The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [99]
‘How is he?’ she heard the major demanding. Tears filled her eyes. The whole of the front of the plane was stoved in and somewhere trapped in that mess of twisted metal were the pilot’s legs. She could see and smell the blood that had soaked the bottom of his tunic, and she knew… She could hardly bear to acknowledge what she knew as she swallowed against her anguished grief.
The pilot opened his eyes and looked at her.
‘Mom,’ he whispered painfully. ‘Mom, is that you? It’s so dark here that I can’t see so well.’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Diane whispered back.
‘Gee, I’m glad you’re here. I don’t feel so good, you know…’
‘I know.’
Diane reached for his hand. It felt icy cold. He was so young. The tears she couldn’t shed burned the back of her eyes and throat.
‘The pain is real bad, Mom.’
‘I know, sweetheart, but it will be gone soon,’ Diane told him gently.
Somewhere in the distance she could hear anxious voices, and the sound of activity, but they didn’t matter. All that mattered right now was here, in this cramped place with the smell of blood and death all around her and a young man’s need for the comfort of his mother in his dying moments.
‘Stroke my forehead, will you, Mom? It feels so hot.’
He still had his flying helmet on but Diane reached out anyway and stroked his face, putting her arm around him to support him.
‘Do you remember when I first started grade school?’
She had to lean very close to him now to catch the slow painful words.
‘I felt real bad because I didn’t want to go. Well, I kinda feel like that now, you know…like I have to be someplace I don’t want to be. But I guess it will be OK when I get there.’
His breathing had slowed to almost nothing. Diane turned to try to look down at him and make him more comfortable, supporting him with one arm as his head lolled against her shoulder.
She could hear men working their way towards her, chopping branches, removing debris. She could even hear one of them cursing as he called out, ‘Ruddy well hurry up, will you, before the bloody thing goes up,’ but she didn’t move.
The boy in her arms gave a small sighing breath. ‘It’s so dark, Mom…’
‘It’s all right, darling,’ Diane whispered against his ear. ‘Everything’s all right…just…just go to sleep now.’
He took another breath and struggled in her arms, his eyes opening. ‘Mom…?’
She could hear the fear in his voice, and she reached out to comfort him, pressing her lips to his cold forehead as the breath rattled in his throat and he was gone.
‘Diane?’
She looked up to see the major crawling towards her. ‘He’s dead,’ she said emotionlessly.
‘And so will we be if we don’t get out of here, and fast,’ he told her grimly, reaching for her hand and half dragging her out of the cockpit.
They only just made it in time.
‘Run,’ the major told her once he had dragged her free of the plane, and, ‘Get down,’ he yelled, pushing her to the ground in front of him as the plane exploded with a dull crump, only a couple of hundred yards away from them.
Diane could feel the heat of the flames as she lay winded on the ground. A second explosion followed the first.
‘Spare fuel tank,’ the major muttered, as he got to his feet. Shakily Diane did the same, as the men who had taken cover from the explosion came towards them.
They were escorted into the town and offered baths and clean clothes by the grateful townspeople – as though they had been the ones who had managed to avoid crashing into the school playing field, Diane recognised numbly, after the WVS had provided her with something to wear, and she was sitting in the church hall, drinking the cup of tea she had been given, whilst the major was talking to the local police. Her uniform, folded up in brown paper, was torn and stained with blood. She could still smell it all around her, still see that poor boy…She started to tremble so violently that her teeth chattered against the cup. Unsteadily she put it down.
‘Here’s your bag, love,’ a WVS helper told her. ‘One of the ARP lads picked it up for you. This fell out,’ she added, giving Diane a