Whistling in the Dark (18 page)

“No, he’s coming on his own.”

“Perhaps he’d like to stay for dinner,” said Mum. And Joan knew that her mind had immediately leapt to wondering if she could make the chops stretch to another person.

“He said he won’t be staying long,” Audrey told her.

Mum answered the door. When Hugh Davies walked into the back room, they could see from his expression that this was no ordinary social call. He looked shocked, as though somebody had just hit him in the face.

“Come and sit down, Hugh,” said Mum. “Is anything wrong?”

Hugh remained standing. “I came to see Audrey especially,” he said. “Didn’t want to tell her on the phone, see. It’s that … well … we’ve had a telegram.”

“It’s about Dai, isn’t it?” Audrey said.

“Yes. I’ve brought it with me for you to read. It’s from the shipping company. We wanted you to be the first to know. It says Dai’s ship was sunk in the mid-Atlantic. They were on their way home. Direct torpedo hit from a U-boat. No survivors. They send their deepest regrets.”

Audrey sat down abruptly, still clutching the tablecloth, and looked down mutely at the floor. Her face was very pale. Mum quickly went over and tried to put an arm around her, but Audrey shrugged her off. At last, Mum turned to Hugh.

“This is terrible news for you and Gwyneth. I’m so, so, sorry,” she said in a low voice. Hugh said nothing, only nodded. There was an agonized silence.

“I can’t stay,” he said at last. “Got to get back to Gwyneth.”

“Of course.”

After Mum had seen him out, she came back into the room. Audrey was still sitting there motionless, as though she had been turned to stone.

“Do you think you could give Judy her dinner and take her over to the Hemmings’?” Mum said quietly to Joan. “Brian’s out. I’ll stay with Audrey.”

Joan was too stunned to reply, but she did as she was told. It was only much later, when she got back home, that the news really hit her. Dai was dead.
She could hear Audrey up in her room, crying and crying, great heaving sobs reaching a crescendo, and Mum’s voice rising and falling as she tried unsuccessfully to comfort her.

CHAPTER 30

T
hat terrible Saturday evening was one of the worst in their lives. As it grew dark, they heard what sounded like a massive armada of Nazi bombers heading for Liverpool. To Joan, preparing for bed, it seemed like the worst kind of science-fiction nightmare made real, like something out of H. G. Wells.

That night, she and Brian sat huddled in the broom cupboard under the stairs, which was supposed to be the safest place in the house, feeling the walls tremble and shake. Mum was still upstairs, trying in vain to persuade Audrey to join them. At least Judy was relatively safe with the Hemmings. They had an Anderson air-raid shelter in their back garden. Somehow, Mum had never got round to installing one. This was supposed to be a so-called “safe area”, after all, but it certainly did not seem like one tonight.

There was no electric light under the stairs. Joan and Brian had their torches but did not want to use them unless it was absolutely necessary, in case the precious batteries ran out. They sat in the dark on upturned boxes, holding hands – something they had not done since they were children. Until now, Joan had always felt fairly convinced that a bomb would not actually fall on them, but tonight she wasn’t so sure. Brian was beyond making jokes. But his hand was steady as it gripped hers, and very comforting. It seemed like an eternity before morning came and the all clear sounded.

Audrey was at last persuaded to join them downstairs, and they all sat in the back room, mute with shock. It was Sunday, but no church bells rang. They had been silenced since the outbreak of war, and would only be rung as a warning in the event of an enemy land invasion – something which, so far, had not happened.

That’s one thing, at least, to be grateful for,
thought Joan grimly.

It was deathly quiet outside: only some faint stirrings among the neighbours as they crept out of their shelters in an attempt to start the day. In Joan’s back garden, the air was heavy with smoke and dust. Bits of charred paper and scraps of wood and plaster were blowing over the grass like mottled snow.

Mum had seldom looked so tired.

“I’ll make some tea,” said Joan.

As they sat there sipping it, Audrey disappeared upstairs again, and came down a little later, very pale, but wearing a freshly ironed blouse and her best black coat and shirt.

“I’m going to church,” she announced, “with Dai’s mum and dad. I know they’ll be attending the service at the Presbyterian chapel this morning to pray for Dai, and I want to be there with them.”

“Are you sure you can cope with it?” said Mum. But they all knew that once Audrey had made up her mind to do something, there was no stopping her.

Joan, Mum and Brian were too tired to go with her. Dazed with exhaustion, they slowly attempted to clear up the mess outside and sweep the dust from the front step. They could see a great pall of smoke over Liverpool and a dull red glow from the fires, which were still burning there.

Brian tried their telephone and found it dead.

“I expect the lines are down,” said Mum. “Maybe our local telephone exchange is damaged. But they’ll get it going again soon, surely.” It was a forlorn feeling to be so cut off.

Mum was looking to see what food she could possibly muster for that day’s dinner when they heard the explosion. There had been no warning, no air-raid siren sounded, just a huge shuddering crash which shook the walls of the house. They all three stood there, transfixed, listening.

“That wasn’t a Liverpool explosion,” whispered Mum. “It was right here, in our neighbourhood!”

They ran to the front door. Outside, not far away, they could hear a lot of screaming and shouting, and the sound of an ambulance siren.

“Audrey!” Mum said. “Oh, God! I should never have let her go out!”

She was already dragging on her coat when there was an urgent ringing at the front doorbell. Brian rushed to answer it. It was Mr Roberts from next door.

Mum clutched his arm. “What is it? Whatever’s happened?”

“It was an unexploded bomb – must have been dropped last night. Only just gone off. I ran all the way from the warden’s post where I was on duty to tell you.”

“Where? Where was it?”

“The Presbyterian chapel in Hartwell Road. Badly damaged. Your daughter Audrey—”

“Audrey? Is she hurt?”

“I’m afraid so. Mr Davies too. The ambulances are there now.”

Left alone at home, awaiting Mum’s return, was a worse ordeal for Joan and Brian than last night’s Blitz. It was made even scarier as information slowly came through about the bombing of Liverpool the night before. A neighbour told them she’d heard that more than five hundred planes had flown over the city, dropping a huge barrage of high explosives. Incendiaries had rained down, transforming homes, shops and warehouses into a raging inferno in a matter of minutes.

“They say the water main burst, so the firemen just had to watch while all those shops and homes and public buildings were burned to ruins,” she said. “The air-raid wardens and ambulance crews would have been working all night to try and rescue people from the rubble. There must have been so many killed or injured − poor things. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Brian and Joan ate some bread and cheese that they found in the larder, then sat in the back room trying to read or listen to the radio, but failing miserably. It was impossible to concentrate on anything. They strained their ears, trying to hear what was happening outside, but their whole suburb seemed to be wrapped in an uncanny silence.

It was well after six o’clock that evening when at last they heard Mum’s key in the lock. The front door opened and she came in, supporting Audrey, who was on her feet, but only just. She was very pale and her face was stained with tears. Her left arm was in a sling, and her shoulder heavily bandaged. Mum’s face looked grey with exhaustion.

“We must get you to bed,” she said. “But first – Joanie, put the kettle on and make us all a hot drink, will you?”

Brian helped Mum to settle Audrey in the armchair while Joan made tea.

“We had to wait a long time at the cottage hospital before they could attend to her,” Mum explained. “There were so many other people there who were much more badly hurt. The unexploded bomb had lodged on the church roof last night, and it blew a huge hole in it when it suddenly went off. It was a miracle that the whole roof didn’t collapse. The church is a mass of rubble and debris. The ARP people are working there now. Hugh was concussed by a falling brick, and Gwyneth is still with him at the hospital. I’ll try to find out how he is as soon as I can.” She turned to Audrey. “Oh, thank God you’re safe!” she said. “Thank God! Thank God!”

Audrey was clearly in a lot of pain. She huddled in the chair with her eyes closed. But after they had persuaded her to drink some hot sweet tea, she managed a weary little smile, and looked down at what had once been her best skirt.

“Ruined,” she said. “And I put it on for Dai. Oh, Mum, my shoulder’s hurting terribly…”

“We’ll give you some painkillers. You need to rest. You’ve had a terrible shock, apart from everything else.”

“It’s Dai. I keep thinking about Dai. It’s so hard to believe he’s dead.”

“Try not to think about anything for the moment, darling,” said Mum. “You’ve been ever so brave. Now we really must get you to bed.”

But Audrey showed no sign of moving upstairs. She just lay back in the armchair and closed her eyes. Two little tears escaped from her closed lids and trickled slowly down her cheeks. Joan and Brian sat there silently, not knowing what to do or say.

They were all still sitting there when the doorbell went – not an urgent summons this time, but a couple of rings. Brian was first to jump up and run to answer it. There was a brief pause, then voices in the hall.

As Brian led the way into the room, his face stunned and contorted with shock, he paused on the threshold. There was somebody behind him, and he stood back to usher him through. It was Dai! Not a ghost, but the real Dai! Exhausted, rather dishevelled, but smiling broadly. Dai, back from the dead.

“Hi, everyone! Couldn’t find anyone at our place, so I thought I’d come over here. Seems like Jerry gave you a real pasting last night, so I wanted to check that you’re all OK.”

CHAPTER 31

I
t was some time before they could hear the full story of why Dai had been reported dead. First, he had to rush down to the hospital and help to get his mum and dad home in the ambulance. Luckily, Hugh had been judged fit to be discharged, providing he rested and reported for a check-up at an outpatients’ meeting the following day. Gwyneth, though unhurt, was totally drained.

When Dai was settled on the sofa in the Armitages’ front room, close to Audrey, he told them everything.

“We were torpedoed by a German U-boat, see. They’d managed to sneak into the convoy and let us have it. Our ship had been separated from the others somehow, and we took a direct hit. Trouble is, with a merchant ship, you don’t even have proper guns to fire back, let alone a depth charge. We went down within half an hour of the torpedo hitting us – on fire, split in two, straight into the drink.”

“I can’t remember much about what happened then,” Dai went on, “except that it was pitch-dark and I was in the water, hanging onto a bit of wreckage. There was burning stuff everywhere, and people screaming. Thought I was done for, see. Got carried away from the wreck. Cold! I’ve never felt so cold! I knew that if any of our crew were still alive, they’d be out there in the water somewhere. But I couldn’t see them, and I knew that none of us could last long in that temperature—” He paused for a moment, unable to go on. Audrey held his hand tightly.

“The next thing I remember was somebody pulling me out of the water. Swedish, they were – a fishing trawler, way off course. God knows how they spotted me. Hauled me on board. I passed out, but they managed to keep me alive. I think I must have been out for quite a while – shock, exhaustion, all that. But they warmed me up somehow, brought me round. They even had some vodka! The only trouble was, when I was finally able to speak to them, none of us could understand a word the other was saying. I wanted to get them to radio the company, to get a message to all of you that I was safe. But they didn’t understand, and I think their radio communication was a bit duff, anyway.