Last Telegram (19 page)

I wished that I could believe him, that these weren't just empty words to comfort me. We had to cling on to some kind of hope, I supposed, even in the middle of this desperate hopelessness.

We fell into silence as we finished our tea.

“Okay to carry on?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Onward and upward then?” he said. “Let's see what the Huns have done to our office.”

• • •

At first, Cheapside seemed to have escaped the worst of the bombing. As we rounded the Mansion House corner and peered down Poultry, only a few buildings appeared to be damaged. In the distance, shrouded in smoke, we could see the outline of St. Paul's Cathedral dome, like a mirage. It was hard to believe it could still be intact.

“Look at that,” I said, pointing at the dome. “Must be a good sign, surely?”

Father nodded. “Let's hope and pray so.”

We skirted heaps of debris and picked our way down the road. We negotiated the King Street junction, counting the door numbers as we walked: fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one. That block was intact. We passed Bread Street and Milk Street. Twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one. I stopped walking to peer ahead through the dusty air and my heart sank. Where numbers thirty-nine to forty-three should have been was a great gap, like a missing tooth.

“It's forty-one.” Father's voice was thick with shock. We stumbled forward and then stopped, dumbstruck, at the base of a pyramid of brick, timber, and stone that for the past fifty years had been the head office of Verner and Sons. The back wall towered perilously over the ruins. There were jagged holes in the adjoining walls of the buildings still standing on either side.

I looked at Father. He seemed hollowed out and unsteady, as if a gust of wind could blow him over. I took his hand but he said nothing, distracted and unresponsive. I wondered what to do next—surely we should call for help? And then I realized there was nothing to be done. The building was utterly demolished, and everything with it. We could only be grateful that because the raid had been at night, it was unlikely anyone had been inside. Had they been, they would never have survived.

Just at that moment, I caught a flash of color out of the corner of my eye. Someone in a red coat was clambering over the ruins. Father saw it too and jumped as if he'd been given an electric shock. He pulled away from my hand and started to run toward the pile of rubble, shouting, “Beryl!” then, more desperately, “Get off there, Beryl, it's not safe.”

The woman turned, her face gray with dust, and called back. “I can see the boxes, Harold. They're just here.” She pointed and started to scrabble frantically in the rubble.

Just then there was a quiet almost imperceptible rumble, like distant thunder. A few lumps of mortar toppled from the high wall of the next door building, crashing like hammer blows onto the rubble below, sending up a new cloud of choking mortar dust.

Father stopped at the base of the mound, coughing and trying to fan the dust away with his hands. I ran to his side, holding my sleeve over my arm.

As the air cleared, we could see Beryl, apparently undeterred, still on her knees, pulling up bricks and throwing them to one side, careless of her own discomfort and danger. We both knew that it was hopeless, but she was like a woman possessed. She seemed transfixed by some vain, desperate hope of excavating the precious boxes she had so carefully packed just a few days before.

“For heaven's sake, come down, Beryl,” Father shouted again. “Leave them. It's too dangerous.”

I looked around for anyone who could help, but the nearest people were many yards away, well out of yelling distance. There was a short moment of silence, and then another heart-sinking rumble. We all looked up as one or two more bricks fell down, landing in an apparently random way. Beryl at last seemed to have regained her senses and started scrambling back down toward us.

There was a sudden, deafening thunder crack as more bricks came smashing down.

“Watch out!” My scream echoed off the walls of the buildings. For a second, Beryl looked toward us, her face pale and expressionless.

I thought they had landed well away from her, but then, to our horror, she started to topple, in a lingering, unhurried way, as if in a slow-motion movie. For a moment, I thought she'd just missed her footing, but then she was lying horribly still, sprawled face down. Her coat was like a sickening splash of blood across the grayness, reminding me of the red paint daubed on the door of the boys' cottage so many months ago.

It was a second before either of us could comprehend what had happened.

“Bloody hell, she's been hit,” Father bellowed, stumbling forward to the base of the mound of rubble, starting to clamber upward toward her still form. I ran after him, trying to grab his hand and stop him. But he was powered with the strength of a desperate man, and easily pulled away from me.

“Stop, Father. It's not safe. For God's sake. Stop.” I looked around, panicky, for anyone, a policeman or a warden. “Help, we need help,” I screamed again, but the street seemed to be completely deserted.

My mind went blank, and by some kind of reflex, without instruction from my brain or any conscious awareness of the danger I was in, my legs started to run toward him again. My only thought was to pull him away to safety.

The rubble was jagged and vicious. Pausing for a second to catch my breath, I noticed in a detached way, as if observing someone else, that my hands and knees were bleeding. But I felt no pain.

Ahead of me, at the top of the mountain, I saw Father reach Beryl's prostrate form. He crouched down and turned her over gently. He lifted her head and cradled it on his knees, brushing strands of dark hair from her dust-covered face. Her arms fell limply by her side, like a rag doll.

He looked up and shouted, “Get help, Lily. She's injured. She needs medical attention.”

“It's too dangerous to stay there, Father. Come down, please,” I shouted back.

“I can't leave her here,” he said. “Help me get her down.”

I was just starting to climb again when we both heard a much louder and longer rumble than before. It shook the ground like an earthquake.

“Get down, Father. Now. Come away,” I screamed, but my words were lost in the roar. Instinctively recoiling and squinting up between my hands, I could see another slab of the back wall starting to move. I closed my eyes and held my breath as it crashed, like a great clap of thunder, onto the rubble below, throwing up another cloud of impenetrable, choking dust.

When I could see again, Father was still several yards away, crouched over Beryl, straining to lift her, apparently oblivious to the mortal danger he had just escaped.

“Come away, Father. Please. Come down,” I yelled again, coughing in the dust. He took no notice, still struggling to pick up Beryl's floppy, lifeless body. I started to scramble toward him again. There was nothing else to do. I had to grab him and physically manhandle him to safety.

Then I heard the loudest noise of all, like the deep, guttural growl of an angered creature. Above us, a crack appeared in the back wall and grew wider. I screamed again at Father and then cowered and covered my head with my arms. It went quiet for a few seconds and I turned my head sideways to look upward. Almost silently now, the crack grew bigger still and I could see the sky starting to show through it like jagged blue lightning.

I watched in horror as a huge slab of wall gradually detached itself in slow motion, pivoting ninety degrees from the vertical to the horizontal. Then it started to fall, flat and intact, like the floor of a giant lift speeding down toward us, and blotting out the sky.

I heard myself calling out again. Even now, I imagined that we could both escape. My head told my limbs to run, but my body felt like a lump of concrete. For a long, agonizing moment, the world went still. Nothing moved.

I was pinioned to the ground by a massive blast of air.

And then the world went black.

• • •

When I opened my eyes, I was in a white bed, in a white room. My head hurt horribly, and I closed my eyes again. Someone touched my shoulder, and a familiar voice whispered, “Lily. Wake up. Open your eyes. It's me, Vera.”

I tried to say hello, but it came out as a groan. My head felt like a lump of lead, heavy and numb.

“You're in the hospital. Gave me such a shock, just came on duty and there you were, being wheeled in. You're safe now. If you count being nursed by me as safe.”

She shook my shoulder again, gently, coaxing. “Come on, open your eyes. It's me, Vera.”

Time seemed to pass, and when I looked again, she was still there.

“Thank goodness. We thought you'd gone again,” she said confusingly.

“Mm schtill hrr.” I couldn't open my mouth. Moving my jaw felt as though hot needles were piercing the side of my face and poking into my brain.

“Yes, you're still here,” she said, stroking my hand. “You've got a concussion and your face is a bit battered, but otherwise you're not seriously injured, thank heavens.”

A little later, someone helped me drink sweet tea through a straw. It tasted delicious.

“Whrs Vra?”

“She's coming to see you soon, Lily,” said a soothing voice.

The next time I regained consciousness, I was propped up against the pillows, looking at the dark bulky forms of two men standing at the end of my bed. Vera was holding my hand, talking softly.

“Lily?”

“Mmm.”

“Can you remember anything?”

“Nhnh.”

“There was a collapse, at Cheapside. Remember? Your father was there, and Beryl, you know, from the London office.”

“Huh?” The wall, the wall was tumbling down. Oh God, now I remembered it falling, the blackness. “Fthr?” I whimpered.

“I'm afraid they didn't make it,” said Vera's gentle voice.

Then a man's deep intonation, “Your father was very brave. He died a hero, Miss Verner. He was trying to save Mrs. Madeley, the warden told us.”

I closed my eyes. If I can keep breathing, in-out, in-out, in-out, in-out, this moment will go away, I will not have heard these words, these things will not have happened.

“I'm sure he didn't suffer,” Vera said softly. “There was nothing the ambulance men could do. He was dead when they reached him. Beryl too.”

They must have sedated me at this point, because I recall nothing more until I woke up again.

“Whrs fther?” I asked the nurse who was offering me more tea. My face still ached horribly and talking properly was impossible.

She looked at me oddly. “Can't you remember the policemen who came yesterday? What they told you?”

I was baffled. How did she know what my nightmare was about?

“Vera will be back in a bit. She'll come and have a word with you,” she said calmingly.

Vera sat by my bedside and explained it all again. I closed my eyes and listened, but couldn't bring myself to believe her. Eventually I opened my eyes, and the sight of her drawn, anxious face made me understand that what she was saying was true. The realization welled up with a rushing sound in my ears, my body started to shake, and my head filled with pain. Then the tears came. I couldn't stop. She sat on the bed and held me, rocked me in her arms for hours, it seemed. When she had to leave, the void opened and the agony flooded back. Eventually, exhausted and wrung dry with weeping, I slept, only to wake and face the nightmare all over again.

Each day, she found time between her busy shifts to visit me on the ward. She talked to me, trying to distract me from my misery. I could not imagine a world without my father, but she told me again and again that people loved me and I would come through it. Life has to carry on, she said. I didn't believe her.

I couldn't understand why Mother hadn't come to see me, when I needed her most. Her gentle touch had healed many a childhood hurt. Each day at visiting time, I was disappointed.

“Hws mther?” I asked Vera.

“She's a bit poorly to travel,” she said. “Gwen's staying with her.”

Gwen? “Where's John?”

“We've sent a message to his squadron. He'll be home as soon as he can.”

She told me a brick must have hit the side of my head. It had broken my jaw, which they'd wired together. They fed me soup and flavored milk through a straw.

On the fourth day, she asked if I was ready to look at myself, and when I nodded, she got out her powder compact and opened the small mirror. I barely recognized the face peering back, it was so grotesquely swollen and purple and yellow with bruises.

“Will I ever look human again?” I muttered, close to tears.

She hugged me. “You'll heal, Lily. Inside and out. I promise.”

• • •

As Gwen approached down the long ward and drew near, I could see her adjusting her expression, trying to control her reaction to my disfigurement. But her embrace was warm, and her smell familiar and comforting.

“Thanks for coming,” I mumbled.

“Oh, you poor dear thing, does it hurt to talk?” She sat down on the bed, defying the notice on the wall.

I nodded. “How's Mother?”

“Taking it hard, stays in bed mostly. Says she's too exhausted to get up,” she said, taking my hand in hers. We might not have been the best of friends of late, but I realized now how much I'd missed her. “When I told her I was coming to see you, she said to give you a hug, send you all her love, hopes you'll understand.”

Imagining Mother struggling to cope, not even able to get out of bed, I slowly started to comprehend the devastation she too must be suffering. She was usually so active, enthusiastic, full of life. I had been so wrapped up in my own tragedy I hadn't stopped to think about how it would affect others. At least I'd been there, witnessed Father's heroism, and that was some kind of consolation. For everyone else, it would feel as though he'd just walked out of their lives. That strong constant presence, on whom so many relied, had simply evaporated into thin air.