Whisper on the Wind (26 page)

‘If you want a sup of tea you’d best come quick and get it,’ he called to no one in particular. ‘That was a purple …’

They came in over Flamborough Head. Twenty-four Junkers-88 bombers, their mission aided by a moon that shone on the waters of the Humber estuary. Navigation was easier on moonlit nights; easy to follow the Humber waters to where they were joined by the River Ouse. Straight and steady flying, then, to York. And all of that city laid out beneath them, easily visible. The Luftwaffe crews were on to a good number in the small hours of that late April morning.

The ten-fifteen express from King’s Cross to Edinburgh approached York station almost on time and the fireman put down his shovel, wiping his face with a rag. The driver peered out into the half-light, recognizing the blacked-out signalbox that was just about a mile away from York. He could do with a five-minute break; trains were easy targets for hunting German fighters on moon-bright nights like this. You couldn’t entirely black out a train; not when its red glowing firebox had to be regularly stoked. But it had been a good run north, for all that …

The telephone in the ARP post in Priory Street jangled again and automatically the air-raid warden reached for his steel helmet. Only four minutes since the purple alert …

‘’Allo!’

‘Air-raid warning red.’ That voice again. ‘Repeat. Air-raid warning red.’

‘It’s a red!’ he called, jamming on his helmet, reaching to throw the switch of the siren that sat atop the building. A flaming rotten red, and him not had his second cup yet. But those swines always knew when you’d brewed up, didn’t they?

The Priory Street siren and those around it began their undulating wail; like souls trapped in torment thought those whose sleep it disturbed. For ninety seconds that seemed to stretch into forever the lamentations went on, chilling some into immobility, others to stark panic. There’d been alerts before and it had been all right. There’d be alerts again, like tonight, but best be sure. Best go to the shelter.

‘Roz,’ Paul said urgently, pulling his arm from beneath her shoulders, flinging off the sheet. ‘Get dressed. Now!’

‘No,’ she pouted. ‘
Damn
it. Oh, let’s not get up?’ They were always having alerts, always getting up, going into shelters and then what? Nothing.

‘
Now
, I said.’ He was taking no chances with her safety. He wanted her downstairs – under a table or under the stairs, if that’s all the shelter there was. ‘Get something on. Quick!’

‘Bloody hell,’ said the air-raid warden, ‘it’s
us
!’ Not Hull, again; not Manchester or Newcastle; tonight they’d come for York. And with fire-bombs, that’s what. Incendiaries, raining down. They’d come to burn the place out.

He hammered on the door of a house showing a light. Only a small window, but big enough for those sods up there to see. A lavatory window. It was always the lavatory windows, the minute the sirens sounded.

‘Get that light out! Get it
out
!’

The ten-fifteen King’s Cross to Edinburgh express pulled into the London and North Eastern station at York just as the sirens had done with their wailing; just as the first high-explosive bomb crashed through the glass, dome-shaped roof and exploded with a sickening, shaking roar. It shattered the platform, sent glass flying in sharp, lethal daggers. Carriage doors sagged; travellers lay where they had been flung, stood stupefied or ran toward the ARP warden who blew on his whistle and pointed them in the direction of the nearest shelter.

More bombs hurled down, and more; fire-bombs crashed into roof spaces and lofts, began their hideous blazing. York, once guardian of the north, ringed round by stout walls and defended by bows and arrows, had no answer to this.

The first, furious explosion wiped all protest from Roz’s lips. Shocked into mobility she slithered into her nightdress then flung on her jacket.

‘Paul!’ She felt her hand grasped and followed him, stumbling in the darkness to the dim light that shone two floors below them.

‘Come down. Careful of the stairs,’ the bed-and-breakfast lady called from the cellar door. A sleeping baby lay over her shoulder, her hair hung loose down her back. ‘Hurry. We’ll be all right down here.’

A candle burned at the turn in the worn stone steps, lighting a small, damp-smelling cellar, its floor covered by old, worn rugs. Beneath a wooden table, its legs shortened so that it stood little more than a foot and a half from the floor, another child lay on a mattress, wide-eyed, thumb in mouth.

In the centre of the cellar, set six feet apart, two thick wooden joists gave support to the ceiling above and, catching Paul’s eye, the woman whispered, ‘My husband put them there. Safer for us, he said, if the house got a hit …’

She was on her own, Roz thought dully. Her man was gone to war and she managed as best she could, rearing her children alone, renting out rooms to eke out the Army pay she drew each Thursday from the Post Office. She was young; too young to have this existence thrust upon her.

On a bench opposite sat a middle-aged man. He looked like a commercial traveller and he’d pulled on trousers and shirt, though his feet were bare and he held a handkerchief to his mouth. He’d forgotten his dentures, Roz thought. In his haste to get down here he’d left them behind and it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t remotely funny.

She reached for Paul’s hand and held it tightly. She was afraid. Those first bombs had been too near – the station, was it?

The bed-and-breakfast lady laid the sleeping baby beneath the table-shelter then drew a blanket over her children. Her face was young and fresh; her eyes old and fear-filled.

‘All right, sweetheart?’ Paul whispered.

‘Fine. Just fine.’

The air-raid still raged and though the explosions seemed farther away now, the noise was horrendous. Why York? Had they mistaken it for some other city? Roz swallowed hard and it sounded loud in the trembling silence.

The commercial traveller pushed his handkerchief into his trouser pocket. Perhaps he had fought in the last war and was suddenly ashamed of his embarrassment. Perhaps all at once he thought damn it, and to hell with his teeth, sitting two floors up. Perhaps things like that didn’t worry old soldiers.

Placing a hand over his mouth he said, ‘Bad do, this. Who’d have thought they’d have a go at York?’

‘We’ve had a lot of alerts but no bombs, till now.’ The woman placed an arm protectively over her children. ‘My husband’ll be out of his mind when he reads about this in the papers. He’s with an ack-ack battery, near Scapa Flow. Wish he were here now.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ Paul comforted. ‘These old houses are solid.’ He looked to the window at ceiling height; a long, narrow window that opened out at street level. Useful that could be. ‘You’re safe as houses down here.’

‘You fly, don’t you?’ she whispered, gazing at the wing on his tunic. ‘Give ’em a bashing tomorrow night? For York?’

‘I’ll do that.’ He felt Roz stiffen beside him, knowing that even though there was a lull in the bombing and the only sound that of anti-aircraft shells screaming up into the sky, this could well be only the start of it. There could have been incendiaries amongst the HEs. There almost always were. Fire-bombs started a blaze that could be seen for miles, provided a target for the next wave to bomb on.

He pulled Roz closer. Her hand clasped his tightly, her body rigid with fear and shock.

Was this then, she thought, how it always was? Tomorrow night would it be S-Sugar’s bombs, falling on men too old to fight and children too young to understand. And on frightened, lonely women.

She smiled up at him and he bent his head to rest it on hers.

‘I think it’s stopping now,’ the bed-and-breakfast lady said, it seems farther off, don’t you think?’

She drew her tongue round her lips. She longed for a cup of strong, sweet tea. She needed her husband beside her, not in khaki; not called up to fire an ack-ack gun miles and miles away from her and the kids. She
wanted
him, the comfort of his closeness in the night and him kissing and touching her, as it once had been.

‘I think you’re right,’ Paul said softly, knowing that was what she wanted to hear. ‘I think the worst’s over …’

The all-clear sounded a little before five in the morning; the sweetest of sounds in a shocked city.

‘Right, then.’ The commercial traveller made for the stairs. ‘Back to bed, I suppose.’

He wouldn’t go back to bed, though. He’d get a shave and finish dressing, then be off to the station as fast as he could, home to Manchester on the first train out.

‘I’ll be making a pot of tea, if you’d like to come up to the kitchen.’ The woman looked at her children, sleeping still. ‘They’ll be all right here. Think I’ll leave them. Let’s put the kettle on.’

‘It’s kind of you,’ Paul smiled, ‘but we’ll have to be away. Best I get back to camp.’

‘Did you have to say that?’ Roz sighed when they were alone. ‘I’d have loved a cup of tea, I really would.’

‘I know, sweetheart, but I want to get you out of here. Just look out there.’ He drew aside the curtain to reveal a sky that was red with fires. ‘We’d best get weaving. They could be back before long to bomb on those fires; it’s the way it is. Believe me, I know.’

‘But what will we do – get the milk-train?’

‘Train? I suppose we just might be lucky. But I don’t care how; all I want is to get you out of this. Just
out
, all right?’

The air was foul with the stench of destruction; of water-drenched buildings and blazing timber. Thick, dark smoke shifted in billowing drifts and ages-old dust floated around them, mixing with minute pieces of fire-blackened paper. Voices called urgently, men dug in rubble and those without spades used their hands. A fire engine sped past, bell clanging.

‘That bomb, Paul; the one that sounded so near …’ Her fingers tightened within the grasp of his hand. ‘It hit the Convent. They’re carrying people out.’ Eyes wide with disbelief she gazed at the waiting ambulances, at a stretcher and the scorched, stained habit of the nun it bore away, a cloth covering her face.

‘Come away, Roz. Let’s get to the station. Maybe they’ve been luckier there.’

Maybe by some small miracle they’d get a train out – perhaps the early milk-train to Helpsley. There might even be transport waiting outside. The station was the likeliest place.

They had not expected the devastation that confronted them.

‘Sorry, lad. No trains,’ the elderly policeman who stood at the station approaches said. ‘No station. Direct hit …’

‘God, what a mess!’ Paul jerked. ‘Many hurt?’

‘Aye. Hurt
and
killed. Got the London train, see. Most of it just gutted. If you’re looking for someone, try the Butter Market. In Kent Street. That’s where they’ve all been taken.’

‘No. There’s no one. Just wanted to get back to camp. Hadn’t realized …’

‘Then you’d best try shanks’s. Only way out of here, this morning. Or you might be lucky with a lift …’

He turned and walked away. He had better things to do with his time than talk to airmen who were well able to take care of themselves. And besides, they were still digging in the rubble in there. Nasty business it was, finding bodies.

‘He’s right. Let’s start walking.’ He took her arm in his. ‘We’ll get a lift, no bother.’

‘It – it’s
terrible.
Such a mess. So many killed.’ Her lips were stiff and she shook with fresh fear. It could have been them; could have been the tall, narrow house in Micklegate and the sleeping children whose father was miles away. And what about Gran, alone? They’d have had an alert at Alderby, too. She’d have known York was being bombed.

‘Sir?’ A hand pulled at Paul’s sleeve. ‘Sir, can you help us, please?’

Two young women stood there, faces dirty and tear-stained. Two young aircraftwomen, shocked and bewildered. ‘We don’t know what to do. Just getting off the train, we were. Lost all our kit. Burned. Don’t know how we’re to get there and there’s no one to ask …’

‘Where do you want to be?’ Paul’s voice was gentle.

‘RAF Peddlesbury, sir. Don’t even know where Peddles-bury is.’

‘Your first posting, is it?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The second, the younger one spoke. ‘But our kit? We’ll be in trouble. Left it on the train. We just ran …’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you. You’re both in one piece – that’s all that matters. And I’m going to Peddlesbury. You’d better come along with us.’

‘Can we? Oh, thanks. It’s awful in there …’ Fresh tears, then, to be brushed away with the back of her hand.

‘Would a cigarette help?’ Paul offered his packet. ‘There’ll be no transport here yet awhile. Think we’d all best try to thumb a lift. And stop worrying about your kit. Enemy action. Nothing at all you could have done.’

Roz held Paul’s hand as he struck another match, and held it out for her. His hands were steady. He’d look after her, look after them all. Paul would get them out of this nightmare. She smiled her thanks, her hand lingering on his.

‘Come on then, ladies. Let’s try to make it to the Helpsley road. Could be we’ll pick something up there.’

They set off together; Paul scanning the sky, ears alert for sounds of aircraft, for a second wailing of the sirens that would confirm the worst of his fears.