I felt sick, like I’d eaten too much, and the stuff I’d eaten was bad. I felt as if I was going to explode, me, myself, going to explode with all the bad things that were so hard to understand, that were filling me up so I couldn’t make sense of any of them.
Why did Mavis have to run off that day of all days? And why did my mum have to go to the pictures and leave me in charge of her? Where had they got to and how was I ever going to find them when, although I knew I was in Boquhanran Park, everything round about it was upside down and on fire?
A woman ran past where I was staring. She was screaming and had no coat, like me. One of her arms was hanging by her side and flashed red in the light from the bombs. I watched her go up the hill. The smoke was not as thick in the park but the smell of it was in my cardigan as I wiped my face with my sleeve. I gagged and shook because I was so afraid that there was a bomb inside me and it was exploding in there already. I was so scared because even the thought of Mavis didn’t feel right, the very thought of her. And when I started retching I stuck my hand in my pocket for the shoe that might have been hers and pulled it out and squeezed it hard with both hands until it hurt and prickled, and I looked at my hands and saw through my tears that they were glistening as if they were covered with diamonds and dark with blood.
I looked up again because another bomb had landed not far off. I hadn’t been watching the sky and there might be another one, with my name on it, as my mum would say, although not usually about bombs. There was a man in a dark uniform coming towards me.
‘Get into the shelters everyone!’ he shouted. He was an ARP warden I noticed and, also, he was the man from the chip shop, Mr Chippie we called him. Why would Mr Chippie be wearing an Air Raid Protection warden’s uniform? Who was looking after the chips? Perhaps his wife was there all by herself.
‘Hello,’ he said, squatting down in front of me, where I sat on the grass. He spoke so quietly I could hardly hear him.
I looked beyond him at the sky, turning my head all around. I had to watch for bombs.
‘You should be in a shelter,’ he said. ‘You can’t sit here with nothing over your head.’
I put my hand on my head. It felt odd. My hair seemed to have shrunk and there was sticky stuff like jam over my ear. It didn’t feel like me. I didn’t understand so I kept checking the sky, but most of the parachutes seemed to be further away now.
‘We need to get your head seen to,’ he said.
He wore a helmet which was reflecting the little stars of light that were streaking across the sky as if they were sliding around on top of his head. He had a torch which he turned on and pointed at my face.
‘Oh!’ he said suddenly, giving me a fright. I wondered if he’d been hit by a bomb. ‘You’re Lenny. You were in my shop.’
I looked into his face. The strap under his chin was too tight and his face was dirty, not like if he was in his shop. He was always very clean in his shop.
‘Where’s your mum and your wee sister, what’s-her-name?’
‘Mavis. Have you seen them? She ran away from me down at the canal while I was fishing out her shoe.’ I waved the shoe at him.
‘No, I haven’t seen them, but I’m sure they’ll be safe in a shelter somewhere, where you should be. Come on and I’ll take you somewhere you can get patched up.’
‘I don’t need patching up. I need to find Mavis, and my mum.’
‘Lenny, I have to go and see to other people too so you must come with me now. Okay? Right now. If you like I can carry you, or if you can, you can walk. We have to go out of the park and down Kilbowie Road to the picture house. You like the pictures, don’t you?’
I leapt to my feet.
‘My mum might be in there with a nice young man,’ I said, ‘but I haven’t got Mavis. She’ll be angry because I lost Mavis and she’ll give me a r . . . .’
‘If your mum is in there,’ he interrupted me, ‘she’ll be chuffed to bits to see you, with or without Mavis.’
‘But I’ve got to find Mavis. I can’t go into a shelter because then she won’t be able to find me either, if I’m in there. Honestly, you don’t understand.’
‘Okay then, I’ll take you to the picture house and then I’ll go and find Mavis for you. You see, I’ve got this hat on to protect me.’ He tapped it twice with his knuckles. ‘You don’t have one of those so you should be indoors where it’s safe. And look, I found you, didn’t I? Now, let’s go before it’s too late.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I wasn’t sure because my mum said I shouldn’t go with strangers and he sort of was one, but he was an ARP man too and I had to take his word for it that my mum would be ‘chuffed to bits’ to see me, with or without Mavis.
‘Where do you live?’ he said.
I told him, and I told him that I couldn’t go home because the building was on fire, and he said yes, he knew.
‘Can I hold your hand?’ he said. ‘Is it sore?’
‘No, I mean yes . . . ow!’
‘In that case, I’ll hold your arm here.’ He put his big hand around the top part of my arm.
‘Ow!’ I said.
He tried the other one very, very gently and it was alright. I looked up along the length of his arm, up towards his big dark shoulder and somehow the bombs inside me seemed to have stopped crackling so much, though they were still fizzing away, and I wished my dad wasn’t missing presumed dead.
Mr Chippie smelled of chips, of smoky chip fat which clung to your nose and made you want to wrinkle it up, but only while we were still standing on the hill, in the park. As soon as we left the park the billows of smoke came all around us, and some other horrible stink that I couldn’t name covered the smell of fat completely. We both coughed and coughed and when I looked at him a few minutes later when he was wondering which way to go I saw that he was crying, although he only looked serious, not sad. He wiped the tears away with a dirty rag from his pocket, and took hold of my shoulder again.
We picked our way through the blazing streets, dodging falling stone and watching the sky. That was my job because he said he could see how good at it I was, checking the sky. He was checking the houses. That was what he was good at but he must have been checking me too because every time I looked at the houses or round about me he told me to concentrate and leave the buildings to him.
We passed my school, big and solid, quietly dignified in the flickering shadows, and I felt less sick. Then we heard the whiz of a bomb behind us and ran for cover in a nearby close. His free arm pulled me into his stomach and I smelled the chips again.
‘Phew!’ he said. ‘That was a close one! Shame you don’t have eyes in the back of your head like my wife.’ I felt his grip tremble on my arm and after we seemed to have been there a long time and there was no more debris flying about I said, ‘We better get going then.’ I didn’t know what to call him. ‘Um, Mr . . . Chippie? My arm?’
So we got going, but what a sight we saw: the whole row of houses, as far as I could see was on fire, gigantic flames billowing out from the windows four floors high, at least a hundred feet, mountainous spikes of flame creeping over the roofs, and all across the street there was glass and bits of people’s homes; and despite the noise of the blaze and the drone overhead I could hear things exploding inside the houses, like the explosions in my head, like I could hear the inside of my stomach. I held on tight to his coat with my sore hands and he held on to me.
‘Watch the ground, Lenny,’ he said. ‘Nothing else . . . well, okay, the sky too, but make sure you know what you’re walking on.’
Glass is what it was, sliding together like bits of ice, and stones and bricks, and broken furniture sticking up at angles waiting to catch us. Pressed close to the buildings on the side of the street that wasn’t burning, we made our way down the hill, running from close to close, taking shelter in each as we went. He held my arm tight, his great bulk shielding me from the heat and he rushed me down the street so fast my feet flew over the debris. Great booms and bangs burst somewhere close by and fires seemed to start up everywhere.
‘Annie! Annie!’ he called suddenly. ‘Annie!’
We’d stopped just inside another close. My back was against the wall.
‘Close your eyes, Lenny,’ he said, ‘and stand there and don’t move.’
I looked at him, amazed.
‘Close them!’
I closed them, though it didn’t seem like a good idea. Who was going to look at the sky now? He was holding my shoulders.
‘Now, don’t open them whatever you do until I say so. Alright?’ His voice had gone hard but I could barely hear him. I nodded. He let go of me. The whistling of the falling bombs seemed to have made its way inside my head and got stuck. I didn’t like having to close my eyes with that noise in there and I began to feel sick again. I heard small explosions beside me like doors banging and somebody brushed past me. I couldn’t hear Mr Chippie any more. I was adrift in a sea of fire and debris.
I opened my eyes. There was a lady lying on the ground in front of me. Her face was black, as if the soot had fallen down her chimney but it was shiny soot and she was asleep. She must have had a leg tucked up behind her because I could only see one. Her dress was torn and I wondered how she could sleep in the middle of all that. I was going to waken her when Mr Chippie came back.
‘Lenny, don’t touch her!’ he said, quickly as if it was all one word, and he grabbed my hand. And I understood what I wanted not to know – that this lady was dead and that her leg had come off, and there was red blood on the grey paving stones of the close floor.
‘Annie, will you take wee Lenny with you to the La Scala while I get the others out.’ He wasn’t speaking to me. I had been staring at the dead lady and when I looked up I saw another lady dressed like my mum in a grey coat but with no hat. She was a bit younger than my mum and had a baby wrapped in a blue blanket in her arms. They both had streaks of dust down their faces. I looked at her. I wanted Mr Chippie.
‘I’ll stay with you,’ I said to Mr Chippie.
‘Go with Annie. I need to stay here just now.’
‘But . . . .’
‘Go quickly, Lenny. There’s no time,’ he said, ‘and I have to find Mavis.’
‘Promise,’ I said, telling not asking.
‘Yes, now go!’
He put a hand on Annie’s shoulder and then on mine and pushed us out onto what was left of the pavement and turned back into the close.
Annie didn’t hold my hand or my shoulder. She held her baby and glanced back at me a couple of times to make sure I was still there. The heat was so intense it was making me see things funny and my face felt tight again. I couldn’t hear her over the noise when she finally stopped and turned and spoke to me, but I saw her point down to a break in the burning buildings. It was a road and she wanted me to go through the fire with her. I shook my head: I wasn’t going down there to be killed but she frowned back at me then grabbed my cardigan and pulled the back of it up to my head, indicating I should cover my head, then she took a firm hold of my hand and pulled me forwards with her.
Another window frame crashed behind me and I took a big breath of courage and hurried on so that she could let go of me and together we stole through the gap in the wall of fire, her back bent over the baby, me with my grey cardigan pulled about my face. I watched the ground, glancing only momentarily at the buildings, forgetting the sky for the moment.
And then she fell. I didn’t notice at first because I was up ahead of her and when I glanced around I was alone and the heat was making everything ripple and move, like when leaves get caught in a corner. But I saw something I guessed was her on the ground and ran back.
She was on her side, her back still arched round the baby and there was a big piece of stone over her legs. She was squealing like a pig in my uncle’s yard. It made a pain start in my tummy and I couldn’t move. Then a huge bang in one of the buildings nearby woke me up. I pulled and shoved to get the stone off her, but she seemed to scream all the more and nothing happened; it wouldn’t move. She caught my grey cardigan in her hand and pulled me down to her.
‘Get someone!’ she said, her eyes big and wild and staring at me. She’d stopped squealing now and was whining like a dog. The baby was still, like the woman in the close. ‘Take the baby,’ she said.
As I looked about me for someone to get, three women and a string of kids from my school came into the street the same way we had come, all covered in blood, clothes torn and black faces.
‘There’s a woman down here! There’s a woman down here!’ I said and I waved my arms about my head.
‘Take the baby!’ said Annie. I lifted her arm off him. The arm was limp and so was the baby.
‘Here he goes,’ I said. ‘I’ve got him. Don’t worry,’ and I tried to smile but it hurt because of the heat on my face, and because he seemed very dead.
‘Take him now. What’s your name? Lenny? I thought you were a girl.’
‘I am a girl,’ I said. ‘Leonora.’
‘Thanks, Leonora. Bye Davie.’
Why would she think I was a boy?
Two of the women were trying to lift the stone that was on Annie’s legs when I left. I pulled the baby tight into my chest as if to squeeze some life back into him. He wasn’t like other babies I had held, the lady next door’s or Auntie May’s when she visited last summer, all bursting with life, solid and warm. He hung over my arm as if he wanted to slide to the glassy ground, as if he’d had enough and didn’t want to go any further. I didn’t like carrying him. I was angry that I had to. What about Mavis?
There was another bang behind me, the slow rumbling bang of a building falling, like the big anchor chains at the dockside, and then I caught up with the kids from my school who, like me, were picking their way lightly over the hot debris.
And just along another few yards there rose the big white building that was the La Scala picture house.