Starlight (16 page)

‘Isn't it the same for you, then? How many WAAFs do you see every day?' Jess sat back in her chair, her brows drawn together, her gaze on Ben cold. ‘Don't you think Marguerite could be worried about you? Only, she trusts you.'

For some moments he stared at his cigarette, then stubbed it out.

‘I suppose I deserved that. Suppose, if I'm worrying about her, I'm not trusting her.' Suddenly, he reached for Jess's hand and pressed it. ‘Thanks, Jess.'

‘I haven't done anything.' She slowly removed her hand from his.

‘Yes. Yes, you have.' Ben looked at his watch and stood up, Jess with him. ‘Glad I met you today. And not just for what you said. I'd better get back to Stockbridge now, for Dad's shopping. Hope there's something left.'

‘I hope your Dad's all right,' Jess said a little stiffly. ‘Give him my best. It was nice seeing you, Ben. Take care, then.'

‘Wish we could have met again, but I haven't got long. Oh, but listen, I forgot to congratulate you on your new job. Assistant manager, eh? I knew you'd do well.'

She thanked him, relaxing a little, and asked if he wasn't planning to go up and speak to the stand-in projectionist. Maybe give him some tips?

‘No, I'd better not interfere. And the funny thing is, I've no interest in my old job at present. It's as though all I've got has to go into my war effort, even if I can't do my best job, because the powers that be won't let me.' As his mouth twisted a little, she saw again the lines around it, and was saddened.

‘You'll do your best work, Ben,' she said gently. ‘Because you always do.'

‘And you, Jess, always say the right thing, don't you?'

Giving her a swift, brotherly kiss, he paid for the lemonade and left her, marching from the cafe as though on parade, while Jess still stood by their table. And then Joan Baxter did appear and came bustling up.

‘Was that Ben I saw just then? Now, why didn't he come in and have a word? And has he paid the bill? Should have been on the house. Can't have our staff forking out now, can we?'

‘You've never let me off,' Jess remarked.

‘Why, you're not serving in the forces, are you, dear? When you come in with your Rusty, I'll let you off too.'

Come in with Rusty. How Jess wished she could. With Rusty, she'd be safe.

Twenty-Eight

The year moved into July and high midsummer, yet still there was no sign of the ‘phoney war' turning real. What was Hitler up to? There was no doubt that he would attack Great Britain some time. Of all the countries on his list for invasion, it would probably be the one he most wanted to conquer. Soon, then, invasion would come. And there were those who rather wished it would, so that they would know what they had to face. Jess, though, just wished with all her heart that they could keep going as they were. No bombings, no invasion, no deaths. She knew it wasn't possible.

One thing that cheered her up was the arrival of Sally on leave, looking wonderfully well in her ATS uniform, though, as she blithely admitted, she hadn't lost a bit of weight!

‘Och, no, I'm struggling with my skirt band every day, but so what? I'm enjoying myself, and so is Arnold, judging from the letters he writes. Just wish he could've got leave with me, but no luck this time. Got two stripes already, though, would you believe?'

‘Why is everyone having such a good time in the services?' Jess asked, as they had coffee in the cafe. ‘Rusty, Marguerite – now you. I thought folk would be pining for home.'

‘Thing is, as my mother used to say, the weight's not on yet. Now, what she meant by that was, the real test is still to come.' Sally shrugged. ‘And that's true, eh? We're all just training. We've no' done any fighting yet.'

At the look on Jess's face, she quickly touched her hand. ‘Ah, don't worry, dear. Rusty'll be fine. He'll come through, sure he will. But I noticed, just then, you didn't mention Ben. What's up with him? Isn't he enjoying his RAF days?'

‘Didn't make aircrew. Something wrong with his eyes for night flying. He's upset.'

‘I bet, knowing Ben!' Sally, having ordered second coffees for them both, grandly threw a saccharine tablet into hers. ‘Just a sop to the diet, eh? Well, there's no' much sugar anyway.' Her face grew serious. ‘Tell you who's no' looking so well to me, Jess, and that's George. Oh, my, his face is either like a pasty or a beetroot, eh? And he's that out of breath! Can you no' get him to slow down, then?'

‘You know what George is like, Sally. He just calls me a fusspot and goes his own way. Does take his tablets, though.'

‘Well, that's something.' As she studied Jess, Sally brightened. ‘Ah, but it's grand to see you, Jess – doing so well and all! I bet you're really keeping everything going, eh?'

‘George does that, Sally. I do what I can to help.'

‘And that'll be plenty. But marriage is suiting you as well, eh? Even though you've been separated already. What a start for you both – and Marguerite and Ben too. That Hitler has a lot to answer for, and no mistake.'

‘Think something will happen soon, Sally?'

‘Arnold says any time, but more likely the autumn. Hitler will have made all his preparations by then.'

‘Autumn,' Jess repeated. ‘That gives us a bit more breathing space, then.'

It was some days later that Mr Hawthorne called Jess into his office. Panting a little, he sat at his desk studying his desk diary, and motioned to her to take a seat.

‘Got a little visit planned for us, Jess.' Smoke from a cigarette he'd rested in an ashtray wreathed his face as he grinned. ‘Not anywhere you won't know.'

‘A visit? Where?'

‘Leith.' He took up his cigarette, gave it a last puff and stubbed it out. ‘I did say you'd know it. But do you know the Clarion cinema?'

‘The Clarion? Off Commercial Street?' Jess frowned. ‘It's closed, isn't it?'

‘It is, but our owners have asked me to take a look at it. With business booming, they're thinking they might take it on. Want to come with me to see what it's like?'

Her expression a little cagey, Jess hesitated.

‘The problem would be to find staff for it, George. You weren't thinking of asking me to transfer?'

‘You? Good God, no!' George's eyes were round with horror. ‘You know I can‘t do without you here. No, John Syme'd have to scratch round to find folk, and it might not work out anyway, but I said I'd tell them what I thought. There'd be money in it for the owners, if they could get it going.'

‘There would. These days, people can't get enough of the pictures.'

‘Want to come, then?'

‘Yes, I'd like to.' Jess smiled. ‘As long as you don't want me to leave the Princes.'

George, rising, shook his head.

‘Never worry about that, Jess, it's out of the question.' He picked up his desk diary again. ‘So, let me see – what day shall we go? How about . . . the afternoon of July the eighteenth?'

‘That'd be fine.'

‘Right.' He laughed. ‘Think they can manage here for a couple of hours without us?'

‘Of course they can.'

Jess, already looking forward to her outing – the first with George that she could recall – made her way to the door, while he, sitting down heavily at his desk, was already lighting another cigarette.

As planned, in the late afternoon of July eighteenth, they left the Princes together and boarded a tram for Commercial Street, there being no sign of the taxi George would have preferred. High above them, in the clouds, a lone plane circled, but they had no idea it was there.

Twenty-Nine

‘Did you ever go to the Clarion?' George asked Jess, as they approached Leith.

‘Of course! I went to all the cinemas. I remember seeing
Snow White
there before the war.'

‘What was it like, then, as a cinema?'

She shrugged. ‘All right, I suppose. Pretty run of the mill.'

‘John Syme told me the owners had lost money on some other enterprise and just sold everything they'd got. Only nobody bought the Clarion at the time.'

‘I think myself it'll need too much doing to it. And where will they get the men to work on it, anyway?'

‘You're probably right, the idea will come to nothing.' George's smile seemed relieved. ‘At least we'll have had a nice trip out. But isn't this our stop?'

They had left the tram and were walking towards the turning for the cinema when, beneath their feet – it seemed crazy – the ground rocked. At the same time, some distance away, an almighty noise hit their ears like a blow.

A noise, Jess called it, but it wasn't like any noise she'd ever heard before. Not like the warning siren, which she was certain she hadn't heard. Not like a gun firing, or a rocket soaring. Not like anything except itself, a heavy, ominous thud. A crump that filled her full of dread, and sent people screaming everywhere.

‘Oh, my God!' cried George, grasping Jess's hand. ‘What was that?'

‘I'll tell you!' cried a man in air force uniform running by. ‘It's a bomb! We're being bombed!'

‘Bombed?' Jess gasped. Her heart missed a beat, as she thought of her mother in Great Junction Street. But then relief flooded through her, as she remembered that Addie would be at the camouflage factory in Edinburgh, she'd be safe. Thank God, she'd be safe. And Derry in his shop? Please God, he'd be safe too.

‘But we had no warning,' Jess cried to the young airman. ‘We never heard a siren.'

‘I saw the plane,' he told her. ‘It was a Jerry. All on his own. A Jerry. I recognized the sound. Better get to a shelter. He won't have finished yet.'

Glancing hurriedly at George, Jess saw that his face was putty-white and shining and he was beginning to breathe fast.

‘An air-raid shelter,' he said thickly. ‘We have to find an air-raid shelter.'

But even as he spoke, another, nearer, heavier thud sounded and again the pavement seemed to rock around them as people cried and screamed and a man, shaking from head to foot, was calling that a great crater had appeared just up the road.

‘Oh, my God, a bloody great crater,' he kept shouting. ‘Can you no' see it? A bloody great crater, big as the moon! Oh, save us, oh Lord! Spare us, oh Lord, for we are repentant sinners! Oh, Lord, save us!'

‘Quick,' Jess cried to George, ‘let's get away, find a shelter!' But to her horror, she saw that his eyes were now closed and that his breath was coming in great gasps, their wrenching sound more frightening than even the thud of the bombs that had fallen.

He was having a heart attack. George was having a heart attack. What could she do? He was having a heart attack, here in the street, and he was going to die. Unless she could do something, unless somebody could do something.

Frantically, she unloosened his tie and his shirt collar, and then, as his legs gave way, laid him on the pavement, her cardigan under his head, and called aloud for help.

But who would hear in all the terrible confusion? It was like a nightmare, the sort you long to leave by waking, until a solidly built woman in a nurse's uniform came running towards them, shouting that she could help, she could help, where was the patient?

She took one look at George, and turned to Jess.

‘Has he a nitrite capsule?' she asked. ‘Quick, quick, tell me!'

‘I don't know, I don't think so,' Jess stammered. ‘He's got tablets . . .'

‘Too late for tablets. Look, dear, what we've got to do is get this fellow to hospital, or he's going to die. There'll be ambulances on their way – flag 'em down . . . tell 'em it's an emergency . . . and, please God, they'll come for him!'

‘Couldn't I phone the hospital myself? I can find a phone . . .'

‘The lines will be jammed, you'll never get through.' The nurse's eyes were on George's face, her fingers on his pulse. ‘Run, then, run!'

Where? Jess cried to herself, as the feeling of nightmare returned. Where can I run?

A small knot of people had gathered around George and one of them – a middle-aged man – shouted now, ‘Quick, there's a policeman! He'll help – come on, lassie, I'll go with you!'

‘A man dying?' echoed the policeman. ‘Well, there's already folk dead here – that first bomb fell on a tenement.'

Folk already dead . . . Jess swayed on her feet. War in all its horror held her in its grasp. Folk already dead, and George would join them. There was nothing she could do.

‘There's an ambulance!' cried the middle-aged man beside her, pointing to a vehicle with sounding siren coming rattling down Commercial Street. ‘And another behind. Can we no' get the poor guy to hospital, officer?'

‘I'll see what I can do,' the policeman said.

Thirty

The news at the Royal Infirmary was long in coming, but it was good. George, saved initially by the ambulance crew, was going to pull through. He was now ‘stable' and ‘as comfortable as could be expected', his trembling wife was told, and she could see him, but only for a minute or two. No need to try to tell him, but he was a very lucky man.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you,' Daisy quavered, as a young doctor guided her away. ‘Oh, I can never thank you enough, never!'

But at the door of the small waiting room where she and her sister, Jess, Addie and Edie had spent long hours in suspense, she did not forget to turn and look back to Jess. ‘And thank you, too, Jess, for all you did for poor George. I'll never forget it.'

‘Aye, it was a mercy you were there, eh?' Alison Wright, Daisy's sister, murmured. She was as thin and nervy as Daisy herself, and though had come to offer support, spent most of the time in the waiting room shivering and crying, and fetching more tea.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, what would have happened if you'd not got him into that ambulance, then? I hear it was the oxygen that saved him.'