to you on Thursday instead of you coming to me. You won’t have the money for the fare now so I shall bring you some cash to tide you over,’ he said in a voice that told her he wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘And we’ll go shopping and get you some new clothes and basic essentials too. You must have lost everything.’

  ‘I have,’ she admitted, fighting back the tears which were always dangerously close to erupting at the moment. ‘But I don’t want you spending your money on me. It wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘Very well then, if you feel like that I shall give you an advance on your fees. Shall we say the next twelve months?’

  ‘But a lot of my stories were in the flat,’ she explained in a small voice.

  He snorted. ‘That’s the least of your worries. You can write some more, and luckily I have quite a few here that you gave me to look at, so you won’t be under any immediate pressure.’

  Once again Dotty thought what a remarkable man he was and she felt slightly better. And at least she could look forward to seeing him again now. It would give he
r something to focus on.

  Mrs P was highly relieved too, when Lucy walked through the door.

  ‘Yer look like somethin’ the cat’s dragged in, love!’ she exclaimed, drawing Lucy towards the settee. ‘Wherever have yer been? I thought yer were goin’ to Annabelle’s, so how have yer got in this state?’

  The girl quickly explained as Mrs P put the kettle on to boil and the woman sighed. ‘It’s a bad do, ain’t it? But then I think we all knew deep down that it were comin’. An’ accordin’ to my Fred, this is only the beginnin’. God help us!’

  At that moment someone rapped on the front door and Mrs P looked up. ‘I wonder who that is? Most people I know always come round to the back.’

  She pottered away, tightening her flowered pinny about her waist as Lucy sat fighting to stay awake.

  Lucy heard her open the front door, but then there was nothing and she started to get concerned. Struggling to climb off the overstuffed settee, she walked into the front room to find Mrs P staring down at a brown envelope in her hand, her face the colour of putty.

  ‘It’s a telegram,’ she breathed fearfully.

  ‘Perhaps it’s good news. Perhaps they’ve found Freddy somewhere?’ Lucy said hopefully. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  Mrs P’s head wagged from side to side. ‘I daren’t. Will you open it for me, luvvie?’

  With a sick feeling of dread Lucy took the envelope from the woman’s hand. She slit it open with her thumb then quickly read what was written on it before looking at Mrs P gravely.

  ‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’ Mrs P’s voice was dead too.

  Lucy found that she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat so she merely nodded.

  ‘I knew it,’ Mrs P muttered. ‘In here I knew it.’ She placed her hand over her heart. ‘Right from the day when we had that first telegram sayin’ he were missin’ I had this empty place inside an’ I knew that he were gone. I’d ’ave felt it if he were still alive, God bless his soul.’