Sweet Memories of You (Beach View Boarding House) (26 page)

She had no idea of how long she’d been knocked out, but when she finally opened her eyes, it was a moment before she could clear the dizziness in her head and adjust her eyes to the flickering light of the last remaining hurricane lamp. But then her gaze fell on Fred and his mate who’d been sitting beside her, and the bile rose in her throat at the sheer horror of what she was looking at. The two men had been crushed to death by the girder that had come down and missed her by inches.

She’d seen lots of dead bodies during the London Blitz, but she’d never been this close before, and the sight of those broken, mangled remains of the old men she’d come to know and admire was too much. Her stomach clenched and she vomited onto the floor.

Studiously keeping her gaze from that awful sight, Ivy cleaned her mouth with the back of her hand and suddenly remembered Freda. ‘Freda!’ she yelled into the darkness of the other side of the basement. ‘Freda, where are you?’

There was no reply and Ivy became frantic. She had to try and get to her – and to the others still trapped, for she could hear moaning and cries for help coming from all around. She tried to move, but found that although she didn’t appear to have been hurt except for a massive lump on her head, her foot was caught under something and holding her fast.

Her imagination took flight as panic set in. She glanced up at the girder that was the only thing holding back the tons of rubble and machinery that she knew must now be precariously balanced above her. She wriggled her toes in the large boots and gave a trembling sigh of relief. Her foot hadn’t been crushed, and her leg was still working. All she had to do was get it free.

There was no room for her to bend and untie the laces on her boot to free her foot, so she began to frantically wriggle her foot about, tugging back and forth, twisting it this way and that, always mindful of the precarious situation she was in. One false move on her part could bring the whole lot down on top of everyone. She lost track of time as she sweated and strained – and then, at long last, her foot was free.

The sweat was cold and smelled sour on her skin as she examined her surroundings more closely. She was hemmed in on all sides, and above her head was what looked like a solid wall of toppled machinery, concrete slabs and brickwork. ‘One puff of wind and it’s goodnight Ivy,’ she muttered. ‘I gotta get out of ’ere.’

She could hear people screaming for help as she carefully wriggled and twisted off the bench and inched her way to a small niche she could see in the wall that was about the size and shape of the fireplace in her bedroom at Beach View. What it was doing there, she had no idea, but she was glad of it, for it offered just a modicum of hope that it might shelter her should everything collapse above her.

‘Freda!’ she yelled again. ‘Freda, are you all right? Where are you?’

There was no answer and Ivy bit down on a sob of terror as dread washed over her. She might have escaped being crushed, but she was entombed down here and had no idea if anyone could hear their cries. ‘Help us, please,’ she called out. ‘Can anyone ’ear us? We’re down ’ere.’

A glimmer of something caught her eye and her heart began to race as she realised that one of the fizzing, loose electric cables had sparked fire into something nearby. She watched in growing terror as the flames grew and began to inch towards her, feeding on the shattered bits of wood that lay around.

She tried to stamp it out with her boots, but each thrust made the girder shudder and she could hear the groan of the debris above her as it shifted and settled and a thick cloud of choking dust sifted down.

‘Help,’ she screamed. ‘Help me, please!’ But her cries were deadened by the sheer volume of the debris above her, and she knew it would be a miracle if someone heard her.

She cowered in the narrow niche, listening to the groans and cries of the others around her. Some of the trapped were muttering prayers, and if she’d had an ounce of faith, she might have joined in with them. But prayers wouldn’t get her out of here, or put out the ever-advancing river of fire – only the rescue teams could do it. Surely, surely they’d be on their way by now?

She sat there in abject terror, almost hypnotised by that creeping river of flame. How long would it take to catch everything alight? How much longer did she have before escape became impossible? Her frantic gaze swept her surroundings in search of a better hiding place away from those flames. And then, some feet away, she saw a machine that had crashed through the roof and landed on its end to form an arch as it leaned against another girder. It looked as if it might provide better shelter than this niche.

Ivy wriggled and twisted on the floor until she was wedged beneath the machine, but as she looked back at the bench she almost fainted. The flames had reached the place where she’d been sitting, and were now hungrily devouring the bodies of the two elderly men.

Ivy’s teeth were chattering. She knew she was close to turning into a jibbering wreck, and that it would take every ounce of courage to deal with that macabre sight and try not to let it send her over the edge. She began to scream, letting out all her horror and fear as the sound pierced the darkness and rebounded off the crumbling walls.

However, the smoke from the fire was now thick and cloying, bringing her screams to a choking end as it got down her throat and stung her eyes. She coughed and spluttered and tried to crawl further into the shelter of the fallen machine, her ragged sweater held tightly over her face. But there was no escape, and every time she took a breath she could feel it seeping into her lungs and slowly smothering her.

And then she felt something cool and wet fall on her face. Thinking she must be imagining it, she blinked up at the precarious, shifting debris above her and felt it again – and then several times more. Her spirits soared as she realised it was water – clean, cold, life-giving precious water. The rescuers had arrived and were trying to put out the fire.

‘Down ’ere!’ she yelled, her throat raw and her eyes stinging from the smoke.

There were other, feeble cries from every corner of the basement, but Ivy was quickly distracted by the rapid change of direction of the flames, which were now starting to lick at the toes of her boots. ‘Fire!’ she screamed. ‘There’s fire down ’ere.’

She tried to kick at the flames and smother them with her other boot. But that caught too and soon her overalls were darkening and beginning to curl and crisp. ‘Me legs are burning,’ she yelled as she desperately tried to beat out the flames with her hands and not think of the TNT that was probably impregnated into the material. ‘Help me,’ she wailed, ‘please ’elp me.’

She looked up as noises came from above her, and then a sudden breath of wind blew the smoke and flames into another direction. She beat the singed legs of her trousers until she was certain they were no longer alight, and then gratefully breathed in great lungfuls of fresh air as icy water poured down over her head and drenched her. The flames sizzled and died and she sobbed in relief. She was going to be all right.

Water was now collecting on the concrete floor and she shifted a bit to try and avoid it, but it was pooling beneath her, soaking her even further. ‘Bloody ’ell,’ she muttered, ‘I escape getting crushed to death, only to get flamin’ drowned.’ She looked up to where the water was coming from. ‘Oy!’ she yelled. ‘There’s people down ’ere what can’t swim!’

‘We can hear you, love,’ shouted a man from a great distance. ‘Just sit tight and we’ll have you out of there soon.’

Relieved and almost hysterical with happiness that someone was talking to her at long last, she shouted back, ‘Hurry up then. We’ve been down ’ere for bleedin’ hours already.’

‘Is that you, Ivy?’

Ivy laughed with the sheer joy and relief of knowing Rita would make sure she wasn’t about to die. ‘Yeah, it’s me, and I’m all right, Rita. But hurry up, mate, there’s people badly injured down ’ere, and me mate Freda’s in trouble.’

‘We have to make it safe, Ivy, otherwise this lot will come down on top of you. Just be patient for a bit longer. We’ll get you out.’

Ivy tried to be patient as she sat like a drowned rat in the filthy puddle of water, but it felt as if hours were passing as rumblings sounded overhead and the wreckage was slowly cleared to reveal a small hole.

She shielded her eyes from the bright flares of acetylene torches as metal was burnt away and sparks rained down to fizzle out in the water, trying to make out what the men and women were saying up there against the grind of winches and the revving of heavy engines.

And then a face appeared through the enlarged hole. It was grubby and smeared from sweat and soot, but there was no doubt that it belonged to Rita. ‘Where are you, Ivy?’ she called down as she flashed the strong beam of her torch over the wreckage in the basement.

‘Down ’ere by the left wall, about ten feet from the door. There’s no one alive near me, but I can ’ear others on the other side. Me mate Freda’s over there somewhere. You gotta find her, Rita.’

‘Let’s get you out of there first. Can you climb up, Ivy?’

‘Nah, there’s a socking great girder in the way holding up most of what come down, and it don’t look that steady. I reckon it could crash down at the drop of an ’at.’

‘Stay there then, and we’ll send down a rope.’

The rope swung down and Ivy caught it. Her hands were sore from beating out the flames on her dungarees, but she was damned if she was going to let a little thing like that stop her from getting out of here. She pulled on the rope and hauled herself out of her hiding place and onto the top of the machine, which began to tilt alarmingly beneath her. Gripping the rope even more tightly, she ignored the pain in her hands and shinned up it like a monkey – just as she’d once done as a kid in the local playground.

Strong hands caught her, swung her into sturdy arms and carried her away swiftly from the still smoking rubble and the blazing fire that was destroying a nearby factory. As she was gently put on her feet she found that her legs were trembling so badly she could barely stand. She swayed against her rescuer, feeling light-headed and strangely disorientated.

He held her close and steadied her, and when she felt more able to stand on her own she looked up into the sweat-and soot-smeared face of the fireman and grinned. ‘Thanks, mate. I thought I was a goner there.’

‘It was my pleasure, darlin’,’ he replied in a strong Cockney accent. ‘Now you ’old tight there and ’ave a cup of char while the medics give you the once-over, and I’ll see yer later.’

His smile was quite attractive, even though it was hard to tell what he looked like under all that grime, and she wondered what a young, fit-looking bloke from London was doing down here instead of being in one of the forces.

She watched him hurry back to the enormous pile of rubble where his colleagues and the men from the heavy-lifting crews were attempting to clear a safe way down into the basement. It was no wonder she hadn’t been able to make herself heard, she realised, as she saw how high and deep that rubble had been. The entire building had been flattened, and it was a miracle that the whole place hadn’t exploded into a million pieces, what with all those charged fuses lying about, and the live ammunition.

Her legs gave way and she slumped down on a broken chunk of masonry, suddenly feeling the pain in her hands and the exhaustion and shock of what she’d been through. A woman appeared and handed her a cup of tea while a young Red Cross nurse put soothing balm on her hands and bandaged them before she checked that her legs hadn’t been too badly burnt. They were a bit red, but thankfully not blistered – she had indeed had a very lucky escape.

‘You’ve got one heck of a lump on your head,’ the nurse said as she dabbed iodine on it. ‘You really ought to go to the hospital and have it checked over.’

‘I’m staying ’ere,’ said Ivy, her whole focus on the rescue team, willing them to hurry up and find Freda and the others who were still trapped down there.

The nurse went to treat someone else and more ambulances arrived along with another two fire crews and a fleet of army trucks. Jets of water were being played over the burning parachute factory, smoke curling like giant mushrooms into the dawn sky, as men raised their voices to give orders and the special machinery was put in place to lift away the girders.

‘Thank Gawd you’re all right,’ breathed Dot as she came running over with Mabel and Gladys. ‘You was down there for over five hours and we thought you was a goner for sure.’ She gave her a hug and looked round with a frown. ‘Where’s Freda?’

‘Still down there,’ muttered Ivy.

The girls perched alongside her and they huddled together as workers from every part of the estate began to gather behind the hastily erected barricades. ‘It looks like we’re all out of a job,’ muttered Dot. ‘And it’s the same for the girls at the parachute and tool factories. They ain’t gunna save them neither.’

The three of them regarded the skeleton of the parachute factory and then the great mass of debris that had once been the munitions building. With a collective sigh they lit fags and anxiously waited to see if Freda had been as lucky as Ivy and survived.

The heavy-lifting crews had removed the girders and the hole had been enlarged. The firemen went down the ladders into the basement and, after an agonisingly long wait for those watching, began to bring up the wounded. Stretcher bearers swiftly transferred them to the waiting ambulances and the few walking wounded staggered to the nearest clear space and sat down, staring in bewilderment at the chaos surrounding them.

The four girls stood as one as stretchers covered in blankets began to be lifted up and, as one, realised in horror that these were the dead. ‘Freda?’ Ivy covered her mouth as the tears caught in her throat.

They watched as body after body was recovered and placed with reverence in the back of the large army trucks. Ivy began to walk towards them, and was held back by the young driver. ‘You don’t want to see, love,’ he said.

‘But I need to know if Freda’s one of them.’

He shook his head, his expression solemn. ‘If she’s not already in an ambulance, then I’m sorry. There’s been a thorough search and only the dead are left down there now.’