Moonlight and Ashes (37 page)

‘Right, so what’s your news then?’

Lizzie solemnly looked back at Danny. ‘It’s Mr Evans. He passed away in the night.’

‘Cor blimey!’ Gus exclaimed. ‘Yer mean he like . . .
snuffed
it?’

When Lizzie nodded, the three boys shook their heads in disbelief.

‘Poor old sod. So what will ’appen to yer now, then? Will yer still stay on wi’ Mrs Evans?’

‘I suppose so.’

The tone of her voice told Gus that Lizzie wasn’t exactly enamoured of the idea, and he asked, ‘Incha happy there?’

‘Not really,’ Lizzie said guiltily, ‘though Mrs Evans
is
very kind to me. In fact, she’s
too
kind.’

Gus stared at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. ‘’Ow the ’ell can anybody be
too
kind?’

Lizzie tried to think how to explain the way she felt.

‘Is she still callin’ you Megan?’ Danny asked softly.

Lizzie’s head bobbed. ‘Yes, she is. She didn’t used to do it so much in front of Mr Evans, but now he’s gone . . .’

By now they were approaching the school gates and Danny gave her hand a squeeze as they headed across the playground. ‘Perhaps Eric would let yer come an’ stay wi’ us?’ he suggested.

Lizzie looked at him hopefully. ‘Do you really think he might?’

‘Ain’t no way of knowing till I ask him, is there? But the worst he can say is no, ain’t it? So it’s worth a try.’

The sound of the bell ringing stopped the conversation from going any further, but as Lizzie trailed into the cloakroom she was smiling.

A teacher who had never taken their class before was waiting for them when they all piled into the classroom. He did speak English, but his Welsh accent was so strong that the children could barely understand a word he said.

‘Stone the bleedin’ crows,’ Gus muttered as he slipped Albert into his satchel.

‘This should be a laugh. I wonder where Old Lady Williams is?’

 

Miss Williams was at that very moment tapping on the door of the blacksmith’s cottage. The vicar’s wife opened it and ushered her inside, and then she stood to one side as Miss Williams approached the grieving widow.

‘I’m so sorry to hear your sad news,
bach
,’ she told Blodwyn sincerely. ‘Daffyd was a lovely man and will be sorely missed by all who knew him. But I’m not just here to offer my condolences. I have to speak to you about what will be happening to Lizzie Bright now. As you know, I’m the one responsible for arranging the evacuees’ billets and it’s plain as the nose on your face that you’ll not want the child here now after what’s happened. You have enough on your plate without having to worry about her.’

Mrs Evans struggled out of her trance-like state to stare up at her visitor. ‘And
why
wouldn’t I want Lizziebright here now?’ she asked angrily.

Miss Williams took a hasty step back as she looked towards Mrs Wigley for support. ‘Well, I was just thinking that with a funeral to arrange and such, you’d be too busy,’ she stammered.

‘Then you thought wrong,’ Mrs Evans snapped. ‘The girl stays here with me and that’s an end to the matter.’

‘But—’

‘I don’t want to discuss it!’

Miss Williams felt the colour flare in her cheeks.

Mrs Wigley clumsily attempted to help. ‘Blodwyn, Miss Williams is right,’ she said. ‘You have a lot to deal with right now and I’m not sure that this is the right place for the child at present. Death is a frightening thing to a little one. Would it not be wiser to let Miss Williams move her on, just until you’ve got over the worst of the shock?’

‘
No!
How many times do I have to tell you? Now please, if this is all you’ve come to discuss, I’d like you both to leave.’

The two women looked at each other aghast as they moved towards the door. Blodwyn seemed more concerned about Lizzie than the loss of her husband at present, but then they supposed she was still in shock.

‘Perhaps it would be best if we came back when you’ve had time to think it over?’ Miss Williams suggested tentatively as they hovered by the door.

A surly nod was their only answer as they let themselves out into the fast-deepening snow.

‘Mr Bright, can you hear me?’

David struggled to open his eyes, blinking in the harsh light of the hospital tent. A young nurse swam into focus and he heard someone groaning. After a few moments, he realised it was himself.

‘Wh . . . where am I?’ His voice was weak.

‘You’re safe,’ the nurse assured him kindly. ‘And that’s all you need to know for now. In a few days’ time you’ll be shipped back to a military hospital in England.’

He tried to lift his head but a searing pain shot up his arm, making him gasp, and she gently pressed him back into his pillows. ‘Try not to move. The doctor will be around to see you again in a minute. I don’t mind telling you, you had us worried there for a while. We didn’t think you were going to make it.’

‘Wha . . . what’s wrong with my arm?’

Lifting the chart that was hooked across the bottom of his bed, she wrote something on it before answering him, ‘You were shot in the arm, but try not to worry. The doctor will do everything he can to save it.’

He screwed his eyes tight shut. What did she mean, the doctor would try to save it? And how had he got shot? Try as he would to remember, his mind was a blank. He could recall creeping across the field with guns going off all around him. He could see the rotting corpses and smell the blood and fear, but when he tried to remember past that, it was as if he had hit a brick wall.

Seeing his distress, the nurse patted his good hand. The other appeared to be swathed in bandages up to the armpit and felt incredibly heavy and painful.

Someone calling distracted her and she looked along the row of beds. ‘Try to get some rest,’ she said, and he watched her walking away before sleep claimed him once again.

The next time he woke, the same young nurse was carefully unwinding the bandages on his arm. Behind her stood a young man in a doctor’s coat who looked incredibly tired.

‘Hello, I thought you were going to sleep the clock round again,’ the nurse joked. Once the bloodied bandages were removed, a terrible rotting smell filled his nostrils and he flinched as the doctor stepped forward to peer at his wounds.

‘Mmm, it’s gangrene I’m afraid,’ he heard him say through a haze of pain. ‘You’d better prepare him for surgery. We stand a chance of saving him if we take it off just below the elbow.’

David wondered what the doctor was talking about but it was too much of an effort to ask somehow. It sounded as though some poor bugger was about to lose a limb. Closing his eyes, he waited for sleep to rescue him again.

 

Ellen Sharp was buried in the little cemetery where, only a few short months before, the elderly woman had laid her husband to rest. The body of her little granddaughter Lucy was buried in the same coffin, which somehow made Maggie feel fractionally better. At least Lucy was not alone.

The day was raw, with a thick frost coating the ground. In the London Road Cemetery another funeral was taking place on a much larger scale, for a mass grave had been dug for all the unidentifiable victims of the Coventry Blitz. The whole city was in mourning as it struggled to come to terms with the terrible event. Today, however, Maggie could think of nothing but her own great loss, and as Mrs Massey stood at her side the young woman’s pain was so tangible that her neighbour could almost reach out and touch it.

‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes . . .’
The vicar’s voice droned on until Maggie felt as if she would scream. Every morning since the night of the Blitz she had awoken, praying that all this was just some horrible nightmare. But now, as she stared down on the cheap coffin, there was no denying it. Her mother and Lucy were gone from her forever, and all she could do was pray that they had moved on to a better place.

When the vicar threw a few clods of frozen earth down onto the brass nameplate, Maggie kissed Lucy’s dolly and threw it down into the grave. It landed with a small thud, its bright plastic eyes staring up at the leaden sky. It hit Maggie with a small shock that Lucy would never see the sky again, and suddenly the tears that she had held back spurted from her eyes in such a gush that she was momentarily blinded.

Mrs Massey sprang forward and caught her in her arms as Maggie swayed precariously on the edge of the grave. And then at last it was over and she was being led away, Jo and Grandma Bright following closely behind. They passed through the lych-gate as yet another coffin was carried through it, and the harassed vicar hurried back into the church to begin the next funeral service.

Beryl Bright wrapped Maggie in a loving embrace. ‘You know as soon as yer up to it, you an’ Jo can move in wi’ me, don’t yer, love? There’ll always be a home for you there.’

Maggie nodded but her eyes were empty, and she didn’t really hear what Beryl was saying.

‘I’ll get her back to Doris’s fer now, love. Don’t get worryin’ about her,’ Mrs Massey said. ‘No doubt when she’s over the shock she’ll be glad to take you up on yer offer.’ Turning to Maggie, she took her elbow and led her towards the waiting car. ‘Come on, love,’ she urged. ‘What you need now is a good stiff drink inside yer.’

She helped her into the car and Jo squeezed in next to her as Maggie fought the urge to laugh. Here she was, burying her child and her mother, and Mrs Massey was telling her that what she needed was a good stiff drink. It sounded so ludicrous somehow under the circumstances, yet she knew the woman meant well. In fact, she shuddered to think what she would have done without her over the last few days - or the other neighbours, for that matter.

Doris Keen had put both her and Jo up without a word of complaint, despite the fact that her house was filled to overflowing with two teenage sons and three daughters. Two of the girls had been sleeping downstairs to accommodate them, but of course, it couldn’t go on, though Maggie couldn’t bring herself to think ahead as yet. Perhaps tomorrow, she promised herself as the car slowly drove through the icy streets.

Troops that had been drafted in from as far away as Manchester were working everywhere they looked, tirelessly digging for human remains in the piles of rubble that still covered the streets. The spirits of the people of Coventry had been somewhat lifted by the visit from King George a few days before, and already the gas and electricity had been restored to most of the homes that were still standing. The sight of the King tramping through streets in deep mud and climbing over piles of rubble had restored the people’s determination to survive. His visit had ended with him standing in the ruins of the once-beautiful Cathedral, his head bowed in sorrow.

But his sorrow could be nothing to the pain that Maggie was feeling now as they moved on to Doris’s home. There would be no funeral tea, nothing to mark the passing of her mother and child, for it was all the people could do at the moment to feed themselves. In the pocket of the black coat, loaned to her by one of the kindly neighbours, was the picture of the twins that she had unearthed from the pile of rubble that had once been her home. She had kept it beside her, for the twins were all she had left in the world now and she clung to the photo as if it were a lifeline.

Doris leaped on her the second she stepped through the door with tears streaming down her haggard face. She was a tall thin woman with hair that always reminded Maggie of cotton wool from the numerous times she had bleached it, but she had a heart as big as a bucket.

‘Come on, sweetheart. Get yourself over by the fire. You too, Jo. You both look perished. While yer thawin’ out I’ll rustle us up a bite to eat, eh?’

Sinking down into the fireside chair, Maggie stared into the flames, and as Doris saw the emptiness in her eyes she broke into a fresh torrent of weeping. ‘God love us, when is all this heartbreak going to end, I ask meself?’

Jo began to fill the kettle as Doris tried to compose herself, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she stared at the sink full of dirty pots. Doris was a lovely woman but she would certainly never win any awards for housekeeping, and that was a fact.

Following Jo’s eyes, Mrs Massey rolled her sleeves up and began to lift the dirty crockery onto the draining board. ‘Right, let’s get some o’ this lot washed and dried, shall we? Then we’ll take the mats out an’ give ’em a good beatin’. No offence meant to you, Doris, but wi’ all these extra bodies in the house I dare say a bit of a hand won’t come amiss.’

Doris sniffed before nodding. From where she was standing the house was perfectly all right as it was, but if Mrs Massey wanted to work herself into the grave then let her.

 

David lay in bed listening to the sounds going on all around him. Men were moaning with pain. Others were delirious and calling for their loved ones. Less than an hour ago he’d watched the little nurse respectfully place a sheet across the face of the poor bloke in the bed next to his, and minutes later they had wheeled him away. The bed had come back empty, but it hadn’t stayed that way for long. Now a young man who looked to be little more than a boy was lying there, pitifully crying for his mother. There was a cage beneath the blankets on his bed, and he had heard the doctor tell the nurse in hushed tones that the poor lad had lost both his legs. David could barely comprehend how the young man must be feeling. He himself had been to theatre earlier in the day and was still feeling groggy from the anaesthetic, but thankfully the pain in his arm had eased from a raging fire to a dull ache now.

Glancing at the cage that covered it beneath the sheets he briefly thought about feeling along the length of it, but then decided against it. He didn’t want to set the pain off again.

Staring up at the roof of the tent, he tried again to remember how he had come to be here but it was too much of an effort. And then suddenly he thought of Maggie and Lucy, and for the first time in days a smile danced across his lips. As soon as he was feeling a little better he’d write to them and let them know he was all right. The doctor had informed him that, as soon as he was well enough to travel, they would be sending him home, which he thought was strange. He’d assumed that, as soon as he was mended, they’d send him back to camp - not that he was complaining.