A Place to Call Home by Val Wood

Author:Val Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When Filip returned he found Ellen sitting on the ground; she had felt faint and slid down to save herself from falling.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must go,’ and putting his hands beneath her armpits he lifted her to her feet.

‘Harry?’ she whispered. ‘Is he all right?’

His face was impassive and she could read nothing from it, no message of hope or despair. ‘We must go,’ he said again. ‘He has been taken to hospital. Mr Tannerson will take you in the wagon.’

She grasped at his words; there must be hope then. He wouldn’t have been taken to hospital if … She couldn’t bear to think of the alternative.

He led her to the mill gate, shouldering away anyone in their path. He was used to doing things his own way, she thought vaguely, and in this instance she was glad of it.

A bearded man with his hair singed and his coat in ribbons waited with another man by a horse and wagon. ‘Mrs Randell,’ he said hoarsely, as if his throat was scorched. He indicated the other man. ‘Brown here will take you to the General Infirmary. You might want to stay, I don’t know, but Brown will have to come back with the wagon as it’s needed. Can you make your way home from there?’ He looked up at Filip for an answer, and the tall man nodded.

‘H-Harry?’ she stammered. ‘Wh-what happened? Is he all right?’

Roland Tannerson shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘He was up a ladder and took the full blast and was thrown into the river; if anything has saved him it was the water that doused the flames. There were two bargemen on the wharf and they went in and pulled him out. I can tell you little else, Mrs Randell. I was knocked unconscious too.’

She saw then that his hands were wrapped in rags and that they trembled as he put them tenderly to his scorched face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I hope there was no loss of life.’

He nodded. ‘One I know of, and another in hospital as well as your husband.’

She chose to climb into the back of the wagon while Filip climbed up beside the driver, and sat hunched into a ball with her hands to her head. What will I do without Harry if he … No, don’t think it. How could he have been blown into the water? It must have been a huge explosion. She leaned forward to catch Filip’s attention.

‘Will you ask ’driver what happened?’ she said. ‘What set off ’explosion?’

Filip turned. ‘I have asked. He doesn’t know. He was late to work and heard the blast from further away. Someone told him the grain had overheated and caught fire.’

‘Combustion,’ she murmured. And in a closed area; not like in a stack where a fire could be contained or would burn itself out.

The driver seemed to know his way through lines of narrow streets that she had never seen before; workshops and small

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