Making her way to the left side of the building, when the policeman was looking the other way, Aidy kicked up her heels and darted down the path that ran the length of the building on this side. It was choked with weeds and muddy underfoot. In no time her only pair of shoes was clogged with mud and sharp brambles were ripping her stockings to shreds and scratching her legs, but she didn’t care, too set on finding a way inside and safely locating her brother and sister.
Surely the building couldn’t extend much further back, she thought. She seemed to have gone miles down this path, but in fact it was a dozen or so yards. The only light she had to guide her was the moon’s eerie glow and it was very difficult for her to see anything ahead. Then suddenly she came across it. A door in the wall, hanging open. This must be where the children got in.
Aidy gingerly walked through it. Once inside she stopped to take stock of her surroundings. It was almost pitch black as she had no moonlight in here to help her. Across a wide expanse of floor she could make out the dark sky, some stars twinkling where
The wall used to be. All around her objects of different shapes and sizes loomed eerily. If she had been expecting a huge bare room and the children to be sitting safely in the middle, waiting patiently for her to arrive, then she was disappointed.
Where did she begin her search? Then the obvious struck her. Why not call out and see if she got any response? Taking a deep breath, she hollered at the top of her voice: ‘George! Betty! Anyone else here?’ And she repeated her call again. Then she listened.
Her heart raced. She felt sure she heard a muffled, ‘Over here.’
She hollered again, ‘Did someone shout out?’
A muffled voice came back. ‘Yes. Over here. And hurry!’
The voice seemed to have come from somewhere towards the middle of the room but below her, which didn’t make sense to Aidy. She was worried, though, as although the voice had been muffled, she could tell it had belonged to an adult male, not a child.
Outside the sound of a police siren nearing the factory could be heard. Better late than never, she thought.
Tentatively, with eyes now accustomed to the dark, she picked her way around and over objects like old discarded tin drums, work trolleys, beams from the ceiling … and what was this? … an old rusting mangle minus its rollers. Obviously people had been
dumping their rubbish in here. Along with the objects, she began to come across scattered bricks from the fallen wall. She stopped short at the sound of a loud groan and a cracking sound coming from nearby. It was apparent to Aidy that the rest of the building wouldn’t be standing for much longer.
A few yards further on she stopped and hollered again, ‘Am I near you yet?’
The muffled voice, a bit clearer to her now, called back, ‘A bit further in! Be careful to look for a hole in the floor.’
‘Are you near the hole in the floor?’ she hollered.
‘We’re down it,’ came the answer.
Whoever it was, they were down in the basement of the building!
‘Keep calling to me and I’ll head towards your voice,’ Aidy shouted out.
To the continued call of …
this way … this way … this way … she
headed in the direction of the voice, being careful to avoid any obstacles and look out for the hole in the floor.
Then she came upon it. She had expected a perfectly round hole, for some reason, but this had jagged edges and was about the size of the kitchen table. She got on her knees, inched her way gingerly to the side and peered down. She hadn’t expected to see anything so was shocked to find a candle lighting the space below, which looked like it had once been a small
store room as in the corner were stacked several old tea chests and a couple of discarded office items. Four faces were visible, ghost-like in the flickering candlelight bouncing off them. Two faces in particular caused her a sigh of relief. ‘George … Betty! You’re alive. Oh, thank God.’
George shouted back, ‘I told the doctor yer’d come looking for us soon as you heard what’s happened, and I was right.’
Doc! Her eyes met those of her previous employer. So that was where the candle had come from. Doctors always carried them in case they needed light in an emergency.
Before she had a chance to ask how come he was in there with the children or why in fact the children had come to be in the basement, Ty shouted up to her in a commanding tone, ‘We need to get these children out of here quickly before any more of the building comes down. This is a small room we’re in and the door is jammed solid. We can’t get out that way. There’s no other way out of here except back through the ceiling – the way we fell in.’
The sound of the police siren was much louder. Their arrival could be only moments away.
‘I’ll go and fetch help,’ Aidy told him.
There was a loud groaning noise from above, and nearby a crash resounded. Another part of the roof had come down nearby.
‘There’s no time for that,’ Ty cried back. ‘One of the boys has broken his leg and is in danger of going into shock. We need to get him out first. I’ve given him a dose of laudanum so he can’t feel much at the moment and he’s pretty dopey.’
That was when Aidy fully took in the scene below, or as much as the flickering candlelight would allow. She could make out that George, a gash on his cheek caked in drying blood, was sitting on the floor with Ava’s son Brian’s head in his lap. A battered-looking Betty crouched to one side, holding the boy’s hand. The boy himself was limp and still, his eyes shut. Ty had fashioned a very crude splint on his right leg from two bits of discarded wood and a bandage from his black bag, which lay open to one side of him. Blood was seeping through the bandage.
While she had been taking in the scene, Ty had already dragged three of the empty chests from the corner of the room and put them under the hole, two side by side and the other on top. While she watched, he clambered up on the top box and tested it for strength. Seeming satisfied it would hold his weight, he jumped down to gather the half-comatose child in his arms, then lifted him high enough to gently place him on the top tea chest.
Aidy knew what Ty was expecting her to do. Dropping the nurse’s bag she was holding to one side of the hole, she lay down then swung her top half
so that it projected over the void beneath. She just hoped the edge didn’t give way under her.
Meanwhile Ty had clambered back up on the tea chest, balanced himself on it, bent down and tentatively lifted the boy up in his arms. The action caused the tea chest to wobble and she could hear the wood crack.
Aidy gasped, fearing the chest, or one of the two below it, was about to give way under the weight it was supporting. It seemed to be holding. Taking a deep breath, Ty heaved the limp child up in his arms as far as he could above his head, crying to Aidy, ‘Grab him, quickly. I can’t hold him up for long …’
Aidy reached down as far as she could, her aim being to grab hold of the waistband of the boy’s trousers and haul him up. But it was just out of her grasp. Hurriedly she inched her way a little further over the hole, mindful that if she wasn’t careful she could topple over into it, and mindful too that Ty’s strength must be giving out. She reached down again. This time she did manage to grab hold of the boy’s waistband, and with a strength she didn’t realise she had, heaved him up with all her might.
As she pulled him through the hole, a jagged piece of wood pierced the boy’s thigh and broke off as she pulled him clear, to virtually throw him down on the solid floor beside her, leaving a piece at least two inches long protruding from his leg. Thankfully the
dose of laudanum the doctor had given him had rendered him unable to feel the pain of his new injury or from his broken leg.
Aidy looked back down the hole to see that Ty now had Betty in his arms. Once he saw she was ready to receive another child, he heaved her up to stand on his shoulders. With Ty’s arms clamped around her legs, Betty stretched up her arms to her sister. Reaching down, Aidy grabbed hold of her hands and heaved her up so the child could grab her shoulders then pull herself up from there.
Next came George. With him being the heaviest of the three, it took her every ounce of her strength to heave him up through the hole. Aidy pretended not to notice as he was coming through that the edge of the floor she was lying on was moving beneath her and she heard the sound of breaking wood.
As George cleared the hole enough to scramble the rest of the way out himself, she ordered him and Betty to drag Brian further away from the hole.
Then, coming from across the other side of the building where she had come in, she heard a shout. ‘Anyone there?’
‘Over here!’ she hollered.
As they were dragging Brian away from the hole, George and Betty both bellowed over to the rescue party in unison, ‘Over here!’
A loud rumbling sound came from above. Aidy’s
heart was hammering. The whole building was going to come down any minute … She looked back down into the hole and cried urgently to Ty, who had now clambered off the chests and back on to firm ground: ‘You next, Doc, come on.’ To stress her point, she reached down her arms to him.
He called back up, ‘I’m too much for you to lift. You’ll never manage. I’ll have to wait for the men to arrive and pull me out.’
The rumbling from above resounded again.
Aidy flashed a look to where the children were and, to her relief, saw that three policemen had reached them. Each had one of the children in his arms and was hurrying off.
There was a rending sound above her.
She looked back down the hole and cried, ‘There’s no time to wait, Doc. I’m sure the main roof is about to come down. Come on, we’ve got to give it a …’
Her voice trailed off as, with a shriek of timber, a roof beam fell in. At the same time, the weakened floor beneath her gave way and Aidy felt herself falling, letting out a scream of shock as she plummeted down the hole.
A
idy was lying on something soft. The air was thick with dust and she was coughing and spluttering. She tried to open her eyes so she could see something then realised they were open, it was just that it was pitch black. She heard a soft groan and felt movement beneath her, realising with horror the something soft she was lying on, that had in fact broken her fall, was the body of Doc.
Her immediate thought was, Of all the people to be trapped in a room with, it had to be him! But she had worse things than her unreciprocated feelings to worry about at the moment.
Easing herself off him, Aidy cried urgently: ‘Doc … Doc, are you all right? Answer me!’
Finally he groaned and told her haltingly: ‘I … think … my shoulder … is either … dislocated or broken. And I can’t … move my right leg.’ He seemed to lapse into silence then and she feared he had passed out.
At least they were both alive, she thought. Her mind was racing. She needed to get some light in here so she could assess the situation. There had been a candle … Oh, it could be anywhere now. Did the doctor carry only one candle with him or more? If she could find his bag, she could check.
On her knees, hands outstretched, she began tentatively feeling around her. She remembered she hadn’t seen much in the room when she had looked down into it from above, except for the tea chests, several old chairs and a few other long-discarded items stacked against the far wall. Now the floor was littered with chunks of plaster and wood from the part of the ceiling that had broken off beneath her. Inch by inch, shuffling forward on her knees as she did so, the sharp debris on the floor stabbing painfully at her, she felt her way around, but the doctor’s bag seemed to be eluding her. Then, finally, her fingertips hit something made of leather.
She let out a small cry of triumph. It was the doctor’s bag! It was covered in rubble and Aidy swiped her hands over it to clear off as much as she could. Oh, but wait a minute, it couldn’t be the doctor’s bag as she remembered seeing that was open while looking down on it from above. This one was shut … it was Ruth’s nurse’s bag. Aidy’s heart dropped. Would a nurse carry candles? She could only hope.
Opening the bag, she plunged in her hand and carefully felt around. Right at the bottom, underneath several bandages and other things wrapped in waxy paper, her hand clasped around two long cylinders. Candles! She pulled them out, then realised they’d be no good without matches. But if Ruth carried candles, she must carry matches to light them with. Aidy put her hand back in the bag and found the box near where the candles had been stored.
Once the candles were lit, holding them in her hands, she took a good look around her. The room they were in was about twelve foot by twelve. There was a door to her right that Doc had told her was jammed shut. Apart from the discarded packing cases and several office items, the space was empty. The doctor’s body was lying a few feet away. He was groaning softly in agony. Pinning down his right leg was part of a thick beam that must have broken off when the floor above fell in. There was a dark stain on his trouser leg which was obviously blood. It was all right, though, because the police would be appearing at any minute to rescue them. Automatically Aidy looked up towards the hole she had fallen through, hoping to see faces peering back at her. She gawped in horror. The hole was there no longer! Something was completely blocking it. The rest of the building could now be piled on top of them, for all she knew.