Authors: Roma Tearne
Brixton Beach
Brixton Beach
ROMA TEARNE
In memory of N M C whose story,
discarded for forty years, is told at last.
And for Barrie,
Oliver, Alistair and Mollie.
All of life is a foreign country
J
ACK
K
EROUAC
,
letter (24 June 1949)
T
HERE ARE POLICE EVERYWHERE
. From a distance it is the first thing he sees. Even before he hears the noise of sirens, the screams. Even before the BBC team appears. Acid-green jackets move grimly about, directing the traffic, securing blue-and-white tape, herding people away. That’s what he sees. A red, double-decker bus stands parked at an odd angle, black smoke pouring out of its windows. There is glass everywhere. His feet crunch on it and he notices shards glinting dangerously in the light. His first thought is, Someone might cut themselves; his second is, There must have been a fire.
‘Move along, please, clear the path,’ the policeman shouts, roughly.
He pushes several people back with the palms of his hands. Then he speaks into his radio. There is a smell of sweat and rubber. And explosives.
‘We need another ambulance over at checkpoint four,’ the policeman says. ‘Quickly. They’re bringing more out. Have all the hospitals been alerted?’
‘We need the reinforcements, now!’
‘Yes. They’re on their way.’
‘What happened?’ Simon asks, urgently. ‘Was it a fire?’
His voice is hoarse; his throat has tightened up. There is an even tighter constriction across his chest. He has been running. All the way over Lambeth Bridge, along Horseferry Road, up Park Lane towards
Edgware Road. He wanted to go in the opposite direction, towards the Oval and the house named Brixton Beach. For a moment he had wavered, wanting to call at the house, knock on its blue-fronted door, but then he had carried on running. There are no taxis to be had. The traffic is gridlocked. It will be gridlocked for hours. He should be at work, he should be at his post, standing by waiting for the admissions, triaging the flood of casualties, but he has fled, unthinkingly. Never in the whole of his professional career has he behaved in this irresponsible way. Panic chokes his voice; fear grips his limbs as he scans the faces in front of him.
‘Clear the path, please.’
The noise of yet another ambulance siren deafens him. He isn’t used to hearing the sirens from the outside. He is used to the calm of the operating theatre, the controlled energy of work. Scalpels placed where they are always placed, nurses ready to second-guess his moves. He is not used to chaos.
‘Oh my God! Oh God! Look! Look!’ a woman screams.
Her voice goes on and on screaming, making sounds but no sense. It is only then Simon glances up and sees the bus. Its top has been completely blown off. Roof, seats, windows, people. Half a bus really, standing motionless save for the thin wisps of smoke sailing lazily out, upwards like a kite; into a sky of startling blue. A man in rags with blackened face and arms walks past holding on to a young boy. Tears furrow his face leaving rivulets of white flesh. Two new ambulances edge their way slowly forwards, sirens blasting, driving the onlookers aside, clearing a path, deafening in intensity, removing all possibility of speech. Three policewomen stand forming a barrier with their arms stretched out, faces braced for what they are about to receive. In a moment the ambulances are swallowed up in the crowd. Simon can smell burning. As the sirens grow fainter he begins to hear other, human sounds and he struggles to move forward.
‘Jesus! What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Does anybody know?’
‘Don’t touch them … for God’s sake!’
‘Oh my God!’
‘Mummy!’
A child’s voice with its upwardly rising intonations, distinct and pure above the cacophony of cries, drifts towards him. The blood pounds in his head, blurring his eyes, making him nauseous. He was hot from running, now he is shivering. A motion of a different kind grips his whole body.
‘Let me through,’ he says. I’m a doctor.’
Inside the blasted double-decker bus, as his eyes focus, he sees that trapped bodies are burning. Some of them are simply torsos without heads.
I’m a doctor,’ he shouts. ‘Let me through.’
I’m sorry, sir, can I see your ID, please?’
The ambulancemen are moving a stretcher and two blood-covered individuals are helped inside. Simon reaches for his doctor’s pass then realises he has left the meeting without his jacket. He has nothing. No ID, no mobile phone, no wallet. If she were trying to reach him she would not be able to. He has rushed out, knowing … knowing what? That he couldn’t wait? That he needs to see for himself?
‘Could you move back, please,’ the policeman says.
His voice is edged with panic, bewildered and with a threat underlying the calmness in it. The glint of metal on his belt is the firearm he is prepared to use in case of necessity. Sweat pours down his face as he answers his radio. He is young, mid-twenties, and what has just happened is overwhelming him. It will mark him forever.
‘We don’t know what’s going on, sir. We’ve only been told there’s been a series of explosions. In the underground. Yes, sir.’
But the bus?
Al-Qaeda?’ asks another voice, uncertain, shaky, on the verge of hysteria. A woman’s voice. ‘Oh my God no! Not
here
, not in Britain?’
‘Don’t know, madam. Not at this stage. Sorry.’
Simon feels weak. He
has
to get to the entrance of the tube station; he
has
to find out what’s actually happened. He needs a mobile phone desperately. Then he remembers, of course, all his phone numbers are in his own phone. He can’t remember any of them. So he pushes his way across the crowds that are gathering and crosses the road, weaving through the stationary traffic. Another policeman stops him.
‘Sorry, sir, could you step aside, please. This area has been closed off to the public’
‘I’m a doctor,’ he says again, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘Can I see your ID, then, sir?’
But of course he hasn’t any. Helplessly he is shepherded across the road, along with a few other onlookers. The sun is exceptionally strong. There isn’t even a small breeze. It is a morning of tropical intensity, a day for spending on the beach, perhaps. There are more sounds as another fleet of ambulances rushes past. The sirens have hardly stopped since Simon arrived.
‘Must be sending them out from several hospitals, I reckon,’ the man beside him remarks.
‘It means a lot of people are involved,’ adds a woman nearby. ‘My mobile isn’t working.’
‘Nor mine.’
‘The network is blocked,’ someone else informs them. ‘Or they’ve been reserved for the emergency services.’
Voices cut across each other, conversations interlock. A woman with a pushchair is crying helplessly.
‘My daughter was going on a school trip today but she had a tummy bug so she stayed at home.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. They would have come to Leicester Square and gone across to the National Gallery.’
‘Some poor parents must be going mad.’
There is another wave of wailing ambulances, louder than before, nearer. How many more are needed? One stops on the wrong side of the now deserted road, flagged down by two police officers who have parked their car diagonally across the kerb. Sniffer dogs prowl at their feet. Simon runs towards the paramedics stepping out of one of the vehicles.
‘John,’ he cries, before the policemen can stop him. ‘John!’
The sniffer dog bares his teeth. Overhead a plane flies slowly through the sky. It is so low that everyone looks up, startled. The moment is frozen, trapped within a bubble of terror. Held steadily.
The plane, it has a blue and yellow tail, glides smoothly above the trees and disappears between two tall buildings.
‘Dr Swann,’ the paramedic says in surprise, and the policeman hesitates.
‘I was in the area,’ Simon says quickly and with deathly calm. ‘Can I help?’
‘They’re on standby, sir. At Tommy’s. And at Charing Cross. It’s okay,’ John tells the policeman, who discreetly lowers his gun. ‘He’s one of ours, off duty.’
And he nods, grimly, as though he has already braced himself for the sight they are expecting.
‘I think it’s a big one, sir, judging by the fuss. Everyone’s on the highest alert. Top priority. Must be bad.’
He shakes his head. He has just been called away from a pile-up on the slip road to the motorway. How many miracles are they supposed to perform in a day?
‘Let me come with you, John,’ Simon pleads as they move off together towards the tube station.
At the entrance to the underground a shudder runs through him. It travels from his feet upwards towards his head. The scene before him is of biblical proportions. A man, or is it a woman, head swathed in a makeshift bandage cut from a shirt, is being helped across to the emergency post recently set up on the grass verge. For a moment the figure hovers, stumbles, its veiled face catching the light. A photographer clicks his camera. This image of a bandaged face will become iconic, one of the images of the year, the decade, even. Someone somewhere loves the face under these bandages. Simon moves towards the emergency post. A waiter has brought chairs for the walking wounded; the lucky ones. There are others not so lucky.
Firemen are bringing out stretcher after stretcher of wounded, mutilated bodies. Cries fill his ears. A charred body, indistinguishable in every way except for a bracelet on a blackened arm, lies motionless. A man, lying face up, stares at nothing, unaware his guts are exposed to the summer breeze. A woman, legs gone from the knees downward, sliced clean, unconscious but still breathing, waits to be whisked off in
an ambulance. Two paramedics are already triaging the arrivals. Some to ambulances, some to be treated first for minor injuries, others, with a sheet over them, to be identified later. A cameraman is recording the scene silently. Picasso’s
Guernica
, thinks Simon, before he can stop himself. And something else, too, he thinks. He sees a room, lit from above, as though with searchlights, and a cupboard that opens out to reveal the hull of a boat. He hears voices.
Searching for Lost Time. A
figure lies before him, long dark hair, caked with blood, eyes closed. He has seen so much blood in his life. Blood and its seepage has been the thing he deals with best. But this blood, this flesh is different. He cannot bear it. All around the drenching terrible smell of burning flesh and soot fill the bright blue sky. Scorched limbs, voices pleading with him, voices giving out instructions.
‘Help me, help me!’
‘This one’s lost a deal of blood …’
‘This one for Tommy’s …’
He is working on autopilot, going through the routines, but all the time he’s looking, looking. Every face, every limb, searching for what he dreads finding, but looking anyway. His heart is crying, he should not have come; he should have stayed in the hospital. Waited. But he is here now and he will not leave until he knows. One way or another. Perhaps, he thinks, the thought forming into words, springing into life, perhaps she’s in the tunnel. Suddenly all his strength deserts him and he feels the ground heave up towards him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbles, but no one hears him.
Perhaps if he goes back she’ll ring. Perhaps she is still at Brixton Beach. Safe, trying to get hold of him. Wildly he looks around, not knowing what to do, and in this fraction of a second a woman dies in front of him. The colours of death, he thinks. Why is he thinking this now?
‘Who has done this terrible thing?’ a voice cries. ‘Who could want to hurt us this much?’
‘The people of London …’ the BBC journalist says into the microphone. He has been the first of the media presenters to arrive on the scene, the first to file copy; sensitive, sharp, precise.
‘Bastards! What have they done?’
The cry of rage reaching his ears is an ancient one, repeated from time immemorial. Arms rise heavenwards as though in prayer. Humanity’s unanswered question asked on this ghost of a morning in July. Helplessly, Simon turns towards the speaker, a man old enough to have seen the sands of Dunkirk, a man old enough to have witnessed the Battle of Britain. For on this beautiful day, even as Big Ben strikes the hour and swallows fill the summer skies, a lesser God descends. Fraught with terrible intent. Here, in the very heart of London.
