One night, after Birgit and I had gone to bed, we heard the air-raid sirens drone out their chilling warning. We were both instantly awake, stiff with fear in the dark. I started to climb out of bed.
Birgit said, ‘Don’t go from me.’
‘We should take shelter.’
‘They will not come near us. Stay here with me.’
‘No . . . it’s never safe.’
I helped her out of bed, first propping her up then swinging her legs around. She stood up unsteadily and for a moment we leaned on each other and embraced in the dark. The hard ball of our unborn child pressed between us. The sirens faded away, into ominous silence.
‘Are the planes coming?’
‘I can’t hear them,’ I said. ‘But we mustn’t take chances.’
We pulled on woollen garments for warmth, then picked up our pre-packed emergency bags and went downstairs. We had no special shelter in which to hide, but because the house was built of stone and the staircase ran next to the chimney we had put emergency bedding, lighting and water in the triangular space beneath the steps. I suspected that while I was away Birgit must have spent many nights alone in there.
We crawled into the narrow space and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. We lay with our arms around each other. I could feel the baby moving inside Birgit’s belly, as if it was picking up our feelings of fear.
The sirens started again and almost at once we heard the sound that everyone in Britain dreaded most: the droning, throbbing noise of engines overhead, a Luftwaffe bomber formation coming in, high above. I felt Birgit’s arms tighten around me. The aircraft were passing directly over the village, the characteristic drumming rhythm seeming to shake the stone walls of the house. We braced ourselves for the sound of bombs, the horrifying shriek of the tail whistles, the shocking explosions; I had lived with those for so long in London.
We heard the Manchester guns first: the sharp, shattering bangs, easily distinguished from the sounds of the bombs going off. As always, it was an encouraging noise, lending the sense that the bombers would be warded off. But then, over the racket of the guns, we heard the first bombs as they fell and exploded in the streets.
I could not lie still in the dark with a raid going on so close and despite Birgit’s protests I wriggled away from her, crawled into our darkened hallway and found my coat and shoes. I let myself out of the house. In the dark I crossed the lane and moved up to a mound of earth which I knew would give me a clear view to the north and west.
The sky was rodded with white shafts of searchlights. Bright flashes of anti-aircraft shells exploded briefly in the air by the cloudbase. Trails of tracer bullets raced upwards. The city was already spotted with bright points of orange fire. A glowing static fireball rested in the centre of the city, like a small sun that had alighted there. As I watched, more bombs went off, more fires took hold.
‘Manchester’s getting it again,’ a man’s voice said beside me. ‘Not as big a raid as last time, but getting it bad.’
I nodded my agreement in the darkness and turned towards the sound of the voice. He was standing behind me but there was not enough light from the fires to illuminate his features.
‘Second time since Christmas, isn’t it?’
‘So it is.’
‘I missed the others,’ I said, but as I spoke I realized who the man must be. I said, ‘Isn’t that you, Harry?’
‘That’s right. You’re an old hand at the raids, your missus tells me. Away down south and all that.’
‘I was working.’
‘In London, wasn’t it? Or was it in Wales? Doing a bit of rescuing?’
‘A bit of that,’ I said, finding myself falling into the rhythms of his speech. ‘I’m not going back for more.’
‘You should be down there in Manchester tonight. Looks like they could use an expert like you.’ There was a taunt in his voice, a sort of mocking challenge. He was beginning to needle me.
‘Not now,’ I said.
‘Not your sort of place, is it? Manchester?’
‘I was injured and I’m still suffering the after-effects, if you must know. I’ve had enough for a while. Maybe you should go and volunteer’
‘Not me. I’ve too much to do around the village. Birgit told me you’d been injured. Then you went off vanishing, and that. Your baby’s due next month, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Last week in May’
‘Glad you’re back in the village, Joe,’ Harry said. ‘Birgit needs you with her. Husband shouldn’t be away, at a time like this.’
‘What did you say?’
‘None of my business, I know, but -’
‘That’s right. It’s none of your damned business.’
‘I’m round the village most of the time, Joe, and you’re not. I hate to see a nice young woman alone, baby on the way, and that.’
‘Look, Harry-’
We both ducked reflexively as one of the larger German bombs exploded not far away. London people called them parachute mines: they threw up a distinctive white-yellow ball of explosive fire when they went off. A second or two later, the sound and the blast from the bomb came at us, banging me backwards from where I was standing. I stumbled, recovered my balance and crouched down so that I could watch the rest of the raid.
‘A close one, that,’ Harry said. ‘Still, you must be like those Londoners, used to this kind of thing.’
‘It’s as bad there as it is here,’ I said. ‘But London is bombed most nights.’
‘They’ll be all right. Expect you will be too, when the war’s over. You off on another trip soon, then?’
We stood there together, watching the fires spread, seeing the huge funnels of dark smoke rising, sometimes even glimpsing some of the raiding planes if they swooped low enough to be lit up by the fires on the ground. The explosions were merging into one long roar. A big raid. The second in a month.
‘You want to stay out here and watch a bit longer?’ Harry said. ‘I could go in and see if Birgit’s all right.’
‘What?’
‘It’s no trouble to me. Quite a few times while you’ve been away I’ve been round while there’s been an alert. Just to make sure she’s managing OK. She’s all right with me. Mum and me can take care of her. Don’t you worry, Joe. If anything else happens to you while you’re working, and that, and you don’t come back afterwards, I’ll take care of Birgit. Be my pleasure. She needs a man to look after her.’
I turned to face him, but he was already walking away from me, down the lane, losing himself in the dark.
‘Just you keep away from Birgit, Harry!’ I shouted after him, but there was no reply.
I turned back to watch the rest of the raid, but I found that while the last exchange with Harry had been going on the attack had come to an abrupt end. One by one the stalks of light from the searchlights were switched off, the flames died down, the smoke drifted away, the drone of the engines receded into the distance. The great urban sprawl of Manchester became dark again, blacked out in the night.
xv
We were in the narrow triangular space beneath the stairs, our arms around each other, our unborn baby fretting between us. Birgit was asleep but I snapped awake. I held tight, forcing myself to be still, not to move suddenly so that I might wake her. The baby kicked at me, a small but distinct pressure against my side.
The night was silent. What happened to the raid? There had been the sirens, sounding the alert, but because the authorities never knew exactly where the German planes were heading there were a lot of false alarms. Had there been an all-clear yet? I was testing my memory for reality. Birgit and I had left our bed when the siren sounded, so that had been real. After that, though? The raid, the conversation with Harry outside in the night?