The Air Raid Girls by Jenny Holmes

Author:Jenny Holmes [Holmes, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473574786
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the calm after the storm of the night before, Pamela decided to walk to Anderson’s to see her father. As she stepped out of the front door she was dismayed to see that little was left of the municipal baths except blackened girders and piles of rubble. The twisted remains of a metal staircase rose from the ruins. More shocking still, when she turned into Tennyson Street, was the sight of an iron bed frame thrown from the first floor of a bombed house. It stood in the middle of the road, complete with its mattress, for all the world as if it had been placed there on purpose rather than blown clear of someone’s bedroom by the force of an explosion. Pamela looked up to see a chimney stack silhouetted precariously against a grey sky and the arm of a crane swinging towards it with a wrecking ball. A woman in overalls and a flat cap warned Pamela to stand clear.

So she quickly backtracked and found another route down to St Stephen’s dock, past a horse and cart piled high with furniture rescued from wrecked buildings. At the end of an alleyway she caught a glimpse of her old school with its front railings mangled and a deep crater in the playground – she guessed there would be no lessons there today. And yet life went on. Housewives carried shopping baskets to the fish market at the harbourside, men cycled to work, buses ran to the normal timetable – all intended to show Herr Hitler that England would not be beaten. Pamela raised her head high and walked with the women in the direction of the dock.

When she came to the entrance to the timber yard she stated her business to a man in a booth by the gate. ‘I’m Harold Carr’s daughter. Is it all right if I go in for five minutes?’

The gatekeeper eyed her with unabashed curiosity then nodded her through. She crossed an open area, her feet crunching over the cinder surface, then she entered the two-storey office block, still under scrutiny from passing workers.

‘Yes?’ A well-dressed secretary with a string of cultured pearls and matching earrings spoke tartly from behind a desk.

‘I’m here to see Harold Carr,’ Pamela explained.

‘Is he expecting you?’

Before Pamela could reply, Fred rushed down the stairs to greet her. ‘It’s all right, Betty. I expect that Miss Carr is here to see Harold. Am I right?’ As he ushered her up to the first floor he told her that he’d spied her through the window. ‘Your father’s in the middle of a telephone call so I offered to fetch you. How are you? Have you recovered from last night’s drama?’

She and Fred had spent three hours cooped up in their landlady’s cellar until the all-clear siren had sounded and it had been safe to return to their rooms. Fielding had been the only one to get any decent sleep, stretched out on a bench and snoring to high

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