A Step Too Far (15 page)

     ‘And your homework?’

     A slight pink tinge crept into Reuben’s face. ‘That . . .’ he looked at his mother, ‘that were a bit of a lie, but that were cos you asked me to say it wasn’t finished.’

     ‘Thank you, Reuben.’ Philip Conroy smiled. ‘Now with your mother and your grandfather’s agreement there is one more thing we would like you to do.’

14

Isaac Eldon had been given the sack. So went the rumours circulating the factory, folk asking why? What had he done to get himself dismissed?

     They could ask. Katrin slipped into her grey worsted skirt. They could gossip all they liked but only she had the answer. It was more than the sack. Eldon had not been handed his cards then given leave to walk from the premises alone as would be the normal way of things, he had been escorted by a man dressed in a dark suit . . . a man Whitman had said came from the Ministry. Not a uniformed policeman, but someone from the government. Meeting her own eyes in the mirror, Katrin smiled in satisfaction. Everything had gone just as she would have it.

     What she had seen fall from that boy’s hand – the maps drawn with pencil, and coloured with wax crayon, squares and rectangles, names of factories, steel works, railways and canals marking each – had stared their promise at her.

     And she had availed herself of it.

     ‘
I don’t want to be a gettin’ o’ nobody into no trouble  . . .
’

     Shrugging into a matching grey jacket, she let recollection trickle through her mind.

     ‘
. . . it were a seein’ o’ all them maps . . . factories an’ the like, all drawed wi’ names to ’em an’ what it be they meks, well it d’aint seem right to me . . . ’specially seein’ as every name were blotted out wi’ paint the minute war were declared, I means to say, where be the use in a doin’ o’ all that, o’ paintin’ all o’ them places wi’ that there camelflaarge if’n kids can walk around wi’ maps a markin’ o’ every one?
’

     ‘
A child, you say it was a child had these papers?
’

     The answering voice had developed a note of uncertainty. Katrin had harboured no desire to linger, street telephone kiosks were too public, anyone using them drew attention, more so when there appeared to be no obvious emergency. But opportunity had been too good for it to be lost for want of another minute.

     ‘
Weren’t no babby!
’ Her mind had worked rapidly. ‘
Were a lad near enough to leavin’ school judgin’ by the size o’ him
.’

     ‘
Can you tell me his name?
’

     ‘
No
.’ She had smiled at the lie. ‘
But I’ve seen ’im afore, seen ’im wi’ a man by the name o’ Eldon.
’

     ‘By the name of Eldon.’ Katrin purred the words aloud. It had not taken long to find a man named Eldon, one who lived in the same house as a young boy.

     So what of Isaac Eldon now? If she heard he was rotting in hell the news would be pleasant. The boy? She took out the lavender silk scarf and held it to her throat. He was young, he would forget. And his mother, would she forget?

     Twisting her shoulders Katrin watched the play of light touch the fragile silk highlighting the delicate colour against the grey of her jacket.

     Why spend a moment worrying for Miriam Carson? Removing the scarf, she placed it back in the drawer.

     Miriam Carson and Isaac Eldon.

     Two birds with one stone.

     And there were more stones yet to throw.

‘Thank heaven that’s finished.’ Thrusting her card into the time clock Alice depressed the lever with a jerk of annoyance. ‘Two more hours on top of what we already do, I tell you this government think we be the machines.’

     ‘I don’t suppose they do it out of choice.’ Stamping her own card, Becky smiled placatingly.

     ‘Huh! Then whose bloomin’ choice is it? I know it ain’t mine!’

     ‘I wouldn’t think anybody chooses, it’s just what we have to do.’

     ‘I bet I wouldn’t have my work day extended by two hours were I in the Forces, I’ll wager they don’t get put on like we do, extra time here extra time there ’til you don’t never know what time you get to leave this place.’

     ‘Well, if you don’t want to be invited to stay another couple of hours I suggest we leg it afore he gets here.’

     Following Becky’s nod, Alice frowned at sight of the approaching foreman. ‘Just let him ask,’ she ground between set teeth, ‘he’ll be told what he can do with his invitation and I’ll even help with the shovin’!’

     ‘D’you think he heard?’ Having sprinted halfway to the factory gates, Becky stopped to fasten the buttons of her coat.

     ‘Who cares!’ Alice tossed the reply carelessly. ‘Can’t do nothing if he did.’

     ‘Reckon he could ask Whitman give you the sack same as Isaac Eldon.’

     ‘The answer might be more polite but I reckon the outcome would be the same, if Whitman couldn’t let me leave on grounds of insufficient workforce then he ain’t likely to do it ’cos old sore arse complains I was rude.’

     ‘Seems everybody be puttin’ extra time in tonight,’ the watchman called as the two girls passed. ‘Even the main office be workin’ over, I’ve just said goodnight to Whitman’s secretary, like as not you’ll catch up to her.’

     ‘Mebbe Kate has some news regardin’ Eldon.’

     ‘No, I haven’t heard anything more since he left.’ Katrin answered the question put to her in the bus queue.

     ‘Seems funny to me,’ Becky put in. ‘I mean you would expect to hear of his being took on some place else but there’s been nothing, least nothing Nora has got a whiff of or we would all know.’

     Alice’s retort was sour. ‘Now there’s a woman should be given a new job, I reckon her be enough of a gasbag to fill every barrage balloon that’s made! Let’s put that to Whitman.’ She turned a glance to Katrin. ‘Speaking of him, why keep you so late?’

     ‘Mister Whitman was called away last night,’ she answered. ‘I was given the message when I arrived at the office this morning. His wife has been in Coventry for some months now looking after her mother.’

     ‘That be where he’s gone then?’

     About to explain that he would be absent no more than a day or two, Katrin was forestalled by the wail of sirens.

     ‘Bugger!’ Alice exploded. ‘Extra hours, rain and as if that ain’t enough ’Itler sends his bombers, what more can a lucky girl hope for?’

     Toward the front of the line of people standing huddled against the rain a voice called laconically. ‘Her can queue forra bus but her won’t get one, not afore the “all clear” her won’t!’

     ‘Well, I ain’t going back to Prodor not if it rains bombs!’ Alice hitched her gas mask decisively. ‘I’ve been in that factory all day and part of the night, I certainly ain’t spendin’ the rest of it in no bomb shelter.’

     ‘But  . . .’

     ‘Don’t tell me no buts,’ Alice retorted quickly, ‘you go back if you want to, Becky Turner, but Alice Butler be going home.’

     Katrin glanced hopefully along the street, though she knew no buses ran during an air raid. There would be very few people taking shelter, maybe the gatekeeper and a few of the labourers, but the others, the machine operatives, the tool setters and foreman, they always opted to carry on working. Even so she had no fancy for sitting in close proximity to any factory hand.

     ‘You going back to the shelter, Kate?’

     Her decision made, with a brief shake of the head Katrin slipped from the queue.

     Of similar mind, other people began to hurry away, their figures suddenly lost to the night.

     Becky followed, her steps quickening to a run as a rapid drumbeat of sound echoed in the distance.

     ‘Oh Lord.’ She caught Alice’s hand. ‘That . . . that’s pom poms.’

     Despite her earlier display of bravado, Alice’s insides trembled.

     Anti-aircraft guns! That meant bombers coming this way. Maybe it had been wrong not returning to Prodor but now wasn’t the time for reflection. If they kept to a run maybe they could get home, things would be better once they were all with their own folk. Alice gasped against the breathlessness of running, ‘You . . . you best come home with me, Kate, you know . . . case your dad be still at work.’

     Go with them to Cross Street, share a garden shelter with either of those families! Aversion sweeping her, Katrin made no answer. Her father would almost certainly not be home, he stayed late at his work so much more these days. But she would rather be alone than take the alternative.

     Accepting Katrin’s lack of reply as a reflection of her own trepidation, Alice ran a few steps then was suddenly jerked to a halt.

     ‘Oh Lord,’ Becky was staring upward, ‘Oh Lord Alice, look at that, look, there must be hundreds.’

     Looking up into a night sky rendered brilliant by gleaming ribbons of light, Alice and Katrin gasped on seeing what had Becky transfixed.

     Sound beat in their ears, a great throbbing swell of sound which seemed to press on every part of the body, to drown out the mind, to force the eyes to close.

     But their eyes did not close, wide open they gazed at the spectacle playing overhead. Aeroplanes lit by the criss-crossing of searchlights seemed to flit and dart among the long slender shafts like huge dragonflies, their great grey bodies flying so low they might almost be touched, droned on, a great swarm following endlessly wave upon wave.

     ‘Oh God Almighty!’ Becky instinctively touched a finger to forehead and breast making the sign taught from childhood. ‘Oh God, please  . . .’

     The request got no further, snatched away by the noise of a tremendous explosion. Out of the distance it rushed in on them, the tumult swallowing them then spitting them out against a high walled building.

     Crouched in its shadow, fear bonding them close the three girls listened to the thunderous drone of aeroplanes accompanied by the continuous thud, thud of anti-aircraft barrage.

     When would the next bomb drop?

     Where would it fall?

     The whole world seemed to shake; roll upon roll it thundered, rippling through the darkness, successive crashes of tumbling masonry and breaking glass bearing witness to some terrific impact.

     ‘Oh, oh my God!’ Becky rose first, her face white and frightened in the glow of fire.

     ‘Seems to be Wood Green way. Somebody’s had a direct hit.’

     ‘We should go there, people will be needing help.’

     ‘No.’ Alice caught Becky’s arm as the other girl made to run. ‘The fire engines and ambulances will already be on their way.’

     ‘Alice is right,’ Katrin added. ‘Those people are trained where we . . . we would probably be in the way.’

     ‘I should have joined the Civil Defence,’ Becky whimpered, ‘I could have helped.’

     ‘Well, you d’ain’t and you can’t!’ Sense overriding shock, Alice answered with familiar bluntness. ‘Ain’t no use standing here moithering over what you could have done, it’s what you need do now should be botherin’ you.’

     ‘What Alice is saying is that it is not safe to stay here, we need to find a safer place.’

     Head drawn into hunched shoulders, Becky could not repress a cry as more explosions thundered, the vibration of them rocking all three on their feet.

     ‘Where, Kate?’ she asked, tears of fright in the question, ‘Where is any place safe from them Gerries?’

     Glancing at the wall they had crouched against, Alice called over the shouts of air raid wardens, over the noise of motor vehicles hurrying through the town, of crashing brickwork and splintering wood, of glass falling all around.

     ‘What about here?’

     ‘I don’t advise that.’

     ‘I don’t see why not, Kate,’ she retorted testily. ‘We are told to take shelter anywhere when a raid be on, and this be one hell of a raid or my name ain’t Alice Butler!’

     ‘I agree,’ Katrin nodded. ‘But bad as our situation is, it could become a lot worse should we try getting into there.’

     ‘Crikey!’ Alice’s half laugh sounded hollow as she read the name illuminated by the luminous red of flame. ‘I sees what you mean. Lloyds Bank – break into that place and it will be a case of move over Freda, I’m here to stay.’

     ‘Over there then, we should be all right in there.’

     Looking to where Becky pointed, Alice felt no comfort from the tall spire rising black against the silver tracery of searchlights. Saint John’s Church, a house of God; you would think to be protected in there but a church had not protected Violet Hawley.

     ‘Not me,’ she answered resolutely. ‘I’ll be lyin’ in a churchyard soon enough. I’m going home!’

     ‘You be going into a shelter is where you’re going.’

     Alice had stepped from the shadow of the bank straight into the arms of a policeman.

     ‘No.’ She pushed free. ‘I have to go home, my mum needs help with the little ’uns.’