Ania hardly spoke again on their way back to Ashchurch Avenue. They said goodbye at the corner, and Joan listened to her footsteps echoing past the neat privet hedges, then heard her knock at Miss Mellor’s front door, which opened cautiously to admit her into a dim hall.
As Joan walked slowly home, she was thinking a lot about Ania: about the terrible experiences she had been through and her bravery at putting up with her current situation. Joan felt much closer to her now that she had heard her story, and was rather ashamed that she had not taken more trouble to befriend her before.
Joan had always been able to take the security of family life for granted – the in-jokes, the occasional rows and jealousy, people around to chat to in the evenings and back you up when things went wrong. She could hardly imagine what life would be like without it.
She reached home only just in time before the air-raid siren started. Another raid on Liverpool tonight. And, as though a visit from the Luftwaffe wasn’t bad enough, Captain Ronnie Harper Jones was in the front room again, chatting to Mum. Joan managed to slip past without being spotted. Being treated to another airing of Ronnie’s views on refugees and foreigners in general was more than she could stand after her conversation with Ania.
The bombing was particularly ferocious that night. All the family lay awake until the early hours listening to the ack-ack guns and the barrage of explosives pounding the Liverpool docks.
Next morning they all slept late, and got up exhausted to find that a letter from Dai had arrived for Audrey. As usual, she clutched it tightly and ran upstairs to her room to read it in private. A long time passed before she reappeared with tear-stained cheeks to tell them the news. Dai had posted the letter just before being sent back to sea again without shore leave.
“Not even twenty-four hours!” Audrey moaned. “He’ll be at sea again by now. But he says he’s going to think about me a lot when he’s on night watch, and he’ll write as soon as he can and post the letter when his ship docks, wherever that is. The name of the port will be censored, anyway, of course…” Her voice trailed off and she looked so forlorn that none of them knew what to say to comfort her.
“Keep writing back, anyway,” Mum suggested, as cheerfully as she could. “And, look, why don’t you drop over to see Dai’s mum and dad today? I’m sure they could do with a bit of company, and they’d love to see you. You could take them some of the cake that’s left over from the tea I made yesterday for Ania.”
“If Ronnie Harper Jones hasn’t scoffed it already,” said Brian bitterly.
Mum ignored this.
It was Saturday morning and Joan’s turn for collecting salvage again. As she was standing by the gate, waiting for Ross and Derek to turn up with the handcart, she wondered if she should ask Ania to join them. She was just thinking that they might walk over to Miss Mellor’s when Doreen and David came past.
“Guess what!” said Doreen. “Ross and Derek went out on their bikes last night, right in the middle of the air raid! They did it for a dare – cycled all the way up to the top of Bidston Hill and watched the incendiary bombs falling on Birkenhead docks!”
“Crikey!” said Joan. “Their mums must have had a fit.”
“Ross’s mum was. She was worried stiff. Derek’s mum was out somewhere and didn’t find out until afterwards.” Doreen paused briefly, exchanging looks with Joan. They all knew the rumours about Derek’s mum, which were darkly hinted at by the catty gossipmongers who gathered for coffee at the Bluebell Cafe. Rumours the children were not supposed to hear, about how she went out to dance halls in the evenings with servicemen who were stationed locally while Derek’s dad was away serving in the army. Derek was often left alone at home, even when there was an air raid.
It was a local scandal, never to be mentioned in the presence of the young, but, of course, they all knew about it. Joan seethed with anger on Derek’s behalf – they all did – and admired the way he maintained his air of cocky nonchalance in spite of everything.
“Talk about brave!” said David. “I wouldn’t have had the nerve to go out in an air raid like that. But I’ll bet it was exciting!”
The three of them walked in silence up the road and hovered on the corner.
“Perhaps they won’t be coming today,” Joan said hopefully – she hated collecting salvage. But within minutes, there they were – Ross and Derek, trundling their handcart behind them as usual, but perhaps with an extra hint of a swagger. They parked the cart beside the pavement and paused to light up a couple of cigarettes, taking their time and keeping their audience on tenterhooks.
“Tell us what happened!” said Doreen. “Did you really go out in the middle of the air raid?”
“Yeah. It was great,” said Derek. “We could see the Jerry bombers overhead and all – and the flares. They were hitting the docks, all right. Fires everywhere.”
“You’re crazy!” said Doreen. “You could have been killed.”
“Nah.” Derek blew out a ring of smoke and looked at her out of the corner of his eye, carefully registering the impression he was making. “We were up on Bidston Hill. The bombs weren’t aimed anywhere near us. Well, not very near. But the noise was terrible, from the explosions and all – and the warehouses were burning.”
“We’d have stayed longer, only the air-raid warden came up and chased us off,” Ross told them. “Livid, he was. Thought he was going to burst a blood vessel. Shouted at us. Told us to get off home sharpish and stay in the air-raid shelter until the all clear went!”
“And did you?” Joan asked.
“Yup. But we had a scare on the way home, all right.”
“It was dead spooky,” said Derek. “Pitch-dark because of the blackout. Couldn’t even have our bicycle lamps on either. And we were passing some bombed-out warehouses – weren’t we, Ross? – where there was a whole lot of rubble and broken glass thrown across the road. And that was where we saw them.”
“Saw what?” Doreen asked.
“Bodies. Lying all over the road. Some with no heads. Arms and legs all over the place.”
Joan felt herself go cold with fear. She silently reached for Doreen’s hand.
“Bodies?” murmured David. “How do you mean bodies? Were they all dead? Why wasn’t the ambulance there?”
“No one was there,” said Derek. “Everything was still. None of them moving. I’ve never seen a dead person before, especially not in bits like that. We didn’t know what to do, did we, Ross?”
“Scared me, I can tell you!” said Ross. “So we thought we’d better double back and tell the air-raid warden. He came along with us really quick as soon as we told him. But when we got back there, we were in for another shock.”
“What? What happened?” Joan urged.
“They weren’t stiffs. Not dead people at all.”
“Not dead?”
“Not real! Not live people. It was a clothing warehouse that had been blown up, see,” said Ross. “And all the clothes dummies − those models they put up in shop windows − they’d all got blown out in pieces all over the road.”
Ross paused to enjoy the sharp intake of breath and stunned silence that followed. Very slowly, Joan released her pressure on Doreen’s hand.
“My mum was doing her nut in when I got home,
I can tell you!” he said. “But we’re going to try it again if we can, aren’t we, Derek? Beats trying to get to sleep in a smelly air-raid shelter any time!”