Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [161]
They were just drawing apart when a woman’s voice called out excitedly, ‘I’ve found a window and I can see a light outside. Quick, someone flash a torch to let those outside know we’re here.’
Several men rushed to do as she said, and in the torchlight Grace could see that the woman was wearing an ARP uniform.
‘They’ve seen us,’ one of the men shouted. ‘They’re flashing a light back.’
‘They know we’re alive now,’ the ARP warden told them. ‘It won’t get long before they get us out.’
Not long in terms of real time, Grace acknowledged, but to those trapped it felt like a lifetime before the rescuers finally managed to break through to them, bringing with them clean night air to breathe, and relief and joy to fill their hearts.
A heartfelt cheer went up and fresh tears were shed, Grace’s into the warmth of Seb’s shirt. It was the children who were helped out first, handed over the heads of the men and women who stoically held back their own longing for freedom and safety to give them theirs, to be carried to safety, one by one.
Then it was the turn of the women, starting with the oldest and the frailest although one doughty old lady insisted that it should be the young mothers who went first, saying courageously, ‘I’ve had my life; it’s them kiddies we should be thinking about. They need their mothers.’
‘Brave words, Missus,’ one of their rescuers praised her, adding reassuringly, ‘Don’t you worry, though. We’re going to get you all out safely.’
‘Your turn next,’ Seb told Grace. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t be far behind you.’
She had just smiled at him and turned to follow the woman ahead of her, when one of the men called out, ‘There’s a kiddie trapped here and she’s bleeding.’
Immediately Grace turned back. ‘Where …?’
The man shone his torch and Grace’s heart turned over. Right up against the worst of the debris that had caved in was a little girl, obviously unable to move, her arm bleeding. She was alive though, Grace could see.
‘Grace, no,’ Seb protested, but Grace shook her head, calmly asking for first aid supplies.
She didn’t dare to look back at Seb after she had left him and started to make her way through the wreckage, and water towards the child she could see more clearly now in the light of the ARP and rescue workers’ torches. What she could also see in the debris around the little girl were the still mounds of clothing, which she realised with horror were the bodies of two adults.
There was barely enough room for her to squat down by the child, who miraculously was trapped just high enough for her head and upper torso to be above the water, which had now thankfully stopped rising.
She spoke gently and reassuringly to the little girl, who told Grace that her name was Mary.
Something – a broken piece of wood, Grace guessed – had gouged a jagged tear in her flesh, which had bled profusely though thankfully the injury was not to an artery. It was not so much the wound in her arm, which she could see, that was dangerous Grace acknowledged as she cleaned it as best she could, but the fact that Mary’s legs were trapped beneath some of the debris – and the bodies.
‘It’s your turn now, mate,’ the burly man standing next to Seb told him but Seb shook his head, without taking his gaze off Grace.
‘I’m staying with my girl.’
‘You’d better make yourself useful then,’ the man in charge of the auxiliary fire service workers told him bluntly.
Seb ignored the pain in his shoulder as he worked under the instructions of the other men, helping to pass out to those waiting the pieces of debris as they were removed.
An hour passed whilst the men worked tirelessly. Grace tried not to think of their danger but to focus instead on keeping little Mary’s spirits up and assuring her that they would soon be safe.
They were removing one of the bodies now, and the little girl was asking about her mother. Through the dirt caking the body Grace could just about make out the blue of a skirt. Was the body