“You’re not putting me out to pasture?” Helen asked. Her eight decades stepped with her into the room she had never seen before. She moved slowly, trying to maintain her balance.
“You always talk like that,” said her daughter, Kate. “Why? It is a thank you. It’s better than that flat you used to call home.” Kate stayed behind her, a certain excitement in her voice.
Helen knew her daughter was right. It was time to relocate. It was time to move on. But abandoning the place your children were born, turning the page on the home your husband died in, was not easy.
“Walter wouldn’t approve,” she muttered, taking in the first floor. Helen’s elderly eyes went to the large west windows.
“We got you a first floor flat because we didn’t want you having trouble with the stairs.”
Helen gripped her purse, as though she were on a busy street corner, and imagined living here. Her family was being nice, and she wasn’t opposed to relocating since Walter was now gone. It was just so difficult being…old.
“Its fine,” said the mother. The truth was, it wasn’t bad.
“You like it? You really do, Ma?”
“Yes,” Helen said, stepping further inside. The kitchen was accessible. A counter separated it from the living area, which was large and open. A partial wall, the colour of roses, separated those rooms from a little dining room. The smell of freshly brewed coffee was already in the air. There were four other doorways which opened into a bathroom, the bedrooms and an office.
Her eyes went back to the west window.
“I’m so thrilled you like it!” Kate said. “We can look around. You should go through everything. We can take in the neighbourhood. You still enjoy donating time at the hospital. A bus could take you there.”
Helen was deep inside the apartment now. Through the window she saw massive buildings on the other side of the street. It was amazing how much everything had changed, she thought.
“You’ve been in this area?” Kate asked, excitement still in her voice.
The old woman turned, slowly. She forced her mind to pull away from the memories. She looked at her daughter, aware the younger woman knew nothing of this location’s history.
“Oh yes,” Helen said, “My career as a nurse started here.”
Alarms blared. The children of Mrs. Foster’s junior school class looked around in terror. Eight year old Helen Collins understood the danger those whirring sounds meant. Planes were approaching Liverpool again. She thought of her parents and the curse words she was not supposed to say. The Nazis were trying to kill her mother, father, and Englishmen throughout the country. It had been going on for several months. She recalled the time a bomb detonated in the building down the road from their house. The broken bricks, the smell of smoke, blood the adults couldn’t hide. German fighters and bombers were trying to destroy Britain from above. They had to hide in air raid shelters that smelled like mould and rotting animals.
Now, frigid air attacked her exposed cheeks and fingers. Helen pulled her winter coat close to her chest. The cold slapped at her exposed skin with the intensity of a scolding parent.
“We have to move,” said the terrified Mrs. Foster. Helen had to partially read her lips to understand the message. The teacher was old and gray, and talked like a member of the church. She sometimes told them stories of the first big war.
Helen pushed in against the bodies of the other girls, wishing she were with her parents. Her father was probably somewhere near the docks, unloading supplies. Mother was likely at the hospital getting ready for the wounded.
Mrs. Foster waved them along the street. The smell of petrol was in the air. Cars accelerated, reacting to the alarms.
Above the teacher, high in the sky, Helen noticed the low flying planes. She stopped, right on the pavement. Mrs. Foster turned, attempting to cradle many of the kids in her reach, to usher them to safety. The teacher saw Helen looking up, and turned. Little gray dots were dropping from the planes. Time slowed.
Helen remembered every pamphlet, every headline in the newspaper carrying news of the blitz. She saw phrases mostly, but there was the occasional picture of a crumbled building. She recalled waiting those attacks out in bunkers and basements. Every photo was seared into her brain, even more than the images from her mother’s albums.
She looked at Mrs. Foster. For the first time during the attacks, she understood true danger. The alarms had always gone off, always given enough warning. There had been the occasional close explosion, ones that brought streams of dust and dirt down from the ceiling.
Helen had never seen a Nazi aircraft close-up before. Now they soared above her hometown like hawks preying on rabbits in a field. Gray killers screamed above her.
Mrs. Foster was motioning, prompting kids along. A plane’s engine overpowered the air raid siren. Everyone’s faces were drawn up to the noise.
It shocked Helen how low the plane was. She thought of Halloween and stories of old banshees dashing over roofs. It was moving fast. It was nearly twice as high as the buildings but much lower than the clouds. The wings were outstretched and threatening; the aircraft looked like a dagger.
Citizens started running. Mrs. Foster didn’t, but many of the other adults did. Panicked cries erupted around them as people tried to shove their way off the street. Someone was knocked to the ground. Vehicles barely missed pedestrians.
Mrs. Foster encouraged the kids along. Helen felt sudden warmth, a belief that listening to the teacher would keep her safe.
More dots fell from the screaming plane overhead. A black swastika was painfully visible on the underside of the plane. She had come to hate that symbol. Helen watched the bombs drop. It descended over the buildings in front of them. In her mind, she saw the Nazi symbol everywhere - on the bomb, on the plane, even among the clouds.
A great unseen force lifted her off the concrete. She registered the abrupt absence of cold air, that the streets of Liverpool had somehow become warm. Her feet were suddenly above her head. Something hit her back and Helen’s legs and head were still airborne, like when she tossed a doll in her bedroom. Images of her mother and father and the man named Hitler were in her consciousness as she coped with the chaos.
Screams came from everywhere. There was a hot, hard pain along her lower back. She sensed she was among her class mates, and they had experienced something similar. It didn’t seem much different than boys and girls piled on one another during playtime.
Helen got the odd sensation it was raining. Drops splashed onto her face, and her elbows and knees were damp. She smelled smoke, recognized the air was still warmer than it should be.
As she stood up, she saw flames. The block in front of them no longer existed. A black funnel of smoke reached into the sky. Her back ached, and her knees felt like she had jumped from the swing set while too high up. It looked like the photos from the newspapers.
Fire was everywhere.
She sensed her classmates picking themselves up and saw the people on the street. There were a lot of them, unmoving. Helen felt angry. Some directed at the man named Hitler and the planes. But a wave of red was directed at her mother and father. How could they be a part of something so awful? Then she saw Mrs. Foster. The kids were gathering around her. She was on her back and her legs were flailing. Mrs. Foster's arms were at her chest, just below her neck. It had not rained at all. Red liquid had pooled under their teacher. Her face was going pale, like snow.
Helen swallowed. Her heart was pounding hard. There was a gross smell in the air, and she wondered if it were burnt hair. Three of the girls started crying and she felt dampness collect in her eyes as well. She took deep short breaths.
A memory of her mother working at the hospital came to mind. It was from one of those rare visitation days. Helen saw the most beautiful woman in the world wearing a nurse’s outfit. There she was, her slim body and legs hugging the magnificent white uniform.
Mother was tending to wounded, crying soldiers. It had been one of the proudest days of Helen’s life.
Mrs. Foster’s body was shivering. Strands of hair reached back across her face. Her lips were moving but no words came out. Red dripped from somewhere around her neck.
In her mind’s eye, Helen’s mother worked directly with some of the wounds, applying fresh clean bandages. Flower-like splotches of red would sometimes spread across them.
Helen grabbed her scarf. She rushed forward hoping no more German planes were overhead. At least she couldn’t hear them. In a few strides she was at Mrs. Foster’s side. The woman’s clothing around her shoulders was wet, soaked with blood. Helen’s knees hurt against the pavement.
The teacher’s face was even paler now. Her lips trembled. Dark smudges pocked the skin on her shoulders. Helen brought the scarf up and thought of her mother. She moved Mrs. Foster’s long hair away. Tears formed in her eyes. She had the thought she would rather be in a shelter, safe. She wished the bomb had never been so close. Helen wished she were with the children, in the summer, running through green fields.
She saw the gash along her teacher’s neck, near what she thought adults called the collar bone. It was the length of a finger. Blood came from the wound like rain water coming off a roof.
“Help us,” Helen screamed. She prodded and ordered the girls to yell for assistance. Mrs. Foster needed someone like her mother if she were to survive. A few of the other children started to look for other adults. Some were too scared.
Helen gripped her scarf. She leaned forward and pushed it onto the wound, like someone taking a rag and trying to clean up spilled milk.
Blood still came.
The older woman tried to move, but couldn’t. The young girl brought her knees closer to Mrs. Foster’s head. She took the already damp scarf, and inched closer still. She pressed it down. Hard.
She wasn’t sure how long she was there. She remembered the other kids screaming for help. Her knees hurt from contact with the rubble. Her clothing was red and wet. Her arms ached.
Mrs. Foster was still breathing when the other adults came.
“Yes, I do like it,” eighty year old Helen said. She’d stepped up to the window and looked out at the street. A nice arrangement of flowers masked the pedestrians.
“Are you sure?” Kate asked.
“How far away is the hospital again?” Helen inquired.
“Mother, you should slow down a bit. You are retired, you don’t have to….”
“How far?”
“The bus passes right by there. Maybe fifteen minutes away,” Kate said.
Helen moved away from the window, recalling memories of her parents, Mrs. Foster, and the blitz. Her mother had continued to serve as a nurse, and her teacher had survived that gruesome afternoon. Father had been killed in the war.
“It’s amazing the memories you can associate with certain places,” Helen said stepping closer to her daughter. “I… uh…do like it.”
Kate saw her mother’s eyes were red and damp.
“Mother, what is it?” A soft hand rested on Helen’s shoulder.
“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” she said.
City Stories Page 6