Bluebirds (36 page)

She pushed the last two WAAFS down into the entrance and waited for a straggler who came flying down the path, holding her helmet on with one hand.

‘Quick as you can, Edwards . . .'

The airwoman gasped at her. ‘Sorry, ma'am, but it's Riddle. She wouldn't budge. She's too scared to move.'

‘Where is she?'

‘Ablutions, ma'am. She's gone and locked herself in the lavatory.'

‘Get inside, Edwards. Don't worry, I'll deal with it.'

The airwoman scuttled past her down into the dugout, like a rabbit bolting into its burrow. Felicity raced towards the WAAF ablutions block. Inside, a tap had been left running full on and the water was gushing noisily into the basin. The bombers' drone was much louder now and the station Bofors guns had begun their deep, angry coughing. She hammered on the locked door.

‘Riddle! It's Section Officer Newman here. I've come to take you to the shelter. Don't be afraid. You'll be
quite safe there, but we must hurry. Open the door, please. At once!'

A fighter shrieked low overhead, drowning the last of her words. She hammered on the door again. An explosion nearby shattered the glass in one of the windows and she flinched as jagged splinters flew about.

‘Riddle! Unlock this door immediately! That's an order!'

There was still no movement from inside the cubicle. In desperation she thrust her weight hard against the door several times and, suddenly, it gave way. ACW Riddle – very young and very white-faced was sitting on the lavatory lid, her hands clapped over her ears, her eyes tight shut. Felicity put an arm round the airwoman's shoulders and hauled her out bodily; she seemed unable to move of her own accord. She put her own tin hat on Riddle's head and, supporting the girl against herself, dragged her out of the hut and towards the nearest shelter. The dark shape of a bomber swept overhead and there was a terrifying rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire and the smack of bullets tearing into masonry. They were still yards from the trench when another bomber screamed down and the blast from the mighty explosion that followed picked both WAAFS clean off their feet and hurled them to the ground. Earth and stones showered over them and waves of searingly hot air buffeted them like a rough sea. Felicity found herself clinging for dear life to the grass with one hand, her nails dug deep into the earth, while the other still hung onto the airwoman lying beside her.

She raised her head to see yet another German bomber making its run in, with two fighters in hot pursuit. Yellow flashes spurted from the fighters' wings as their guns fired, but the Junkers came remorselessly on and a stick of bombs dropped over by the hangars sent great eruptions of earth high into the air and made violent shock-waves through the ground. She clutched at the grass again as the world rocked about her.

She began to crawl in the direction of the trench shelter, tugging the girl along with her. Then other hands caught hold of her and she felt herself being dragged painfully across the ground and downwards into the trench, like a sack of coals. She lay there, stunned and winded. Her eardrums felt as though they would burst with the noise and she covered them with her hands. Above the tumult, she could hear the heartening, furious stutter of a fighter's guns.

Anne had been off-duty in the WAAF recreation room when the alarm had sounded. She had been playing a game of table tennis with one of the MT drivers, and listening to Workers' Playtime on the wireless at the same time. Some comedian had been in the middle of telling a joke when the station commander's voice had cut in over the tannoy. For a few seconds she and her opponent stared at each other in disbelief and then, with one accord, they flung down their bats and snatched up their respirators and helmets. As she ran to the door, Anne heard a roar of audience laughter coming from the wireless in its corner as the comedian delivered his punch-line.

In the dugout shelter they took their places on the benches, as they had done so many times in practice. But this time there was no giggling or fidgeting. She looked along the row of scared faces – Maureen beside Vera, Sandra with her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, Winnie next to Enid at the far end. Enid was looking as though she was going to turn the waterworks on at any moment. Gloria and Pearl would have gone to another shelter. She sat back, her heart thumping in her chest. The WAAF cook sitting beside her in her white hat and overalls had brought her work with her. She was starting to peel potatoes and making a far better job of it than Anne had ever done – paring long, thin spirals of peel away before she lobbed the potatoes into the bucket of water jammed between her stout feet.

The girl sitting opposite had started to recite the Lord's Prayer loudly, her hands clasped before her. The cook leaned her bulk sideways against Anne.

‘Don't know what good she thinks
that's
going to do.'

The heavy drone of enemy bombers was clear now and she could hear the ponderous fire of the station guns and the fierce snarl of a fighter. Ominously, a bomber's note changed to a high whine as it began its dive. Two explosions, one after another, made the shelter rock and the water leap in the cook's bucket. Someone gave a choked scream of fear.

The girl was shouting now. Why couldn't she shut up? There was enough bloody racket going on without her adding to it. And who cared about daily bread at the moment? Another explosion, much closer, made the hurricane lamps rock wildly on their hooks. Michal would be up there, somewhere in the midst of all that hell, defending them. His Hurricane would be diving on the bombers, guns blazing . . .

Thank God, she'd finished her stupid chanting. Enough to get on anyone's nerves. The noise outside was worse than ever. The eerie whistling sound of yet another bomb falling culminated in an ear-splitting explosion
that seemed to burst right inside her head. A blast of hot air gusted through the shelter entrance like a blow and knocked them all sideways so that she found herself lying with her head in the cook's lap. The slamming to her body and the searing heat and stench of high explosive left her gasping for breath. The cook was cursing that her bucket had been knocked over and was flailing about with her arms. There were more terrifying whistles and a series of thudding explosions that shook them in violent succession. In all the appalling row going on up above, she could distinguish the scream of one fighter's engine going flat out. She shut her eyes.
Please God, let Michal be all right
.

That bloody girl had started all over again with her maddening chanting.

Anne felt like throttling her. Her feet were soaking from the overturned bucket and her eyes smarting from the dust and dirt that had blown into the dugout. The cook had dropped her knife and was groping about, trying to find it in the semi-darkness. It was her best knife, apparently. As though it mattered when any second they were all probably going to get blown to kingdom come. God, that ghastly screeching sounded exactly like an express train coming . . . She braced herself.

At the other end of the shelter, Winnie was trying to comfort Enid. The racket going on was too loud for any words so she put her arm round Enid's shaking shoulders. She wondered if she ought to change places with her because she was at the very end of the bench, nearest to all the dirt blasting in, but it was hard to get up and move with the shaking going on. The only thing to do really was to sit tight and pray – like that girl was doing up the other end. Only to herself. Not making a song and dance of it, like she was. It was worse, far worse,
this than anything she had imagined during the practices. She felt battered by the noise and every explosion made her flinch however much she tried not to because of Enid. It sounded as though everything was being blown to smithereens outside. She shut her eyes tightly as there was yet another screeching whistle overhead, and then the shelter seemed to blow apart round her and the world went dark.

The plotting table was shaking so much that the markers kept sliding out of place. With every bomb explosion a shower of white dust fell from the concrete ceiling and Virginia had to keep blinking it out of her eyes. She pressed her earphones closer to her head to shut out the noise as she listened to the plots. Nobody in the Ops Room had panicked. Nobody had done so much as wince, so far as she could tell. The faces round the table registered only grim concentration. Pamela was looking as though enemy raids were beneath her notice, disdainfully pushing her rake to and fro. There was another violent bang, like a tremendous clap of thunder, and another deluge of dust. The warrant officer standing near winked at her and she hoped he had not seen her shoulders cringe. She looked away from him and, as she did so, the ceiling suddenly seemed to disintegrate. A blast of hot air hit her like a blow and, at the same time, someone grabbed hold of her in a sort of flying rugger tackle that propelled her clean under the plotting table. She lay there, gasping, her helmet askew, a man's heavy weight across her back. The warrant officer who had put her there said apologetically in her ear: ‘Beg pardon, miss, but we'd better stay like this 'til the All Clear.'

The bombers had gone, leaving behind them a scene of devastation. Felicity peered out of the shelter at the smoking rubble, the gaping craters, the mangled metal and broken glass, and at the cloud of dust that hung over it all. There was a rotten egg stench of high explosive and a strong smell of leaking gas. Close to the trench a burst water pipe spouted a jet high
into the air where the droplets sparkled prettily in the sunlight, like an ornamental fountain. She turned her head towards the WAAF ablutions hut and saw that nothing of it remained but a mound of bricks and broken concrete with a lavatory perched upside down on the top.

The RAF corporal beside her said: ‘You all right, ma'am?'

‘Yes, quite all right, thank you.'

‘Sorry we were a bit rough with you, ma'am. Had to get you down in here as quick as we could.'

‘I'm very grateful.'

She could feel blood running down the side of her face and found a handkerchief to wipe it away. ACW Riddle was crouched inside the shelter, still clasping her hands to her ears. An airman had put an arm round her shoulders and was telling her cheerily that it was all over now. She seemed unhurt.

Felicity emerged unsteadily. Other people were coming out of other shelters, clambering over debris and gazing about them. The raid had lasted barely ten minutes but the damage was enormous. Two of the hangars had been destroyed and almost every building seemed to have been hit. Several were on fire – the station armoury dramatically ablaze. As Felicity picked her way through the ruins two of the returning Spitfires flew overhead.

She found Corporal White supervising some airwomen who were filing out of a shelter.

‘Anyone injured, Corporal?'

‘No, not here, thank heavens, ma'am. Are you all right? There's blood on your face.'

‘I'm fine. It's a cut or something. I'll see to it later. Keep them all together here, Corporal. There may be unexploded bombs and we'll have a roll call as soon as we can.'

She hurried on in search of other airwomen, skirting rubble and craters, climbing over a fallen girder. Hot
shrapnel and broken glass carpeted the ground. She passed a chain of airmen dousing a fire with buckets of water passed from hand to hand. A party of stretcher bearers came towards her, at the double; one of the bearers called back over his shoulder.

‘The shelter by the WAAF cookhouse has been hit, ma'am. They're trying to dig them out.'

She started to run in that direction, stumbling over obstacles in her path. A huge mound of earth marked the site of the shelter. Both entrances had vanished and airmen were digging frantically with shovels; others were tearing at the soil with their bare hands. She started to do the same. There seemed no hope that any of the WAAFS inside could be alive.

‘I think it would be better if you left this to the men, Section Officer.'

She turned to see Group Captain Palmer behind her. ‘I'd rather help, sir.'

‘They'll get them out as quickly as they can.'

‘All the same, sir.'

‘You've been injured . . .'

With people dead and dying it seemed absurd to have been asked no less than three times already about a silly scratch. She wiped the blood away again with her handkerchief.

‘It's nothing, sir.'

‘It doesn't look like nothing. Get it seen to as soon as you can. That's an order, Section Officer.'

‘Yes, sir.'

To her relief he turned away to talk to one of the airmen. She had noticed vaguely that he was wearing a Mae West over his uniform, so he must have been up with the squadrons. It would have been a case of all hands to the pumps. She went on scraping at the mound of earth, heaving cupped handfuls of it away. The erk digging hard beside her gave a grin.

‘Soon 'ave them out, ma'am.'

The warrant officer helped Virginia to crawl out from under the plotting table.

‘Easy does it, now. Mind how you go. It's a bit of a mess.'

That was an understatement. The Ops Room roof had been blown open to the sky. Slabs of concrete had crashed down over the table and floor, bringing lights and wiring too in a broken tangle. Incredibly, faint squawking voice sounds were coming from one of the headsets trailing from its jack. The warrant officer extended a hand.

‘Careful not to touch any wires. They could be live.'

Her legs felt wobbly and she dung to the firm hand that guided her through the wreckage. There was a buzzing sound in her head and a strange, dream-like feeling about it all. She could not quite comprehend what had happened. The gallery, she noticed dazedly, was still intact and the Controller was up there, together with Ops B and the rest of them. They were mopping themselves down but seemed unhurt. Everyone and everything, she saw, was covered in a thick coating of the white dust, as though bags of cement powder had been thrown around.