Far From Home

by Anne Bennett

  Kate’s eyes opened wider and her mouth was drier than ever as she looked back at the policeman and said fearfully, ‘Then … Oh, God, then where is she?’

  ‘That I can’t say,’ the policemen said. ‘I wasn’t here when that was done. Just sent now to stand guard like, but try not to worry, I’m sure she’ll be all right. You’ll be able to locate her tomorrow. And just for now, have you anyone you can stay with? If not I’ll have someone take you to a rest centre, because if you don’t mind me saying, missis, you look all in.’

  ‘I am,’ Kate admitted. ‘I’ve been helping down Aston tonight.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘It was bad,’ she went on. ‘So many dead!’

  ‘I know, lass, we see it all the time too,’ the policeman said, moved by the bleak look in Kate’s eyes. ‘Never fails to get to you, though. The minute I am not upset by such things is the day I hang my hat up. Now, my dear, you must think about yourself. Have you anyone to stay with for now?’

  Kate thought of the Masons straight away. She knew that she would be made welcome there. ‘Yes,’ she said, and she heard the policeman sigh with relief. ‘I have friends further down Marsh Hill. They will put me up.’

  ‘Then, my dear, I would get yourself down there as soon as possible.’

  ‘I will, yes. Thank you,’ Kate said as she walked away.

  The Masons’ house was quiet and still, but she hammered on the door anyway. It was opened in minutes and she heard Susie gasp with shock as she pulled her inside and threw her arms around her. ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you were … Oh, God, you are all right.’

  Susie’s words brought her parents down the stairs. They were dressed in their nightclothes, Kate noticed, but Susie was still in her warden’s uniform, and Kate saw them all looking at her with concern mixed with relief. There was so much she needed to say; she needed to tell them why she was there, about the unexploded bomb and – more importantly – that she didn’t know where her sister was, but then, as she opened her mouth to speak, the emotion of that evening proved too much and she sank to the floor in floods of tears.

  Mary took charge, lifting Kate gently to her feet. Instructing Frank to put the kettle on and Susie to bring another set of pyjamas down, she put her arm about Kate’s heaving shoulders and said, ‘I’m going to give you a little wash and dress you in something more comfortable. You are in a state.’

  Was she? Kate hadn’t given a thought to how she might look, but she caught sight of herself as she passed the mirror in the hall and couldn’t believe that the reflection staring back – with the blackened face and large bloodshot and red-rimmed eyes – could be her. She had no idea where her tin hat was and her soot-streaked hair was in tangles around her face. She looked down at her hands and they too were blackened and bloody, the nails torn, her palms calloused and blistered and suddenly very sore. In fact, now she was able to think about it, everywhere was sore; it seemed her whole body throbbed with pain, while specific areas stung like mad. She groaned aloud and Mary’s heart was wrung with pity as she half carried Kate into the kitchen.

  ‘Soon have you comfy,’ she said, lowering Kate into a kitchen chair. She shooed her husband out of the kitchen as she began to strip the ragged, singed uniform from Kate’s body, gasping as she saw the extent of the lacerations, bruising and blistering there was under it. She began to bathe her gently with the warm water from the kettle that she poured into a bowl. Susie came into the kitchen then with clean underclothes and pyjamas and her thick woollen dressing gown and slippers and Kate said to her, ‘I can’t find Sally. I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Sally is fine,’ Susie said. ‘We both saw the bomb and the copper told us what had happened and she went home with one of the other wardens. Mind you, she didn’t want to go because she was so worried about you. In the end I said that I would wait for first light and start searching for you and check around the hospitals if necessary. That’s why I hadn’t even bothered getting undressed. Where did you get to?’

  ‘Aston,’ Kate said, wincing as Mary began applying salve to her many cuts and scorch marks. ‘They were asking for volunteers because it was horrendous down there, and so I said I’d go. I’m surprised Jane didn’t tell you and Sally where I’d gone. She said she would – I knew that you would be worried.’

  ‘She probably would have done,’ Sally said. ‘But she was caught in a blast herself.’

  Kate gasped. ‘Poor woman. Is she dead?’

  ‘The ambulance men said she was breathing,’ Susie said. ‘Looked in a bad way to me, though, and she was unconscious when they carried her away.’

  ‘Come and get dressed in these things before you get a chill,’ Mary said, and she helped Kate on with the vest and nightdress and tied the dressing gown tight around her as if she was a child. Kate was tired enough to let her do just that. Mary wrapped bandages expertly around Kate’s damaged hands and then said, ‘Now, I’m going to make you a sandwich. That will be the easiest thing to eat, I would think, and then you are going to be tucked up in Martin’s old room.’

  ‘Just now I think I could sleep on a clothesline,’ Kate said.

  ‘Well, you can sleep in the morning anyway,’ Mary said firmly. ‘For there will be no work for you tomorrow with those hands. There might not be work for any of us, because few parts of Birmingham were left unscathed last night, and if the Jewellery Quarter has been hit again, I might be out of a job permanently. Anyway, Kate, I want the doctor to take a look at you.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need a doctor, Mary,’ Kate said. ‘I will be fine in a day or so.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must insist,’ Mary said, and though her voice was gentle, Kate saw the steely glint in her eye. ‘Some of those cuts are deep and the burns extensive and there is always the risk of infection, and so I will ask the doctor to call and I will take the day off myself to look after you.’

  Dr Butler was a plump, bluff man with very red cheeks and kind brown eyes. Kate had met him before when she had been concerned about Sally when she’d had news of Phil’s death. So he greeted Kate before examining her all over and saying she was a very brave girl, but she had done her bit for a while and she was not to go either to work or warden post until he said it was all right for her to do so.

  He unwrapped all the bandages and said that Mary had done a first-rate job, but he applied new salve and fresh gauze and said the dressings had to be changed daily so he would be back in the morning. ‘Mary Mason is right to be careful,’ he said. ‘The risk of infection with injuries like these is very real. And I am concerned about your lungs too,’ he went on. ‘I know that husky voice is not your natural way of speaking.’

  Kate smiled as she shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘There you are, do you see,’ the doctor said. ‘Could be all sorts of damage there. Mary Mason is more than willing for you to stay here until you are better.’

  ‘She is very kind,’ Kate said. ‘And yet I will be glad to get back home. That is, of course, if we have a home to go back to.’

  ‘Where do you live now then?’ Dr Butler asked, for when he had attended Sally they had been living at the flat.

  ‘Bleak Hill,’ Kate said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s that unexploded petrol bomb in Hesketh Crescent.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’m sure they will get back to defusing it or whatever in time,’ Dr Butler said and added, ‘And I wouldn’t be in too much of a rush to leave here if I were you. Haven’t you the life of Riley?’

  And she had of course. She dozed after the doctor’s visit, and when she woke it was to find that Sally and Susie were both at home because both factories had been damaged. Sally’s had been destroyed totally, and they would have to look for new premises, but there wasn’t much damage to the actual factory Susie and Kate worked in. ‘Bit of a mess, like, and all the windows had been blown out, because it had been caught in the blast that destroyed the places across the road,’ Susie told her. ‘And when they have the
place tidied up, they will have to check that it’s stable and won’t fall in on top of us. And they were saying some of the machines might have to be repaired or replaced as well.’

  ‘So until then we’re ladies of leisure,’ Sally said.

  ‘And we can come and look after you so that Mom can go back to work,’ Susie put in. ‘She’s heard that her place is still operational, but the fires just ripped through most of the wooden warehouses and they were burnt to the ground.’

  ‘Susie, your mother can go back to work any time she likes,’ Kate said. ‘She is a lovely, kind lady, but I don’t need looking after by her or anyone else either.’

  ‘Yes, you do, Miss Independent,’ Susie said. ‘The doctor said he thinks you are suffering from shock as well as everything else, and he said it would be better if you can stay still and preferably in bed for a few days until the blisters and burns begin to heal a little.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Sally said, ‘what have you got to do that’s so pressing? We can’t go home yet and you can’t go to work, so why can’t you stay in bed and recover?’

  ‘I’m just not used to lying in bed.’

  ‘Then get used to it,’ Susie said unsympathetically.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sally said. ‘You just lie there and pray Jerry doesn’t pay us another visit tonight, that’s all. Give us a chance to recover.’

  ‘If he does then he does,’ Susie said. ‘Just maybe he will give us a break after last night.’

  There was a raid, but it was light in comparison to the previous night’s. However, there was a particularly ferocious landmine dropped on Queen’s Road in Aston, which wiped out the entire street. Kate was really sorry to hear that because she knew that that area had already suffered so much.

  The following night there was no raid and it was the 22 November when the bombers returned in force in a raid that began at just after seven o’clock. Kate lay restless in her bed, listening to the mayhem going on all around her, with bombs falling so close they rattled the windows.

  Mary would not allow Kate down to the shelter because she said she really wasn’t well enough, and she insisted on sitting it out with her, though Kate could see that she was as nervous as a kitten hearing the raid progressing so clearly. And even Kate was concerned, hearing some of the bombs falling so closely that they might easily set off the bomb that was still lodged in Hesketh Crescent. ‘I know I wouldn’t be the first in this war to lose my home,’ she said to Mary. ‘But I would just hate it. I mean, it’s far more than just bricks and mortar, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ Mary agreed. ‘All our memories are tied up in this house. It would take me some time to get over the loss of it.’

  ‘Me too,’ Kate said. ‘For all we haven’t been in it that long, David really liked it. I mean, it is the sort of house we can settle down in together after the war and plan our future, raise any children we might have. I’d hate to have that swiped away from me like so many others have.’

  ‘Let’s not think about it any more now,’ Mary suggested. ‘I think I will make us a cup of tea. It’s great for steadying the nerves and maybe the raid won’t go on so long. Maybe it’ll be more fast and furious.’

  However, the raid lasted eleven hours. Kate had been unable to sleep, but Mary had managed an uncomfortable doze in the chair beside her bed and was roused by the ‘All Clear’. And when a bedraggled, black-faced and exhausted Susie returned that night, Kate thought she needed something stronger than tea to steady her nerves.

  ‘God, Kate, you should have seen it: vast areas laid waste, streets and streets of houses and factories and all that’s left is gigantic mounds of rubbish. The city centre got hit again. New Street Station too, someone said. Grey’s and C and A department stores have just been wiped off the map. That makes you angry, but it’s the suffering of the people that really tugs on your heart strings.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I was sent to the General today,’ Susie said. ‘We had some seriously injured people in the ambulance and they could only spare the one nurse to travel with them, so when they learnt I had done a first-aid course I was sent to help her. In all my life I will never forget what we saw when we got to that hospital.’

  Susie swallowed deeply and went on: ‘The place was packed and there were injured still coming in. Men, women and children. They lay about on trolleys, or the floor, or sat on chairs; others shambled about, looking dazed and confused. Most of them were covered in a reddy-grey dust and it was everywhere, ingrained in the folds of skin and their hair and even gilding their eyelashes and eyebrows. And their clothes were all tattered and torn and were covered with that same dust. But the thing that really got to me was the look in their eyes. Everyone was filled with such deep despair. Even the children, and I know as long as I live I will never forget the look in those eyes.’

  ‘I know, it breaks your heart,’ Kate said. ‘I’ve seen it too. In the raid we had on Tuesday, I was pulling crushed, broken or burnt little bodies from the rubble when I knew very few of them had any sort of chance. I felt helpless that I could do so little for them.’

  ‘There’s so little the doctors and nurses can do, too, even if they reach the hospital,’ Susie said. ‘They seem to know that, and you could almost touch their fear and misery. You could certainly smell it; it was all mixed up with the smell of that swirling dust that lodged in my throat, and blood and vomit and charred flesh that overrode even the antiseptic that most hospitals smell of.

  ‘And the noise too was unbelievable. The raid was ongoing outside, but inside there were heart-rending sobs and moans and groans. Some screamed or shrieked and others wept wretchedly; the babies and some of the children whimpered weakly, as if they had no energy for anything more; others bellowed and keened. More than once my eyes filled with tears—’

  ‘So did mine.’

  ‘Bet you didn’t let them fall though,’ Susie said.

  Kate shook her head and Susie said, ‘Neither did I. I couldn’t allow myself to go to pieces and be of no use to anyone. The nurses were rushed off their feet and they didn’t even try and keep order – there was no point. There were just too many patients, and every few minutes more would arrive. They just walked among the poor people, stopping here and there to try to soothe and reassure, especially the children, but sometimes they would have to cover the face of one who had died without even getting the offer of treatment.

  ‘And when I set off to come home, the night was as light as daylight, with all the fires that had to be left burning.’ She looked at Kate and said, ‘They’ll still be raging now. They drained the canals again, just like they did on Tuesday, but it just wasn’t enough, and now there is no water in the taps.’

  ‘What do you mean, no water?’

  ‘What I say,’ Susie said. ‘I walked home with this man who was a volunteer fireman, and he said the planes hit three trunk water mains in Bristol Road, so there is no water in vast parts of the city.’

  ‘Golly!’

  ‘Yes, but for us it’s just an inconvenience,’ Susie said. ‘But if Jerry comes back tonight, Birmingham will be burnt to the ground. It will cease to exist.’

  The girls’ eyes met; they both knew that that was a distinct possibility.

  ‘Well,’ said Kate, throwing back the bedcovers. ‘This has decided me.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This lying abed all the time has to stop,’ Kate said, padding to the window. She lifted the blackout curtain away carefully with her bandaged hand and peered out. The sky was blood-red and a bright orange glow was everywhere. Other fires still raged, spitting orange sparks into the air; curls of smoke rose from other smouldering heaps.

  There she had been, worrying about if her house was all right, yet for many poor devils, the unthinkable had happened, and the houses and maybe the places they had worked too had been annihilated. She let the curtain fall back and turned to face Susie. ‘Many have suffered worse than me and have carried on,’ she said. ‘Doctor or no doctor, I am getting
up and getting dressed, and I am going to see what is happening with the house and if possible make arrangements to move back as soon as possible. And I will be at the warden post if the sirens go off, because if there is a raid tonight, Birmingham will need all the help it can get.’

  ‘The factory is opening again on Monday,’ Susie said, and added with a wry grin, ‘that’s if it wasn’t hammered again last night, of course.’

  ‘That suits me perfectly, if it does open,’ Kate said. ‘I will be as fit as a fiddle by then.’

  ‘Well, you do what you want, Kate,’ Susie said. ‘I won’t even try to stop you, but I just know I am bushed and need to go to bed.’

  ‘I’m going up to see about the house anyway,’ Kate said. ‘So I’ll leave you to it.’ She went out of the room and down the stairs, aware that her legs were slightly wobbly and the unaccustomed clothes were rubbing on areas where she had been burnt or where the lacerations had begun to heal but the skin was still very tender. Her hands were still quite painful when she tried to use them, but she didn’t say a word about any of that because she wanted no more mollycoddling.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The citizens of Birmingham were not told of the fracturing of the water pipes, which had left their city so vulnerable to fire, but if there is no water in the taps, and later there is a member of the Labour Party touring the area in a van with a loud-hailer telling people where to get their water from, it didn’t take much working out that something serious was amiss. And so most Brummies were more nervous than usual as night fell. However, there was no attack that night, nor the next. By that time, too, Sally and Kate were back in the house, but the huge crater left in the garden of Hesketh Crescent was a reminder of how close they had come to disaster.

  Kate was more than glad that the spate of bombing had eased slightly, allowing her to get fully fit once more, for although there were a few skirmishes, there wasn’t a more sustained attack until 3 December, when bombers again attacked the city centre and areas around it; but the water pipes, which had taken five days to repair, were by then fully operational once more.