Authors: Lesley Pearse
‘I
wish I hadn’t got to work tomorrow,’ Ruby sighed. She was sitting in an armchair, her legs over the arm.
Verity was busy embroidering some flowers along the edge of a cardigan to try and make it look new. She looked up at her friend. ‘If Wilby catches you sitting like that, you’ll get a rocket for being unladylike,’ she said. ‘But why don’t you want to go? Luke hasn’t got any leave, tomorrow is likely to be as grey and chilly as today, and you’ve always claimed Sunday is tedious with Wilby insisting we go to church.’
‘I don’t know why I don’t want to go, I’ve just got this weird feeling about it,’ Ruby said, and giggled a little. ‘One of my famous premonitions, like when I got the feeling you were in trouble. Okay, that makes me sound cuckoo, doesn’t it? I usually love working Sundays, the patients are all happy because they get visitors, dinner in the canteen is good, and it’s by far the jolliest day of the week all round. But I just don’t want to go.’
‘Well, you have to,’ Verity said. ‘As you are very fond of telling me, no one else can do your job.’
Ruby threw a cushion at her. ‘It happens to be true, I’ve made myself indispensable.’
Verity snorted derisively. ‘And so modest, as well as beautiful!’
Ruby grinned. ‘Do you ever get these feelings about things that you can’t explain?’
‘Only to wonder why it is I like you,’ Verity said.
‘I’m serious,’ Ruby said.
‘Well, I do get feelings about Archie sometimes,’ Verity admitted a little sheepishly. ‘I feel he’s thinking about me and planning some hideous revenge. But it’s daft to think he’d track me down here, he’ll only get himself in deeper water.’
A local police inspector had called to see her in Devon about a month after she was discharged from Lewisham Hospital. He had been asked by the London police to check that Archie Wood hadn’t tried to contact her. She told them he hadn’t and that, as far as she remembered, she hadn’t told him about her friends in Babbacombe, so it was extremely unlikely he’d turn up here.
The inspector said that all their efforts to find Archie had failed, but that more often than not, men on the run got themselves caught eventually because they returned to their old home or a family member. He said the Lewisham police were keeping an eye on Weardale Road, and if she had any reason to believe he was in Babbacombe, she must contact the police station immediately.
She would, of course, in the blink of an eye. But Archie wasn’t likely to show himself in advance of pouncing on her. But she never admitted that thought to Ruby or Wilby.
‘Too much time has passed now,’ Ruby said comfortingly. ‘He’ll be long gone, either tucked in with some woman daft enough to trust him, or even gone abroad. One of the airmen at the hospital was telling me the other day that men who want to hide, whether that’s from the
police or trying to escape their past, are signing on with the merchant navy. All they need is a fairly good false identity. It would be easy enough then to jump ship in another country.’
‘I can’t imagine which country would be good to be in right now, with the war going on almost everywhere,’ Verity said. ‘But I suppose a man like Archie would see a war-torn country as a place of opportunity.’
Colin and Brian came bursting into the room and interrupted the girls’ conversation. With their freckled faces, sticking-up hair and soft brown eyes they were very appealing. ‘Will you play Monopoly with us?’ Brian asked. ‘We helped Wilby make some rock buns, and now she’s told us to clear off out of the kitchen and leave her in peace.’
Both girls laughed. The two boys were bundles of energy. On a grey, miserable day like today, when they couldn’t go out to play, they could be a bit much for Wilby.
‘I think we could do that,’ Verity agreed, packing away her embroidery. ‘And maybe we’ll have some dancing practice later too.’
‘Oh, goody!’ Colin clapped his hands together. ‘I danced with my teacher the other day, and she said if I kept it up I might end up like Fred Astaire.’
Ruby arrived at work the next morning just before nine. Sundays were always calmer than weekdays, because there were far fewer service staff working, and many of the convalescent airmen took exercise around the grounds or went to the church just further down the road in Wellswood.
When the hotel was first converted into a hospital they had only 48 beds, but the number had been gradually increased since then to 249. They hadn’t needed to make huge alterations to the building to turn it into a viable hospital. Four bedrooms on the second floor had been changed into a theatre block, but there were always complaints from the nursing staff about there being too many single rooms scattered about. One of the biggest advantages of the former hotel was the amount of sporting facilities, including a gymnasium and indoor tennis court, all of which were invaluable for rehabilitation.
Most of Ruby’s work that morning was to file any case notes which had been left on the wards for the doctors to see, to chase up copies of any correspondence to do with patients, and file them. She also had to start files for patients who had been brought in on the previous day, which involved typing up the notes made by the doctors both at the time of their injury and on their admittance here. Then there were a few discharge notes to type up for patients going home either today or Monday.
It was around twenty to eleven when Ruby got an internal phone call from the medical quartermaster, who asked her to come over to the east wing and collect some requisitions for drugs and equipment.
She was almost there when she stopped to look out of a window at a group of Home Guard marching off in the direction of Walls Hill. It made her smile, as some of them were quite old men, who had probably done service in the first war and were proud to think they were doing something worthwhile in this one.
Suddenly, without any warning, enemy aircraft came
swarming over the cliff from the sea, strafing the hospital grounds with machine-gun fire. The air-raid siren hadn’t gone off.
Shocked to the core, Ruby initially dived to the ground. But as the planes wheeled off, she got up to look out of the window again and was pleased to see the group of Home Guard had run into the woods, and there were no casualties outside that she could detect. She was undecided what to do, whether to run back downstairs and take shelter, or to continue to the quartermaster’s office. But before she could act, there was a massive bang, the whole building shook and she was knocked down by something heavy.
A searing pain shot up her back and she tried to call out for help. Her last thought before darkness blotted out everything was of Luke and that she wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
Wilby and Verity were preparing the vegetables for dinner when they heard the droning noise of aircraft. With no siren warning them of an air raid, they assumed it was English planes. Until they heard machine-gun fire.
‘Boys! Shelter!’ Wilby shouted, running to the sitting room where they were playing.
Verity ran to them too, grabbing each of the boys’ hands, and flew with them to the cellar.
‘Is that the Germans coming?’ Brian asked, brown eyes wide with fright.
‘Not coming to us, just their planes overhead, but let’s get down those stairs quickly,’ Verity said.
Once Wilby was down in the cellar with them, they all
listened carefully. ‘It sounds like they are firing closer to Torquay,’ Wilby said. ‘It’s not here in Babbacombe.’
Then came the bombs, and Wilby blanched at the massive bangs.
The boys were excited, not scared. ‘I want to see what they bombed,’ Brian said. ‘When can we go out and look?’
‘You little ghoul,’ Wilby said, but her tone was affectionate rather than cross. ‘People may have been hurt, or even killed. It isn’t something you go and gawp at.’
When the all-clear sounded, they went back upstairs. Verity went up to the bedroom to get her embroidery. When she glanced out of the window, she could see a plume of black smoke or dust rising up to the right. It was in the direction of Torquay, but she didn’t think it was that far away.
All at once she remembered Ruby saying she didn’t want to go to work. As the hospital was the only really big building between here and Torquay, it could have been hit.
‘Oh no,’ she gasped, all at once feeling as if her heart was being squeezed hard.
She ran downstairs. The boys had gone back into the sitting room, and she told Wilby what she feared.
‘They wouldn’t bomb a hospital, surely?’ Wilby said. ‘They painted a huge red cross on the roof!’
‘Since when did they care about niceties like that?’ Verity said with a shrug. ‘I must go down the road and just check. If it wasn’t the hospital, I’ll come straight back.’
‘Make sure you do, dinner will be ready at one thirty.’
Verity leapt on her bicycle and whizzed off down the road. As if in confirmation of what she feared, a truck went past her full of rescue workers. She could hear
ambulance sirens too, but they were coming from Torquay towards her.
She was at the RAF hospital within five minutes, and to her horror the spiral of black smoke was coming from the east wing of the building. There was that all too familiar, throat-constricting smell she’d grown so used to in London, of brick dust, plaster and burning. By the time she’d propped her bicycle up against a wall, Babbacombe Road was clogged with rescue workers, air-raid wardens, police, firemen and ambulance men, along with a great many local people.
Verity made her way towards the main entrance, but a burly air-raid warden prevented her going any closer. She told him Ruby worked in reception and that she had red curly hair. She pointed out that Ruby ought to have been first out of the door.
‘I haven’t seen anyone that fits that description,’ he said. ‘But the patients and staff who are unhurt are all coming out now,’ he said.
He waved his hand towards a trickle of people leaving the building. They all looked as if they were in shock, and some of the women were crying. ‘Your friend should be among them. But don’t worry if you don’t see her, she might be helping to get patients out.’
He went on to explain that the bomb had dropped on the south side of the east wing, by the Milk Bar. ‘Thank God it’s Sunday and it wasn’t open,’ he said, crossing himself. ‘Usually, at eleven in the morning, it’s packed with patients and staff having elevenses.’
Verity waited and watched as a steady stream of people came out, nurses pushing men in wheelchairs, and
cleaning and kitchen staff wearing overalls or aprons. There were men on crutches, others with arms in slings or bandages around their heads, most of these led by nursing staff. There were rescue and ambulance men going in as others came out, and soon some of the injured appeared. The first ones had what looked like minor injuries, small lacerations on the face, or were supporting an arm which was hurt. But then the more badly injured began to come, holding a dressing over an eye, a shirt or trousers soaked in blood.
Yet still there was no sign of Ruby.
The ambulance men were bringing the seriously injured out on stretchers, but she had no need to rush forward to see each face. Ruby’s red hair was enough to identify her, even from a distance.
Fear started to bubble up inside Verity. She wanted to rush into the hospital and search for her friend. But each time she stepped forward the burly man pushed her back.
‘Marilyn!’ she yelled out, seeing a woman Ruby was friendly with, coming out with a man on crutches. She had come to the house several times, and Verity knew she worked alongside Ruby. ‘Have you seen Ruby?’
The man was directed towards a bus which was taking some of the patients to another hospital, and Marilyn left him and came over to her. ‘She should be out by now,’ she said. ‘As far as I know, the only people left are those trapped under rubble and –’ She stopped short, and it was clear she had nearly said ‘the dead’. ‘Of course, she could’ve come out another door round the back and be helping with patients. Have you looked there?’
Verity thanked her and ran back to the road, then down
the drive on the other side of the building which overlooked the sea. The grounds of the old hotel were huge, and there were crowds of people standing up on the banks at the side of the garden watching the rescue work.
The damage to the building was horrendous; the bombs had gone down through the roof to ground level, shattering everything in their path. If Ruby had been on that path she couldn’t have survived.
Verity found another girl she knew slightly, and asked her if she’d seen Ruby.
‘I did before the bombing,’ she said. ‘She passed me on the stairs going up to the second floor.’
‘What time was that?’ Verity asked, her heart sinking even further.
‘Just before –’ The girl stopped, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, how tactless of me! But I’m sure Ruby’s fine, go and ask that big man with the dark hair. He’s in charge of the rescue team.’
That was how it was for almost an hour. Passed from one person to another, and no one could say whether Ruby was still in the hospital or not.
By now the death count had risen to ten. She heard there were more inside, and Verity was sure the next body brought out on a stretcher with a blanket over them would be Ruby.
Verity knew the part of the building where the bombs had dropped quite well, because Ruby had taken her to the Milk Bar several times and shown her the operating theatre too. She decided she was going in to search for her friend. The worst that could happen was that she’d be ejected forcibly. But as volunteers, both male and female,
were arriving to help in the rescue, she saw no good reason why she shouldn’t be one of them – although, in an ordinary coat over a skirt and jumper, she wasn’t exactly dressed for rescue work.
Seeing a group of rescue workers going in from the back of the building, she tagged along behind as if part of their group.
The staircase they made their way up was intact, but windows had been torn out beside it, and there was broken glass, chunks of plaster and lumps of brick everywhere, so they had to pick their way through it carefully. The leader of the group asked that they all remain silent once they went into the corridors approaching the bombed section, so they could hear any cries for help. He also warned them to watch where they were walking, as the bombing may have loosened beams. If they should come across a person trapped by fallen beams or masonry, they were to call for help, but not try to get the person out alone until the experts had assessed the situation.