Last Telegram Read online

  Father looked up from his newspaper. “I should have moved them out of London sooner,” he said quietly.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself,” I whispered back. “No one’s been hurt, as far as we know.”

  The head office of Verner and Sons, Silk Merchants, had operated in London since 1740: first in Spitalfields and for the past fifty years in the City, dealing with customers at home and overseas, buying and selling raw and woven silk, and managing the financial controls and audit. To the London staff, Westbury was merely the manufacturing end of the business. When the bombing started, Father had suggested they leave London, but they had been reluctant to move out to “the sticks.” As the air raids became more devastating, he had insisted. Just before Christmas, they had packed up the office, ready to move in January, just a few days’ time. And now this.

  The sun started to break through, but toward London the sky became dulled with a yellowish haze of smoke. The train edged into Liverpool Street Station even more tentatively than usual, and as we arrived, we could see why. The station was in complete confusion. The platforms were so jammed with people trying to get on trains leaving London that it was almost impossible to get off the train. We pressed on through the crowds toward the tube station, but when we got there we could see at the entrance a hastily handwritten sign: “Closed due to bombing.” At the bus depot, a dozen red double-deckers were parked, going nowhere. The taxi rank was empty.

  “Looks like we’re on Shanks’s pony,” Father said. “Are you up for it?”

  I nodded. I’d walked the route to Cheapside with him just a couple of months ago; it was just a few streets away. “Only takes ten minutes, doesn’t it?”

  But as we came out of the station, we stopped in our tracks. The streets were unrecognizable, transformed into piles of rubble, punctured by craters and broken buildings. Our eyes searched for familiar landmarks, but there were none. It looked like a foreign place. The city had been remodelled. It was chaotic, reminding me of the terrifying Old Testament depictions of hell in the color plates of our ancient family Bible.

  Father took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed his back, too stunned for words.

  My thoughts could barely keep up with the horrors my eyes were witnessing. In some places, the interiors of what had once been offices were exposed where external walls had been ripped away, some of them strangely untouched with desks and cabinets, curtains and carpets still in place.

  On the top floor of a building to our left, there was a kitchen, complete with cooker and fridge, chairs set in their places around the table still laid with blue-and-white-striped plates and a matching fruit bowl, as though its occupants had just left the room. Next door was a bathroom with the mirror hanging above the basin, towels on their rails, bizarrely undisturbed.

  On the other side of the road, a bus had been thrown, like a toy discarded by a careless giant, coming to rest on its side against a wall. Through its crazed, charred windows, we could see the rows of seats still in place. I prayed no one had been on board.

  After several moments, Father cleared his throat.

  “Ruddy hell,” he said. “Do you think we can find our way through this mess?”

  I wanted to run away, to pretend we had never witnessed these terrifying scenes, but heard myself saying, “We’ve got to get to Cheapside somehow.”

  We started to walk again, and the sheer effort of concentration needed to pick our way among the debris helped push the fear to the back of my mind. The air was filled with cloying, suffocating mortar dust and the acrid, choking smoke of fires still burning among the rubble, like some kind of infernal underworld. In places, I had to hold my coat sleeve to my nose because of the sickening stench of raw sewage from broken drains. We became covered, like everything and everyone else, in black smuts and gray dust.

  At almost every corner were roadblocks. When Father approached a policeman to ask which route we should take, he answered with weary resignation.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. It’s a bugger’s muddle just about everywhere.” He regarded us with sad eyes. “I wouldn’t bother, if I were you, with the young lady and all.”

  Father turned to me. “Do you want to turn back?”

  I shook my head. “Not now we’ve come this far. What about you?”

  “I’d never have brought you if I’d known. I can’t believe the office can have escaped damage in this lot,” he said.

  “We’re here to find out, aren’t we?” I said, trying to keep my spirits up. “It can’t be far now. Let’s carry on.”

  In one place—it must have been Threadneedle Street—dozens of people, children and adults, swarmed over the ruins of a destroyed building, apparently unafraid of collapses and unexploded bombs. The police and air raid wardens were trying to keep order, but it was an impossible task. As they shooed one group away, others clambered onto the wreckage behind them.

  “What are they looking for?” I asked a warden.

  “Money,” he said, with a resigned sigh. “Happens every time a bank gets hit. We can’t control them. But the vaults are safe under the rubble; there’s not usually much to be had.”

  A small boy ran past triumphantly waving a bent coin, heading toward a caravan with a blackboard advertising, “Tea ½d, toast with butter 1d.”

  “Let’s have a cuppa,” Father said. “I’ll get them.”

  I sat on a broken wall, and as I waited, my eye was caught by a rescue worker who crouched down to pick up something that looked like part of a shop dummy. With rising revulsion I realized that it was a human hand, a very pale, slender hand with rings on the fingers, stopping abruptly at the wrist, cleanly, with no blood. I wanted to turn away, but my gaze seemed unwillingly fixed. The man appeared almost unmoved. Still crouching, he gently eased the rings from the fingers, put them into a brown envelope, wrote something on it with a stub of pencil, and put it into his pocket. He wrapped the hand in a strip of white sheeting and carefully placed it into his shoulder bag before standing up to continue his search.

  All this he executed in the most matter-of-fact way. No one else seemed to have noticed, and I could barely believe what I’d seen. This was the hand of a real woman, whose body was probably buried in the rubble, I thought, with a shiver. Till last night she had been going about her daily life, working, eating, sleeping, trying to have a bit of fun in spite of the war. Now, in an instant, all that was wiped out. Her family had lost a sister, wife, or mother. They would learn this from the rings, I supposed, but what was left of her body might never be identified. How many other dead or dying people lay concealed under these anonymous piles of bricks and mortar? I found myself scanning the wreckage, gruesomely fascinated, afraid to see other body parts.

  Father returned with two steaming mugs. “Are you all right, my dear?” he asked anxiously. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I think I have,” I said, standing to take the cup from him. The hot sweet tea burning my throat was a welcome reminder that I was still alive, still capable of feeling. Father pressed me to tell him what was wrong, and as I described what I’d seen, my legs started to tremble uncontrollably. He sat me down again, gave me his handkerchief, and held me against his solid, reassuring bulk until the sobs stopped.

  “I wish I could protect you from this, my darling.” With my head against his chest, his voice was a deep, comforting rumble. “But it won’t last forever, and we’ll see it through together, you and me.”

  “I love you, Father,” I said, raising my head to kiss his cheek and realizing that it was the first time, as an adult, that I’d told him.

  He squeezed me tighter. “My precious girl. I love you too. It means so much, having you working with me. Couldn’t do it without you. It’s the only good thing about this bloody war.”

  “I wish it was over,” I said, feeling tearful again.

  “We’ll get through it together, my darling,” he said. “John will come home safely and we’ll all get back to normal. You’ll see.”


  I wished that I could believe him, that these weren’t just empty words to comfort me. We had to cling on to some kind of hope, I supposed, even in the middle of this desperate hopelessness.

  We fell into silence as we finished our tea.

  “Okay to carry on?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Onward and upward then?” he said. “Let’s see what the Huns have done to our office.”

  • • •

  At first, Cheapside seemed to have escaped the worst of the bombing. As we rounded the Mansion House corner and peered down Poultry, only a few buildings appeared to be damaged. In the distance, shrouded in smoke, we could see the outline of St. Paul’s Cathedral dome, like a mirage. It was hard to believe it could still be intact.

  “Look at that,” I said, pointing at the dome. “Must be a good sign, surely?”

  Father nodded. “Let’s hope and pray so.”

  We skirted heaps of debris and picked our way down the road. We negotiated the King Street junction, counting the door numbers as we walked: fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one. That block was intact. We passed Bread Street and Milk Street. Twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-one. I stopped walking to peer ahead through the dusty air and my heart sank. Where numbers thirty-nine to forty-three should have been was a great gap, like a missing tooth.

  “It’s forty-one.” Father’s voice was thick with shock. We stumbled forward and then stopped, dumbstruck, at the base of a pyramid of brick, timber, and stone that for the past fifty years had been the head office of Verner and Sons. The back wall towered perilously over the ruins. There were jagged holes in the adjoining walls of the buildings still standing on either side.

  I looked at Father. He seemed hollowed out and unsteady, as if a gust of wind could blow him over. I took his hand but he said nothing, distracted and unresponsive. I wondered what to do next—surely we should call for help? And then I realized there was nothing to be done. The building was utterly demolished, and everything with it. We could only be grateful that because the raid had been at night, it was unlikely anyone had been inside. Had they been, they would never have survived.

  Just at that moment, I caught a flash of color out of the corner of my eye. Someone in a red coat was clambering over the ruins. Father saw it too and jumped as if he’d been given an electric shock. He pulled away from my hand and started to run toward the pile of rubble, shouting, “Beryl!” then, more desperately, “Get off there, Beryl, it’s not safe.”

  The woman turned, her face gray with dust, and called back. “I can see the boxes, Harold. They’re just here.” She pointed and started to scrabble frantically in the rubble.

  Just then there was a quiet almost imperceptible rumble, like distant thunder. A few lumps of mortar toppled from the high wall of the next door building, crashing like hammer blows onto the rubble below, sending up a new cloud of choking mortar dust.

  Father stopped at the base of the mound, coughing and trying to fan the dust away with his hands. I ran to his side, holding my sleeve over my arm.

  As the air cleared, we could see Beryl, apparently undeterred, still on her knees, pulling up bricks and throwing them to one side, careless of her own discomfort and danger. We both knew that it was hopeless, but she was like a woman possessed. She seemed transfixed by some vain, desperate hope of excavating the precious boxes she had so carefully packed just a few days before.

  “For heaven’s sake, come down, Beryl,” Father shouted again. “Leave them. It’s too dangerous.”

  I looked around for anyone who could help, but the nearest people were many yards away, well out of yelling distance. There was a short moment of silence, and then another heart-sinking rumble. We all looked up as one or two more bricks fell down, landing in an apparently random way. Beryl at last seemed to have regained her senses and started scrambling back down toward us.

  There was a sudden, deafening thunder crack as more bricks came smashing down.

  “Watch out!” My scream echoed off the walls of the buildings. For a second, Beryl looked toward us, her face pale and expressionless.

  I thought they had landed well away from her, but then, to our horror, she started to topple, in a lingering, unhurried way, as if in a slow-motion movie. For a moment, I thought she’d just missed her footing, but then she was lying horribly still, sprawled face down. Her coat was like a sickening splash of blood across the grayness, reminding me of the red paint daubed on the door of the boys’ cottage so many months ago.

  It was a second before either of us could comprehend what had happened.

  “Bloody hell, she’s been hit,” Father bellowed, stumbling forward to the base of the mound of rubble, starting to clamber upward toward her still form. I ran after him, trying to grab his hand and stop him. But he was powered with the strength of a desperate man, and easily pulled away from me.

  “Stop, Father. It’s not safe. For God’s sake. Stop.” I looked around, panicky, for anyone, a policeman or a warden. “Help, we need help,” I screamed again, but the street seemed to be completely deserted.

  My mind went blank, and by some kind of reflex, without instruction from my brain or any conscious awareness of the danger I was in, my legs started to run toward him again. My only thought was to pull him away to safety.

  The rubble was jagged and vicious. Pausing for a second to catch my breath, I noticed in a detached way, as if observing someone else, that my hands and knees were bleeding. But I felt no pain.

  Ahead of me, at the top of the mountain, I saw Father reach Beryl’s prostrate form. He crouched down and turned her over gently. He lifted her head and cradled it on his knees, brushing strands of dark hair from her dust-covered face. Her arms fell limply by her side, like a rag doll.

  He looked up and shouted, “Get help, Lily. She’s injured. She needs medical attention.”

  “It’s too dangerous to stay there, Father. Come down, please,” I shouted back.

  “I can’t leave her here,” he said. “Help me get her down.”

  I was just starting to climb again when we both heard a much louder and longer rumble than before. It shook the ground like an earthquake.

  “Get down, Father. Now. Come away,” I screamed, but my words were lost in the roar. Instinctively recoiling and squinting up between my hands, I could see another slab of the back wall starting to move. I closed my eyes and held my breath as it crashed, like a great clap of thunder, onto the rubble below, throwing up another cloud of impenetrable, choking dust.

  When I could see again, Father was still several yards away, crouched over Beryl, straining to lift her, apparently oblivious to the mortal danger he had just escaped.

  “Come away, Father. Please. Come down,” I yelled again, coughing in the dust. He took no notice, still struggling to pick up Beryl’s floppy, lifeless body. I started to scramble toward him again. There was nothing else to do. I had to grab him and physically manhandle him to safety.

  Then I heard the loudest noise of all, like the deep, guttural growl of an angered creature. Above us, a crack appeared in the back wall and grew wider. I screamed again at Father and then cowered and covered my head with my arms. It went quiet for a few seconds and I turned my head sideways to look upward. Almost silently now, the crack grew bigger still and I could see the sky starting to show through it like jagged blue lightning.

  I watched in horror as a huge slab of wall gradually detached itself in slow motion, pivoting ninety degrees from the vertical to the horizontal. Then it started to fall, flat and intact, like the floor of a giant lift speeding down toward us, and blotting out the sky.

  I heard myself calling out again. Even now, I imagined that we could both escape. My head told my limbs to run, but my body felt like a lump of concrete. For a long, agonizing moment, the world went still. Nothing moved.

  I was pinioned to the ground by a massive blast of air.

  And then the world went black.

  • • •

>   When I opened my eyes, I was in a white bed, in a white room. My head hurt horribly, and I closed my eyes again. Someone touched my shoulder, and a familiar voice whispered, “Lily. Wake up. Open your eyes. It’s me, Vera.”

  I tried to say hello, but it came out as a groan. My head felt like a lump of lead, heavy and numb.

  “You’re in the hospital. Gave me such a shock, just came on duty and there you were, being wheeled in. You’re safe now. If you count being nursed by me as safe.”

  She shook my shoulder again, gently, coaxing. “Come on, open your eyes. It’s me, Vera.”

  Time seemed to pass, and when I looked again, she was still there.

  “Thank goodness. We thought you’d gone again,” she said confusingly.

  “Mm schtill hrr.” I couldn’t open my mouth. Moving my jaw felt as though hot needles were piercing the side of my face and poking into my brain.

  “Yes, you’re still here,” she said, stroking my hand. “You’ve got a concussion and your face is a bit battered, but otherwise you’re not seriously injured, thank heavens.”

  A little later, someone helped me drink sweet tea through a straw. It tasted delicious.

  “Whrs Vra?”

  “She’s coming to see you soon, Lily,” said a soothing voice.

  The next time I regained consciousness, I was propped up against the pillows, looking at the dark bulky forms of two men standing at the end of my bed. Vera was holding my hand, talking softly.

  “Lily?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Can you remember anything?”

  “Nhnh.”

  “There was a collapse, at Cheapside. Remember? Your father was there, and Beryl, you know, from the London office.”

  “Huh?” The wall, the wall was tumbling down. Oh God, now I remembered it falling, the blackness. “Fthr?” I whimpered.

  “I’m afraid they didn’t make it,” said Vera’s gentle voice.

  Then a man’s deep intonation, “Your father was very brave. He died a hero, Miss Verner. He was trying to save Mrs. Madeley, the warden told us.”