HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (29 page)

‘Looks like it,’ answered the warden.

‘What’s it like down there?’ asked the policeman.

‘A mess,’ said the warden briefly. ‘The back room’s blocked: looks as though the whole ceiling’s caved in. But we’ll have to get to it somehow.’

The policeman sucked his teeth. ‘There’s no way in from the back garden – I had a look just now. Too much stuff on top. The rescue chaps will have to tunnel through from this side. Did you put in a call for them?’

The warden nodded, and then pointed towards the end of the street. ‘There’s the lorry now.’

‘Stand back there,’ said the policeman. ‘Right back on the kerb.’ He waved the lorry up, and it came to a standstill alongside the stretcher-cars. Godden was the first to jump down from it.

Two minutes to get the hang of the situation, and the layout of the house: another five to assemble the gear in the basement room; and Number Three Squad went to work. Godden, going over his plan as he stripped off his coat, was satisfied with it. They would tunnel along the edge of the side wall, shoring up as they went, until they reached the division between the front and the back rooms: break a way through this if it was still standing; and go on tunnelling and shoring until they found something. It was possible that the ceiling of the back room, where the Timsons probably were, still held, in spite of the enormous weight of ruined brickwork on top of it; though if the front room was anything to go by, it wasn’t very likely. But even if the back room ceiling had collapsed, there was still a chance that the Timsons might survive – underneath one of the cross-beams, or in the angle between the wall and the floor. In any case, they had to find out ...

Godden and Wilensky, working in turn with picks and with their bare hands, were the spearhead of the attack; the rest of the squad were strung out behind them, ready with shores, crowbars, and baskets for the rubble as it was passed back to them.

They worked silently in the dusty, twilight room, with its foolish and shattered oddments of furniture – broken chairs, a sofa scattering flock and horsehair all round it, an overturned table, and a ‘Present from Margate’ which still survived on the mantelpiece. Godden, plugging away methodically – hacking at the brickwork and plaster, picking up the bits and passing them back, chopping, wrenching, thrusting aside – felt full of confidence: at that moment it was the most important thing in the world to get through the mess and reach the Timsons, and he was sure they would do it. Indeed, it was more than confidence – it was sort of ecstasy of achievement: somewhere, not very far away, were people who needed his help, people to take risks for and fight to save, and he was going to save them. This, at last, was the job he had been waiting to do, through all the months of training; this, at last, was what he had been talking about when he told his squad: ‘There’ll be people needing our help before very long.’

At the end of his spell he straightened up and stepped back: with a grunt Wilensky reached for the pick and took his place at the wall tunnel. Good old Wilensky, thought Godden; he knows what he’s doing all right, and he’s not wasting any time either … With the back of his hand Godden wiped the sweat and dust off his face, and then walked from the basement into the area, passing close to Horrocks, who said: ‘Don’t kill yourself, Bill: take a bit of a rest.’ Out in the area, leaning against a wall and breathing deeply and thankfully in the fresh air, he stared up at the slit of sky overhead. It was clear blue and sunny; it seemed very peaceful and miles away from the stress and pain buried down here … There were three heads visible, outlined against the sky, leaning over the railings at the top: the warden, the policeman, and the pacifist stretcher-bearer, watching and waiting like the rest of them up on the street level.

‘How’s it going?’ asked the warden.

‘All right.’

‘You don’t want another squad on it, do you?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve sent all the other casualties off,’ said the stretcher-bearer. ‘Eight of them. I suppose we’d better stay on here, though.’

‘It’ll be a bit of time yet,’ said Godden.

‘Better wait, all the same. Anything I can do down there?’

‘Not yet. We might need a couple of slim chaps a bit later.’

‘That’s me, for one.’

‘Can you hear anything?’ asked the policeman.

‘No. Too far away still … Tell you what we could do with – a few cups of tea.’

‘The mobile canteen’s coming along soon,’ said the warden. ‘I’ll have some sent down.’

The All Clear went suddenly. The policeman straightened up, and his head disappeared from view. Godden said: ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ waved to the other two, and went back to take over from Wilensky.

The tunnel grew. At the end of two hours it was about nine feet long, and nearing the dividing wall between the front and back rooms. The shores and props placed at intervals to hold off the massive weight on top gave it a workmanlike air; but from its entrance it dwindled in height until it was not more than four feet high at the far end. This economy saved time, but it meant working under very difficult conditions: kneeling down in cramped discomfort, swinging the pick at half-arm, elbows close to the sides, attacking the wall of rubble with quick short jabs, which made the sweat pour ...

Horrocks had now taken the place of Wilensky, who had had to give up working in the tunnel itself – the dust and close confinement had started fits of coughing which made it impossible for him to keep up the pace: but Godden worked on untiringly, picking at the rubble, prising out bricks and woodwork, passing the loose stuff back, working with a sense of timeless effort, automatic and continuous. He had to breathe through his nose to filter as much of the dust as possible: he had stripped down to a pair of trousers only, and the sweat, running in rivulets down his scratched, filthy chest, collected in a sticky band at his waistline. Occasionally he paused, listened for sounds beyond the tunnel, trying to quiet his own laboured breathing in order to catch any faint noise or movement ahead: but there had been no sign of anything so far, and each time he would fall to again, making up for the tiny delay with a sustained spurt of energy.

Once, when he backed out at the end of his spell to let Horrocks take his place, the latter said: ‘It’s like the Old Firm again, eh?’ Godden smiled without answering, but he liked the idea a lot: sipping his tea from the mobile canteen, he felt glad that the work was so tough and that he and Horrocks were leading this hard-driving effort of rescue.

It was Horrocks who reached the dividing wall, during one of his spells, and after clearing away the last of the rubble he crawled out to report the fact.

‘It’s not much,’ he said. He, like Godden, was dirty and streaked with sweat. ‘Two bricks thick, I should say. Won’t take long to get through.’

‘What’s the other side sound like?’ asked Godden.

‘Hollow, I think. Looks as if the wall had held up this end of the ceiling, same as in here.’

‘Won’t be long now, then,’ said the warden, who was down in the basement with them. ‘I’ll warn the stretcher-bearers.’

‘I take a turn now?’ asked Wilensky.

‘No,’ said Godden. ‘This bit is mine.’ He took the pick, and a short crowbar from Horrocks, and crawled into the tunnel again. The time was now four o’clock – three and a half hours since they had started. Godden went at the last obstruction carefully, breaking away a brick at a time close to the side wall and the floor, making a sort of little rat-hole in one corner, to keep as much of the wall’s support as possible. Presently he could put his arm right through up to his shoulder, and when he did so, and reached round with his freed hand, he touched nothing. So far so good: this corner of the ceiling still held. He prised away a dozen more bricks, until the hole was big enough to crawl through: then he dropped the little crowbar and eased his body through the opening.

It was pitch dark inside: no glimmer of light penetrated from anywhere. Godden lay on the ground halfway into the room, his legs still in the entrance hole, and listened. All round him the blackness was still and silent: the air smelt acrid, and he could feel the thick brick dust settling in his nostrils. He stretched out his arm again, and felt all round him, to the full length of his reach: still he touched nothing. Then from somewhere in the room there was a vague stir, which might have been the rubble settling overhead. He cleared his throat, and called softly: ‘Anyone there?’

There was no answer: not an echo, not the smallest answering resonance, relieved the loneliness of his voice. The darkness seemed to be crowding round him, the weight of the ruined house overhead pressing upon this small threatened space. Then there was a slurring movement from somewhere near by, and a sound which might have been a groan. Godden felt his scalp prickle, and the sweat drying cold on his body as he pictured what the darkness might hold. He called again: ‘Who is it?’

There was the groaning sound once more and a whimper which seemed separate from it, and then silence.

He turned his head back over his shoulder and called through the opening: ‘Horrocks!’

‘Yes, Bill?’

‘Get me a torch, will you?’

‘All right … Are you through?’

‘Yes. Can’t see anything, though. But there’s somebody here all right.’

There was a scraping sound along the length of the tunnel: it stopped as Horrocks bumped into his legs.

‘Pass the torch through the hole,’ said Godden.

He felt Horrocks reaching out, and then the torch was in his hand.

‘Thanks, George … Wait here till I see what else I want.’ He clicked the torch on, and slowly splayed it round the room.

The roof first … More than half the ceiling was down, sagging to the floor with the laths sticking through the plaster like dusty ribs adrift from a skeleton. Only the corner by which Godden had entered was still clear, and the small section of the room underneath it was in ruins: the woodwork was scarred, the walls cracked and pitted, the single item of furniture – a settee – overturned and splintered. By this settee a woman lay, face downwards and groaning: she had a deep scalp wound, and her hair spread like a sticky red fan on the floor around her head. Farther away, where the ceiling met the floor, lay another figure, an old man: he had been trapped at waist level by the roof fall, and his thin body seemed to grow out of the ruins like the centrepiece of some tawdry illusion. From him there was no sound: his eyes were closed, and his bony face and bald head seemed to have shrunk to a waxy skull.

That was the Timsons, anyway … Godden’s torch swung again, attracted by a nearby sound, and found a last surprise. Almost at his elbow, sitting on a stool with her back to the wall, was a child, a girl of about six. She was obviously terrified: her back was braced taut against the wall, her face seemed to have dwindled to a pair of enormous eyes, set above grey cheeks streaked with dust and tears. She was apparently unhurt – in body, at least; but when the torch reached her face she screamed and hid her eyes from it.

‘It’s all right, love.’ said Godden. He was deeply shocked. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

As he spoke there was a cracking sound overhead and some more plaster fell from the ceiling, landing close by his body. The child screamed again. Godden’s torch swung upwards, exploring the battered arch above him: there was nothing new to be seen, nothing to add to the danger or to lessen its menace, but it was clear that he had very little time to play with. Of the whole house, there only remained this tiny corner which had not caved in completely; and by the look and sound of it, it would not last much longer.

‘It’s all right,’ said Godden again. ‘I’ve come to get you out.’

The child said nothing. Godden crawled forward until the rest of his body was clear of the entrance hole, and then stood upright. Into the small space round him the walls and ceiling seemed to be pressing tightly: it was like standing in a coffin.

Keeping the torch pointed away, he bent down and touched the child on the shoulder. She shrank away from his arm: under the thin jersey he could feel the small body convulsively jerking, straining against a total collapse with God-knows-what effort of self-control.

‘It’s all right,’ he repeated, for the third time. He felt quite inadequate: he had really forgotten how to talk to children, and perhaps he had never known how to talk to a child in so pitiful a state. ‘Can you find your way out, through the hole? That’s the way I came. It’s quite easy. You’ll be outside before you know where you are.’

Godden indicated the entrance hole with his torch, and then swung the beam round until he could see the child again. She did not answer him, and she had not changed her position; there was no way of telling whether what he had said had got through at all, or whether the child was still too hopelessly dazed to take in anything. He tried again.

‘Come on,’ he said gently. ‘Get down on your hands and knees, and see if you can crawl out by yourself.’

He put out his hand to coax her, and then drew it back again as the girl stiffened, ready to cry out. She made no other move, and there was nothing to show that she had understood his words. Godden shook his head. This was getting him nowhere: he just wasn’t the sort of person who could persuade her to any new action; indeed it was waste of time to try, in this black hole where the horrible thing had happened to her. And there were the others to be thought of, too … A fresh series of cracks from the ceiling, another fall of plaster, reminded him of the true significance of this time-wasting: unless he got moving soon, the whole lot of them would be caught. Standing there in the gloom, exhausted by the physical effort of tunnelling, shaken by the child’s condition and the two prone bloodstained figures, it was difficult to think of the right order of things. He took a grip on himself, put on the torch, and bent down to the entrance hole.