HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (30 page)

‘Horrocks!’ he called.

‘Hallo, Bill,’ came the answer. ‘Who was that calling out?’

‘There’s a kid in here.’

‘Lord!’ said Horrocks. ‘Anyone else?’

‘The other two as well. They’re both knocked out. The old man looks as if he’s gone: the woman’s still alive.’ (But was she? There’d been no sound, no movement of that clotted head, for some time.) ‘Send a stretcher-bearer to move them out, anyway.’

‘What about the kid?’

‘I can’t get her to move at the moment. Shock or something. The stretcher-bearer better have a look at it too.’

There was a pause, while Godden heard Horrocks at the end of the tunnel repeating the information, and a faint echo in which he could distinguish the warden’s voice. The link with the outside world was tenuously comforting. Then Horrocks called again, a shade more anxiously: ‘Do you need any gear, Bill? What’s the ceiling like?’

‘Not too good. But there’s no room to shore up – and too much weight anyway if it starts to go. We’ll just have to try getting them out, and trust to luck … Send a couple of hurricane lamps through with the stretcher-bearer. I can’t see much with just a torch.’

‘All right. Watch out for yourself, Bill.’

Silence fell again. While he was waiting, Godden switched on the torch and went back to the Timsons. The woman had stopped bleeding, which he vaguely knew might be a bad sign: he had been ready to put on a tourniquet, like they’d been shown in the classes, but there didn’t seem to be any need now. (How did you put a tourniquet on a head wound, anyway?) He could not tell whether she was still breathing; his own sounded too loud. Leaving her, he shuffled over on his hands and knees to have another look at the old man: clearly he was pretty far gone – the breathing imperceptible, the face like a thin paper mask with a line of dried froth at the mouth – and there was nothing to be done to help him. Godden didn’t want to start pulling him out before the stretcher-bearer had a look at him: that was what he’d been taught, though it seemed a cruel thing to leave him there with all that weight on top of him ...

There was a scraping noise in the tunnel, and a thin line of light which grew until it spread over the whole corner of the room. A hand came through, thrusting two hurricane lamps into the open; then a head followed, wriggling and jerking like a moth leaving a cocoon. It turned towards the light. It was the pacifist stretcher-bearer.

He peered round him, and then his face broke into a grin.

‘Hi there, Bill!’

‘Hallo, lad. Bit of work for you here.’

The stretcher-bearer stood up, rather gingerly, and glanced round the room. ‘How long is this going to last?’

‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ Dismissing the state of the ceiling with a carelessness he did not feel, Godden pointed to the Timsons. ‘Three of them to look at, with the kid there. See if she’s OK, will you, and we’ll send her out first.’

‘All right.’

As he knelt down beside the girl, Godden said: ‘She may scream.’

The stretcher-bearer did not answer, but took the child’s hand, and smiled at her. His face, grimy with dirt from the tunnel and queerly shadowed by the lamplight was not reassuring; but some quality of gentleness in him must have reached the child, for this time she did not cry out. Godden watched as the stretcher-bearer ran his hands swiftly over her body and made her stand up, talking all the time in a soft whisper, which seemed to fill the shattered room with comfort and confidence. It was wonderful to watch his concentration as he laboured to get through to the child’s mind, and the way in which she gradually surrendered to him. Godden wished he had been able to do it himself, but he knew that could never be. He hadn’t the trick of that sort of thing. It was something you were born with, most like.

Presently the stretcher-bearer stood up. ‘She seems OK,’ he said to Godden. ‘Shaken to bits, of course … Now we want to get you outside,’ he went on, bending down to the child again. ‘Do you think you can crawl through the hole down there?’

The child followed his pointing arm, looked at the tunnel entrance for a moment, and shook her head. Godden thought: we’ll be all night over this, and the roof will probably go before we’re properly started. From the corner he stared at the pair of them, impatient, wanting to hurry them up, but knowing that he could do nothing: he could only stand by and wait, with no more part in the scene than the enormous crooked shadows the two of them cast against the ruined wall and ceiling. Sweating and half stifled, feeling the drag of the minutes as they stretched out over the limit of safety, he listened to the curious, hurrying, half whispered dialogue of the stretcher-bearer persuading the child to move, and the child delaying in terror. But Godden knew that, in spite of the critical circumstances, it had to be persuasion: unless she were willing to go, it would be impossible to force her down the tunnel without a grim and horrible struggle.

‘Don’t want to leave Granny.’

‘I’ll bring Granny out in a minute. You go first.’

‘Where does it go to?’

‘Outside the house. You’ll be out in the sunshine in a minute.’

‘It’s too small. It’s a little hole.’

‘It’s just big enough for you.’

‘It’s too small for Granny.’

‘No, it’s big enough for her, too.’

‘Will there be somebody there?’

‘Yes, there’s a nice man waiting for you outside.’ The stretcher-bearer called, and Horrocks answered faintly. ‘You see – he’s all ready to help you.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Just a nice old man. I expect he’s got a bag of sweets in his pocket somewhere.’

‘What’s he doing out there?’

‘He’s come to help you.’

‘Don’t want to go by myself.’

‘Just go a little way, and you’ll see him there waiting for you.’

In the end, tearful, trembling uncontrollably she went … Godden heard Horrocks saying: ‘Come on, love – here we are,’ heard the child start sobbing out loud as she reached the tunnel-end, and felt suddenly a huge surge of relief. At least they were free of that bit of the job.

Swiftly the stretcher-bearer turned to the old woman, examined her, started binding up her head and then putting a long splint on her broken thigh. As he worked, with furious speed, the roof overhead gave an enormously loud crack, and he looked up momentarily.

‘Sounds as though the whole bloody issue is coming down … How long have we got, do you reckon?’

Godden shook his head. He was beginning to feel slightly sick: it was obvious that their small bit of the ceiling would go at any moment. ‘Don’t know, lad … Not too long … Have you finished?’

‘Nearly.’ The stretcher-bearer, tying a knot at the bottom end of the splint, glanced over his shoulder. ‘We might as well leave him where he is … I’ll put this old girl out: you follow me.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Don’t forget the lamps, will you? Council property.’

‘All right.’ But Godden knew already that he would not leave the old man until the very last moment. He could still be alive. It was worth a good try, at least.

After a moment the stretcher-bearer looked up. ‘OK – finished. It’s as rough as hell, but it’ll do for now. Give me a hand up to the entrance.’

They half pulled, half carried the lolling figure to the tunnel mouth. More plaster fell as they moved, a last warning to speed their exit. At the open corner the stretcher-bearer made a long sling out of the three bandages, looped it over the old woman’s shoulders, and tied the ends round his own waist. Then he said: ‘See you later, Bill – don’t hang about too long,’ and began to crawl out on his hands and knees, dragging the old woman after him like an unwieldy bundle at a rope’s end. As she moved, inch by inch, the hacked-up floor scored her face cruelly. Godden, easing her body through the entrance, thanked God she was unconscious.

Left to himself, he crossed back to the old man, and peered down at the pale face. Not a flicker there … But he must try, anyway: this was one of the people he was meant to look after. He took a good grip of the thin shoulders and heaved. The body gave a little, and then stuck. A fresh shower of plaster covered them both with a grey, choking cloud of dust.

Through the tunnel came Horrocks’s voice: ‘What are you doing, Bill?’

‘Getting the old chap out, if I can.’

‘Thought he was dead.’

‘Maybe not. Worth a try, anyway.’

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ Horrocks’s voice, unnaturally loud and strained, communicated its fear. ‘Leave him and come on out.’

Part of what he said was drowned by a rumble overhead.

Horrocks called sharply: ‘Bill!’

Godden, tugging again at the old man’s body, grunted: ‘Yes?’

‘For heaven’s sake come out before it’s too late. The whole house will be down in a minute.’

‘All right. I’ll just have one more–’

He broke off suddenly. The roof was coming down: he felt the whole crazy structure start to sag. Up till now he had not been afraid: now a stab of panic shot right through his heart. With his arms still round the old man – the old man he already seemed to love so fiercely and tenderly – he gave a wild glance round the room. What a rotten place to die, what a little hell-hole of dirt and pain … He heaved again at the body, feeling it inexorably stuck against something within the rubble, feeling the roof dropping like a wave slowly breaking over them both. One of the lamps went out, caught by a sagging beam: the space left was suddenly halved by a crashing fall of brickwork.

Horrocks’s voice called ‘Bill!’ on an extraordinary note of anguish.

Godden thought: ‘Poor old George. He’ll be sorry.’

The old man was torn out of his arms by a sudden cruel weight dividing them, and disappeared from sight, as if sponged out by a dirty cloth. With nothing left to save, Godden jerked backwards, making for the tunnel, but he did not reach it: as he stumbled across, the roof overhead split with a crack like thunder, unloosing a cascade of brick and woodwork, which thickened until it was a solid avalanche of rubble.

Its crushing weight bore down upon his back, beat him to his knees in total darkness, forced his body down and clamped it to the floor. Blood came into his mouth. The house fell upon him with repeated blows, but he was not alive to more than two or three of them.

Published by House of Stratus

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