Chapter 21
Gracie brought the boat into Shadwell Basin, followed the canal through a canyon of warehouse walls into the sudden open space of the vast Eastern Dock.
To their right, the northern side of the dock was an inferno. Gracie kept the boat as far from the flames as she could, but still the heat was unbearable. Cook held up his arm to protect his face from the worst of it, smelling burning wool from his sleeve.
The water was low, the locks at either end of the complex chain of docks and canals had been left open.
As Gracie brought them into the southern wall, Cook looked up.
They were ten feet below the level of the quay.
Holes in the slippery dock wall made for a rudimentary ladder, covered with green algae.
A cloud of black smoke engulfed them, blown across the water from the northern quay.
Cook squinted, trying to protect his eyes.
The stinging was intense. It felt like the fire itself had reached across the water and pierced his eyelids.
He had a desperate urge to dunk his head in the water, but when he looked down he saw a slick of oil on the surface.
‘Pepper,’ Gracie shouted, as an explosion from one of the warehouses sent a shockwave across the dock. Her eyes were red, and streaming from the smoke.
‘Oh Christ,’ Gracie said, forgetting the pepper smoke. Cook turned to follow her gaze. A huge ball of blue flame rose into the sky. More blue flame poured out of a warehouse, gushing around stone columns, spilling over the dockside, cascading onto the water. An erupting blue volcano.
‘Get out,’ Cook said, pushing her up, reaching for the nearest handhold in the dock wall. ‘Now.’
The rungs embedded in the wall were slick.
Cook waited as Gracie made her way up. He allowed himself a look back, expecting the blue flame to extinguish when it met the water, but instead it was spreading, an expanding semi-circle of fire crossing the water as fast as thought.
Cook grabbed the slippery rungs, and pulled himself up, out of the boat.
In an instant, the flame was below him.
*
Thick smoke, alive with glowing embers, filled the air as Cook and Gracie threaded their way to the pub. Cook held his handkerchief over his mouth and squinted his eyes.
‘Sugar wharf’s gone up,’ Gracie shouted, over the roaring of the flames.
She nodded towards a tall warehouse at the end of the street.
Three fire engines were doing their best, three squadrons of volunteer firemen had their hoses on it, but the water was evaporating before it could even land on the building.
Cook pushed Gracie out of the road as a ringing bell heralded the arrival of another engine, but it wouldn’t be enough.
They needed a hundred hoses to make a dent.
The smoke smelt like burnt toffee. It got through the handkerchief, into Cook’s eyes, into his ears.
Gracie coughed, doubled over. Cook stopped. Waited for her coughing to subside. She spat black phlegm onto the pavement.
‘We’ll be doing the same to Berlin soon enough,’ Gracie said.
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ Cook said. But he could tell Gracie didn’t believe him. He wasn’t sure whether he believed it himself.
A bomb landed nearby. A big one. Cook felt the shockwave through the ground – the eerie sensation of a solid turned to liquid, the pavement rippling like a child making waves in a skipping rope. A symphony of breaking glass followed. Then a moan.
‘Mother?’ A man’s voice. An old voice. Weary. Weak. Thin – the strength gone from the lungs. ‘Where are you, Mother?’
Cook and Gracie paused, waiting to see if there would be a response. But no response came.
‘Mother?’
Gracie led Cook through a maze of alleys, trying to locate the voice. Hard to hear over the roar of the fires and the drone of the bombers and the thump of the bombs.
‘Mother,’ the old man said, this time sounding weaker.
Gracie stopped at a gate, leading into a yard, a few square feet of concrete, and a reeking outhouse.
‘I’m scared, Mother,’ the voice said.
The back of the house was gone, peeled off, like a doll’s house, everything on display. Upstairs, a bed hung halfway off what was now a sloping ledge. In front of them, a mess of bricks and rubble.
‘Stay in bed, Father,’ a muffled voice called out. A no-nonsense voice. ‘I’ll be there in a minute. I’ll bring you a nice mug of tea. Lots of sugar.’
The rubble moved, causing a tiny landslide of broken tiles.
Cook dropped to his knees and pulled away a brick, then another. He saw a hand. He thought it was disembodied. But the fingers moved. He swept a mound of dust away, pulled more bricks, and revealed the arm it belonged to.
‘You’re all right,’ Cook said. ‘Keep wiggling those fingers to let me know you’re still there.’
‘It’s gone dark,’ the woman said. ‘Think something knocked me on the head. And I can’t move me legs.’
‘Annie? It’s Gracie Reynolds. We’ll get you out, don’t you worry.’
‘Is that you, Gracie? Bless you. I’ve got to get Father’s tea on. He won’t understand.’
Cook looked up to the bed, threatening to fall out of the upstairs room.
‘Mother?’ the voice called again.
‘Think me leg’s stuck,’ Annie said.
Cook felt among the remaining bricks. There was a beam, two-by-fours nailed together to make a cheap lintel, carpenter’s marks still visible now it had been exposed.
It lay across the old woman’s ankle. Cook couldn’t see the foot on the other side.
Worry about that in a minute. Job one was to get the beam off her. Get her free.
He felt the beam, gave it a tug, a test to see if there was any give. It was heavy, but he thought he could move it.
‘I’ll pull this up, you drag her out,’ he said.
Gracie grabbed the woman under the arms, prompting a scream.
‘Sorry!’ Gracie said.
‘?a ne fait rien,’ the old woman said. A saying the Tommies had brought back from the last war.
‘San Fairy Ann indeed,’ Gracie responded.
Cook tensed his arms.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ Gracie said.
‘Ready,’ Annie said.
Cook pulled. The slight give he’d initially felt turned out to be about a quarter of an inch, then he felt something more solid.
‘Mother!’ the old man called from out of the ether.
‘Don’t you move, Father! I’ll be there in a jif!’ Annie called out. Then, to Cook – ‘Come on, lad, get it done.’
Cook had, he felt, been trying to get it done. He tried again. Harder. A fierce burst, grunting with the effort.
A shower of glass and dust fell onto Cook’s head. A dagger of intact glass, a foot long, landed at his feet.
‘Bit more,’ Gracie said.
Cook didn’t like giving up, but there was only so much a man could do. He let his arms relax, shook his head.
‘Gracie,’ he said, ‘get over here.’
Gracie shuffled over and took her place next to Cook.
‘Watch out for the glass,’ Cook said, with a quick look up. There was a potential waterfall of jagged shards above them. Like one of those machines on the pier that held a teetering overhang of ha’pennies.
Gracie grabbed the beam and gave a grunt, her shoulder muscles stretching her coat with the effort.
‘That’s not going anywhere,’ she said.
‘We can do it,’ Cook said. ‘On three.’
Cook counted. ‘One,’ he tensed his arms, Gracie did the same.
‘Two . . .’
‘Mother . . .’ the voice from above was weaker.
‘Three.’
Cook pulled. He felt a muscle in his back give. The beam moved, then more. A crunching noise as a chunk of masonry slid way, then it was free.
‘Thank God!’ Annie whimpered. ‘Don’t move, Father!’
Shouts from the alley heralded the arrival of more men. Two of them, tin hats with ARP stencilled on the front.
‘What have we got?’ the one in front asked, as he stepped into the yard, crunching on glass.
‘Father’s upstairs,’ Annie said. ‘Gracie’s just got me out from under half the back wall.’
‘You should be in the shelter,’ the ARP warden said, as Cook stood up. ‘Can’t have civilians running around, getting in the way.’
‘Who’s in charge?’ Cook asked.
‘Beaumont,’ the ARP warden said.
‘Where is he?’ Cook asked.
The warden looked at his mate, who shook his head.
‘On patrol,’ he said.
Cook knew the look. It was the look of a man who’s learnt the truth about his superior officer, after all the training, and the marching, and the blowing of whistles, when the shots start firing and the bombs start falling.