Page 33 of A Family Affair
‘Course I will. We women have to stick together, and you never know, once your mam and dad see the little one, they’ll have a change of heart.’
‘They won’t. My parents are ashamed of me, that’s what my father said but thank you, for your kind offer.’
I smiled at that, even though my mam would think I’d gone daft, inviting a stranger, but I knew she’d understand, too.
Thinking of Mam gave me strength, ‘Well let’s not worry about that just now. Let’s focus on them bloody Germans and hope our lads in the RAF are giving them what for. We just have to hold on till morning then someone will come and get us out of here. And I can’t tell you what I’d give for a brew right now. Two big sugars and a slice of toast and dripping. What do you fancy, Nora?’
When there was no reply I held my breath and my stomach turned, and then when she answered I could breathe.
‘I’ll have what you’re having,’ she said, and I imagined she was smiling, my friend in the darkness. It made me smile too.
And then, ‘Molly…’
‘Yes love.’
‘If I don’t… if I’m not here in the morning will you look after my baby for me? His name’s Robert, after his father. He has nobody else, and he deserves to be loved. I can’t bear the thought of him being alone, not having family.’
I bit my lip and forced out a reply. ‘Let’s not be talking like that. We have to keep our spirits up, that’s what Vera and Gracie would do. You’re going to be all right just hold on.’
I listened in the darkness to the sound of nothing and it was the worse sound of all because I felt I’d let her down.
‘Nora, Nora… stay awake Nora.’
She didn’t answer.
I was so angry because I should have promised when I had chance, but that would have been admitting defeat and I couldn’t do that. So along with listening to the sounds of Manchester burning, the sky falling in and heroes trying to do their best against the odds, I focused on good things. My son’s breath on my face. The feel of his body. My husband and my family.
It was getting colder by the minute, and I shivered under my coat and wished I’d had a blanket and warm boots because my feet were freezing. I had to keep Joseph warm so pulled him closer and tucked my coat around him.
There, in the midst of panic, despair, and dogged hope, I entered a surreal state somewhere between sleep, nightmare, and reality, and waited for morning.
CHAPTER25
When I opened my eyes, instead of black I saw grey, and as I slowly lifted the mattress a dim shard of light peeped through a hole in the roof. It allowed me to take in the floor of my room that was covered in thick dust and all manner of debris. It was morning and we’d made it.
And then I realised.
It was and still is the most dreadful, most terrible moment of my life, and I think in some ways I knew. I knew during those hours of fitful sleep and lip-numbing terror that my Joseph wouldn’t make it.
That him and me, we were never meant to be. That he’d never meet his daddy. That his grandparents wouldn’t take him to The Hat and Feathers on his eighteenth birthday, and his cousins would have no need to stick up for him in the schoolyard. I’d never hear him call me mummy, and his daddy would never hold him in his arms.
He was so beautiful. The silver-morning light lit up his face. And I took him in. The scent of him. His eyelashes, long and dark like Walter’s. His perfect little fingers and hands. His cherub lips that I kissed as I drenched his cheeks in tears.
Somewhere between the bombs and the fires, the sirens and the cries for help, Joseph had slipped away and left me behind. I cried for… what seemed like forever, until at some point another sound interrupted my grief. A baby crying.
Robert.
Still holding Joseph, I wriggled from under my hospital bed fortress and waited while my eyes further accustomed themselves to the light and, when they did, I realised I was lucky to be alive.
Above my head, a steel girder dangled precariously, and the ceiling flopped, plasterboard and tiles sagging under the weight of whatever had been above it. Then sheer horror when in the corner of the room I spotted legs, and then a body spattered with blood, and as my eyes travelled further upwards the dead, unseeing eyes of a patient. Stripped bare in their moment of exit from this world. Their dignity snuffed out by a German bomb.
Averting my eyes, because that was all I could do for the person who once inhabited the broken body that lay in the corner, I took Joseph and crawled toward the gaping hole in the partition wall and the hospital bed covered in debris.
I had to scramble over bricks and shards of wood and whatever had fallen from above until I reached Nora and her baby and, although I was weak from the cold, thirst and hunger, I dragged myself onto the bed.
I was exhausted and my arms ached from holding Joseph while my legs felt like jelly, but I had to see Nora. She was covered in dust but, what struck me the instant I caught sight of her, was that beneath the grey, I saw red. She had the most glorious auburn hair that tumbled around her face while the rest of her locks flowed onto the pillow behind her head.
With a trembling hand I slowly wiped away the layer of fine particles to reveal… a beauty. A pale yet perfect complexion, pastel pinks lips, fine cheekbones. Her eyes, shuttered by lids, but I imagined them to be green.
