Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (45 page)

Stretcher parties materialised through the thick pall of smoke and began to remove the living and the dead from the rubble. An eerie silence had now fallen, broken only by cries and moans from the injured and the still buried survivors. Fire was now raging where the bombs had fallen, adding to the confusion and creating a thick black and suffocating smoke that hindered rescue operations even more. Standing on a pile of shattered
masonry, Robert shielded his eyes as he tried to get a visual purchase on the scene of devastation, but all he could see was a fog of smoke and dust.

A wind got up as if from nowhere, created by the acute difference between the chilly temperature of the day and the fierce blaze of the blitz. However, it cleared the smoke in front of where Robert was standing, revealing a street of shops half of which were either fully on fire or smouldering. He could see people running from doorways to escape the flames and crashing masonry, and as he jumped down and ran in their direction he could hear pitiful cries for help coming from inside the buildings.

The first shop he passed was already completely gutted, as was most of the second one. But the third was still standing, although fire had broken out in the second floor window. To his disgust Robert saw two loutish-looking young men running from the shop stuffing looted goods into their pockets as they fled. He was about to go after them when he realised that it was ridiculous. Human life was infinitely more important than the rescue of property, so wrapping his scarf tightly round his mouth and nose to protect his throat and lungs from fire and shielding his eyes with one raised arm he looked into the shop to see if there was anyone left alive inside.

On the floor lay a dead body, its head crushed by a beam from the floor above which had collapsed into the shop, scattering the merchandise from broken glass cases everywhere. The flickering light of the flames was being reflected by what the cases had contained: watches and necklaces,
bracelets and rings. Jewellery lay everywhere, most of it still miraculously intact. For a second, seeing it, he remembered why he had come to town. For Lily's ring, her engagement ring, to buy her a sapphire perhaps, like his mother's, a dark blue stone set in diamonds. His mother always took it off when she washed up, hanging it on a cup hook above the kitchen sink. He wanted Lily to have one just like it.

Seconds later he found himself distracted by the sound of a whimpering cry.

Above him, suspended somehow in a gaping hole in the ceiling, was a child, a little girl no more than three years old, Robert thought as he stood below her staring up. She was alive because he could see her moving, and because now that she saw him below her she was holding one hand out to him to be rescued. There seemed to be nothing trapping her, no beams, or boards or masonry – she was simply lying in a hole without any support yet somehow not falling, miraculously held in place by some invisible device.

If she fell from that height on to the masonry below, at the very least she would be badly injured. Robert looked slowly and carefully about him for something on which to stand or climb.

‘It's all right, sweetie!' he called up to the child. ‘Just don't move! Don't move anything just in case! Don't move because I don't want to have to catch you! What I'm going to do – what I'm going to do is climb up and get you – so just – don't – move!'

The child lay as still as could be, hardly breathing while Robert pulled what remained of one of the shop's counters below the hole in the ceiling. But
even if he stood on it he realised he was going to be a good two or three feet short, and if the child was actually trapped there would be no way he could reach her.

He found a chair upside down in a corner of the ruined room, still with all four legs intact. By standing on that he knew he could reach the child. All he needed after that was luck – the luck to find the little girl wasn't trapped and could be freed from below. He would need that luck, as now he saw that the fire that had broken out on the floor above was creeping down into the room where the little girl lay trapped.

‘Quickly!' he called from the shop doorway. ‘Help needed! Quickly!'

He saw two figures running towards him at once, a warden in a tin hat and a woman in a torn and burned WVS uniform. He directed the woman to stand by to take the child and run once he had her freed and the warden to hold the chair on top of the half-broken showcase while he climbed up on it.

Holding on to the round back of the shop chair with one hand, Robert slowly and carefully got his balance and stood right up to his full extent. The child's face was opposite his own now, and as he appeared in front of her the little girl instinctively reached out for him. As soon as she did she dislodged a considerable amount of small masonry fragments and a lot of dust.

‘No, sweetie! No!' he whispered. ‘Don't move till I tell you!'

He didn't say that he couldn't even see her now – he just steadied himself on the rickety chair and
slowly raised both his hands, hoping he could keep his balance. As the dust cleared behind the child he could see flames billowing ever nearer, and as they did so the child began to scream from the pain of being scorched. Slipping both his hands through the hole in the ceiling, Robert tried to feel if the child was trapped, and found to his vast relief that as far as he could ascertain she was simply lying stunned all but in space, just as he thought.

Taking hold of her as gently and as slowly as he could he tried to ease her to him, but as soon as he did so he felt resistance. It was not as if there was any great weight behind it, just as though something was holding the child in place. He pulled harder, and heard the faintest rending of what sounded like material, and the next thing he knew he was holding the child free in his hands above his head. He guessed what had been holding her in place and saving her from probable death was nothing more than her clothing.

Now he felt her weight. She might only be a toddler, but that amount of weight above his head was almost too much to bear. It was certainly too much for him to maintain his balance.

‘I'm going to drop you, sweetie,' he whispered to the whimpering child. ‘Not far – I'm just going to let you fall – very gently – into the arms of this kind lady who's just below me – you'll be perfectly safe – but you're just going to take a little drop – here goes.'

With a nod to the woman who was standing with upstretched hands and arms, Robert swung the child round and let her go. As he did, he began to lose his balance, so to save himself from falling
on the child and injuring her he grabbed a portion of one of the floor beams sticking out of the gap in the ceiling. Fortunately it held.

‘Quickly!' he shouted to the woman. ‘Out! Run! Go on! Quickly!'

But the woman was already gone, darting as fast as she could into the safety of the streets outside.

‘You too!' Robert yelled to the warden. ‘In case the wretched ceiling falls in!'

‘What about you, sir?' the warden called back. ‘Let me give you a hand down!'

At that moment the chair beneath Robert gave, leaving him swinging in space still holding on to the beam. He was just about to drop when the beam moved violently, jumping upwards as something heavy crashed from above onto the other end of it, causing Robert to all but disappear into the remains of the room above. He let go at once, hoping to fall, but whatever had caused the beam to upend so suddenly had also caused more masonry and timber to cascade from the floors above, all but filling in the hole where the child had hung suspended and now completely trapping Robert.

Below him through what was left of the hole he could just see the terrified face of the warden staring up at him.

‘Get out, man!' he called. ‘This whole damn ceiling could collapse! Get out! And be quick about it!'

The face remained looking up at him aghast for a moment and then, as some more masonry collapsed, was gone. Robert struggled, carefully at
first lest he should trigger another avalanche of masonry and timber, and then, when he realised he was completely caught, more violently. Both his arms were free, but it felt as if one of his legs was now well and truly stuck between boards and beams. Turning his body round as far as he could, he began to scrabble at the junk trapping his leg, clawing his way down to a heavy beam that was lying across his knee. After two or three good pushes and pulls, he felt the timber move, falling off his leg, and then he heard it crashing through what was left of the ceiling to fall far below on the floor.

He was free. Gently easing his leg back under him, he realised both legs now hung uninjured below him on the other side of the hole. All he had to do now was work the top half of his body free and then wriggle through and drop down. But he would have to hurry. The flames that had threatened the child were now only a matter of yards from his head.

He could feel the heat becoming more and more intense as he struggled harder and harder to free himself. If only someone would jump up and pull his legs from below he would probably just pop out like a cork from a bottle, but there was no one in the shop below.

Except there was. Now he could see two anxious faces peering up at him through the smoke and dust.

‘Jump!' he yelled at them. ‘Jump up and catch hold of my legs! Quickly! Jump!'

The tallest of them jumped. Robert could feel his hands brush the bottom of his feet. Pushing him-
self down with all his might he tried to force his body nearer to his rescuers but he couldn't move himself an inch let alone six.

‘Hold on!' he heard one of them shout up to him. ‘Pete's gone to fetch a ladder!'

Pete would have to be quick, Robert realised, as with a loud
whoosh!
a ball of flame exploded on the other side of the room in which his top half was stuck, scorching his face like the sun even from that distance. Now he could barely breathe, so little oxygen was there left in the air – so closing his eyes as tightly as he could, he breathed in slowly and deeply through his nose, held the breath and gave one last mighty push downwards.

He felt the floor give way and sensed he was beginning to fall – but even as he did there was a huge explosion above him.

Meanwhile Lily sat on in the shelter. It was only when she realised that she was by now quite alone that it came to her that something must have happened.

Gas, they said later. It had to be one of the gas ovens in one of the flats above the shop, to go off like that. Or it could just have been combustion, one of the firemen reckoned, as they sorted through the rubble.

Whatever it was was of no consequence to Robert, who was killed instantly by the blast even as he fell through the hole from which he had rescued the jeweller's little girl.

When they finally disinterred him from the massive pile of rubble that had collapsed on top of him, they found his tall, handsome body face
down, arms spread out, barely covering, among many other pieces, a cluster of rings.

Kate stood staring at the dark rectangle in the ground. The nightmare was still running. She tried hurting herself again, surreptitiously bending her little finger back as far as she could until she could practically bear the pain no longer but refusing to cry out, hoping only that the self-inflicted agony would shake her sleeping mind into consciousness, and when it did she would be lying in her bed in the cottage at Eden Park looking out on the glorious landscape that lay beyond her window, with Marjorie asleep in her bed beside her, and Billy in the room next door – instead of standing at Robert's grave. But the terrible event was not a nightmare. Robert was dead, tragedy had triumphed and grief was exultant.

She turned to Marjorie, putting out a hand to place it on her arm, as Billy stood a little way behind her, hands folded in front of him, head tilted upwards, staring at the sky above him as if unable to face the reality of death. Robert's father and mother stood at the head of the grave. Helen's face was immobile, still as a statue, while at her side Harold stood in a black overcoat holding his homburg hat in front of him, seeming to glare down into the hole in the ground where his son's coffin rested, its shining brass plaque now all but obscured by a handful of the earth thrown by the vicar. At the other end of the grave Lily stood apart from the family, a small, slender figure, her face concealed by the veil on her hat.

The ceremony ended, Kate turned to look at Lily,
about to go and ask her to come back to the house with the family and closest friends and relatives, but Lily seemed unaware of Kate. Instead she took a step nearer the grave, dropped a white lily on the coffin, turned and stumbled hurriedly out of the graveyard.

‘Are you going to be all right?' Kate asked Marjorie. ‘I'm just going after Lily.'

‘Lily?' Marjorie said, staring at Kate. ‘What for? Why do you want to go after Lily?'

‘I think I ought to invite her back to the house.'

‘Why? Why should you think that?'

‘Marjorie.' Kate took her friend aside. ‘Marjorie – Lily and Robert were
engaged
.'

‘Not officially.'

‘That doesn't matter, Marjorie. Robert was mad about her and they were going to get married. So I think it's only proper that I should ask her back.'

‘They weren't engaged. Not officially.'

‘It really doesn't matter, Marjorie. Really it doesn't.'

But by the time Kate made it out into the lane by the church, Lily appeared to have vanished. Thinking she couldn't have got very far, Kate began to hurry towards where the lane met the road, but as she reached the junction she heard the throaty roar of a car driving away. Looking to her left she saw Robert's MG fast disappearing in a cloud of dust as Lily fled the burial ground.

‘You'll be giving up that secretary stuff now I take it,' Harold Maddox said to his daughter after the last of the guests had left the house. ‘You'll be coming home to look after your mother.'