Across the Mersey (39 page)

‘In less than a month it will be Christmas.’

Seb grinned and hugged Grace closer to him as they sat together on the tram. They’d spent the evening with Grace’s parents and now Seb was seeing Grace back to the nurses’ home before returning to his own billet.

‘Ernest Brown Junior Technical School, Durning Road,’ the conductor sang out as they approached a tram stop.

Ignoring him since it wasn’t their stop, Seb teased, ‘If that’s a hint about Father Christmas …?’ but then fell silent as the familiar sound of the air-raid siren began.

‘There’s a public shelter at the Technical School, just past the tram stop,’ the conductor yelled as the tram came to a halt, and dutifully everyone stood up and filed off.

Because they had politely held back to allow the older passengers to go first, Grace and Seb were amongst the last to reach the shelter, which was so packed with people that they only just
managed to find a small patch of standing space right by the door. It was too late to look for somewhere else, though, as they could already hear the planes quite clearly approaching.

Those in charge were grumbling about the extra intake of people as the doors were closed.

In the distance they could hear bombs exploding.

‘We wouldn’t normally be out so late but we’d bin visiting the wife’s parents,’ a man standing next to them, his wife and two young children with him, explained to Grace and Seb.

Deeper into the shelter people had started to sing Christmas carols, and the children, one held tightly by each parent, immediately started to join in.

Some typical Liverpudlian wag started up singing ‘Silent Night’ and after a laughing cheer, others joined in. They had just reached the end of the first verse when there was the loudest explosion Grace had ever heard, followed by the thunderous sound of falling masonry and breaking glass, thick brick dust filling the air as the lights went out.

‘We’ve bin hit,’ someone announced unnecessarily.

In the darkness Seb reached for Grace, pulling her close. She could feel the heavy thud of his heart and she knew that her own was racing with fear. All around them people were crying and calling out to one another. There were other sounds too, moans and worse, familiar to Grace, who started to turn towards those sounds, driven by her training
to want to go and give what aid she could, but it was impossible for anyone to move.

People were demanding that the doors were opened, but they wouldn’t move.

Torches were being switched on so that people could see their way to the emergency doors, and then several voices shouted out that the emergency exits themselves were all blocked as well.

‘Don’t worry,’ Seb told Grace robustly. ‘I reckon your dad and his mates will be here any minute now and they’ll soon have everyone out of here.’

‘I’ve got to go and see if I can help the injured, Seb,’ Grace told him.

‘Grace, no, it’s too dangerous,’ Seb protested. Grace could hear his love for her in his voice and along with it his fear. She felt afraid herself but she knew what she must do.

‘I’ve got to, Seb.’

She had turned away from him when someone called out frantically, ‘The bloody roof’s fallen in back here, and there’s hundreds trapped underneath it.’

Seb had grabbed hold of her hand and was holding it tightly.

‘The ruddy place is on fire,’ another voice called out, and Grace stiffened in horror as she looked back into the shelter and saw that a fire had started at the furthermost end.

‘There’s water coming through, an’ all,’ another voice chimed in. ‘Looks like the flaming water main’s bin hit.’

Thick choking smoke was pouring into the part
of the shelter where they were trapped. Helplessly Grace buried her face in Seb’s shoulder and clung to him. She had never felt so afraid.

The sounds of pain from the injured and dying trapped behind the fallen masonry, and echoing on the dusty air were hellish and harrowing. All the more so because the victims could not be seen.

Duty and fear struggled within Grace, but she knew what she had to do. She lifted her head and whispered to Seb, ‘I’ve got to try to help, please understand and let me go.’

She could feel the unsteady breath he exhaled as he held her tighter, and then released her, his muffled, ‘I love you,’ echoing in her ears as she called out, ‘I’m a nurse. Please let me though to see if I can help.’

‘It’s no use, love,’ one of the men in charge told her gruffly, blocking her way. ‘You can’t get through to them poor sods that have bin trapped.’

‘But I must try,’ she protested.

‘It’s no use, lass,’ the ARP warden told her thickly.

The water from the burst main was rising swiftly. It was almost up to her knees now, Grace noticed with a new shock of fear, as its fierce movement forced her back to cling to Seb or risk losing her balance. Men were lifting small children onto their shoulders, whilst women sobbed and prayed for their little ones.

‘We’re going to die. We’re all going to die,’ one woman screamed before starting to sob hysterically.

Seb wrapped his arms around her and Grace moved as close into his embrace as she could. She was shivering, trembling with the horror and cruelty of it all. But at least if they were going to die here she would be with Seb, she tried to comfort herself.

‘You’re cold,’ Seb told her. ‘Here, take my jacket.’

She tried to protest that he needed it himself but he was insistent and the smell of him on it as she slipped it on was sweetly comforting.

She could feel the water lapping above her knees. In the darkness someone stumbled against her. Without Seb’s strong arms around her the weight of them falling against her could easily have overbalanced her. A person wouldn’t have much chance if they lost their footing.

‘We’re going to die anyway,’ a woman sobbed. ‘Why don’t we just lie down in the water and get it over with quickly?’

‘Here, we don’t want none of that talk,’ another woman called up sharply.

The water was still rising. The smoke from the fire burned her throat and she could hear people coughing, and children crying.

Grace felt Seb bending his head down towards her. His skin felt warm, alive. Surely it wasn’t for this that he had been spared septicaemia? A sob tore at her throat but she suppressed it.

‘If it gets any deeper I’m going to kneel down so that you can climb on my shoulders,’ Seb told her.

Grace shook her head. ‘No, Seb. If we have to die then I want us to die together.’ She had to stop speaking to cough against the acrid smoke filling air. When she had stopped, Seb kissed her.

It was dark enough for them not to be seen, even if their kiss had to be brief. Brief, but oh, so tender. Now the tears stinging Grace’s eyes weren’t only from the smoke.

They were just drawing apart when a woman’s voice called out excitedly, ‘I’ve found a window and I can see a light outside. Quick, someone flash a torch to let those outside know we’re here.’

Several men rushed to do as she said, and in the torchlight Grace could see that the woman was wearing an ARP uniform.

‘They’ve seen us,’ one of the men shouted. ‘They’re flashing a light back.’

‘They know we’re alive now,’ the ARP warden told them. ‘It won’t get long before they get us out.’

Not long in terms of real time, Grace acknowledged, but to those trapped it felt like a lifetime before the rescuers finally managed to break through to them, bringing with them clean night air to breathe, and relief and joy to fill their hearts.

A heartfelt cheer went up and fresh tears were shed, Grace’s into the warmth of Seb’s shirt. It was the children who were helped out first, handed over the heads of the men and women who stoically held back their own longing for freedom and safety to give them theirs, to be carried to safety, one by one.

Then it was the turn of the women, starting with the oldest and the frailest although one doughty old lady insisted that it should be the young mothers who went first, saying courageously, ‘I’ve had my life; it’s them kiddies we should be thinking about. They need their mothers.’

‘Brave words, Missus,’ one of their rescuers praised her, adding reassuringly, ‘Don’t you worry, though. We’re going to get you all out safely.’

‘Your turn next,’ Seb told Grace. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t be far behind you.’

She had just smiled at him and turned to follow the woman ahead of her, when one of the men called out, ‘There’s a kiddie trapped here and she’s bleeding.’

Immediately Grace turned back. ‘Where …?’

The man shone his torch and Grace’s heart turned over. Right up against the worst of the debris that had caved in was a little girl, obviously unable to move, her arm bleeding. She was alive though, Grace could see.

‘Grace, no,’ Seb protested, but Grace shook her head, calmly asking for first aid supplies.

She didn’t dare to look back at Seb after she had left him and started to make her way through the wreckage, and water towards the child she could see more clearly now in the light of the ARP and rescue workers’ torches. What she could also see in the debris around the little girl were the still mounds of clothing, which she realised with horror were the bodies of two adults.

There was barely enough room for her to squat
down by the child, who miraculously was trapped just high enough for her head and upper torso to be above the water, which had now thankfully stopped rising.

She spoke gently and reassuringly to the little girl, who told Grace that her name was Mary.

Something – a broken piece of wood, Grace guessed – had gouged a jagged tear in her flesh, which had bled profusely though thankfully the injury was not to an artery. It was not so much the wound in her arm, which she could see, that was dangerous Grace acknowledged as she cleaned it as best she could, but the fact that Mary’s legs were trapped beneath some of the debris – and the bodies.

‘It’s your turn now, mate,’ the burly man standing next to Seb told him but Seb shook his head, without taking his gaze off Grace.

‘I’m staying with my girl.’

‘You’d better make yourself useful then,’ the man in charge of the auxiliary fire service workers told him bluntly.

Seb ignored the pain in his shoulder as he worked under the instructions of the other men, helping to pass out to those waiting the pieces of debris as they were removed.

An hour passed whilst the men worked tirelessly. Grace tried not to think of their danger but to focus instead on keeping little Mary’s spirits up and assuring her that they would soon be safe.

They were removing one of the bodies now, and the little girl was asking about her mother.
Through the dirt caking the body Grace could just about make out the blue of a skirt. Was the body that of little Mary’s mother? If so it was better that she did not know that until she was safely out of here.

‘Won’t be long now, love,’ the rescue worker closest to them said comfortingly.

He was as good as his word. The second body was being lifted away. Quickly Grace checked to make sure that Mary hadn’t broken anything before she too was lifted to safety.

‘Your turn now, love,’ a burly auxiliary fireman told her.

At last it was over and they were both safe.

As he took Grace in his arms in the cold smoke-tasting night air, Seb knew that no matter what happened in his life from now on, no moment could possibly be sweeter than this one.

He was still hugging her tight when Sam walked up, his face, as Grace told her mother later, a real picture when he realised that the stubborn young woman who had risked her life for a little girl and the chap who loved her too much to leave her, were Grace and Seb.

It was mid-afternoon the following day before Jean finally stopped fussing over her eldest daughter and allowed her to get dressed and come downstairs. Everyone knew now about the terrible tragedy of the previous night: how a landmine had drifted inland and hit the Technical College, sending all three floors of it smashing down into
the basement on top of those who were sheltering there from the air raid.

In Jean’s eyes Grace was a heroine and Seb was a man in the same mould as her own Sam for insisting on staying with her. She welcomed him with very real affection when he arrived to see how Grace was when he had come off duty.

‘I kept her in bed all day, she looked that washed out, and we’ve heard that the little girl is all right, and that her mother was rescued as well, so that’s a mercy,’ said Jean.

As a mark of her feelings, Jean allowed the young couple the privacy of the front room and with a closed door.

The first thing Seb did when he saw Grace was take her in his arms and then kiss her with all the passion she’d been longing for but which they’d denied themselves, saying that it wouldn’t be ‘sensible’.

‘I know we said we wouldn’t rush into anything, and I know there are a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t be saying what I’m going to say to you, Grace,’ said Seb huskily when he was finally able to bring himself to stop kissing her, ‘but so far as I’m concerned there’s only one thing that matters to me right now and that is telling you how much I love you. Whatever lies ahead of us, whatever this damn war bring us, I want you to know that.’

‘We said we wouldn’t do this,’ Grace reminded him shakily.

‘I know,’ Seb agreed, ‘but I love you so much.’

‘I love you too,’ Grace told him.

He was kissing her again and Grace was kissing him back, holding him as tightly as she could and kissing him with all the love and passion she felt for him. She just couldn’t stop thinking about how close they had come to death. All she wanted right now was to hold him and be held by him, and to feel his heart beating against hers, telling her that they were both safe and alive.

‘If I’d lost you, I couldn’t have gone on,’ Seb told her gruffly when he had stopped kissing her.

‘I wouldn’t want to live without you, Seb.’

They kissed again, unable to stop themselves from holding one another; both of them needing the sweetness of knowing they were alive and in love.

There were so many words they could have used to share the fear they had known and the joy they now knew but their kisses said it so much better.