Christmas on the Mersey by Annie Groves

Author:Annie Groves [Annie Groves]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘Mrs Kennedy! Mrs Kennedy!’ Dolly Feeny coughed as thick black smoke from the burning roof began to seep down to the street. She had been in the shelter only for a few moments when someone said the corner shop was on fire. Dolly’s newly learned fire-fighting skills came to the fore. The shop door had been locked when she’d got there and she’d had to grab a young warden to put his shoulder to the door and burst it open.

‘What are you doing up here?’ Dolly called as she climbed the ladder to the loft, having assured the spotty youth in an ARP uniform that was far too big for him that she could cope alone. ‘I noticed you were not in the shelter,’ she said, popping her head through the square opening to see Winnie Kennedy scrambling on all fours to gather valuables.

‘I checked all the rooms and the cellar but you weren’t there.’ Dolly did not fail to notice the well-stocked storeroom, hidden, no doubt, from prying eyes and probing questions. And, even though Christmas was around the corner, Dolly knew the kind of luxury goods in Winnie’s cellar were very hard to come by lawfully right now.

‘You’d better get yourself down to the shelter. It’s not safe in here.’ Dolly had seen the flames licking out of the roof of the shop while she was hurrying from the shelter after making sure the children were safe with Violet. As the elected auxiliary fire warden for Empire Street, Dolly had a duty to make sure everybody was safe, and that all incendiary bombs were put out before they were allowed to take hold.

Hurrying up the street from the shelter, she’d noticed the incendiaries had gone right through Winnie Kennedy’s roof and smoke was pouring out.

Having paid attention in her training, Dolly was keenly aware the incendiaries and the chemical bombs, with their brilliant white light designed to start signal fires, would alert enemy bombers. One large bomb could, and did drop hundreds of incendiaries, and Dolly knew there were many large bombs being dropped tonight.

Being only a few hundred yards from the docks, Dolly knew everybody was in peril. But it was now clear by the ever-increasing number of fire-fighters and the increasingly determined sound of the ack-ack guns that people were not prepared to sit around wondering what time they would meet their doom. Their Maker would just have to wait until the fires were out! The people of the dock road would do all they could to stop the enemy taking their houses and their livelihoods – or they would die trying!

‘You just get yourself down to the shelter now, Mrs Kennedy,’ Dolly ordered. She could not believe the stupidity of this woman who would rather save a few paltry insurance policies than her own skin! ‘You could have been trapped up here and nobody would have known. You’ve got to get down to the shelter!’

Dolly knew her daughter Rita was on duty at the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.