Pat Barker - Noonday

Tell you what, she wouldn’t be going to the shelter tonight, not with all this lot to clear up — no, not if it pissed bombs.

After the first few hours you lost track of time. He thought it was about three in the morning, but he couldn’t see his watch. In the doorway of a building opposite, a group of people, bombed out of a church basement, was waiting to be found space in other shelters. The usual purgatorial shadows. One of them, a woman, detached herself from the rest and gestured to him to come closer. He crunched towards her over broken glass. She pointed to a house farther down the street, the house she lived in — what was left of it. Her mouth was so caked with dust she had to moisten her lips several times before she could make herself understood. “There’s somebody still on the top floor.”

Brian Temple joined him and peered up at the house. “Well, whoever it is they’re a goner.” He was pointing to the side of the roof that had caved in. “If there is anybody.”

“She seems pretty definite.”

Charlie nodded. “Don’t see how we can ignore it.”

“I bloody do,” Brian said. “I’m sick to death of wild goose chases.”

“We’ll just have a look, right?”

They fetched a stretcher from the back of an ambulance and pushed the front door open. “Rescue-squad job, this,” Brian said. Charlie ignored him. He began creeping up the unlit stairs, testing every tread to make sure it would bear his weight. Brian was probably right, but then every available rescue squad had been called to Malet Street, where a bomb had fallen on a hostel. And the building seemed stable enough, nowhere near as bad as the houses on either side. At intervals, Charlie held up his hand and they stopped to listen. Creaks, an occasional louder crack, the grumbling of an injured building.

“I don’t think there’s anybody here,” Charlie said.

But then, on the third landing, they heard a groan and realized it was coming from a room above the attic stairs. These were narrow, room for only one person, and so steep it would be more like climbing a ladder. Charlie gestured to the others to stay back. Halfway up, there was a bend, and there he had to stop: a beam had fallen across the staircase, leaving only the narrowest of apertures. He shone his torch down onto their faces. “So who’s the thinnest?” This was a joke. He was grinning at Paul.

Right. Paul took off his coat and helmet, lay down, poked his head under the beam and started pushing with his heels, wriggling into the airless tunnel, inch by painful inch — a bit like being born but in reverse. Once, he got stuck and called back, “This isn’t going to work,” but then Charlie gave his backside a tremendous shove, his left shoulder broke through and he found extra space. Burrowing into the dusty darkness, mouth and nostrils choked with dust, eyes smarting, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on, but then, unexpectedly, he felt cool air on his face and neck and guessed the room beyond was open to the sky.

At least, now, he could see, and what he saw, when he finally managed to crawl into the room, was a woman with her nightdress rucked up to her thighs, lying across a mound of rubble. One leg was dark, covered in dried blood, the other fish-white. He couldn’t see her face or upper body, but the size of the thighs alone told him she was heavy, quite possibly a dead weight. She wasn’t moving. He tried not to hope she was dead. Dead, she could wait till morning. Alive, she was a nightmare.

As he’d thought, the roof was open to the sky. Searchlights probing banks of cloud cast a shifting light across the debris. Table, more or less intact — she must have been sheltering under that when the ceiling came in — bed broken, chair smashed, sink smashed, chamber pot mysteriously intact — and feathers everywhere. A blizzard of feathers. Bright orange flashes — three as he watched — lit up the room, each accompanied by the thud of high explosive. The walls shook. A saucepan skittered across the floor and came to rest by the sink.

Still not knowing if she was alive or conscious, he started saying the usual comforting words. “Don’t worry, love, we’ll soon have you out.” Reaching her ankle, he thought he detected warmth. Not much, but then for God knows how long she’d been lying in a room open to the sky. He crawled along her side till he was level with her shoulders and felt for a pulse in her neck. Irregular, but no mistaking it — she was alive. He tried to assess how badly injured she was, calling out to Charlie on the stairs that he thought she might have broken her leg. He didn’t like the angle of that knee.

Her eyes flickered open. “Hello, love,” he said. “Well, this is a right pickle, isn’t it?” A moan from the white-crusted lips. “Do you think you can stand?”

Before she could answer, a lump of plaster fell from the ceiling, narrowly missing his head. “ Fucking hell.”

Charlie from the stairs: “You all right?”

“Never better.”

“We’re going to have to dig you out.”

They’d never get her down the stairs, not without moving that beam. Lying flat on his back, he stared through the hole in the roof. Flares blossomed and faded, each casting a trembling light across the floor. He listened to the sounds of scuffling and scraping on the stairs, then, propping himself up on his elbow, found himself gazing straight into her eyes. Christ, she was sweating, a slippery, cold sheen bringing with it the stench of fear and pain. “Not long now, love. They’ve just gone to get the shovels, they’ll have us out in no time.” No response. “I’m Paul. What’s your name?”

“Bertha.”

Was it her? My God, it was. He remembered her labored breathing as she climbed onto the platform, and thought: She’s not going to last.

A few minutes later came a renewed scrabbling on the stairs and Charlie’s hand appeared, waving a bottle of water. Paul crawled across to get it, and trickled some into her open mouth until she choked and turned her head away. Then he moistened his own lips. He’d have liked to take a good swig but he didn’t know how long he’d have to make the bottle last. He could hear shovels now, digging into the rubble. By rights, they should have left the building and waited for a rescue squad, but he knew they wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t rest till they got her out.

Bertha lay motionless, her eyes closed, breathing through her open mouth. He’d wriggled into the narrow space between her and the wall and now lay pressed against her vast bulk. The film of sweat between his body and hers was acutely unpleasant. In the circumstances they were in, that shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. He tried to ease himself away from her, but there was no room, and whenever he moved she groaned.

“Yeah, I know,” a man’s voice said. “She turns my stomach too — all that lard. ”

Paul froze, then made himself turn towards the voice. She looked different. Where before, there’d been only double chins and flabby cheeks, there was now the suggestion of a jaw. How could anybody change physically, like that?

“So, you know, go easy on her.” The voice was beginning to slur into silence. “She’s a poor beggar.”

Charlie’s voice from the stairs. “Paul, that you?”

So he’d heard it too. “Yes, don’t worry, it’s all right.”

Paul struggled to sit up, to free himself from the slime of sweat. Looking down at the fat, pallid face, he was inclined to doubt the evidence of his ears. His eyes. She seemed to be unconscious. He pushed up one eyelid, even shone the torch into her eyes, but there was no response.

“Paul, you still in there?” Brian this time.