The Memory of Us: A Novel (27 page)

I threw a tea towel at her.

It was so good to laugh and to feel carefree again, even if only for a moment.

We reminisced over some strawberries that she’d bartered for and made plans to see
My Favorite Wife
, the new Cary Grant movie about a wife who disappears for many years. We caught up on local news and gossip. John and Maude’s baby boy was now two years old, and Lucille loved going over to help. Maude was pregnant again and very excited, hoping for a girl this time. Lotte had moved to New York, following a salesman that she met while he was traveling here for work. Not surprisingly, she fell out of love with him but in love with the city, and often sent postcards from all the places that she was visiting. Blythe was working at the docks, facilitating communications between the dock offices and the naval ships that passed through.

Liverpool had been taking the same precautions as London, and I saw that my hometown’s skyline was also punctuated by the now-familiar barrage balloons. Army searchlights and antiaircraft guns attempted to protect Merseyside. Bombing planes usually approached from the Welsh coast, and they used the lights of Dublin as their guide.

So far, the Liverpool area had fared better than London, but not by much. The cathedral had been damaged, children were leaving by the tens of thousands for Cheshire and other areas, and half of the docks in Wallasey had been destroyed. So much for the IRA being the thing to fear.

Birkenhead, across the Mersey, was a prime target as the largest port on the west coast. Already, the area had suffered from over two hundred air raids. Residents were creating overnight shelters in the underground stations, in their homes, and, for Lucille, in the basement of Edge Hill Training School. In fact, this was where we were to spend this first night. Lucille’s flat was not safe, being on the third floor, and she had spent many nights in the basement of her teaching school, an official shelter.

After dinner we cleaned up, and Lucille pulled out a pillow and quilt for each of us. She said that it was very cold in the basement until people showed up. We also packed some food. Lucille had stockpiled her rations for my visit.

We had been so caught up in talking that we lost track of time. The air outside was freezing, and I hugged myself in my wool coat. Even my teeth were cold. It was eerie to see everything so dark. I was used to seeing London shrouded in opaqueness, but this was my hometown, and at night it looked funereal.

Rushing through the streets, along with some other stragglers, we made it to the school on Durning Road. About three hundred people were already packed in, and I could see that she was right about the body heat. After being outside, the basement was like a furnace, and I quickly shed my coat.

Cots were laid out as makeshift beds, but when a teenage boy saw my condition, he offered me his. I thanked him by slipping him a treasured chocolate bar. Lucille sat next to me, laying her pink-and-yellow quilt out on the floor. She said hello to various people, as they had become a tightly knit community in the past few weeks. Most were young ladies, many of them students at the school with Lucille.

The ways that people responded to this unnatural grouping was an interesting thing. Some were frozen in fear, even after months of hundreds of raids. Others took it in stride, using the time to play cards. The few children that were left made up games.

One little girl, maybe four years old, came over to me and stared at my belly. With curly blond hair and sunken dimples, she was adorable. She made me wonder what my child would look like. Would the baby have my blond hair or Kyle’s chestnut brown? My green eyes or his brown ones?

“Did you swallow a ball?” The girl spoke through the thumb in her mouth.

“No—I have a baby inside.”

“Is it going to come out tonight?”

“I don’t think so. I hope not!”

“Is it a boy or a girl or a puppy?”

“I don’t know yet, but I don’t think it’s going to be a puppy. Why—do you like puppies?”

“I have a puppy, but I’m not allowed to bring him down here. They said he’s ’posed to stay at home.”

“What is the puppy’s name?”

“Buster.”

“What is your name?”

“Genevieve.”

“Well, Genevieve, when you get home in the morning, give Buster a big kiss for me, all right?”

She lit up at this idea. “I will!” she said, and scampered off.

A siren wailed overhead just then, and everyone jumped. We heard a bomb explode in the distance, and no one wanted to voice where they thought it might have landed.

Lucille and I huddled next to each other. “It’s not usually like this,” she whispered. “We’ll get the warning sirens, but I’ve never heard an explosion so close.”

Across the room, a woman was screaming hysterically while the policeman assigned to this shelter tried to calm her.

The siren continued, but we hadn’t heard any bombs after the first.

The tone in the basement had become hushed, so we whispered.

“This isn’t like a London shelter at all,” I told Lucille.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, most people use the underground after the trains shut down for the night. There are so many people that many of them even sleep on the rail tracks, and others sleep sitting up on the escalator stairs.”

“I suppose we don’t have it so bad here.”

A loud crash came from somewhere close by, and those who had managed to fall asleep awoke in a panic. Lucille and I hugged each other until the silence returned.

“What do you hear from Ben?” I spoke so quietly as to almost be inaudible.

Lucille responded in kind. “He’s like Kyle. He doesn’t write much about the war, probably not to worry me. I know that he’s in France, but I don’t know much more than that. It’s irritating, isn’t it, that they have to censor what they say?”

“It is, but it must be safer not to give too much away. Or maybe they’re just trying not to worry us.”

“I suppose you’re right. And to be honest, I do the same thing. I’ve told Ben only a little about coming down here every night, and unless he’s heard about it from the newspapers, I don’t know if he knows how badly Liverpool has been hit.”

“I wrote to Kyle to tell him that I was leaving London to stay with my parents. I’m sure until he gets that letter, more will arrive at our flat. I hope that he’ll send new ones here. I find myself living from letter to letter, and every day in between them is just about surviving until the next one. Despite all the things I fill my days with, they’re still just a countdown to his return.”

“I know what you mean. But now you’re here, and the wait is going to be so much more fun! Or as fun as we can manage, all considering.”

Both of us grew sleepy. Lucille had studied all day for several tests, and I was weary after the long train ride. Kissing my cheek, she said, “Good night, Jul. I’m glad you’re here. It’s going to be just like old times. Well, except that you’ll have a baby in a few weeks. But other than that, it will be like old times.”

“We should play backgammon and make a deal that the loser changes the baby’s nappies!”

“That’s not a fair deal. You usually win, and you’re going to be the mum.”

“You’re right. Loser gets to wash them, though.”

“All right, count me in for that.”

I lay back onto the cot. I couldn’t lie on my back, because the weight of my stomach felt like it would sink me. I turned to the right and then tried my left before I could find a position that felt passable. Lucille had it worse, even though she wasn’t pregnant. She folded her quilt in half, trying to give the tiniest bit of cushion to the cement floor, and covered herself with the other half.

About ten restless minutes passed, but as tired as we were, sleep still eluded us.

“Hey, Jul? Are you still awake?”

“Yes.”

“So, speaking of mums, when are you seeing your parents tomorrow?”

“I’m meeting them around noon at a restaurant near the docks.”

“It’s been two years since you’ve seen her, hasn’t it?”

“It has, poor thing.”

“Poor thing? How can you say that? She’s been awful to you!”

“It’s that holy husband of mine rubbing off on me.”

We shared a quiet giggle.

“But think about it,” I continued. “Her son is born with so many handicaps. Father works all the time, and her daughter, her focus for eighteen years, has a runaway marriage and moves across the country. She surrounds herself with people, but in the middle of it all, she’s lonely.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“You know, Kyle said the same thing about me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said that I was always surrounded by people, but he could see that on my own, I was different inside.”

“I could have told you that.”

“And that’s why I love you. You give me a lot more credit than I deserve.”

An old lady shushed us, and we noticed that most everyone else had managed to fall asleep. Saying good night again, Lucille moved to a cot across the room that had become available. I closed my eyes and fell asleep almost immediately, oblivious to the ever-present sirens.

I awoke to a horrific scene.

Chapter Twenty-Four

An explosion, the crumbling of the building, and the gush of water. It all happened so fast.

When I’d gone to sleep, the ceiling above me had been a solid maze of wiring and pipes, some of them dripping. Where it had been, I could now see the sky raining debris. All around me, chunks of bricks, mortar, and glass were tossed about as if some malign giant had staged a temper tantrum, and bodies lay crushed beneath it all. The smell of gas permeated the area, and anyone still alive was coughing and sputtering. I could barely see through the ash and smoke, and my throat was on fire. Flakes of debris fell and swirled like a snowstorm. I sat up, placed my feet on the crumbled ground, and took tiny, careful steps between cots and wreckage. I could see that people were shouting, but I felt like there was a bubble in my ears, and everything was muted and distorted.

Lucille. Where could she be? I looked around frantically, but couldn’t begin to judge the direction of her cot. I called out for her, but she probably couldn’t hear me any better than I could have heard her. I started to shout again, but my belly contracted, doubling me over in pain. Could the little one inside hear the terror surrounding us? Instinctively, I put my hands there and rocked, humming. The pressure lessened, but I continued my miniature lullaby to calm myself as much as the baby.

Just feet away, another mother and child were wrapped in each other’s arms, both lifeless. I held my hand to my mouth to stifle the nausea that was sweeping through me.

Then I spotted little Genevieve out of the corner of my eye, shaking a woman who must have been her mother. Crying, imploring her to wake up. Even from this distance, it was clear that she never would. I picked my way over to them and had begun to pick up the little girl when a terrible pain shooting through my back caused me to nearly drop her. I stooped toward her as far as I could without hurting and told her to come with me. She looked at me, confused, and I told her that Buster would want her to come home to him. At that she followed me, and we pressed on through the rubble.

Little fires smoldered throughout the ceiling-less room, and I feared the gas we smelled could ignite them at any time.

Most of the survivors appeared dazed, and many others were wailing over the bodies of their loved ones. Cards littered the floor—the solitary eye of a Jack stared at me, bewildered. As the light grew brighter, I at last got my bearings and looked toward where I knew that Lucille’s cot was. I hoped that I would find it empty, and that she was looking for me, too.

But as Genevieve and I approached, I saw that Lucille’s area was buried beneath a pile of beams and dangling electrical wires. Sparks flashed from the frayed ends like fireworks, and I had to duck to avoid the ones that swung down from rafters. When I turned around to make sure that Genevieve was safe, she was running the opposite direction into the arms of a man who gripped her and cried into her coat. I heard her say, “Mama’s over there,” as she pointed in the direction from which we’d just come.

I continued on. The beams looked like piles of broken bones, disarrayed throughout the space and bent into impossible shapes. I couldn’t lift them to remove them from my path, so I stepped over them as best as I could.

Please, God, let me find Lucille.

All at once, my prayer was answered, but the response was not the one I sought. I saw the familiar pink-and-yellow pattern of Lucille’s quilt, and hanging out of it was her arm, still and lifeless. I felt like I flew over, without regard for the debris or the crackling and snapping of the live wires, to the side of my friend. Pushing away scraps of wood and metal from her face, I saw that it was remarkably unscathed. But her poor body had been crushed under the weight of the beam. I turned her head toward me in a fruitless hope that she would look back at me and I could rescue her. But her eyes were closed. She appeared so restful. I didn’t think she knew what had happened, and I was thankful, at least, for that.

That only lasted a second, though, and the well brewing inside of me overflowed. I cried and wailed and cursed and yelled out for her. How had this happened? This was a
shelter
! We were supposed to be safe here. And no one was safe. It looked like half of the basement’s inhabitants were dead.

A thick mist started to swirl around me, but I barely noticed it. I continued my tirade against no one, screaming for my friend. The steam intensified until I couldn’t help but see it, and it burned my skin. Looking up, I saw the steam was gushing from what had been a boiler one floor above, and from a severed pipe dangling from it. For a second, the vapors seemed to subside. Perhaps the boiler was spent. But then, in a blinding white flash, I saw it burst.

I glimpsed light through a haze and thought that I was dead. Fluttering my eyelids to clear my vision, I made out the shape of a woman hovering over me. She was dressed in white, but I knew that she was not an angel when I saw the nursing cap that was so familiar. A delicate gold crucifix hung around her neck.

Then there was more that I recognized. A chart on a clipboard hung beside me. Stacks of gauze. And I was propped up on pillows in a hospital bed. I saw the outline of my feet under the blanket and panicked when I felt my flattened stomach.

“Where is my baby?” I shouted. Oh, my mouth felt strange.

The nurse patted my hands, which were wrapped in gauze. I was suddenly aware that my face, too, bore the same dressings.

“There, there, brave girl. Your baby is just fine. She’s in the nursery, probably sleeping. You can see her in a little while.”

She? My baby had been born? I didn’t remember a thing.

The nurse saw the confusion in my eyes. She pulled a chair over to my side, lifting it slightly so as not to scrape it against the tile floor.

“You’ve been heavily sedated for nearly two weeks now. You kept having nightmares, so we thought it would be best for the time being. But you’ve been sleeping better lately, so they lessened the dosage.”

She leaned over to straighten my blankets. Her mousy brown hair was knotted in a perfect chignon at her neck, and she smelled like vanilla. “My name is Jane Bailey,” she said. “I’ve been taking care of you, and I’ll be here until you’re all better.”

I talked through the numbness, each word deliberate and labored. “Lucille. I remember Lucille. She was . . .”

And I started to cry.

The nurse took a tissue and dried my eyes, presumably so that the moisture wouldn’t get underneath the gauze. I had done the same thing in London with patients.

“What happened?” I asked.

Jane proceeded to explain. The Edge Hill Training Centre on Durning Road had been bombed with a parachute mine on the morning of 29 November. About three hundred people had been sheltered there, and 166 had died. Many, like myself, were injured. Some died from the wreckage falling on them, and others from the gas that ignited and burned them. I was one of the lucky ones, if I could be called that. My burns had come from the hot water erupting out from the exploding boiler, like an unholy baptism. I was at Smithdown Hospital, down the road. I recalled that it was this hospital that had received the donations from the last festival that I had participated in.

People were still streaming in, trying to identify loved ones, and it was especially difficult with the ones that had died in the fires.

I had been found unconscious and was rescued. The trauma had brought on early labor, though, and they delivered the baby by cesarean section. She was tiny at first, but she had grown to a healthy weight under the care of the nurses and was thriving.

It was so much to take in, though I’d been dreaming things on and off that correlated with what she was telling me.

“I’m thirsty” was all that I could say.

Jane helped me sip some juice through a straw. I could barely feel it in my mouth, but I appreciated the soothing texture as it ran down my throat. She explained that the medication was numbing me so that I wouldn’t feel much pain. It was also helping me with what would have been excruciating engorgement. My breasts were full, rock-hard, with the milk that had been collecting, aching to nurture the baby that I had not yet seen.

“Now, dear. Are you from Liverpool? You must have family looking for you.” She lifted the clipboard from its peg and pulled a pen from behind her ear. “Let’s get some information about you. Why don’t we start with your name?”

I closed my eyes and turned my head. I wouldn’t tell her my name, or that I was a nurse, or anything else about me. Part of me refused to believe that I was here and that this had happened. Surely this was just part of the nightmares, and I would wake up. Speaking my name to her would somehow have made it all seem real.

“Well, I’m not going to press you right now. Lord knows, you’ve been through enough, and you have your reasons. Why don’t you take a little nap now, and maybe we can talk later.”

I started to pull the pillows from my back so that I could lie down more properly, but she stopped me.

“Oh no, honey. You don’t want to do that. We’re trying to keep the swelling down, and that’s going to work much better if you keep yourself like we had you.”

Jane patted my bound hands again and left the room, pointing to a bell that I could ring if I needed her. As soon as she shut the door, I adjusted the pillows into something that had to be a reasonable compromise.

I lay back and tried to forget all that I had just been told, but it was useless. I kept seeing the fires, the broken beams, the bodies, all of the hellishness. And Lucille.

Poor Lucille. I couldn’t think of her without crying, and the salty tears scorched my raw skin. I pitied her father. She had been his only daughter, the oldest above three sons. He must be devastated. I took a little comfort in the fact that they would have been able to identify her, and at least didn’t have to experience the ache that came with not knowing.

But that only made me think of my own parents.

Were they looking for me? They must be. I had told them that I would be staying the first night with Lucille, and as Edge Hill was her school, it would be easy to surmise that we had stayed the night there.

But it was unlikely that they could find me. My parents would not be looking in the hospitals for a pregnant woman because I hadn’t yet told them about the baby. When their searches proved fruitless, they would reasonably surmise that I had died in the attack and that my body was among the many unidentifiable remains.

I thought about sending them a message. To tell them that I was alive, that I was here. But what would my mother say? She had already abandoned one child who didn’t turn out to her liking. What would she say to this one? I wasn’t sure that I wanted to find out just yet. I needed to know more about my prognosis before taking that step.

Jane bustled in around suppertime with a tray containing soup and applesauce. She set them down and fluffed my pillows back into a sitting position. “I know it’s not comfortable, dear, but we have our rules.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “I’ll tell you what. When my shift ends, I’ll let you do whatever you want with them, and maybe you can get a few hours of good rest before anyone notices.”

Then she pulled up a chair and sat beside me.

“Now, let’s take a good look underneath these.” She took one of my hands and started unrolling the gauze. I felt almost nothing, as the medicine was strong. I thought back to another time, so long ago now, where I’d unrolled my stocking after the day of the festival. I inched it down over the scrape on my leg, and I could remember how much it hurt. I could remember, too, how Kyle watched me there in that old barn, and how I knew for the first time what he felt for me. I winced from the pain of that memory. But, as to my current state, I remained numb.

Jane continued. “We’ve been changing these every day to keep them clean. Then we wash you down with cold water. You had a lot of blisters in the beginning, so we left those alone, and they’re starting to look better now.”

She kept my attention on her face until she was finished.

“All right. Now your right hand got the worst of it, so I thought I’d start there. Because after that, everything else will be better.”

I looked down and shook involuntarily when I saw myself. My arm was covered with red-and-white splotches, and in some small areas, a layer of skin had been removed altogether. You could see the outlines of where the blisters had been, but like she said, they’d done well with those. There would be permanent scarring, no doubt, but not like there might have been.

When I had taken in the reality of the first one, she unwrapped the second one. It had more mobility and all of the same markings but was somewhat lighter.

“You see what I mean? This one isn’t so bad.”

I looked down at my formerly graceful hand and saw a void where my wedding ring had been. “Where is my ring?” My goodness, my voice sounded different. Scratchy. A few notes lower on a musical scale.

“We have a safe downstairs with everyone’s valuables, and I put it in there. It’s yours whenever you want it.”

“Why do I sound this way?”