Moonlight and Ashes Page 16

  ‘Hello, Soho Gus,’ she smiled, and even the sound of her voice was wonderful to him.

  ‘’Ow’d’ya do,’ he managed to mutter as his heart fluttered in his small chest. Hauling himself to his feet he began to lead the twins through the village, trying his best to pull his socks up and tidy himself as best he could as he went.

  ‘There’s loads to see,’ he informed them, hoping that Lizzie would be impressed. ‘There’s the sea an’ the beach. Oh, an’ there’s some crackin’ caves an’ all. Then on a clear day yer can see Snowdon from ’ere. But be careful if yer go fer a jaunt over the fields though. There’s disused mineshafts everywhere, an’ should yer fall down one o’ them, you’d be a bleedin’ gonner.’

  The twins’ eyes stretched wide when he swore, but as they were soon to discover, swearing came as naturally to Gus as saying their prayers each night did to them.

  ‘So, do yer still wanna see the beach first then?’ he asked, and when they nodded excitedly he grinned and led them on, pointing out the shiny red postbox on the way. Lizzie kissed her card before she posted it. Danny on the other hand was acutely aware of Gus watching him so he popped his in with the minimum of fuss.

  On the way they told each other of the places they were staying.

  ‘Mrs Evans seems nice,’ Danny remarked as they strolled along.

  ‘She is - and so is Mr Evans,’ Lizzie said. ‘But they call me Lizziebright an’ sometimes they gabble away in a language that I can’t understand. But what about you, Danny? That horrible man who came for you frightens me. He’s all scarred and ugly, and he didn’t seem very kind either.’

  ‘He’s all right really,’ Danny told her. ‘A bit on the quiet side, but his cat an’ dog are lovely. The cat is called Hemily and the dog’s called Samson. He’s a Labrador an’ he’s enormous. I was goin’ to ask Mr Sinclair if I could bring him out with me for a walk but I daren’t just yet.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll let you when he gets to know you a bit better?’ Lizzie suggested wisely. Danny nodded in agreement but then the conversation dried up as they reached the top of a cliff and the sea came into sight.

  Their first walk on the beach was something that Lizzie and Danny would never forget. Lizzie squealed with delight at the feel of the soft sand between her toes, and despite Mrs Evans’s warning, she couldn’t resist a paddle in the sea. Throwing her shoes and socks into a heap she splashed in the frothy waves that were crashing onto the shore with gay abandon. For a while, Danny and Gus stood back and watched her, but her laughter was so infectious that soon their shoes and socks had joined hers and they ran into the shallows. They searched for shells on the beach and then spent a pleasant hour looking for crabs in the little rock pools that the sea had left behind.

  Eventually, Gus told them, ‘I reckon we ought to be’eading back now. We’ve gorra bloody good way to go an’ we don’t wanna get into trouble, do we?’

  Once they’d brushed the sand from their feet and put their shoes and socks back on, they began the climb up the side of the cliff that would lead them to the village. As they neared the blacksmith’s, Lizzie became quiet again and asked fretfully, ‘You will come to see me again, won’t you, Danny?’

  ‘Course I will,’ he assured her, sad that the morning had come to an end. At Mrs Evans’s door he gave her a very brief hug, conscious of the fact that Gus was watching his every move.

  ‘See yer later,’ he said, and as he moved away he saw fresh tears well in her eyes.

  Lizzie watched until Danny and Gus were gone from sight then slowly turned and tapped at the door of Ty-Du . Mrs Evans had told her to walk straight in, since this was her home for the time being, but somehow she didn’t feel that she could. It wasn’t her home, no matter how cosy it was. Home was with her mother in Coventry.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As Maggie lifted an envelope from the doormat, she frowned. Who would be writing to her?

  ‘What’s that letter you’ve got there?’ her mother asked from the doorway.

  Maggie shrugged, then withdrew a crumpled sheet of paper. As she read down the page, the colour drained from her cheeks and her hand flew to her throat.

  ‘Lord love us. Whatever’s happened now?’ Ellen asked apprehensively.

  ‘It’s from David,’ Maggie managed to tell her. ‘He’s stationed in France and it sounds like the troops there are living in hell. The poor souls are dropping like flies, according to this. But there’s worse than that. It seems that Sam is out there too.’

  ‘Good God.’ Ellen could understand Maggie’s distress. There was no love lost at all between the two brothers. It seemed ironic that, after avoiding each other at home for years, they now found themselves fighting side-by-side on a bloody battlefield.

  ‘Ah well, happen this might be just what’s needed to bring them closer,’ she said optimistically.

  Maggie looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. Both of them knew it would take a lot more than that. Maggie had no time to dwell on it though, for just then Lucy tottered up to her with her potty clutched in her tiny hand.

  ‘Wee-wee, Mammy.’

  Maggie had been trying to potty train her for weeks, with very little success up to now. Lucy tended to tell her she needed the toilet when the deed had already been done. Not that Maggie minded. Now that the twins were gone, Lucy was all she had left and Maggie worshipped the very ground she walked on.

  ‘All right, darling. Who’s Mammy’s good girl then?’

  Lucy flashed her a toothy grin and for now Maggie tried not to think of anything else but this precious child in front of her.

  As David crawled through a sea of stinking mud he tried to keep a picture of Maggie and Lucy in the forefront of his mind. His stomach was growling with hunger and he felt sick and cold. Of course, he knew that he was one of the lucky ones. Only yesterday, young Jimmy Harris had died in his arms on the battlefield. Jimmy had been just nineteen years old and the joker of the bunch. David knew that he would never forget the sight of the young man dying for as long as he lived. He had promised Jimmy that when he got home, he would go and see his parents for him. If he got home, that was. All around him, soldiers were dying in their hundreds, yet still they were told to push on. It was no easy task, loaded down as they were with their gas masks, and rifles slung across their aching shoulders. Earlier in the day he had finished the last of the water in the bottle that was also slung across his shoulder, and right now he would have given anything for a drink. It didn’t help to know that somewhere on this very same field was his twin brother, Sam. When they had first run into each other, David had offered his hand and told Sam that it was time to put the past aside. But Sam had slapped it away and David knew then that he had more of an enemy in his own brother than any German he might be forced to confront on the battlefield. It was a chilling thought. The smell of diarrhoea and death was putrid in his nostrils and he kept his lips clenched tight shut.

  Above him, the sky lit up as bright as day as another barrage of gunfire rattled into the night. Just then, he felt himself come up against something that smelled worse than anything he had ever smelled in his life, and he realised with a shudder that it was a corpse. Swallowing the vomit that rose in his throat, he wriggled his way around it in the cloying mud. Poor bastard must have been lying there for ages to stink like that, he thought. His mind slipped back to his training days. He had thought they were hard, but nothing could have prepared him for this. The nightmare had begun when they were shipped out, packed like sardines in a troop-ship. His biggest fear then had been that he would die on the battlefield. Sometimes now he thought it would be a relief. A bullet whistled past his head and slightly in front of him he heard the grunt of yet another comrade as they dropped to the ground. Many of his comrades’ bodies had never been recovered, for the mud had sucked them down. He shuddered as he thought of them lying there and prayed that if he should die he would at least be buried in a proper coffin in his homeland.

  Up ahead he could vaguely
see the edge of the foxhole that the soldiers had dug. If he could only get to that, he could rest for a while at least. With the last of his strength he dragged himself on as a picture of Maggie and Lucy floated before his eyes.

  Maggie was bathing Lucy in front of the fire when the dreaded sound of the air-raid siren filled the air. Snatching the child from the tin bath she wrapped her in a towel and sprinted out of the house with her in her arms. In her haste, she almost collided with Mrs Massey in the shared yard, and the older woman steadied her before gently urging her towards the shelter.

  ‘I reckon I’ll come into your shelter wi’ you, love, if yer don’t mind?’ she panted. ‘The old man’s on fire-watch an’ I don’t much fancy sittin’ in our shelter on me own. Would yer mind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Maggie told her, pushing Lucy into her arms. ‘Will you take her in, Mrs Massey, while I go an’ try to persuade me mam to join us?’

  ‘Course I will, love.’ With her head bent, Mrs Massey did a dash to the door of the shelter, which she wrenched open. ‘Don’t think much o’ yer chances of persuading her out o’ her house though,’ she shouted above the wail of the siren as Maggie disappeared off down the entry.

  Minutes later, she was back. Mrs Massey had already lit the candles, put Lucy into her vest and nightdress, and tucked her into the bunk with her teddy. One glance at Maggie’s crestfallen face told her that she had been right.

  ‘Havin’ none of it then, is she?’ she whispered into the flickering light.

  Maggie shook her head regretfully before heading for the door again.

  ‘Where you off to now?’ Mrs Massey asked in exasperation.

  ‘To make us a flask of tea,’ Maggie flung back. ‘If these bloody Germans are goin’ to keep us holed up in here all night again then I want me cuppa at least.’

  A glimmer of a smile played around Mrs Massey’s lips as she watched the young woman’s retreating figure. Since first taking the job in the factory, Maggie had changed almost beyond recognition. She had grown up and become stronger, and since Sam had left and the twins had been evacuated, she’d become stronger still. Mrs Massey admired her; it hadn’t been easy for the girl, yet here she was caring for her child and sewing every hour that God sent to make a living. Maggie had somehow come out of her shell and shown that she had guts.

  The raid went on well into the early hours of the morning as the women cowered in the shelter listening to the devastation going on all around them. Every now and again, they would hear a loud whistle as a bomb plummeted towards them, and then the walls of the shelter would shake as it found its target.

  ‘They sound a bit too close fer comfort,’ Mrs Massey breathed as she made the sign of the cross on her chest. The sound of shattering glass drowned out anything else she might have said, and the smell of burning grew overpowering. Only the fear of what she might see stopped Maggie from throwing open the shelter door, for she was beginning to feel claustrophobic. And so they sat on in silence, listening to the boom of the guns and the drone of the planes overhead, broken only by the clanging bells of the fire engines as they raced from fire to fire. More than once the sound of a wall crashing down reached them too and they glanced at each other fearfully in the flickering light of the candle.

  ‘Do yer reckon the houses are still goin’ to be standin’ if we get out of here?’ Mrs Massey whispered.

  Maggie noticed that the older woman had said ‘if’ and reached across the enclosed space to gently squeeze her hand. She would have liked to offer words of reassurance, but truthfully as the night wore on she was beginning to fear that they would never leave the shelter alive.

  When at last the all clear sounded, Maggie offered up a silent prayer of thanks as she pushed the shelter door open. The first thing she saw was that her home was still there. The second was Mr Massey, who had spent a long night on fire-watch, just emerging from the entry. The tiny man looked unbelievably weary and his shoulders were stooped as if they had the weight of the world on them. He was so filthy that only the whites of his eyes showed in his soot-black face, but still he asked, ‘Are yer all right then, love?’

  Maggie nodded as tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Mrs Massey has been in here all night with me,’ she told him as he headed for his back door. He stopped and turned back to her.

  ‘Thanks, love. I’m afraid some o’ yer windows have blown in - look.’ He pointed to the glass that was strewn across the yard. Maggie hadn’t noticed it before but now fear flashed into her eyes.

  ‘What about the houses on the other side of the road?’

  He rightly guessed that she was afraid for her mother. ‘Some o’ them were hit,’ he said, ‘but don’t worry. It was the ones farther down that took it. Yer mam’s is all right.’

  Seeing that the elderly man was fit to drop, Maggie once again pulled herself together as Mrs Massey crept out of the shelter behind her. ‘Come on into my house,’ she urged as she turned back to fetch Lucy, who had slept through it all. ‘I’ll make us all a nice hot drink, eh?’

  ‘Now that sounds about the best thing I’ve heard all night.’

  After picking their way through the glass they trooped wearily into the kitchen, but when Maggie went to light the gas on the cooker nothing happened.

  ‘They’ve probably hit a gas main down the street,’ Mr Massey suggested.

  ‘Not to worry. The fire’s still in so I can boil a pan on there. At least our houses are still standing, which is more than can be said for some of the poor souls in the street.’

  Maggie turned on the tap and sighed with relief when water trickled out of it. ‘Well, we still have some water,’ she said as brightly as she could. Once she’d filled a pan and placed it onto the glowing coals to boil, she made for the front door, wishing to give her neighbours a moment alone.

  The sight that met her eyes when she stepped into the Lane made her gasp. Much further down, two houses had had their entire fronts blown off. A dressing-table with a brush and a mirror still on it was teetering half on and half off the edge of what had once been someone’s bedroom. Maggie thought it was one of the saddest sights she had ever seen and went back inside with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Did they get out of the houses?’ she asked as she poured boiling water over the tea leaves in the pot.

  Mr Massey sighed. ‘Some of ’em did. They’ve set up places for some of the homeless in the church, an’ the Salvation Army have shelters they can go to for a while an’ all. But not everybody was lucky. I don’t mind tellin’ yer, I’ve seen sights this night that will stay with me fer the rest o’ me days. Those bloody Jerries have a lot to answer for, an’ that’s a fact.’

  At that moment, the kitchen door swung open and Maggie’s mother waltzed in as if it had been just another night. Maggie was getting the bottle of milk out of the cool pantry. She glared at her.

  ‘Have you seen what’s happened to the houses further down the lane?’ she snapped. ‘It could have been your house that took a hit, and you would have been a sitting duck, lying there in your bed being so stubborn.’

  ‘Well, as luck would have it, it wasn’t my house,’ Ellen told her smartly. ‘The way I see it, when yer card’s marked you’ll go wherever you are, an’ as I’ve told yer before, I intend to be in me own bed when that day comes, God willin’.’

  Maggie was so light-headed with relief that she slopped the tea all over the tablecloth as she poured it into the mugs. Not that it really mattered. Everything seemed to be covered in a fine layer of soot anyway. The biscuit barrel was too, but the ginger nuts went down a treat with the tea.

  Once Mr Massey had gratefully drained his mug he rose, yawning. ‘I’ll just go an’ get me head down for an hour, love, then I’ll come round an’ board yer windows up for yer.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Massey, I’d appreciate that. But are you sure you wouldn’t like another drink before you go?’

  He limped towards the door, closely followed by his wife. ‘No, thanks all the same, love. I’m about dead on me feet. It�
�s been the longest bloody night o’ me life an’ I’ll be good fer nothin’ now till I’ve had a bit o’ shut-eye.’

  Minutes later, Ellen rose too. ‘I’ll be getting back across the road now, if yer sure you’re all right, love.’

  ‘I’m fine, Mam,’ her daughter assured her. ‘I’ll see you later, eh?’

  Once the door had closed behind her, Maggie looked across at Lucy, who was sucking at the bottle of warm milk she had given her. They’d survived yet another night of bombing, but how much longer would their luck hold?

  After she had washed and dressed Lucy, and coaxed her to eat her breakfast of toast made with a toasting-fork on the fire and a scraping of Bovril, Maggie set about trying to clean the soot-covered room. Lucy was happily settled at the table looking at the pictures in a storybook when the back door suddenly flew open and Jo walked in unannounced.

  ‘Why, Jo, whatever’s the matter?’ One glance at her friend told Maggie that something was seriously amiss.

  Jo swayed, and if Maggie hadn’t hurried across and caught her, she would have fallen in a heap. Leading her to the table she sat her down and fetched a damp cloth to wipe the smoke from her face.

  ‘There now, that’s better, isn’t it? Now - can you tell me what’s wrong?’

  For a moment Jo’s mouth worked but no words came out so Maggie stood patiently waiting.

  ‘They’ve all gone,’ she said eventually.

  Maggie frowned in confusion. ‘What do you mean? Who’s gone?’

  ‘All of ’em. Every last one. Me mam, all the little’uns . . . an’ me dad. The house took a direct hit, an’ by the time I got home the fire engine was there trying to put the flames out. There ain’t nothin’ left but a pile o’ burnin’ rubble. An’ my family’s all under it somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, my dear God.’ Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth in horror as Jo stared off into space, dry-eyed. She was obviously deeply in shock. Maggie wrapped her arms tightly around her. ‘Where were you when all this happened?’ she gasped, thankful that her friend had escaped.