She’d reached the living room and turned on the light when a whooshing sound seemed to knock her off her feet and take all the breath from her body. She lay where she’d been thrown for a moment or so. The house had been plunged into darkness and debris continued to fall all around her. Linda knew a bomb had fallen terrifyingly close and her house had been caught in the blast. She was frightened to death, trembling in every limb, fearing at any moment the house would fall on top of her.
She could see nothing. The darkness was so thick she felt she could almost touch it. Yet she told herself to keep calm, and to try and remember where she’d been in the room when the blast had knocked her over.
Cautiously she got on to her hands and knees and began to crawl frantically over the rubble, whimpering with fear and knowing there was just one place where she might be moderately safe and that was the pantry. However, in the pitch black, she had no idea if she was even going in the right direction.
She found the remains of the pantry door first, and crawled over it into what remained of the small room. She was only just in time. As she lay, panting with fear, the house began to give ominous creaks; there was a sliding, splintering sound and Linda curled in a ball with her hands over her head as with a roar the house collapsed. There was a crash of falling masonry, the smell of brick and plaster, and the stink of charred wood.
Never in all her life had Linda felt such intense terror and she broke out in a cold sweat. The dust swirling in the air was gritty in her eyes, stopped up her nose and filled her mouth, threatening to choke her. Any minute she expected to be buried alive.
Eventually, things stopped moving and there was no sound at all – only a deep silence. She moaned in relief, almost surprised that she was still alive. She tasted blood in her mouth and realised she’d bitten her bottom lip and hadn’t been aware of it. She was so tense, every bone in her body ached.
She was mighty glad her mom knew where she was. She even knew where it was Tolly had dropped out of George’s fingers, so she could pinpoint exactly where Linda would be right away. Until then she knew she just had to stay calm and eventually they’d dig her out.
It was hard though to remain calm, all alone in the dark, and soon she began to shiver with cold and shock. Had she been injured anywhere? She felt all over her face and extended her arms, very gingerly one at a time, not sure how much space she had. She did the same to her legs and gave a sigh of relief when she found there was room to stretch them out fully. It was a fairly large space, she reasoned, so there’d be plenty of air if it was a long time till she was rescued. Suddenly, there was a loud crack above her head and she opened her mouth in a scream. But before she was able to utter a sound and before she could pull her legs out of harm’s way, the bottom of the stairs collapsed on top of them. The stairs had held the weight of the house and of the houses adjoining, and the pain that ran through Linda’s body was agonizing. She was also stuck fast. At first she couldn’t believe it and began wriggling and struggling, but it achieved nothing but more pain.
She forgot about being brave and staying calm. She wanted her mom and she began to shout for her, but her mouth filled with dust and she started to cough. She thought she was going to die, die here all alone in the blackness, and tears poured down her cheeks as she continued to yell for help.
Eventually though, she was too tired and her throat too sore to shout any more and she lay quiet, shaking all over. She tried to calm herself; she wouldn’t be there long. People were probably looking for her right now. She listened intently, but couldn’t hear anything. Maybe the raid was still going on. She had to be patient; they’d come as soon as they could.
When her fumbling hands came into contact with fur, she realized she’d found Tolly and was absurdly pleased. She’d thought he would have been buried under the rubble that had once been their home. George would be pleased at least, she thought, by the return of his beloved bear, but her mom would be cut up by the loss of the house she loved. Linda wondered where they’d all live. Something would have to be found for them; they could hardly camp out in the street. Mom would sort it all out, Linda thought sleepily.
She wished she could see her, or hear her voice. She cuddled Tolly, surprised how comforting it was. The bear smelt of her brother George and she leaned her head against the toy and closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep, to pass the time away till she was rescued, and she thought of all the tales her mother had told her about her real father. She pictured his face before her as he had been in his wedding photograph. ‘Oh, Dad,’ Linda whispered into the darkness. ‘I wish I could remember what you really look like. I wish you were here now.’ That was the last thing Linda could remember. It was as if a deep peace came over her and eventually she slept.
Phil Rogers, the chief ARP warden, surveyed what was left of what had once been six houses, virtually opposite Paget Road Senior School. He and several wardens like himself had worked through the teeth of the continuing raid to pull people from the rubble and now as the planes still droned above in the black sky and with the crashes and thumps and explosions all around them, he said, ‘We’ll have to leave the rest; I can’t risk any more lives. There’s an unexploded bomb in the school playground and everyone has to be evacuated out of the area.’
Jenny was feeling very sick. She’d helped pull apart the buckled corrugated iron and burst sandbags of the Anderson shelter in the garden of the end house to get at the woman with the two little boys. She’d fought the nausea that rose in her throat as she pulled out the little crushed bodies, one little boy was just a baby, the other only slightly older. ‘Poor sod lost her man at Dunkirk,’ one of the neighbours said as she was being carried to one of the three ambulances standing by.
Oh God, Jenny thought, a whole family killed through this stupid, stupid war. She felt anger and hatred towards the German nation and in particular, the bombers, bringing such misery into people’s lives.
The first three houses were reduced to a mountain of rubble; the fourth had no upper floor, but part of one of the downstairs walls still stood; the fifth had been sliced clean in two.
‘Bleeding good job Beattie was out of the way tonight,’ the woman said as she passed Jenny.
‘Beattie?’
‘Beattie Latimer, her what lived next door to Patty Prosser.’
‘What, the woman who was killed?’
‘That’s the one,’ the woman said. ‘Reckon she’d have been a goner an‘ all, I do, but she’s been at her sister’s all afternoon. She told me herself when I met her coming in from work this afternoon, and her old man’s on nights down the Dunlop.’ She shook her head sadly and gathered her own two children closer to her. ‘Bloody shame it is. Proper shook me up, to see a family wiped out like that. I mean, it’s bad enough losing your house, ain’t it? You spending your life building it up like, and then it’s smashed to bits, but then you look at the likes of Patty Prosser and you thank God for what you’ve got left.’
‘Come on missis,’ Phil shouted. ‘Let’s get you and the babbies out of it. Hitler ain’t finished with us yet.’
And he hadn’t. Bombs still whistled from the sky, as they marshalled the women and children and a few men down Paget Road. The incendiaries that had fallen had set up pockets of flames that lit up the black sky, but did nothing to take the damp chilling coldness from it, and all the families shivered as they hurried along.
Jenny, watching them, shivered herself,
