Sunday, 10 November 1940
‘Here, we need some help down here.’
The morning light after a raid always brought a stark view of the city. It had been a busy night, but then it always was when there was a raid on. All they could do was respond to the fires, or sit back and watch, but the morning brought new light. On his rounds Anthony got to see which parts of Liverpool no longer existed, which homes had been destroyed. Sometimes there were fires still smouldering under the piles of bricks and masonry. Far too often there were those who had become trapped.
The rescue men working in the area were miners brought in from Wales. He relished the accent, reminding him of a simpler time. They didn’t know the city as well as he did, but they were hard workers, and at times he had heard them singing songs as they worked. This morning was too solemn for such an occasion.
‘Grab some timber, will you? Anything strong that’ll hold some weight.’
‘Warden?’
That was Sid, asking for his help. Anthony nodded to himself, then crossed the road to one of the ruined houses. Its first floor had caved in, like the ruins of some kind of castle. The floorboards had burned away, but some of the thick beams that held the floor up were still there. He tried to pick one up, but the splinters cut at his hands, even through his gloves, and it wouldn’t budge. Towards the corner of the room a table had fallen over, one of its legs missing from the blast. It would have to do.
He pushed it over, and with a kick removed the remaining two and a half legs. The board was as sturdy as any piece of timber he would be able to find. When he couldn’t lift it, Sid appeared and helped him drag it over to the miners. With a grateful nod they took it and started placing bricks around it to form some kind of lintel. They were digging into the building, and it was only then that Anthony recognised where he was.
He could just about make out the varnished wood panelling, buried beneath the stone work. This was the place he came to work, every day. The school had been destroyed.
His knees almost buckled beneath him, but he held on to Sid for a moment.
‘You all right, lad?’ Sid asked, and Anthony could only nod in reply.
He had known others to lose their homes or their places of work, but this was the first time the war had directly affected him. What would he do now? He could appeal to one of the other schools in the area, but it was unlikely they were looking for any staff. There was money put aside in his bank account, but it probably wouldn’t last the war. He would have to see if he could get permanent work as a warden.
‘There’s someone down here,’ one of the miners called back over his shoulder. ‘There’s definitely someone down here, there is!’
Everyone around visibly tensed, but the miners redoubled their efforts, digging even faster than they had been before. Anthony desperately wanted to help, but he would only get in the way. He must have mumbled something to Sid, who had a similar response.
‘Keep calm? Yeah, bloody right. Who’s keeping calm with all this mess going on?’
Sid was never one to guard his words, and it was one of the things that Anthony appreciated about him. Anthony himself had never found he could simply say what was on his mind, especially as a teacher with young children around. It made him laugh, but Sid didn’t look like laughing.
‘I heard those posters were unauthorised,’ he continued. ‘Too bloody right. Rather than keeping my morale up, they make me want to grab a gun and shoot whoever was stupid enough to come up with that slogan in the first place. Next they’ll be telling us we’re all in this together and we just have to pull together. What, while they sit in their palaces and make us do all the work? Makes me blood boil, that.’
Anthony heard a gasp, but it had not been Sid. It was as if the miners, having completed their dig, had collectively released a sigh of tension. Instinctively, Anthony stepped closer.
There was a shape trapped down there, only visible because it was different to the straight edges of the fallen masonry, more organic, more alive. Only, it no longer appeared alive. It wasn’t moving. As he scrabbled down the loose bricks, almost losing his footing more than once, he realised that the shape was smaller than those he was used to seeing in the rubble. It was a boy, maybe ten or eleven years old going by the size of the boys in his class. He half expected the boy to be wearing a uniform, but instead he was dressed in tattered rags that had once been a smart brown waistcoat and trousers. Anthony might have worn something very much like that himself.
It was Jones.
What had the boy been doing in the school during a raid? Anthony stumbled over the broken building, drawn by impulse alone. He had not expected to lose the school, but it was even worse to see one of his pupils buried amongst the wreckage.
‘Jones?’ he asked the still shape.
One of the miners put an arm across Anthony. At first he thought it was to stop him falling, but then he saw the man shake his head.
‘He’s gone, he is,’ the miner said, soft and lyrical. ‘There was no helping him.’