‘I expect we’re all delirious,’ said Adam, glancing up from the little girl he was attending to. ‘Going a bit hysterical.’
An hour or so later, they realized that the noise overhead had diminished a little.
‘Just when we were beginning to get used to them too,’ said Jim Barclay.
“There’s no reason to suppose they won’t be back,’ came the grim response.
The lull allowed the removal of more of the injured to hospital. Liz was asked to accompany two of them to Canniesburn Hospital in Bearsden. The phones being out, she was also to ask how many more they might be able to take. Local hospitals like Blawarthill had filled up quickly. The injured were going to have to be taken further afield.
‘Cup of tea before you go back into the lion’s den, Nurse?’ asked the sister at Canniesburn, who then persuaded Liz and the ambulance driver to take five minutes to drink one. The sister laid a hand on both their shoulders.
‘God speed.’
When she got back to the first-aid post, Liz stood back to allow a stretcher to be carried out to another ambulance.
‘Hello, Liz,’ said the boy lying on it.
‘Dominic! Are you all right?’
‘I’ve buggered my leg,’ he said cheerfully. ‘There was I, cycling along minding my own business, when this dirty great piece of timber falls on top of me. Knackered the bike as well.’
‘Are they taking you to Canniesburn?’
One of the stretcher-bearers answered for him. ‘No, he’s heading for Killearn. Some fresh country air for this lad.’
‘It’s a bit far out,’ said Dominic, with a quick frown. ‘It’ll be difficult for anyone to visit me.’
‘We’ll manage somehow,’ said Liz. ‘There’s buses go out that way.’ He was being put into the ambulance now, struggling to sit up so he could still see her.
‘Liz, will you let them know at home what’s happened? Ma’ll be real worried about me.’
‘I will,’ she promised.
‘Och, and Liz,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell Ma that I said my leg was buggered. I don’t want a cuff round the ear when she comes out to visit me.’ He grinned. ‘Put it a wee bit more politely.’
‘Nae bother,’ she said. She gave him a wave and a smile before the ambulance doors were slammed shut.
The first person Liz spotted when she went back into the church hall was her grandfather in his ARP uniform. She flew to his side.
‘It’s all right, hen,’ he told her after he had given her a hug which took her breath away. ‘I think your mother and father are probably all right. They seem to have missed Brown’s. There’s been some damage, but no’ as much as you might expect.’
Relief flooded through her. In the morning I’m going down there, she thought. I’ll make it up with them. It’s not worth it. This is no time to bear a grudge.
‘What about the Holy City, Grandad? Do you know what’s happening there?’
His face betrayed his knowledge. ‘They’ve taken a hell of a beating, hen.’
Helen and the baby! Oh, please God, let them be all right! Terror made her angry, snapping her out of her previous unnatural calmness.
‘Well, is anybody doing anything to help them? Let me past, Grandad, I’ve got to go and see for myself!’
The old man gripped her shoulders with a strength which belied his years.
‘Lizzie! You cannae. It’s bloody dangerous out there. There’s enough folk risking their necks as it is. And you’re needed here!’
The bombardment started again. The merciless pounding of the town went on for another four hours.
Thirty-five
It was half past six in the morning and it was over at last. The all-clear had sounded some time ago and dawn had broken. A large convoy of ambulances had arrived to ferry the remaining casualties out. Hospitals all around Glasgow were taking them in.
More help had arrived in the devastated town, not least a squadron of mobile canteens, many of them run by the Women’s Voluntary Service.
‘Thank God for the WVS,’ said one of the medics wearily. ‘What would we do without you, ladies?’ He lifted his cup in a toasting gesture.
‘What would we have done without you, young man?’ replied the woman, offering Liz a cup of tea as she sat slumped at a table with her head in her hands.
She shook her head and stood up. ‘No thanks. I have to go and see if my friend is all right. And my folks.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Adam, ‘but we’re going to drink a cup of tea and have something to eat first. A quick bite - a roll or something.’
‘I don’t want anything.’
‘Liz, you’ve been up all night. And you’ll be no use to anybody if you collapse of exhaustion.’
She gave in. She could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere unless she did. She bolted down a couple of mouthfuls of bread roll and drank the tea so fast it scalded her mouth.
Her ears were still ringing with the remembered noises of last night: the crashing and whooshing and booming of the bombs dropping, the screams and cries of the injured. The sounds were all the louder in her head because of the eerie quiet which now lay like a pall over the town. It was uncanny. Clydebank was a place of bustle and industry. She had never experienced such stillness here.
In increasing distress, she took in the devastation wrought by the raid. All around, burned and blasted houses were smouldering. There was a bigger fire somewhere close at hand, too. At Singer’s, she thought. They passed Radnor Street. The buildings were extensively damaged.
‘Looks like your grandfather’s going to have to find somewhere else to sleep tonight.’
They had seen him again this morning, after the all-clear had sounded. It was a relief to know that he, at least, was all right.
‘Look at the tram lines,’ said Adam. ‘It’s like a piece of avant-garde sculpture.’ Liz looked. Exploded from their moorings, the lines were standing up like jagged vertical spears. Water mains had burst too. Kilbowie Road was running like a river. And there was a peculiar smell in the air - not only from all the fires which were still raging, but something faintly sweet.
‘It’ll be from the distillery at Yoker,’ said Adam, indicating the direction with a lift of his chin. ‘Remember someone told us last night that it had taken a hit? Looks like they got Rothesay Dock, too.’ He turned his head and looked in the other direction, to where a huge pall of smoke was hanging over the Clyde. ‘That looks like oil burning. Where would that be?’
‘Old Kilpatrick,’ said Liz, her words slurred with tiredness. ‘There’s an oil depot there.’ But she wasn’t really listening to him. Her eyes were fixed on the rubble, slates, broken furniture and glass which lay strewn about the street. With a horrible sense of foreboding of worse to come, she picked her way through it, Adam occasionally gripping her elbow to guide her.
Worse
was
to come.
‘Don’t look,’ he said. He reached out an arm, trying physically to turn her head away, but he was too late. It was the body of a small boy, clearly dead. Her head tucked into Adam’s chest, Liz spoke in an anguished whisper.
‘Shouldn’t we do something? Lift him and take him somewhere?’
She felt him shake his head. ‘No, Liz, that’s not our job. Someone’ll come and get him soon.’ He stopped, and she knew from the way he held her that he had something else to say, something which he was trying to phrase in the kindest way possible. In the end he chose simple words.
‘He won’t be the only one. I think I can see a squad down the road. They’ll come up for him soon. They’ve ... I think they’re getting someone else at the moment’
Held close against him, Liz nodded her head. He was right, of course he was. She pulled out of his embrace and looked up at him, dry-eyed. He cupped her face with his hands, his hazel eyes soft with compassion. ‘All right?’
‘All right,’ she replied.
They turned a corner - and it was like all the newsreel reports she’d ever seen of London and Coventry and Liverpool. She remembered Guernica and the Spanish cities too.
There were the same surreal pictures: houses which stood like hollow teeth, as though scooped out with a spoon: buildings where the fronts had fallen off, leaving the rooms behind exposed to view. It was pitiful. Liz saw a precariously poised black-leaded range, a big kettle still sitting on it. There were dogs and cats running about everywhere, panicked by the events of the night. She saw with relief that there were people rounding them up.
She thought about Conor and Finn. She’d have given anything to see the two of them coming towards her. Liz had never been able to decide if Conor had copied his long loping stride from Finn, or if the dog had taken it from his master. Their mutual devotion seemed to make either possible.
Liz rubbed her eyes. They were playing tricks on her. Small wonder. After all she had seen last night and this morning it would be odd if they weren’t. But she was confused all the same. She would ask Adam. He always had a sensible answer to everything.
‘Where’s Helen’s close gone, Adam? I can’t see it at all.’
‘Och, Liz,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He tried to take her in his arms again, but she side-stepped him. What was he on about? What was he so sorry about? All they had to do was find Helen’s close and then find out how she was - and Mr and Mrs Gallagher and the boys too, of course. Finn as well. They had to be all right They had to be.
‘Adam,’ she said. He was very pale. Poor soul, he must be exhausted. ‘You’ve got to help me find Helen’s close. The entrance has to be here somewhere.’
‘Och, Liz,’ he said again.
Now she was getting angry. She began shouting. She ran towards what was left of the houses.
‘Liz! Come back!’
She ignored him, but she was forced to stop when he caught up with her and grabbed her roughly by the arm. He swung her round to face him.
‘Helen!’ she shouted. ‘She’s in there somewhere! Let me go, Adam. Please! We’ve got to get her out. She’s pregnant! With Eddie’s baby. Don’t you know that?’
Adam seized her other arm and held her fast ‘Yes, I know that - and there are people trying to get her out,’ he insisted. ‘People who know what they’re doing, who know the best way to go about it. We don’t.’ He saw from her face that she needed convincing.
‘You and I are both exhausted, too tired to make proper judgements. About anything very much. We might do something stupid - simply because we’re so desperate to get to Helen and her family. The buildings will be extremely unstable. Digging the wrong way could do more harm than good. It could bring more masonry down on everyone in there.’
Privately, he had a horrible fear that there was no one left alive. He’d never seen such devastation. The human body could be very resilient, but not against the damage which had been done here.
It was Liz he was concerned about now. She needed rest to enable her to cope with whatever was coming next.
‘Do you hear me, Liz?’ he asked, gripping her arms and forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’
He repeated his arguments, shaking her in an attempt to get the message across. They weren’t experts. Think of all the different things in a building: plaster, wood, heavy furniture. Moving something the wrong way could do more damage to the folk trapped in the buildings. She took it in eventually, slumping briefly against him before straightening up and looking around her.
‘Let’s see if we can help the people they bring out, anyway.’ He nodded. It was the best he was going to get. She really needed her bed. So did he, but he would go along with this for a while. A very little while. Then he would insist.