Weaver

XIII

Hot air pulsed over Mary, a compression that squeezed her chest. The whole shelter lifted and shuddered, and bits of stuff, the wireless and the tin cups, rattled and fell off their shelves. The shelter's roof clattered, as if handfuls of gravel were being dropped on it.

But the noise was muffled. She touched her ears to see if they had been stopped up by dirt or dust. They were clear. She could hear little but a ringing noise.

It made her mind up. Whatever came next, she couldn't just sit in here, waiting to be bombed out. She had her handbag with her papers, and all her cash, her gas-mask, her rucksack, her briefcase. She glanced around the shelter. She picked up the camping stove and set it carefully on the floor.

Then she clambered up the little ladder and emerged into George's garden. The soil, and George's potatoes and carrots, were covered in debris, bits of brick, wood slats, slates, and a layer of dust. There was heat in the air, and a smell of dust and sewage. Yet she could still hear little. The planes washing overhead sounded dull and distant.

She made her way through the house and out to the street. She locked George's front door carefully behind her.

She walked down the street, heading for the sea front. This was Hastings' Old Town, a tangle of streets crammed into a valley between two sandstone hills, steep and crowded, long terraces of houses assembled over centuries. Today there was chaos, brick and broken glass spilled all over the road, people running, distant screaming.

She found that the big bomb had fallen slap bang on top of a large corner house on the High Street. Mary just stood and stared. A crater had been dug deep into the ground, and broken pipes and cables jutted out like snapped bones. The house itself had been sliced open, exposing the interiors of rooms, so it looked like an immense doll's house. In one upper storey room a big iron bed dangled perilously over the drop. There was an extraordinary, repellent stink, of dust, ash, burned meat, sewage.

People swarmed all over the smashed house. A fire tender was pulled up outside, and firemen grappled with a hose, spraying the lower floors with water. Men of a Heavy Rescue Squad were hauling their way through heaps of brick, trying to get through to rooms at the back of the house. Some worked with bare hands, and others laboured to get joists and blocks and tackles in place, to lift heavier beams and slabs of wall. They were already streaked with dirt and sweat.

And people were being brought out of the building, some walking, some not. Stretcher parties bore their inert loads, sometimes just on bits of planking. At hastily assembled first aid stations the victims were treated and marked with labels, a code Mary had come to know through her experience of such raids: X for internal injury, T where a tourniquet had been applied. Two kindly ladies from the WVS, in their bottle-green uniforms and felt hats, handed out the inevitable cups of tea, the reward for every 'bombee'. But others had been less fortunate. Mary saw a row of bodies lined up on the ground like fish on a slab. An ARP warden, a woman, was checking names off a list, and studying the bodies for identity cards and rings and other means of identification.

Somebody touched her shoulder.

It was George. His face was caked with sweat and dust and dirt, and blood was smeared over his dark uniform. He was speaking to her.

She shook her head. 'I can't hear you.' She tapped her ears.

He leaned closer and shouted, 'I said, what are you doing here? I thought you were in the shelter.'

'I couldn't stay.'

'If you're not going to a shelter, get out of town.'

'George, I can't go. Not while this is going on.'

'It's not your fight.'

She shook her head. 'But it's Gary's. Look, I'll go help those WVS women. I can pour a cup of tea.'

He eyed her, then stood back. 'All right. Your funeral.' He glanced at the sky. 'What time is it? The light's going. I don't think this is going to let up all night-'

There was another shuddering crash. They both staggered, and a bit more of the ruined property collapsed.

George ran off towards the latest catastrophe, blowing a whistle. It occurred to her that she should have taken the opportunity to tell him about Battle. But it was already too late.

She walked determinedly towards the WVS team.