Till the Sun Shines Through

by Anne Bennett

  She’d told Rosalyn she’d not felt hungry and it had been true, but that had been linked to her mood. Feeling moderately better, she’d felt hunger stirring in her as they went into the restaurant and the different smells assailed her nostrils. When the meal was put in front of her, she felt saliva in her mouth and attacked the dinner as if she hadn’t eaten for a week and indeed she might not have done. She knew it had been a long time.

  Feeling full and knowing you look good gives a lift to anyone’s spirits and as Bridie made her way to the General, she began to feel a little more self-confident. Rosalyn, following behind, was devastated by the state of the city centre after the sustained attacks by the Luftwaffe. There were gaping holes in roads, where buildings had once stood, filled with rubble.

  There were no lights, no festivity at all. You’d hardly credit it was nearly Christmas, Rosalyn thought, and wondered how many families were without a home that year. And the children, many deprived of their father, without presents. We could do more in America, she thought to herself. I will write to Maria as soon as I have a chance.

  She said none of this to Bridie, who barely noticed the bomb damage now. She’d become inured to it.

  Jay was in pretty good spirits and was delighted to see Bridie looking so well. He’d been worried about her lately, and he had to admit he’d been slightly ashamed, for she’d looked such a mess and smelt a bit like rancid cheese.

  He was also pleased to see Rosalyn. He’d not seen her for years and didn’t recognise her, but remembered his mother talking of the great friendship between his aunt Bridie and Rosalyn. And Rosalyn amused him, telling him tales of America, entertaining stories to make him smile and laugh.

  It was when there was a lull in the conversation that Jay said to Bridie, ‘That’s Syd Bradley over there,’ motioning to a bed to the side of his. ‘He’s been moved up from the orthopaedic ward this morning.’

  Syd Bradley had been a neighbour of Ellen’s in Bell Barn Road and Bridie said, ‘I’ll go over in a minute to say hello.’ But when next she turned, his wife was with him and she came across when she spotted Bridie. ‘Terrible business that night. Fancy coming home to that,’ she said. ‘My heart went out to you when I heard. Course, Syd will never be the same, but we’ve had a good innings. I think it’s hard to take a person dying when they’re young. And a child, now, that’s a double tragedy.’

  Rosalyn, seeing the effect the woman’s words were having on Bridie, wished she’d go away and attend to her own man. But then, the woman asked Bridie directly, ‘Did the wee ones die too?’

  Bridie, her voice too choked to speak, gave a brief nod and the woman said, ‘Ah well, they looked in a bad way.’

  Bridie, agitated and upset, didn’t realise the significance of the woman’s words, but Rosalyn did. Her mother had told her Bridie’s children’s bodies had never been discovered: she said they’d either been blown to smithereens, or crushed to pieces. So what did this woman mean, they ‘looked in a bad way’?

  ‘When did you see the bodies?’ she asked.

  ‘When they was fetched up,’ the woman said. ‘They was still, but I think they was breathing then, ’cos when they put them on the stretchers they didn’t cover their faces like. Mind, they did look bad. Took them away sharpish.’

  Bridie felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach by a donkey. ‘You say my children were taken out of the rubble?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘’Course I’m sure,’ the woman said. ‘I was shook up and cut and bruised, but all right apart from that, not like Syd what was buried, like. I was sitting on this pile of rubble while a woman patched me up like and I saw them bring your kids out.’

  ‘Where did they take them?’ A flicker of hope was penetrating Bridie’s confused mind.

  ‘Gawd knows. Thought they’d be here.’

  ‘They weren’t here, we checked,’ Bridie told Rosalyn. ‘And we checked Lewis’s basement and the other emergency centres set up. We tried all we could think of. I had a warden with me and she knew of places used that I didn’t know – we trailed the streets looking. We went to the morgue too and the funeral directors. There was no sign of them.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bridie said helplessly.

  Jay raised himself on his good elbow. The woman’s words had knocked him sideways too. He’d been nearly as upset about his little cousins’ death as he was about his mother’s.

  ‘Go and find out about it,’ he urged his aunt. ‘Go now, I’m all right. Come and tell me when you know anything.’

  ‘I promise we will, Jay,’ Bridie said, anxious to be gone and search again for her children.

  As she left the hospital with Rosalyn, she faced the fact her children could still be dead. ‘Surely to God if they weren’t, I’d have been informed, for they’d be able to give their names.’ Maybe they’d been taken to hospital and died there and were taken to the morgue afterwards; she’d only been the once. Perhaps there were too many dead bodies for the morgue to cope with and they’d opened up other centres that she knew nothing about.

  But whether her children had lived or died, she needed to know. They’d been pulled out of the rubble alive and in one piece, that much she knew. She hardly dared hope she’d still find them living. That would be wonderful, tremendous, her wildest dreams come true. But, realistically, she had to face the likely fact of them dying from injuries sustained during the blast. Then, however, she could have them at least buried respectably, with a Requiem Mass for the repose of their soul and she’d have a grave to tend and visit. A place for her to remember their lives and at times be filled with sorrow because it wasn’t longer.

  The short winter’s day was at an end when they reached the Children’s Hospital. None of the hospitals they’d visited so far could recall having any children so young sent to them during the raid in question, but it was Rosalyn who asked as they left the Orthopaedic Hospital in Broad Street, ‘Is there a hospital just for children nearby? They might have been taken there.’

  ‘Of course, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that already,’ Bridie said. ‘We’ll try there next.’

  However, the porter had just come on duty there and knew nothing about admissions from a month before, and had no intention of being helpful enough to find out. Bridie pleaded with him, telling him why it was so important, but he was unmovable. They would have to come back in the morning.

  It was as they made their dejected way homewards that the siren’s wail sounded about the city. People began streaming from houses, carrying blankets and bags of provisions and small children, and Rosalyn looked at Bridie helplessly. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Follow the people,’ Bridie said. ‘All we can do; I wouldn’t know where to find a public shelter here.’

  An ARP warden appeared before them suddenly, marshalling people forward, urging them to hurry, and Rosalyn and Bridie fell into step with everyone else. A little later, crushed into a shelter with Bridie, Rosalyn smiled wryly to herself. She’d intended staying a few days with Bridie, but when she saw the state of the room, she didn’t fancy sharing it, but it would have been better, she conceded, than this cramped and uncomfortable shelter.

  Bridie, while not content, was stoical about it all. The raid was light and she was amazed how jumpy and scared Rosalyn was of the general cacophony of noise, the crashes and explosions and the tattoo of anti-aircraft guns.

  ‘How d’you stand it?’ she said to Bridie in a voice that trembled.

  ‘You get used to it,’ Bridie answered. ‘Ellen’s Sam was for ever saying the British fight better with their backs against the wall. It’s a sort of stubbornness. Hitler is trying to frighten and demoralise us, and so we refuse to be. Anyway, at least we are near to the hospital for the morning.’

  Rosalyn couldn’t feel the same way about it. The sanitary arrangements in the shelter were basic and so were the washing facilities. To arrive anywhere unwashed and in crumpled
clothes she was unable to change was a real trial for her. And to arrive at the hospital where they had to persuade professional people to help them in their quest for two children – well, she would have felt better if they could arrive clean and more respectable looking.

  There was nothing for it, however. By the time the ‘all clear’ sounded it was too late to even make for Bridie’s flat, never mind tour the streets looking for lodgings somewhere, and so they bedded down where they were and slept away the few hours till dawn.

  The next morning, Bridie was up first, anxious to return to the hospital. ‘I need food,’ Rosalyn complained. ‘And a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Coffee might be difficult,’ Bridie said. ‘But we can get tea from any WVS van – we passed one on the corner of the street on our way here. They do toast too and a bacon sandwich if you’re really lucky.’

  Rosalyn wasn’t a great lover of tea, but that morning it tasted like nectar and with it and a couple of slices of toast inside her, she was ready to start the day. They made their way back to the Children’s Hospital. The matron was also new to the hospital and knew nothing about admissions the month previously. ‘Yes,’ she said in answer to Bridie’s question, they kept records, but they were not open for anyone to see. Could Bridie even prove she was who she said she was?

  Of course she could, Bridie replied calmly. Everyone had to carry an identity card, which she produced. The matron scrutinised it and then said, ‘I don’t recall anyone of that name.’

  ‘Surely there’s someone that we can speak to,’ Rosalyn said. ‘And perhaps give us access to the hospital records.’

  ‘You’d have to see the doctors for that,’ the matron said stiffly, annoyed that her authority was under question. ‘But I don’t know when one will be free to see you. The wards are almost over-flowing and the doctors start their rounds about ten o’clock. It will possibly be a long wait.’

  It was, and on a hard, hospital bench it seemed longer. They had nothing to do but watch the clock going round slowly. ‘I hope the children’s wards are brighter than this,’ Rosalyn said, looking with dismay at the grim, grey and beige walls. ‘It would put years on you if you have to spend much time in here.’

  Bridie couldn’t help agreeing; the place was very dull indeed and she wished the time went quicker. Every minute seemed like an hour to her.

  Now and again people passed, porters pushing children in wheelchairs or on trolleys, young nurses scurrying beside them, or anxious-looking young doctors, their stethoscopes hanging around their necks, hurtling along. Some of the children cried or screamed in fear and pain and the sound pierced Bridie’s soul. Others bore it all without a sound, too scared to cry or more worryingly appeared unconscious. ‘God, a true seat of misery this,’ Bridie said in a whisper to Rosalyn.

  But then the silence was broken by the loud chatter and laughter of hospital cleaners – their shift over – stacking their brooms and mops and cleaning cloths in a cupboard and ribbing one another all the time. They smiled broadly at Bridie and Rosalyn, smiles of sympathy, and Bridie wondered how many people they’d seen waiting just like them.

  The matron passed them just the once, after they’d been sitting there a couple of hours. She gave no sign of recognition, nor gave them any further information. Bridie watched the woman march down the corridor, her back ramrod straight, and remarked to Rosalyn, ‘I think you’ve really upset the matron. They like to think they run the hospitals.’

  ‘Well, it’s ridiculous,’ Rosalyn said. ‘All we want to know is did two children come in here the night of that raid.’

  ‘Rosalyn, you have no idea of the severity of some of the raids,’ Bridie replied. ‘The night of the 23rd I went looking for them. The General Hospital and Lewis’s basement were littered with the injured, some dreadfully injured too. There were people coming in all the time. In fact, as the General Hospital had been hit itself, people might have been ferried anywhere across the city.’

  Rosalyn could see what Bridie meant and wondered if there was even the slightest possibility she’d ever find out what happened to the children. Maybe the doctor knew no more than they did either.

  But thankfully the doctor did, although he told Bridie that from the minute the raids started, he’d had many injured children arrive in his wards and some he couldn’t save. He often had a further problem with those who had survived, for if they had no known relatives they had to go into one of the city’s orphanages run by the authorities.

  ‘But my daughter, if she survived, would say who she was, where I was,’ Bridie said. ‘She was six and bright.’

  ‘Even so, if there’d been no one to take her …’ the doctor said. He rifled through the sheaf of papers he held in his hand. ‘The raid of 22nd/23rd, you said. I had twenty-five children in that night and the following morning. Two of these died, four are still with us – three boys and a girl between seven and ten – and the rest were eventually reunited with family or relatives or were taken in by the social services.’

  ‘Where did those ones go? How many children were there?’ Bridie persisted.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ the doctor said. ‘It amounted to about six, I think.’

  ‘And were there two young children amongst them?’

  ‘I have the names and ages here,’ the doctor said, checking his notes again. ‘Most of the children were able to tell us themselves.’ But something struck a chord in his memory and he said, ‘There were two, a boy and a girl, who didn’t seem able to speak a word. They weren’t dumb as such, it was trauma-related. But neither of those children were six. We estimated three to four years. We have it on the file here. The ambulance driver told us they were taken from the ruins of a house in Bell Barn Road.’

  Bridie gave a gasp. ‘My children!’ she said in an awed whisper. ‘They’ll be my children.’

  ‘Steady,’ Rosalyn said gently. ‘That’s not absolutely concrete fact. There might have been more than your children buried in that road.’

  Bridie knew that was true and yet she had a gut feeling about these children. But then she asked herself whether it was just a flicker of hope, clutching at straws even. ‘I know where those two children went,’ the doctor said suddenly. ‘They weren’t really well enough to leave hospital, but we were worried about their mental state as much as their physical injuries. They were taken to Oakengates Children’s Home. It’s on the edge of Sutton Coldfield and has a fully staffed medical wing with trained psychiatrists on hand.’

  ‘Have you the address?’ Bridie demanded. ‘We’ll go straight up.’

  ‘I have,’ the doctor said, ‘but they don’t encourage impromptu visits. In fact, they don’t like the children disturbed in any way – many of them are damaged, you see.’

  ‘They told you this?’

  ‘More or less,’ the doctor said. ‘The children were moved from here after only a few days. They thought if they had relatives they would have turned up to claim them before then. So did I. It’s taken you almost a month, Mrs …’

  ‘Cassidy,’ Bridie said. ‘I wasn’t here for the raid, I was in Ireland, seeing if my parents would take my children in while the bombing was so bad and my sister, Mary, was minding them. When I came back, I found my aunt and uncle dead and my sister and two nephews injured. My sister never regained consciousness. No one knew about my children and I searched for them everywhere. I thought they’d been blown to pieces. We even held funeral services for them. It was only a chance remark from an old neighbour the night before last, when I was visiting my nephew in hospital, that got us to this point.’

  ‘Such things happen in war time,’ the doctor said sympathetically. ‘I suggest you phone Oakengates and arrange an appointment with the supervisor of the place – a Dr Havering – and tell them what you have told me.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Bridie said vehemently. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ and she took the phone number and address the doctor had copied from the file and walked out of the hospital with Rosalyn, so happy she felt like she was flo
ating on air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Bridie would have gone into the first phone box they passed the minute they’d left the hospital and phoned, but Rosalyn stopped her. She had the feeling that the phone call, the first link in the process to Bridie getting her children returned to her, had to be planned carefully. Bridie was in such a state of nervous excitement, she might give doctors the impression she was a gibbering idiot.

  As it was nearly lunchtime, Rosalyn treated them both to lunch and while they ate, they discussed what Bridie would say to the doctors at the orphanage. ‘We can go up straightaway instead,’ Bridie suggested, but Rosalyn shook her head. ‘We can’t, Bridie – look at the state of us. If you want to prove to them how capable you are of looking after your children, we both need to wash and change and look slightly more respectable.’

  ‘What d’you mean, prove I’m capable? They’re my children.’

  ‘I know that,’ Rosalyn said. ‘But it’s how these people work – they’ll need to see you’re a fit person to look after children who have been through such an ordeal.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’ Bridie said doubtfully.

  ‘I am. Trust me,’ Rosalyn said. ‘Make the phone call. Ask if we can go over tomorrow.’

  It was torture for Bridie to wait another day and yet she saw the sense of what Rosalyn said. The person she eventually spoke to was none too keen on Bridie visiting at all. Visitors were not encouraged as they upset the children, the woman told her.

  ‘I’m not any old visitor,’ Bridie said. ‘I have reason to believe two children taken in to your care on or around 25th November are my children.’

  Even that didn’t move the receptionist at the other end. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘but you must understand that that is something I couldn’t possibly discuss on the telephone. Most of the children we have with us are sick, mentally ill in some way, traumatised by their experiences. We have to be extremely careful not to disturb their emotional balance and at the moment they are highly excited by Christmas. Maybe if you left it to the New Year?’