At least, now, he could see, and what he saw, when he finally managed to crawl into the room, was a woman with her nightdress rucked up to her thighs, lying across a mound of rubble. One leg was dark, covered in dried blood, the other fish-white. He couldn’t see her face or upper body, but the size of the thighs alone told him she was heavy, quite possibly a dead weight. She wasn’t moving. He tried not to hope she was dead. Dead, she could wait till morning. Alive, she was a nightmare.
As he’d thought, the roof was open to the sky. Searchlights probing banks of cloud cast a shifting light across the debris. Table, more or less intact — she must have been sheltering under that when the ceiling came in — bed broken, chair smashed, sink smashed, chamber pot mysteriously intact — and feathers everywhere. A blizzard of feathers. Bright orange flashes — three as he watched — lit up the room, each accompanied by the thud of high explosive. The walls shook. A saucepan skittered across the floor and came to rest by the sink.
Still not knowing if she was alive or conscious, he started saying the usual comforting words. “Don’t worry, love, we’ll soon have you out.” Reaching her ankle, he thought he detected warmth. Not much, but then for God knows how long she’d been lying in a room open to the sky. He crawled along her side till he was level with her shoulders and felt for a pulse in her neck. Irregular, but no mistaking it — she was alive. He tried to assess how badly injured she was, calling out to Charlie on the stairs that he thought she might have broken her leg. He didn’t like the angle of that knee.
Her eyes flickered open. “Hello, love,” he said. “Well, this is a right pickle, isn’t it?” A moan from the white-crusted lips. “Do you think you can stand?”
Before she could answer, a lump of plaster fell from the ceiling, narrowly missing his head. “Fucking hell.”
Charlie from the stairs: “You all right?”
“Never better.”
“We’re going to have to dig you out.”
They’d never get her down the stairs, not without moving that beam. Lying flat on his back, he stared through the hole in the roof. Flares blossomed and faded, each casting a trembling light across the floor. He listened to the sounds of scuffling and scraping on the stairs, then, propping himself up on his elbow, found himself gazing straight into her eyes. Christ, she was sweating, a slippery, cold sheen bringing with it the stench of fear and pain. “Not long now, love. They’ve just gone to get the shovels, they’ll have us out in no time.” No response. “I’m Paul. What’s your name?”
“Bertha.”
Was it her? My God, it was. He remembered her labored breathing as she climbed onto the platform, and thought: She’s not going to last.
A few minutes later came a renewed scrabbling on the stairs and Charlie’s hand appeared, waving a bottle of water. Paul crawled across to get it, and trickled some into her open mouth until she choked and turned her head away. Then he moistened his own lips. He’d have liked to take a good swig but he didn’t know how long he’d have to make the bottle last. He could hear shovels now, digging into the rubble. By rights, they should have left the building and waited for a rescue squad, but he knew they wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t rest till they got her out.
Bertha lay motionless, her eyes closed, breathing through her open mouth. He’d wriggled into the narrow space between her and the wall and now lay pressed against her vast bulk. The film of sweat between his body and hers was acutely unpleasant. In the circumstances they were in, that shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. He tried to ease himself away from her, but there was no room, and whenever he moved she groaned.
“Yeah, I know,” a man’s voice said. “She turns my stomach too — all that lard.”
Paul froze, then made himself turn towards the voice. She looked different. Where before, there’d been only double chins and flabby cheeks, there was now the suggestion of a jaw. How could anybody change physically, like that?
“So, you know, go easy on her.” The voice was beginning to slur into silence. “She’s a poor beggar.”
Charlie’s voice from the stairs. “Paul, that you?”
So he’d heard it too. “Yes, don’t worry, it’s all right.”
Paul struggled to sit up, to free himself from the slime of sweat. Looking down at the fat, pallid face, he was inclined to doubt the evidence of his ears. His eyes. She seemed to be unconscious. He pushed up one eyelid, even shone the torch into her eyes, but there was no response.
“Paul, you still in there?” Brian this time.
“No, I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Don’t worry, mate. Soon have you out.”
It was what they said over and over again to people who were injured or trapped, only now they were saying it to him. He’d become a victim, no longer one of the team.
“You OK? Only we thought—”
“Fine!” he shouted back. Easier to say that than try to explain what he didn’t understand anyway. More questions; ignoring them, he turned back to her. Her lips moved, but the voice was, once again, not hers. Even in this hot, stuffy darkness, he was drenched in a cold sweat, his own this time. It was a relief when she fell silent.
It took nearly an hour of heaving and shoveling to clear the stairs. They were almost through when a rescue squad arrived and tried to take over. A row broke out as to why the wardens were in the building at all. Paul heard a squeaky, querulous voice laying down the law, or trying to, then Charlie: “You can go fuck yourself, mate, we’re not budging.”
All this time, Paul had been listening to a constant trickle of plaster dust, the minute creaks and rustles and sudden heart-stopping lurches as the stricken building shifted its center of gravity. Another bottle of water was passed through. He gave some to her, relieved when she seemed to be swallowing, before taking several huge swigs himself. Grit everywhere: between his teeth, in his nostrils, in his eyes. He seemed to be breathing dust. A voice from the past: a doctor he’d consulted a few years ago in Harley Street, after one particularly bad winter. “You have to take better care of your chest. Have you thought of spending the winter abroad?” He was laughing, still laughing when Charlie’s head appeared, level with the floor. “Glad you think it’s funny, mate.”
Paul could cheerfully have kissed him. Charlie inched forward, pressing down hard with his hands before trusting his weight to another foot of sagging floor. When, finally, he reached Paul, he clapped him on the shoulder, then looked down incredulously at the prone woman. “By heck, the size of her.” He was whispering, but the sound registered on her face.
“Do you think we can get her down?” Paul asked.
“Bloody got to, mate. Can’t leave her here.”
“Get some of the others?”
Charlie shook his head. “Floor won’t take it.” He crawled round to Bertha’s other side and wiggled his hands underneath her till his fingers were clasping Paul’s in a desperate, painful grip. “Right. Count of three.”
As soon as they tried to move her, she started to moan but also, embarrassingly, to apologize. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, love,” Charlie said. “Blame Hitler.”
Finally, they managed to drag her farther away from the wall. Paul got behind her, put his hands under her armpits and heaved her into a semi-upright position, aware, but in a totally detached way, that at one point they formed a perfect, if grotesque, pietà. Then they half dragged, half carried her across the floor, and lowered her through what remained of the doorway into Brian’s waiting arms. Still, in between screams and moans, she kept apologizing for her weight. “I’m sorry, I’m so heavy,” she said. “I can’t help it, I hardly eat a thing.” “Sure you don’t, love,” Brian said. He’d make a joke of it later, but he was tender with her now.