Darkest Before Dawn (27 page)

‘The poor people,' Toby muttered. ‘I hope to God they were given some warning before the bombs began to fall. Then at least they might have saved themselves, even if their homes and businesses were gone for good.'

Boysie snorted. ‘This is war, you fool,' he said roughly. ‘What warning did we have that the bleedin' Belgians were going to give in and the French were going to retreat through our lines? It were a complete shambles and we were caught up in the middle of it.'

Someone stumbling along beside them said quietly: ‘We might have guessed something of the sort would happen, though. Half of us never got no equipment and what we did have had been used by our dads during the last lot. Them Germans know what they're doing and that bleedin' Führer of theirs knows what they need 'cos they practised during the Spanish Civil War. And they've got the most modern stuff you could wish for.'

Another voice, this one with a Scottish accent, spoke out of the darkness. ‘Them poor bloody Belgians though; they fought like tigers, blew up the bridges, did their best to keep the Huns out, unlike the French. If the Frogs hadn't broken and retreated through our ranks, I reckon we could have made a stand.'

‘Ah well, fellers, you know what they say:
He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day
.'

It was an older voice and Toby, peering through the darkness, caught a glimpse of greying hair above the man's dirt-smeared face and guessed he must be a regular, aware of a thing or two which the volunteers had yet to learn. He grinned at the man. ‘That's what General Brooke's hoping, I imagine – that we can somehow get across the Channel, re-equip ourselves, and fight on,' he said. ‘But how they mean to get us back is beyond me.' He gestured to the ruined town ahead of them. ‘Look what they've done there! If we reach the beaches, then I reckon as soon as daylight comes the aircraft will be over our heads again, strafing anything that moves. And we can't fight back, 'cos they made us destroy all our weapons.'

‘I hung on to my rifle for a bit,' Boysie remarked, ‘but it were heavy and I'd no ammunition for it, so there weren't no point.' He turned to Toby. ‘At least we can both swim, old feller, and it looks as though it may come to that.'

Someone ahead of them turned. ‘Less of that, lad,' he said in a broad Yorkshire accent. ‘My brother's in the Royal Navy; the Senior Service won't let us down.'

Toby and Boysie crawled through the sand dunes as dawn was beginning to blanch the sky in the east. They looked down towards the sea and Toby thought that the beach was now no longer a strand but a battleground. There were huge craters where bombs had dropped, and bodies that once had sprawled in the sun now sprawled in the abandonment of death. Yet, as the light strengthened, he could see the lines of patient men snaking down towards and into the sea, until some of them were up to their shoulders in water. Toby realised that the slope of the beach was very long and the water correspondingly shallow, which meant, of course, that the patiently hovering ships could not come in to pick up the men they had been sent to save. Instead, little boats were ferrying the troops out to the larger vessels, working indomitably through the hail of machine-gun bullets, the crash and thunder of falling bombs, and the devilish shriek of the Stukas.

Boysie hoisted himself up on to his knees. ‘We'd best be moving down or we'll get left,' he said huskily. ‘If only we had an ack-ack battery then we could fight back. Where's the RAF then?'

Toby shrugged. No use complaining, or feeling bitter. And no use joining the long queues until there was at least a chance that you might get to the head of one and be taken off. Hunger gnawed at his belly and fear gnawed at his mind, but he knew he must ignore both, as everyone on these accursed beaches was ignoring them. He heaved a sigh and moved to a more comfortable position, and as he did so something rustled in the breast pocket of his battle dress. A letter? Wearily, he unbuttoned the flap and drew out a piece of paper in which was wrapped . . . good God, it was Evie's Christmas present. He felt a smile begin, then felt tears rise, unbidden. He choked them back and held out the cigarettes to the men nearest him. ‘Anyone gorra match?' he enquired rather unsteadily, and ignored the ribald comment, ‘Your face and my arse', which immediately came from three separate throats. Good old Evie. He had tucked the cigarettes away and forgotten all about them and now, when he needed something desperately, there they were.

Evie was sitting at the kitchen table, spreading margarine on slices of bread, when Seraphina burst into the kitchen. It was a warm day and her coat had flown open and the neat cotton frock she had donned to go to her college classes that morning already looked weary, but her face was alight with excitement. ‘Evie, they're taking them off,' she said, her voice pitched higher than usual and her eyes bright. ‘The BEF, I mean. I met one of my old customers from Lyon's – he's a rating in the Royal Navy now, and he says he's been ordered back to his ship and they're going to set off for France right away. Everyone's going . . . why, the good old Mersey ferries are going . . . so it looks as though our fellers must have reached the coast. Oh, God, I hope Toby – and all our other friends – will be home in a day or so.'

Evie threw down her knife and jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, Fee, if only you're right,' she said, seeing her sister's face through a blur of sudden tears. ‘Is there anything we can do to help? I can row a boat, you know, and I'm sure I could help stoke, if they need stokers.'

Seraphina laughed. ‘There's nothing we can do up here. It would be different if we lived down south, at one of the channel ports, but the fellers will probably be put on trains once they get back to England and end up all over the place. My customer said he thought they were going to be sent back to where they first volunteered. As for being able to row, what do you think the Channel is – the lake at Prince's Park? No, the boats that go across the Channel will be ships really, like the
Daffodil
and the
Iris
, but I expect they'll want volunteers to man the railway stations because whenever the trains stop the WVS will be handing out sandwiches and hot drinks, or so they say.'

‘Who says?' Evie said, almost dancing with impatience. ‘I want to help – I want to help! It's all right for you and Angie, you're both doing something towards the war effort, but even my knitting isn't good enough . . . no, don't deny it, I caught Angie unpicking that scarf I were making for Toby and knitting it up again without the holes.'

Seraphina giggled. ‘Look, you do as much as any other kid your age,' she said. ‘But as for helping in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force . . . well, that isn't for children, particularly girls. I don't want to hurt your feelings, queen, but you are only twelve. And come to that, training to be a teacher isn't what I'd call war work.'

Evie heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘But you knit lovely. You must have made at least twenty pairs of mittens for the troops and yards and yards of scarves,' she observed. She ran across the kitchen and reached down her coat from the hook at the back of the door. ‘Just tell Mam I'm going down to the Pier Head to find out what's going on and see if I can help,' she said. ‘I may be gone ages and ages, so none of you are to worry.' She began to turn the handle, then looked back over her shoulder at her sister, her face alive with mischief. ‘I reckon they'll bring your Roger home if they're bringing the BEF back, because France won't be safe for anyone,' she observed. ‘Then I suppose you'll get married – more fool you! I'd sooner marry Toby any day, meself.'

Seraphina opened her mouth to protest just as the door slammed behind her sister, so she sat down in the chair Evie had vacated and began spreading margarine on the loaf her mother had thoughtfully sliced before going down to work in the shop. She wondered just what her sister intended to do. She suspected that it would probably include activities of which their mother would disapprove, such as trying to sneak aboard one of the ships bound for the rescue mission, but she had sufficient faith in the seamen to believe that Evie's attempts to board would be thwarted. And if she wants to help the WVS, then why not, Seraphina thought, spreading furiously. In half an hour, Angie and her mother would come in from their respective jobs and be glad to have a meal already prepared for them. Not that bread and marge was a meal, exactly, but there was the good smell of stew coming from the big black pan on the stove and another pot, which she guessed held potatoes, was just waiting to be pulled over the flame. Evie says she does nothing for the war effort, but enabling Mam and Angie to get on with their work and come home to a decent meal is more than I do, Seraphina told herself. And I wonder if she's right and Roger really will come home from France? That would be wonderful.

Roger was piloting a Spitfire now, and eight weeks ago had been sent to France – before that he had been really far away, in Rhodesia, learning his trade – where she supposed he would now be attacking the Luftwaffe and defending the retreat of the BEF. Seraphina smiled down at the beautiful sapphire ring, with its encircling diamonds, which graced the third finger of her left hand. Dear Roger! He had wanted to marry her before he left for Rhodesia, but her mother had said firmly that if one married in haste one repented at leisure, and had begged her not to do anything so rash. Seraphina had been tempted to ignore her mother's words but had finally complied, mainly because her teacher training course was an intensive one and allowed her little or no time to plan the sort of wedding she would have liked. However, if he really did come home now, she thought that they would marry after she'd taken her final exams in June, only a matter of two weeks away.

She got up from her seat to pull the potato saucepan over the heat and move the stew off it and heard footfalls on the iron stair. Good; it would be Angie returning from her work at the uniform factory. Seraphina smiled to herself. Angie had changed a lot since starting at the factory, for she had speedily risen, from being an ordinary machinist, to the post of supervisor and hand-finisher. Seraphina had thought Angie would let the girls in her charge ride roughshod over her, but she had been wrong. Other girls at the factory told Seraphina that Angie never shouted or lost her temper and was always willing to spend time explaining how to get the best out of the machines if one of the girls was falling behind with her work. She joined them in the canteen and sometimes went to the pictures with them, yet somehow managed to keep both their respect and their liking and this, Seraphina knew, was no mean feat. Seraphina had done a good deal of practical class work and now knew the narrow path one had to tread between being liked and losing the respect of her pupils. Seraphina loved to be popular but recognised that popularity can sometimes only be bought by losing control, and she admired Angie greatly, for her sister could not send a rowdy machinist to the headmaster for punishment, or give her six hard wallops on the palm of her hand with the classroom ruler as a teacher could.

Seraphina pulled the pan of potatoes over the heat and turned to smile as the kitchen door opened. Angie smiled back and came right into the room but did not remove her coat. ‘Have you heard the news, Fee?' she asked, before Seraphina could so much as open her mouth. ‘They're bringing the BEF back from France, which means that Toby will be coming home. A member of the WVS came to the factory asking for volunteers to go down to the station. They say our boys are arriving in a pretty bad state so they want women to hand out sandwiches and hot drinks. The Salvation Army will be there, you may be sure, helping in any way they can, but we all agreed we'd go down to Lime Street as soon as our shift finished, and do anything we could to help.' She looked questioningly at her sister. ‘What about you, Fee? Are you going to come too? I popped into the shop on my way past and told Ma what I was doing. She said she'd like to help but she would do so later in the evening.' She glanced around the kitchen. ‘Where's Evie? I made sure she'd have been indoors by now, helping to get the meal.'

Seraphina laughed shortly. ‘Evie has pipped you at the post,' she said drily. ‘She's gone off down to the Pier Head, hoping to sneak aboard one of the ships bound for France. As if they'd let a kid of her age do anything so crazy! But look, you'd best get something to eat before you go. Will stew and bread and marge do? Only the spuds won't be cooked for twenty minutes or so.'

Angie, however, shook her head, though she reached for the jar of jam and two rounds of bread, and made herself a thick sandwich. ‘I'll eat this on my way to the station,' she said. ‘I'll have the stew when I get in tonight. TTFN, Fee.'

Toby and Boysie spent two days and nights in the sand dunes, dug in against the marram grass with their eyes fixed on the beach below, and their ears resounding with the fearful din of enemy aircraft overhead, and several times with horrendous explosions as one of the ships waiting to take the troops off was hit.

Toby thought that he would never forget the scenes of carnage on the beach below, or the bravery of the men awaiting their turn to be picked up. The little boats took aboard as many men as they could safely hold, heaving them over the gunwales and into the relative safety of their small craft, and then helping them to climb aboard the big ships. There was no panic, no sign that the men were aware of the fearful danger in which they stood. They queued across the sand, then walked stoically into the water, only stopping when it reached their necks. Fortunately, the sea was calm with scarcely a wave disturbing the surface which was just as well, Toby reflected. Had any sort of sea been running, he doubted whether a tenth of the men would have reached the patiently waiting ships.