Chapter 37
Annie sat on a pile of bricks and watched her island burn.
Born and raised here. Seventy-five years.
Only left once, when they’d taken her and the other children for a day in the country.
She crossed the bridges once a week to go up to the market, but she never felt right until she was back on the island.
The docks had provided work for Father, never quite enough to pay the rent and put food on the table but somehow they’d survived.
Children had come and gone. Many of them had died within weeks.
Just visiting, the other women used to say, little mites too weak to draw breath.
But it had been a good life, all things considered.
Father sat next to her, shaking. He was cold.
Since their house had been blown up they’d been living rough.
The young folks from the ARP had told her to go to the rest shelter, given her two coupons for tea.
When she’d asked where she was meant to spend the night, they’d looked at each other and smiled, as if she were an imbecile.
Stay put, they’d said. Someone will know what to do.
Not their fault. They were doing their best. Helped her get Father safe. Made sure the gas was turned off. Then they’d rabbited. Plenty more piles of rubble to dig through. Coupons to give out.
She’d done the best she could, found a bombed-out warehouse with a bit of roof left. But it wasn’t enough. No place for a fire. No place to keep anything that the rats wouldn’t get at.
She clutched her gas mask. The papers had been very clear.
Any day now, the Germans would gas the city.
Millions would die. Annie wasn’t scared of dying.
She didn’t think there’d be an afterlife.
She wasn’t stupid. Not like she’d be in heaven, reunited with her babies.
It would be like going to sleep. Sometimes she thought she could do with a long sleep.
But she couldn’t die yet, not while Father needed her.
He’d been fading for a long time. If she was honest, he’d been gone for a long time.
The man who’d hefted crates twice his size, who’d taken her up West to the pictures the day he’d proposed to her, who’d carried her over the threshold of their tenement flat, promising to look after her as long as they lived.
If he was still in there, she hadn’t seen him for a couple of years.
Now he was like one of her babies, needing feeding, and changing.
She’d hated him at first, for leaving her.
But she couldn’t hate him any more. Not his fault, she told herself, when it got so bad she had to step outside and grit her teeth and give out a silent scream.
A cloud of yellow smoke rose out of a distant warehouse.
She’d seen the bomb come down. Watched the flames consume the roof of the building.
An odd sight, seeing a wall come down that had been her horizon for half her life.
Now the smoke was drifting towards her. She could already taste it, making her cough.
Gas.
‘Got your mask, Father?’ she asked. She knew he wouldn’t respond, but it was her habit. Give him the chance to redeem himself. Show he’d been hiding in there all along.
He coughed, and looked at her. His eyes were streaming, the gas already swirling around him.
She put the mask on his face but he pushed it away.
‘Don’t want it,’ he said.
She held it to his face, struggling with the leather straps. He pushed again, hurting her. Still a trace of his old strength.
‘I said no!’ he yelled, giving her the back of his hand as anger flashed across his face. All traces of her husband gone.
She recoiled, and he saw then what he’d done. His face screwed up, the tears arriving in an instant.
She tried once more, raising the mask to his face, but he shook his head.
She held him to her chest. Comforting him. Hating herself for the anger she’d felt as he’d pushed her away. Not his fault.
Not his fault.
The gas was getting in her chest.
She threw the mask away, the glass eyepieces smashing as it landed on the rubble.
‘Come here,’ she said, holding him. Doing her best to comfort him.
She felt him pull away, but she held tight. Kept his face pushed into her chest. Taking care of him this one last time, before they both went to sleep.
He struggled harder, but the fight was gone out of him. She was coughing now, the gas working its way into her lungs. She hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.
Eventually, he stopped struggling, and she held him more, the way she’d held her babies when their short visits had come to an end. She closed her eyes and let the tears come.