Brave Hearts (4 page)

“They're giving us bloody hell tonight,” the ARP warden said wearily. “God, I think it's the worst yet.” The phone rang, and he looked at it helplessly. “I don't have any more men to send out.” The phone rang again, and he picked it up. He listened and began to make notes. “I'll send a rescue unit as soon as possible, but it may be a while. Give me the address again.” He scribbled the numbers. “Seamore Place?”

Jack's heart began to thud. Catharine's house was on Seamore Place.

“Warden, what's that address?”

The warden looked at him absently. He'd forgotten Jack was there. “Seamore Place. A direct hit midblock. They think some people are trapped . . .” His words trailed away; Jack had turned and was already at the door.

Jack ran down the darkened street. Catharine's house was four blocks from the warden's post. He'd chosen to come to this post tonight because it was close to Catharine, and it didn't make any difference which post he covered when the raids began. He always got a story, at one post or another. Tonight, he'd come to be close to Catharine, that was all, but now . . .

The heavy thud of his footsteps echoed in the empty street. Everyone had taken shelter. Between bangs of AA guns, Jack heard the tinkle of shell casings striking the pavement, the clatter of incendiaries on the rooftops and the streets, and the heavy, uneven drone of the bombers. But he kept on running, skirting an enormous crater in one street, seeking another path when rubble, the spilled-out walls of a church, blocked his way.

A gas fire burned and hissed as he approached the corner of Seamore Place. Heat pushed against Jack as he forced himself on, sweat streaming down his back and legs despite the chill of early spring. He rounded the corner and stumbled to a halt. An agony of horror knotted the breath in his chest.

Fire danced high into the sky from the blazing house at the corner. As Jack watched, the house slowly dissolved, the walls sliding inward and thousands of sparks crisping up into the air. Smoke spiraled lazily up. Firemen struggled with heavy hoses to save the house next door.

Jack blinked his eyes against the stinging soot and smoke, straining to see down the block. Where Catharine's house had stood was a gaping emptiness against the darkening sky, a crumpled, tumbled heap.

Jack stumbled over the fire hoses.

“Hey, mate, get back. It's dangerous here.”

Jack ignored the shout and dodged around the fire truck, his eyes clinging to that open space where no open space should be. He ran desperately toward the emptiness. “Catharine!” He shouted it against the roar of the hoses, the rumble of the fire, the clatter of incendiaries, and the drone of the bombers.

“Catharine!”

The stench of cordite burned her nose and throat. Catharine struggled to breathe. It was utterly dark. She realized with surprise that she wasn't injured, although her head ached from the concussion, and she would be bruised and sore. When she tried to move, she discovered she was lying in a pocket of rubble. She had some inches of leeway, but her shoulder touched an immovable beam. She lifted her hands, felt the rough wood. Panic flared. She turned, twisted, shoved, then sank back, her heart thudding. She was buried beneath the ruins of the house, and the oak beam which trapped her also protected her from the crushing weight of the debris.

Faintly, she heard faraway thumps in the dark, cold, and quiet space. She knew the raid went on, but that was all she heard.

“Priscilla?” She heard her voice, thin and high. “Priscilla?”

No answer.

Nothing.

Only a tiny crackle as pieces of mortar sifted down through the wreckage.

She and Priscilla had just reached the floor of the cellar when the bomb hit. What had happened to Fontaine and his wife and the two maids?

“Fontaine?” She tried to shout. Her call sounded loud in her own ears, terribly loud against the awful silence.

No one answered.

No one moved.

“Priscilla?” she cried again, but without hope.

Catharine lay in the terrible silence and thought of her life—and of love.

Reggie. She had wanted so badly to love Reggie. He'd taken his two-seater up one sunny Friday morning, turned the nose down, and kept his hands steady on the controls until the plane crashed into a Surrey hillside.

“Reggie . . .”

She could picture him clearly, his smiling light blue eyes and sandy hair and that dark blond mustache that made him look so carefree; but he wasn't carefree at all. The love she'd offered hadn't been enough to help him fight the demons in his mind, the guilt and horror that he tried to wash away with whisky. He'd chosen death because he felt he wasn't worthy of love. She understood that now. It didn't ease the pain. She struggled with her own guilt. If she hadn't followed him to England, if she hadn't been seventeen and so certain of herself and the future, a sunny, happy future . . . But she had been seventeen and certain. Now she was thirty-two, and she would never be certain of anything again.

She and Spencer had almost been happy. But she didn't love him, and he didn't love her. In the utter loneliness of this quiet, dark pocket, she couldn't escape the truth. They had come close to happiness with Charles. Those were the bright days, the laughter-filled days. Spencer had been so very proud of his son. He'd taken so many pictures of Charles's first birthday party.

Catharine had teased him. “I believe you're going to use up all the film in Paris. For heaven's sake, Spencer, there will be other birthdays.”

But there hadn't been any more birthdays for Charles.

The pictures were upstairs in her sitting room in the roll-top desk . . . oh, the war mustn't destroy their pictures of Charles . . .

The happy days. They'd walked in the Bois de Boulogne and taken picnic lunches and, for the only time in her marriage, she and Spencer had come together with pleasure and almost with passion. But in the icy, numb days after Charles's death, she and Spencer had moved apart; they'd never come together again. The tie between Catharine and Spencer died when Charles died.

She knew that Spencer didn't blame her for Charles's death. It was more that their grief snuffed out any spark of love, and it had never rekindled.

Catharine lay in the darkness and thought of Jack. It was odd how words could turn your mind. Priscilla's high, cultivated voice crying out, “Oh, God, I'm going to die—and I've never loved a man.” And neither, thought Catharine, have I.

“Catharine.”

It was a faint call, filtered through the mound of rubble that covered her.

“Catharine!”

Tears burned her eyes. From somewhere above her, Jack called her name.

“Careful there, careful! The whole bloody mess'll go down if you pull on that,” the rescue worker shouted.

His mate yelled, “There's somebody down there. I heard a cry.”

The ARP workers wore rubber boots and thick padded gloves. One of them held a blue-shaded lamp.

The stocky man with the rough voice repeated, “I heard her. Right about here.” He began to shift the debris. “Come on, lads.”

Jack crouched at the edge of the sidewalk. He strained to see through the dark in the dim pool of light from the lamp.

Then a cry went up. “Here's one, but she's gone. Give me a hand, will you?”

Jack crouched, and his chest ached. One of the workers gave a heave. A mound of debris moved, and the worker began to tug. He and a second man clambered awkwardly over the heaped rubble, carrying a sagging, still form. When they got to the sidewalk and gently laid her down, Jack was there. He bent down and saw a dark sweep of hair before he realized the hair was dark with soot and grime, but a loose tendril was blond. It wasn't Catharine.

The rescue workers were turning away. Jack called after them. “There's another woman down there.”

“We're still looking, mate.”

Jack followed and waited at the edge of the broken-up masonry.

Twenty minutes. Thirty. An hour. Jack waited, unmoving. He'd watched before as rescue parties scrambled among shattered houses, trying to find someone alive, anyone alive. Sometimes, everyone survived. Sometimes, no one. Death might strike at the head of the table, bypass the foot. There was no rhyme or reason in a bombing. So he knew there was hope. And one of the rescuers said a woman had called out. He didn't look again at the still form on the sidewalk. Please, God, let Catharine live. He wished he could help dig, but he knew he must wait as thousands of Londoners waited this night to learn whether the answer was life or death. Let her be alive, he prayed. At last he understood the heartbreak of war.

Tomorrow men and women like him would file stories—stories of the night that fire and death rampaged across the West End. Correspondents would describe the bomb destruction.

He knotted his hands in tight, hard fists and waited.

Dust cascaded down into her face, clogged her nose and throat. Catharine twisted her head. “Don't.” She coughed. “Please, I'm choking.”

“Miss.” The voice was deep and rough. “You just hold quiet now. We'll have you out as quick as we can. You hold quiet.” Then he shouted to the others, “I've found one alive. Get me a rope.”

The rubble shook and settled. More dust swirled around her, but she held her breath. Then the beam that trapped her began to move. There were grunts of exertion and calls of encouragement. The beam lifted, and she was free. Gloved hands gripped her arms; a dim blue light shone in her face.

“Are you hurt, miss?”

Cautiously, she moved. Her head ached from the force of the concussion, her back was stiff, but she was lucky this night.

“Careful, miss. We can get a stretcher.”

“No.” Her voice was hoarsened by the dust. “No, I'm all right. The beam protected me.”

The man picked her up as easily as he might have lifted a child and mounted the rubble. “She's all right,” he called out.

“Catharine?” Jack's voice carried across the mound of debris.

“Yes.”

Jack took her in his arms when the man gently swung her to her feet on the sidewalk. They didn't speak, but Jack held her. Catharine felt strength flowing back into her.