The Clockmaker's Wife

by Daisy Wood

  Nell stared around in disbelief. Surely there had never been bombing on such a scale – although miraculously, so far not a single incendiary had landed on their part of the roof. They were standing on an island in the middle of an inferno that was roaring as loudly as any bomber.

  ‘What shall we do?’ she shouted, but Hetta only shrugged.

  On the planes thundered, and now the scream of high explosives close by added to the din. Hetta grabbed Nell’s arm and dragged her to the shelter of a nearby turret, where they hunkered down behind a pile of sandbags as the world around them was torn apart.

  Some time later, an incendiary landed not far away – still only the one – and Nell was able to dispatch it with her stirrup pump. Taking advantage of a lull in the wave of bombing she ran, crouching, to the low parapet wall at the edge of the roof and looked out.

  ‘My God.’ Hetta had arrived and stood at her shoulder, mesmerised.

  The darkness was gone. A false dawn had broken, leaving the city bathed in a surreal rosy glow. A pall of pink smoke drifted across the livid crimson sky, brilliant diamonds of light flashing within it as anti-aircraft shells exploded harmlessly around the enemy planes. Fewer now, though still coming. The barrage balloons had flushed the colour of candy floss and the Thames had turned into a shining golden ribbon, with a tug boat ablaze on it like a flaming torch. The whole of London was on fire. It was the most terrible, beautiful thing Nell had ever seen.

  Lorries and fire engines hurtled through the streets, their bells clanging; already, turntable ladders were swinging into position and jets of water arcing against the blaze. Nell scanned the horizon. The smoke seemed to be thickest upriver, towards the City and around St Paul’s. For a moment, the dense cloud swirled apart to reveal the pale, serene dome of the cathedral, still intact so far – but for how long? And all they could do was watch. They saw extraordinary things: bombs curling through the sky like shooting stars; a vast building with flames spilling from every window falling gently forward as if in slow motion; a fireman three storeys high swept from his ladder by the cable of a drifting barrage balloon. Shrapnel clanged on the roof as the ack ack guns continued to fire, people shouted and screamed in the streets below, and every fifteen minutes the Westminster Chimes rang out regardless.

  ‘There’ll probably be a second wave.’ Hetta lit two cigarettes and passed one to Nell, her hand shaking. ‘We must stay alert.’

  Yet, extraordinarily, an hour or so later, they heard the piercing wail of the All Clear. They climbed off the roof, dazed, and went down into the street with sandbags over their shoulders. The ground was awash with water, hissing shrapnel and chunks of masonry, the air full of ash and cinders. Sparks showered down on them like golden rain; Nell had to duck as a spar of burning wood narrowly missed her. Firemen were everywhere, dragging unwieldy hoses that writhed like snakes, shouting instructions, their reddened eyes staring from faces black with soot.

  ‘We might as well piss on it for all the good we’re doing,’ said one, throwing the nozzle down in disgust.

  ‘Can we help?’ Nell asked, but he brushed past her without a reply.

  They dealt with a couple of small fires in the gutter and walked on, not knowing where they were heading or what they hoped to find. A woman wearing a dressing gown and a saucepan on her head instead of a helmet ran down the road, which might have been funny had she not been weeping. Rounding a corner, they came across a small knot of people in front of a partly demolished house. The front wall had been sheered away, revealing a kitchen on the ground floor with a table set for breakfast – two bowls and spoons, two side plates, two cups and saucers – and a flight of stairs leading to nowhere. The first floor was a mass of beams piled higgledy-piggledy on top of each other, plasterboard, bricks and roof tiles. An unbearable sound was coming from somewhere within the chaos, midway between a howl and a scream.

  Catching sight of them, a man turned away from the group and called, ‘Sonny? Over here!’ And then, ‘Oh, sorry, Miss. My mistake.’

  A woman and her twin babies were trapped at the back of the house, he said when Hetta and Nell were in earshot. Someone had tried to reach them several times – a ladder stood propped against the wall – but the gap between the beams was too small for a man to crawl through. They were having to wait for the heavy rescue boys with a crane, and who knew how long that was going to take.

  ‘Would you be prepared to have a go?’ the warden asked Hetta. ‘Think you’re about the right size. If you could at least get close enough to tell us exactly where they are, it would be a help.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ She was already taking off her jacket.

  ‘Is the building stable, though?’ Nell said.

  ‘As far as we can tell.’ A woman in uniform and a peaked cap had joined them, and now Nell noticed the St John Ambulance waiting nearby with its doors open. ‘I’d go myself, but …’ She gestured at her ample hips.

  ‘Don’t worry. Of course I’ll do it.’ Hetta took a brief swig from the hip flask and passed it to Nell, along with the cigarettes that were in her trouser pockets. ‘Keep these for me?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll give you something for that poor soul, if you can get near her.’ She hurried over to the ambulance, returning moments later with a folded cloth that smelt sickly sweet. ‘Put this over her mouth and nose. Try not to breathe it in yourself.’

  Hetta nodded. Seconds later, she was shinning up the ladder.

  ‘Stand back, just in case.’ The warden shooed them a safe distance away. There were five people altogether in their group: the ambulance driver and her nurse, an off-duty fireman from the next street who’d come to help, Nell and himself. The fireman followed Hetta, taking up position at the foot of the ladder. Cinders swirled towards them on a gust of wind and a column of smoke rose from the back of the house; water gushed from a broken pipe on the first floor to the kitchen table below and the china fell off it, piece by piece, to smash on the tiled floor. Nell could hear it, she realised, because the woman who’d been screaming had stopped. She let out her breath with a shudder.

  Hetta emerged backwards from the wreckage a few minutes later, on her stomach. They saw her boots feeling for a foothold on the ladder before the rest of her body appeared and she was climbing down. Once on the ground, she bent double and vomited. Nell started forward but the warden reached out a restraining arm. ‘Leave her be.’

  At last she walked unsteadily towards them. ‘The woman’s dead, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Pretty sure I can reach one of the babies but I can’t see the other. Don’t know if either of them are alive.’ Her face was a greenish white. The nurse gave her water from a vacuum flask and she took a mouthful of brandy after that.

  ‘Should I come too?’ Nell asked, but Hetta shook her head, saying there was no point; it was a tight squeeze, even for her. The warden decided that the fireman should follow her up the ladder and she would pass the babies out to him. Or not, as the case might be.

  Nell could hardly bear to watch. She turned and walked a short distance away, worried she might be sick herself, and drank some brandy too. When she looked again, Hetta had disappeared from view. A few minutes later, the fireman called to her and a reply came from somewhere inside the wreck, but the wind snatched their voices away. Nell paced back and forth, her mind blank. A cheer from the nurse made her whirl around, to see the fireman climbing back down the ladder. After he’d reached the ground, he paused for a moment to reach inside his tunic, and soon the reedy, indignant wail of a baby drifted towards them.

  ‘Now there’s a thing!’ cried the ambulance driver. The warden laughed, taking out a packet of cigarettes, and the nurse squeezed Nell’s arm. ‘See?’

  Nell’s breasts throbbed in response to the cry and she felt the milk rise in them, seeping through her brassiere. The visceral reaction took her by surprise. She’d thought her milk had all gone but the flow only increased when she saw the little mite, not more than three months old, wrapped in a f
ilthy sheet and bawling now, its eyes screwed up and red in the face. The nurse had taken the baby from the fireman’s arms and wrapped it in a blanket. Nell followed her to the ambulance, already unbuttoning her siren suit.

  ‘May I?’ she asked, reaching out for the baby.

  After a brief, astonished pause, the nurse said, ‘Well, I can’t see why not,’ and handed him over. She clearly thought it was a very odd request, though, and watched Nell dubiously as she sat on the ambulance step and settled the baby on her lap. His cries became more frantic as he smelt her milk and his open mouth searched desperately for the nipple. Gently she guided his small, hard head to her breast. He latched on with grim determination and began to suck, kneading her flesh with his tiny fingers, intent on the business of survival. Occasionally, he paused to give an outraged hiccup, milk dribbling down his dirty chin. It couldn’t have been much of a feed but the familiar action and warmth of her skin must have been a comfort. Nell stroked his matted hair, glad to be of use at last, and the baby stared back at her with ancient, inscrutable eyes.

  And then a number of things happened all at once, in a split second. The air was sucked out of Nell’s lungs, leaving her breathless and panicky. She saw the remaining walls of the house bulge outwards, and the ladder fall away, and the fireman who had been about to climb it blown backwards as the most tremendous explosion set the ambulance rocking. Nell hugged the baby, bent over him, her ears ringing with the sound as missiles clanged against its metal side. When at last the noise had died away, she looked up to find the ground littered with stones and splintered wood. All that remained of the building was a mountain of rubble. She might have been looking at the wreck of her old home in Hathaway Road – except this time, there were people buried under the debris, and one of them was Hetta.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  London, December 1940

  It was most probably a delayed-action fuse on the bomb, that’s what they said, or maybe some movement in the house had triggered the explosion: a settling of beams, or the collapse of an internal wall. Nell stayed at the site all night; she couldn’t leave Hetta alone in that desolate place. Somebody gave her a blanket and a WVS refreshment van arrived as the true dawn broke. She sat on a sandbag with her back against the wall, drinking hot, sweet tea. The heavy rescue boys had turned up by then and three or four men and a dog were picking over the rubble. There was no need for a crane, because the building had been so thoroughly blown apart. The men grunted with exertion, calling to each other in terse voices. Occasionally the dog scrabbled with renewed vigour and they would cluster around it, calling for silence, and listen with their heads bent low to the rock. Nell had offered to help but they wouldn’t let her, and she was glad, because she dreaded what she might find.

  She had drifted into a fitful sleep when a cheer woke her and she leapt to her feet, dazed. A miracle had occurred, although not the one she’d been hoping for: something small and soft and human was being lifted from the pit and passed from one pair of arms to another. The second twin had been dug out.

  ‘Who’d have believed it?’ said one of the WVS ladies. ‘As if anything could have come out of there alive!’ Somebody shushed her, most likely for Nell’s sake.

  The baby had been sleeping in a drawer, it emerged, and a door had been blown across it that formed a perfect shelter, with enough air to breathe. The little bundle was cuddled and exclaimed over, and a second ambulance was called to take him to hospital, as the first had long gone by then. Nell wondered whether the twins would ever be reunited; everything seemed such a muddle that she doubted it. The baby was quiet and she couldn’t bear to look at him. The only way to get through this ordeal, she felt, was to keep her mind as quiet and blank as possible. She watched the men work, huddled in her blanket; occasionally she stood up to stretch her legs and smoke a cigarette.

  The pale sun was rising in a peachy sky streaked with crimson when a warden approached her. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  A chain swung, glinting, from his hands: Hetta’s St Christopher medal. When Nell confirmed that it belonged to her friend, he patted her awkwardly on the back and said there was little point in her staying any longer. ‘There’s no hope, I’m afraid,’ he added, in case she had somehow missed the point. ‘Go home now and get some sleep.’

  He’d taken her gently by the shoulders and guided her away. She had walked in a dream, not knowing where to go. The people she passed wore the same blank, baffled expression as they picked their way over the ground. One elderly couple had no shoes. She saw a woman being helped into an ambulance, burned skin hanging down from her elbows in shreds. Fires were still burning; columns of smoke rose up everywhere she looked, fire engines tore through the streets and the gutters ran with dirty water. The air was full of ashes so she tied a handkerchief over her nose, which helped a little. There were cinders in her hair and her hands were filthy, her fingernails rimmed in black. She stood for a moment, looking about. There was something important she had to do, but she couldn’t think what. Finding herself in St James’s Park, the idea came to her that, of course, she must go to the house off St James’s Street and tell Miss Coker that Hetta was dead.

  Hetta was dead. She repeated the words in her head, not wanting to believe them. Hetta, so full of life, so brave and seemingly indestructible; how could she possibly have gone? Nell had jumped out of her old life and landed in another, and it had been Hetta who’d been there to guide her, Hetta who had scooped her up and become her friend. She sank onto a bench with her head in her hands, clutching her hair so hard that it hurt. The pain would help her focus.

  ‘Pull yourself together, old girl,’ she heard Hetta say, as clearly as though she had been sitting beside her. ‘Sitting here won’t get the job done.’

  A mouthful of brandy was left in the hip flask. She pulled off her handkerchief mask, drank it and stood up. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time; that’s how it was done. She fastened Hetta’s St Christopher medal around her neck, next to the watch Arthur had given her, fearing that she might lose it. The two chains soon became tangled, which she found comforting; it made her feel as though she and Hetta were still together. As she walked, she overheard snatches of conversation from the people emerging from shelters or standing at bus stops. The fire had spread rapidly between empty buildings. Being a Sunday, there had been no workers to sound the alarm, and no firewatchers either; the fire service had been overwhelmed and the tide in the river too low to pump more water. St Paul’s had been saved, a policeman said, but only by a miracle, and all the books had been burned in the publishers’ warehouses in Paternoster Row. Nell felt as though she were living through a nightmare, the sort one feels relieved to have woken up from. There could be no wakening and no relief now, though, only a grim process of counting the cost.

  She didn’t know the name of the street off St James’s but after a certain amount of wandering about, managed to find the house with the ‘To Let’ sign outside. It was still early. She was shown to a cloakroom where she managed to clean herself up a little, and then to a small windowless room where she paced up and down as she waited, bracing herself. She could hear the familiar sounds of chaos in the corridor outside, the same atmosphere of frenetic activity.

  At last she was taken to see Miss Coker, who sat in state behind her vast desk. ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, by way of a greeting. ‘Don’t do it again.’

  Her expression hardly changed when Nell passed on the news of Hetta’s death, although she swivelled her chair around to look out of the window and didn’t speak for what seemed a long time. Eventually she said, ‘You’re due to meet this man at midday tomorrow?’ When Nell nodded, she picked up the telephone receiver and barked into it, ‘Ask Miss Hart to come to my office. At once, please.’

  Miss Hart was the girl with the streaming cold who’d driven Nell here the last time; she didn’t look much better now. They nodded at each other while she dabbed her nose with a handkerchief. Miss Coker informed her she
was to wait for Nell the next day, under the statue of the lion on the south side of Westminster Bridge. They would walk beside the river until they were sure of being unobserved, and then Nell could relay whatever information she’d gleaned.

  ‘I was given a Whitehall telephone number, too,’ Nell said. ‘Is that still valid?’ The line about leaving her suitcase at Paddington Station had suddenly come back to her.

  ‘Only for emergencies,’ Miss Coker replied. ‘We trust it won’t be necessary.’ She stood. ‘Well, if that’s everything, I won’t keep you. Good luck for tomorrow.’

  ‘Could I rest here for a while?’ Nell asked, no longer giving a damn about social niceties. ‘I’ve been up all night and I don’t have anywhere else to go.’

  Miss Coker didn’t seem at all put out. ‘Of course. Take Mrs Spelman upstairs, Felicity, and make her a cup of tea.’

  ‘Upstairs’ turned out to mean another cubby hole, just big enough for a camp bed. Nell was swilling in tea; if she drank any more, she’d dissolve. She thanked Miss Hart but declined her offer, kicked off her boots, crawled under the blanket fully dressed and fell instantly asleep.

  She slept all day, waking only when Miss Hart reappeared to tell her the office was closing and show her the back door through which she could leave unobtrusively. That night she kept vigil at her spot on the roof, remembering each time she had been there with Hetta, every conversation they’d had in the still, small hours. All was quiet; perhaps the Germans had run out of bombs. The next day, she woke with the dawn and on a whim, walked over to the clock tower and used Arthur’s keys to unlock the door. She climbed the endless spiral steps to the belfry and then up to the Ayrton light. Then, at last, she wept. St Paul’s stood alone in a wasteland. The maze of narrow streets that once surrounded it had been reduced to rubble, from which plumes of smoke still rose into the cold morning air. So many irreplaceable, ancient buildings, destroyed in a single night. It was unbearable.