A Strong Hand to Hold. Anne Bennett
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‘There wasn’t,’ Jenny insisted. ‘I was here at the scene.’
‘Could she have been blown out of the shelter?’ Beattie asked.
Jenny shook her head. ‘No. It collapsed inwards. We had to move sandbags and corrugated iron to get them out.’
‘Didn’t they have a list?’ Beattie demanded. ‘Who was in charge?’
‘Phil Rogers.’
‘Oh him,’ Beattie threw up her hands in despair. ‘He’s no bleeding good. His mother’s the same, I was at school with her. As for him, he couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.’
Jenny had the desire to laugh at the expression on the outraged woman’s face. What, she wondered, was the matter with her? Was she mad to want to laugh when a child was missing, possibly dead. The laughter bubbled within her, high and hysterical. Beattie, far from being offended, put her arms around Jenny’s shoulders and said, ‘There duck, there.’
The laughter turned to racking sobs. Jenny spluttered through her tears in an attempt to explain. ‘I’m so sorry. You see, my brother was shot down yesterday as well.’
‘Oh, you poor sod,’ Beattie said, and the sympathy from a perfect stranger opened the floodgates at last. Beattie led her to the kerb where they both sat down and she held Jenny in her arms while the tears streamed from her eyes. When the paroxysm of grief was spent, Jenny lay, worn out against Beattie who then said, ‘I’ve got to look into this business of Linda being missing, but I don’t want to leave you by yourself. Is there anyone I can take you to?’
‘My gran’s,’ Jenny said, not wanting to go home. ‘She lives in Westmead Crescent.’
Maureen O’Leary was half demented herself when they arrived with the news that the BSA where Peggy had worked on the night shift had been attacked the previous night. Gerry had been like a madman until Peggy was able at least to send news that she was safe and in the General Hospital, nothing then would do, but he had to go up there. ‘I’ve put in enough hours overtime,’ he’d said to Maureen. ‘They can do without me for once.’
‘But son, she says she’s not badly injured, and thank God for it.’
‘I have to see for myself, Mammy,’ Gerry said, looking at his mother bleakly. ‘My life’s nothing without her. I thought you knew that.’
‘I guessed, lad,’ Maureen said. ‘And I should tell the girl if I were you and put her out of her misery. I’d have done the same for my own man. Go on and satisfy yourself.’
And then, not half an hour after he left, she opened the door to her granddaughter who was being helped by a woman she’d never seen before.
‘What in God’s name is the matter with you?’ Maureen cried, putting her arm around Jenny and drawing her inside, where the girl sat on the settee sobbing with her head in her hands. ‘What is it?’ Maureen asked Beattie, but Beattie didn’t answer. It wasn’t her tale to tell.
‘I have to be off,’ she said.
‘Will you not stop a while?’ Maureen said.
‘No, ta all the same,’ Beattie said. ‘I have things to do, and you two need to be alone.’
When Beattie had gone, Maureen went into the kitchen and came back with a cup of tea that she pressed into Jenny’s hands. ‘Drink that,’ she said, ‘and then for God’s sake, tell me what it is.’ And then she sat very still and said, ‘It’s no one else is it child? You haven’t had another telegram?’
Jenny shook her head. ‘None of the family,’ she said. ‘It isn’t that. It’s just that last night was a terrible raid and I saw some awful sights.’ She looked at her gran and said, ‘Beattie, the woman who brought me here, had her house destroyed and her neighbour, a young woman with three children, was killed and her two young sons with her. The daughter is still missing; she’s only twelve years old.’ Jenny’s hands shook so much she was in danger of spilling the tea.
‘I know pet. It’s this awful war.’ Maureen said, and put her arm around Jenny’s shoulder.
‘Yesterday, I told myself that Anthony had a sort of choice,’ Jenny said. ‘I mean, he chose to be a pilot, but he’d never choose to die, he loved life too much for that. This morning, I suddenly realised I’d never see my brother again. I’ll never see him smile or hear his laugh or have a joke and argue with him. Oh Gran, I don’t think I can bear it.’
‘You’ll bear it, cutie,’ Maureen said sadly. ‘You’ll never forget Anthony like you’ve never forgotten your daddy, but you’ll learn to live without him.’
Jenny knew her grandmother was right, she’d have to learn to live without Anthony, however hard it was.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Maureen said, ‘you need a good feed and a sleep. Then you’ll feel better able to cope.’
‘Oh no, Gran.’
‘Oh yes Gran,’ Maureen said. ‘Sit you down and drink that tea before it goes cold. I’ll just be a minute.’
After a bowl of stew and another cup of tea Jenny did feel better, but she was still very tired and her gran lifted her legs onto the settee and covered her with a blanket.
She slept deeply and didn’t wake, not even when Gerry came back and said he was away to see the priest because when Peggy came out of that place they were to be married as soon as was humanly possible, and no one was going to stop him.
Then Beattie came to see how Jenny was. ‘Tell her we’re searching the bomb site,’ she said. ‘It’ll be for a body, I dare say, for if the child’s under it she doesn’t stand much chance.’
‘There’s always a chance,’ Maureen said.
Beattie thought she could only say that because she hadn’t seen the mountain of rubble, but she didn’t disagree with the older woman.
Linda had given up the chance of being rescued. She seemed to have been inside her black tomb for ever and was in so much pain. She’d screamed in agony when she’d woken up and had shouted and yelled, but no one had heard. There was no one there. It was like everyone in the whole world had disappeared. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there, but it seemed a long time. When she’d first woken up and opened her eyes she’d shut them quickly, because such intense dark frightened her. She would have said she wasn’t afraid of the dark, like George was, but this dark was different.
She shivered with cold and fear, her legs were throbbing and she cried out with pain. God, she’d never felt pain like this and she wasn’t sure she could stand it. She was soaked because she’d had to wet her knickers, she couldn’t ever remember doing that before. She lay on her back and let the tears trickle out of her eyes and run unchecked down her cheeks.
Phil Rogers looked mournfully at the mountain of debris and said, ‘You sure there’s someone in there?’
‘Course I ain’t sure,’ Beattie said. ‘But if she ain’t in there, where the hell else is she? All I know is, if you’d checked the bloody list last night, you’d have known she was missing, at least.’
Phil looked at Beattie and remembered the previous evening. Pockets of incendiary fires had lit up the sky and bombs had been raining down as they tried to evacuate people from the area of an unexploded bomb in Paget Road School playground just yards from houses. He knew it would have been easy to miss one young girl in that nightmare. They daren’t use heavy lifting gear whilst there was even the remotest chance of someone being alive inside it. He knew how impossible a feat it was going to be to clear the area by hand, but Beattie had begun to shift the bricks already. ‘Come on you daft ’aporth and put your bleeding back into it,’ she cried.
When Jenny woke, she was determined to go and help after hearing Beattie’s news. She impatiently swallowed the sandwich and drank the scalding hot tea that