by Lynn Austin
Eventually, Audrey and the others got back in their cars and drove toward the city, where the real horror began. When they could go no farther, the roads blocked by debris, she and the other women got out and walked, passing out food and water to the workers digging for survivors in the rubble. She couldn’t bear to look at the bodies lined up in rows outside the remains of their homes. Shards of glass splintered beneath her shoes as Audrey offered water and bandaged wounds, accompanied by the roar of distant flames, the clang of ambulance bells and fire engines, the cries and moans of survivors. She wanted to sit down in the dust and weep over the tragedy and destruction she was witnessing. Instead, she silently prayed for the strength to continue for as long as she was needed. And she was badly needed.
She had no idea how much time passed—hours? Days? She knelt on the ground, offering water to an elderly man, when someone called her name. Rev. Hamlin stood over her. George stood beside him, his shoulders slumped, his hands and tan, whiskery face covered with soot. “We’ve done all we can for today,” the vicar said. “It’s time to go home.” He offered his hand to help Audrey to her feet. Somehow, the other volunteers from the village made their way back to the cars, now emptied of supplies, their strength exhausted.
Audrey’s eyes burned from smoke as she drove. She would never forget this day for as long as she lived. And the war was far from over. What more would people be forced to endure? Would her nation hold firm or fall to the Nazis as so many others had? There were no answers. Only endless questions and agonizing uncertainty. God, help us, she silently prayed. Please . . . please . . . help us all!
LONDON
Eve cleared off her desk and slipped the cover over her typewriter for the night. She had just enough time to hurry home and eat before changing into her Auxiliary Fire Service uniform and reporting for night duty with the other volunteers.
She laid her hand on Iris’s typewriter in silent tribute. Iris’s desk was still unoccupied. She had never returned. When Eve last saw her, Iris was heading to an East End school with her grandmother to wait for a government bus to take them to a shelter. Eve knew from the memos she’d typed at the Ministry of Information that there’d been a mix-up. The buses never arrived at the school. While Eve had huddled in the Anderson shelter all night with Mum and the other servants, a bomb struck the school. Sixteen hundred people were injured in that nightlong raid. Four hundred and thirty had died. Eve longed to return and search for Iris and her family, but London’s East End was so utterly devastated, she knew she would never find the block of houses where Iris’s little cottage once sat.
Eve hunched her shoulders against the November wind that blew through her jacket as she left the ministry building. She hurried to the stairs to the Underground, the streets crowded with jostling people heading home after work. Life went on in London in spite of the widespread damage and destruction. The Nazis had bombed the city relentlessly every night for the past month, striking countless historic landmarks—St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Mansion House, the Law Courts, even Buckingham Palace.
The Nazis dropped incendiaries first, igniting fires to guide their bombers through the blackout. Sandbags lay piled on every street to douse the fires. Every home and business had a stirrup hand pump, and everyone in London knew how to use it.
Eve detoured around a cordoned-off street, passing an apartment building with its outer wall sheared off, leaving people’s belongings dangling on tilting floors. She shuffled down the stairs to the Underground with hundreds of others. The station platforms, the stairs, and even the rails would soon fill with people who didn’t have an Anderson shelter in their yard or a public shelter nearby. Some people had already lined up to stake claim to their nightly spot. They were supposed to stay behind the yellow lines until after the evening commute before settling down to endure another night of terror, but many ignored the rules.
A rush of stale air preceded the train. Eve pushed her way on board, gripping a strap for the rattling ride home. Weary Londoners stared straight ahead or perused the daily newspapers. She wished she could read their thoughts.
Twenty minutes later, Eve exited at the station near her flat. She slept down here with her roommates when she wasn’t on duty with the fire service. They’d become a community of sorts, laying their bedding in their customary places, mothers reading bedtime stories to their children, elderly women knitting socks for the soldiers. The long night always began with sirens. Always. How Eve hated that sound! On some nights, the thud and crump of bombs sounded very close, shaking the ground. No one knew what the landscape would look like at dawn.
Eve climbed the steps to her flat and found her mates eating a quick supper before gathering their things for the shelter. “Are you coming with us?” asked her new roommate, a girl named Mabel, who’d replaced Iris.
“I’m on fire duty tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.” She fixed beans and toast, then changed into her Auxiliary Fire Service uniform, slipping the strap of her gas mask over her head and donning her steel helmet. Audrey had begged her to come to the safety of Wellingford Hall, but Eve wouldn’t flee London. She felt a solidarity with the other volunteers who fought back against the enemy. She worked every other night from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m., manning four emergency telephones with another volunteer; then she would return to her flat to change clothes, eat breakfast, and go to work.
Tonight, the other volunteer was a middle-aged housewife named Edith who had settled her children and her mother on the Underground platform for the night before coming to volunteer. “I see the telephone lines are back up,” Edith said. “They were knocked out by the bombing the last time I worked here.”
“I guess the fire lines are always a priority. My flat hasn’t had telephone service all week.”
They talked in between emergency calls, sirens wailing in the darkness above them along with the roar of enemy planes, the rattle of British antiaircraft fire, the hail of shrapnel. Whenever a call came in that an incendiary bomb had ignited a fire, they found out how many fire engines were needed and dispatched equipment from various fire stations.
“You can go to sleep,” Eve said when Edith began to yawn. “It’s slow tonight and I’m wide-awake for some reason.” They would take turns sleeping on bunk beds, waking whenever the telephones rang.
The night wore on. The sound of distant booms continued overhead, accompanied by Edith’s soft snores. Eve was good at judging how far away the bombs were and which areas of London were hit.
She was beginning to feel sleepy when the telephone startled her. Eve listened with growing horror as the caller described a direct bomb hit in a London neighborhood, civilian injuries, a spreading fire. The Clarksons’ town house was in that neighborhood.
Mum!
Eve’s voice trembled as she grabbed a telephone and called for multiple fire engines. Emergency vehicles.
Not Mum! Please, God, not my mum!
Once help was on the way, she woke Edith. “I—I need to go. You’ll have to take over.”
“You can’t leave! We’re both supposed to stay here until the next shift arrives.”
“The street where my mum lives was bombed!” Eve donned her jacket, slung the straps of her purse and gas mask over her head, and bolted up the stairs.
It was too far to walk. She grabbed one of the yellow bicycles that AFS messengers used. Eve longed to race as fast as she could, but it wasn’t safe in the pitch-darkness of the blackout. She usually took the Underground to the town house, so the overland route was unfamiliar to her. And London’s street signs had been removed to confuse enemy spies. Sirens blared all around her. Antiaircraft guns hammered the sky. Searchlights probed for airplanes. Whistling bombs fell with thuds and explosions. Eve pedaled as fast as she dared through it all, begging God to spare her mum.
She neared the neighborhood at last. The glow of flames lit up the night from several blocks away. She got off her bike and walked with it, picking her way through rubble-filled streets and snaking
fire hoses. Firefighters blocked off the area, but her AFS uniform and bicycle allowed her inside the barricades. Her chest ached as she labored to breathe. Her heart pounded with fear and fatigue as she rounded the corner.
The sight that greeted Eve made her cry out in horror. The entire block of town houses was a flaming pile of rubble. No one inside could possibly have survived. The bicycle fell from her grip and clattered to the pavement. Her knees gave way and she dropped to the pavement in shock. No! Oh, God, no! Mum!
“Miss? Are you all right, miss?” A volunteer tried to help her to her feet. Eve’s legs wouldn’t hold her.
“M-my mum . . .” She couldn’t breathe. “Is anyone . . . ? Did everyone get out?”
“They’re digging for survivors.”
“Th-there’s a . . . a shelter . . . an Anderson . . . behind the town house.” Her lips wouldn’t move right, her thoughts wouldn’t form. Oh, God! “People . . . there might be people inside.” Please, God . . . Please, please let Mum be one of them.
“We’ll get to them, miss, as soon as we can get back there. Why don’t you wait over there?” But Eve shook her head and gripped the frame of the fallen bicycle like a life raft.
Cries and moans came from the rubble. Faint calls for help. Workers dug frantically, moving the precarious piles of debris, shoveling, shoveling. Eve wanted to dig with them, but she couldn’t move, watching through a haze of smoke and tears. Watching. Waiting. Hoping. Her heart thrashing against her ribs.
Please, God, let them all be safe! Not only her mum, but Tildy, the butler, the housekeeper. Her friends. And Audrey’s mother. For Audrey’s sake, Eve prayed that Lady Rosamunde had gone into the shelter too. But God seemed very far away. He must have turned His face from His creation to allow this death and destruction to go on and on, night after night.
When Eve was sure her legs would hold her, she stood and wandered through the crowd of workers and victims, searching the faces of pajama-clad people. She drew a shuddering breath before looking at the bodies lying in the street. She didn’t recognize anyone. She waited some more, watching the digging, the suspense agonizing. The workers shook their heads. Were they giving up?
Maybe Mum wasn’t even in London. Maybe she and Lady Rosamunde had returned to Wellingford Hall after all. Eve ran to find the nearest phone box, clinging to a thin strand of hope. “You shouldn’t be out, young lady,” a policeman hollered as she sprinted past. “Get to a shelter!”
Eve ignored him and kept running. Good thing she’d remembered her purse. She dug inside it for coins when she reached the phone box. She could barely insert them into the slot, her fingers shaking with fear and cold. She deposited all she had. The operator said it wasn’t enough.
“Reverse the charges, then.”
“Whom shall I say is calling, please?”
“Um . . . Rosamunde Clarkson.”
The operator placed the call. Eve heard it ringing, ringing. “Sorry, no answer, ma’am.”
“Keep trying! It’s a huge house. They need time to get to the phone in the middle of the night.”
At last she recognized Robbins’s voice, thick with sleep. “Hello? Wellingford Hall. Who’s calling, please?” Eve started to reply but the operator interrupted, asking if he would accept a collect call. There was a pause. Then, “Yes, Operator. Yes, I will.”
“Robbins! This is Eve. I’m sorry for saying I was Lady Rosamunde but this is an emergency. Is my mum at Wellingford?” The wait for his reply seemed interminable.
“No, she’s at the London town house.”
A wave of nausea washed through her. She had to lean against the side of the phone box. Surely Mum was safe inside the Anderson shelter even if Lady Rosamunde refused to go. Mum had to be safe. She had to be.
“Hello? Hello?” Robbins said. “What’s going on, Eve?”
“Is Audrey there?”
“She’s asleep.”
“Go upstairs and wake her. She needs to come to London straightaway. A bomb destroyed her London town house tonight.”
“Oh, dear God . . .”
“It’s in ruins. I don’t know if . . . whether anyone . . .” An ambulance raced past in the darkness. It halted near the ruins. Eve’s stomach twisted with dread. Helpless. She was so helpless.
“Hello, Eve? Are you still there?”
“I need to go. Tell Audrey to come to the town house . . . um . . . to where it used to be. I’ll be waiting for her.”
She hung up the phone and sprinted back to where the ambulance idled. The attendants had a stretcher out and were loading someone onto it. Eve pushed past the ARP wardens who tried to restrain her, shouting, “No! Let me through! Let me see my mum!”
It wasn’t her.
Eve was trembling so violently she could barely stand. She had to get around to the back, to the Anderson shelter. Surely Mum was inside it. All of the servants were. They had to be! She tried to make her way down the street, around the chaos, but the workers wouldn’t let her through. She stammered an explanation, desperate to make someone understand, but her thoughts and words jumbled together.
“We’ll get back there as soon as we can, miss,” they assured her.
Eve stumbled back to where the ambulance stood. One of the attendants made her sit down and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. It didn’t help. Eve couldn’t stop trembling. Her entire body was going to shake into pieces. She watched the activity swirling around her as if from a great distance, as if time had slowed to a crawl and the minutes ticked by like days, weeks. Why didn’t they hurry?
Please, God . . . Please don’t take my mum . . .
Audrey stood in her bedroom doorway in her robe, wondering if this was a bad dream, wishing it were. Robbins was in the darkened hallway in his pajamas, saying that Eve had called. The town house had been hit. Audrey needed to come at once. She gripped the doorframe as the room tilted. She’d seen what Nazi bombs had done to Coventry.
“I would like to go to London with you, Miss Audrey,” Robbins said. “I don’t like the idea of you going alone.”
“Thank you, Robbins. I would be grateful for your company. We’ll leave as soon as we’re dressed.” She needed to stop trembling. She must pull herself together and be strong. It would take hours to get to London, inching along in the darkness, unable to use headlamps in the blackout.
She had begged Mother to leave London and come to Wellingford. “I won’t let the Nazis scare me from my home,” Mother had replied.
“Wellingford is your home, too,” Audrey had said. She’d heard Mother’s bitter laughter and imagined her shaking her head. Mother didn’t love Wellingford the way Audrey and Alfie and Father did. To them, it would always be home. But not to Mother.
The sun was beginning to rise when Audrey and Robbins reached the outskirts of London. It had been the longest drive of her life. The longest night. A pall of smoke hung above the city, and she could taste the scorched air—the same as in Coventry.
The destruction filled her with dread as they neared the town house. Rubble. Police and fire barricades. A woman in uniform telling Audrey she couldn’t go any farther. Audrey wanted to rage at her but managed to reply calmly. “My town house was bombed last night.”
“You’ll have to walk. You can’t drive any closer. Emergency vehicles only.”
Audrey parked, and she and Robbins got out. Her distress grew with each trembling step, dodging bricks and shiny chunks of shrapnel, twisting fire hoses. Audrey halted in silent horror when she saw the crumpled, smoking ruin. Robbins groaned and gripped his forehead.
All but one of the town houses had collapsed. The front of that unit was sheared off, and Audrey saw inside her neighbors’ rooms as if peering into a dollhouse. Pictures hung crookedly on the walls. Furniture and rugs lay jumbled in heaps. The floors tilted, ready to collapse. Her family’s town house had stood in the middle of the row. Audrey couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
“Audrey! . . . Audrey!” She heard her name as if from a great distance, the
way one hears it when being awakened from a nightmare. “Audrey!” She turned and fell into Eve’s arms. The strength of her grip pushed all the air from Audrey’s chest, but she clung to her, longing to draw from Eve’s strength.
“Oh, Eve . . . dear God . . .”
“They haven’t found anybody, yet.”
Audrey couldn’t grasp what she was saying. “They have an Anderson, don’t they? In back?”
“They’re still trying to dig it out. The garages—” Eve halted. She released her and ran toward a fireman leading a group of dazed survivors from the alleyway. Robbins took Audrey’s arm as they followed. The cook and the housekeeper were hugging Eve. Weeping. Mother wasn’t with them. Neither was Eve’s mum.
“Where’s my mum?” Eve shrieked. “Isn’t she with you?”
“No—”
“What do you mean, no? She has to be!” Eve gave the housekeeper a shake as if forcing her to change her reply. The cook’s words came out between sobs.
“We were all in the shelter except Lady Rosamunde. Your mum went back inside to persuade her to come down where it was safe. Then . . . then the bomb hit.”
Eve collapsed to the ground and wept.
Audrey didn’t know what to do. She hesitated, then crouched beside her, feeling Eve’s loss as much as her own. “They’re still searching, aren’t they, Eve? Let’s not lose hope.”
Hours passed as they waited, holding tightly to each other’s hands, watching the rescue workers dig. A canteen truck arrived with tea and sandwiches but neither of them could eat. Audrey heard her servants talking, weeping, and Robbins comforting them like a father.