Darkest Before Dawn Episode 19
“We are trapped!” Maud cried. “We’ve been buried alive!”
“It’s your fault, Mum!” Sidney shouted. “You made us come in here.”
Maud tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Sidney was right: it was her fault.
They should never have moved to London. She should have put her foot down like she had about Sidney being evacuated.
But if he’d gone off to the country, he wouldn’t be here now, trapped in an air-raid shelter with no way of escape.
“Mum! It’s all right,” Isobel’s voice soothed her. “It’s just a nightmare. We’re all safe.”
Maud went limp in Isobel’s arms.
She was fine during the day, but at night she was plagued by nightmares of being trapped in the shelter.
It always played out differently in her dreams.
The fear she’d kept hidden from the others on that long night always burst out and she went to pieces.
She’d kept their spirits up and waited for rescue, and when Sidney shouted that he’d heard Isobel’s voice, she hardly dared believe it.
Before that night, the raids sometimes came to nothing, or produced the distant sound of gunfire, but that one had been relentless and they’d had more like it since.
“You said Isobel would be fine,” Tilly had said when rescue came. “You said she’d find shelter, and you were right.”
Maud might have said it, but she hadn’t believed it.
“You said someone would rescue us,” Sidney added.
“Who’d have thought it would be Isobel? We’ll never ’ear the end of it.”
“We’ll never hear the end of it, Sidney,” Maud said with a sigh of exasperation.
“That’s what I said,” Sidney said, and Tilly burst out laughing.
“Come here, you!” Maud pulled him into her arms and held him tight.
“I was scared, Mum,” he admitted. “For Isobel and for us.
“But everything’s going to be all right now, ain’t it? It’ll go back to what it was like before.”
Maud gave him a tight squeeze, but didn’t answer.
How could she say things would be all right?
She’d never forget the moment the door opened and she’d pushed her way out, stumbling into her daughter’s arms.
Isobel was safe.
“Oh, Isobel, I thought I’d never see you again.” Maud sobbed with relief.
“It wasn’t too bad, miss.” One of the men who’d helped clear the door grinned in at them. “The shelter did its job.”
“What about the house?” Maud asked.
“A few windows broken,” Isobel replied. “But still standing.”
“I never want to go through another night like that.” Maud bit her lip.
“They won’t dare do it again,” Isobel reassured her.
But Isobel was wrong.
The air raids had increased in intensity, and the bombs even hit Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral.
One day Maud was coming back from the shops with Sidney during a raid in broad daylight, and she stopped in her tracks, frozen to the spot as the sky darkened with planes.
She saw the bombs fall, knowing they were bringing more destruction.
“Haven’t you done enough?” she shouted as something inside her broke. “Leave us alone!”
Sidney grabbed her and pulled her to the ground as the world shook.
The door of a nearby house blew out and glass rained down on them.
“That was close!” Sidney exclaimed as he gathered up Maud’s scattered groceries before hauling her to her feet.
“Come on, Mum. Let’s get to shelter.”
It was during that raid that the store where Isobel worked was hit.
“It’s all gone, Mum,” Isobel said as soon as she came through the door. “The flames were awful, and there’s barely a wall left standing.
“Luckily we were all safe in the shelter.”
She gasped.
“Mum, how did you cut your face?”
“You should have seen her,” Sidney said. “She was telling them bombers where to go! Shaking her fist at them and swearing!”
“I was not shaking my fist,” Maud retorted. “Or swearing!”
“What? You were out?”
“We saw actual bombs dropping,” Sidney went on. “There was broken glass everywhere.”
“Oh, Mum!” Isobel cried. “You could have been killed. Both of you!”
“So could you,” Maud pointed out. “And to think your dad moved us to London thinking we’d be safer than at home.
“If I’m going to be killed, I’d rather it was in my own home.”
“What for?” Sidney asked, horrified.
He loved living in London, and even pitched in to help with clearing the rubble whenever he got chance.
“We can’t leave Auntie Rose,” Isobel said. “After all she’s done for us.”
“Perhaps she’ll come with us,” Tilly said hopefully.
“I ain’t going,” Sidney stated, looking exactly like his father when he was in a stubborn frame of mind.
Maud didn’t have the energy to argue, so she put the thought away.