AFTERWARDS. 

A Fragment. 

The snow was falling steadily. Mary became aware of it as a faint rustle, and realised, with something of a shock, that it was the silence she noticed, a cessation of the horrible clamour that had filled her ears - a crash of explosives, fall of masonry, voices raised in terror, command or agony. Quiet had come and the children around her stirred in the dark as if a signal had been given then. She could feel them relax, sigh and stretch their cramped limbs. 

"Have they gone?” whispered a girl's voice, the voice of a stranger. Then at her side her little son, Jackie, spoke:

 "Is it over ?" 

Mary answered softly so as not to wake the baby in her arms: “I think it is over now.” 

Voices rose in the street outside and among them Mary recognised, with a quick throb of relief, the voice of her husband, vainly trying to quieten a shrill, hysterical crying. Figures loomed up in the open doorway. 

“Are you alright, Mary?" came John's quick urgent call.

 "AlI safe,” she answered. "Have they gone?”

 A stranger answered for him "They've got away. We've let them get away, the swine!” It was a growl of rage, a fierce, old voice crying for blood, "What were our men thinking of. We ought to have smashed the lot!"

“Shush! Hush!" whispered Mary, rocking the baby gently.

The hysterical voice had been quietened only a moment, now it broke out again.

“But why doesn’t  someone do something? I called ‘Fire’ on the telephone and they tell you to call ‘fire’. She said ‘the fire station doesn't answer'...”

 "Wiped right out, the fire station was," said Johnny tersely.. "Shut that noise, you're scaring the child.” He turned back to the child in his arms, but the voice went on with its babble of explanation and reproach. 

“I found a policeman and he said he was too busy rescuing people to stop. ‘Too busy? and all the time my Toots was burning to death? “ The voice rose to a scream and cracked. Mary rose and pulled the other woman down beside her.

"It's terrible,” she said, her own voice shaking.

"But the men are doing all they can, and we've got to be brave. Was it … your baby?” 

For a moment something like normality came into the woman's tone. 

"Toots a baby? Why no, of course not. My darling little Peke." 

The old man gave a sudden bark of laughter that had little of mirth in it. 

"No time to cry over dogs now Ma'am," he said, harshly, “Lucky if the swine have left any of us alive, You stay here and you'll be alright." 

John stooped and placed the child at Mary's side. 

“Look after her" he said. "The father's killed and I don"t think the mother will live. The kid’s cut a bit but not too badly, if you can find something to bandage her up with. It ought to be safe to make a light now -~ if you can.” 

He took the old man by the arm and the two hurried out through the broken doorway through which the snow was sifting steadily. Mary looked down at the child he had left, trying to gauge her injuries, but it was too dark to see. She must make a light first. 

“I'm so cold," said Jackie, in a frightened tone and a murmur went round that was very near to tears. 

“We can make a fire now that the aeroplanes have gone,” said Mary cheerfully, “That will warm you up." 

She passed the sleeping baby to the stranger at her side. “Hold him for me," she said, her tone was unconsciously commanding that the other only gasped and obeyed. "I’ll try to find something to make a fire.”

She groped her way across the little kitchen, trying not to stumble over the children clustered on the floor, speaking cheerily to them as she went. The fire had been raked out at the first warning, but the cinders were still warm. She felt for coal and kindling, rejoicing that for once the matches were in their place. Crouched on the hearths she coaxed the fire alight and the children crowded round, spreading their cold hands to the blaze, huddling against each other for companionship. As the flames rose up they flickered across the room, glinting on jagged glass in the shattered windows, revealing the door hanging on its hinges. But the kitchen was still intact. They had a roof over their heads no, a ceiling only, perhaps not a roof for, as they crouched together at the height of the raid, something had fallen above their heads, something that seemed as if must come through on top of them, but miraculously had only shaken the room, only powered it with plaster and left it standing. Suddenly anxious to investigate, Mary went to the foot of the stairs.

 Rubbish was piled on the treads as far as she could see and above a hole gaped in the roof through which the snow floated down. There might be something left if she could get it, thought Mary, blankets, bandages ,clothes. Her hand touched the pile of rubble and she fingered it wonderingly. All this had happened and yet it seemed so strangely unreal. This muddle of broken things had been part of a home, such a little time before, up there was her room and John's, the baby's cot, the bathroom she had planned to scrub in the morning. On hands and knees she tried to climb over the impeding rubbish, but the stairs swayed perilously and she stopped in alarm and felt her way back to safety again.

 The fire was well alight now and she could see the children more clearly. Some she knew, others were strangers and she could not guess what fortune had brought them here and whether others remained alive to claim them. By the fire the little hurt one moaned gently, and Mary gave a shocked start of recollection. There were clean kitchen cloths in the dresser, they would serve. Quickly she tore — them in strips and, as well as she could by the firelight, bandaged the cut arm and head. The doctor ought to see that army she thought, and then caught her breath, for who knew if even the doctor remained alive? 

The firelight flickered an invitation across the street and faces looked in.

 "Can I bring my mother in here?” asked a passer-by and half dazed, an old woman sank down by the hearth.

“ Nay, I dunno,” she murmured again and again. As if the experience she had been through was past any words to express. The man went out again quickly, but others came and the little kitchen grew crowded. The old woman ceased to mutter as the warmth of the fire soaked into her and her strained face relaxed into a quiet passivity. She had seen so much, suffered so much; this was but one thing more. She reached down and drew a tired child into the warm nest of her lap. It cuddled drowsily down and she cradled it with tuneless croonnings. 

Snatches of news were brought as the night wore on. “The telegraph wires are down", “the station's gone", "they say the main line is hit higher up, Nothing can get through to us, "half the town killed, they reckon. . .” 

 "But something must be done about it,” cried the owner of Toots, passionately but unhelpfully. “The Government ought to organise something, We can't just sit here and be bombed."

“It's happened, all the same,” said a girl, with a vague wonder. (They had dragged her from the ruins of her house and there was little hope that the feverish work of the men would recover more than the bodies of the family that had sat laughing with her.) "It couldn't happen ~<but it did. We just sat -- and were bombed." 

She ran her hand over her eyes in a puzzled way. The shock had been too great and mercifully the brain had not yet grasped the full horror of the night's work.

Mary looked at her with troubled eyes and again the necessity for action came to her. She groped her way past the tumbled staircase to the back of the house, The larder door hung loose, the shelves sagged in layers of splintered woodwork, but her groping hand found tins intact. 

"If I could get water," she said, returning, “I could make tea. I have found condensed milk and the tea is safe. But the water has gone; nothing comes when I turn the tap.

 The water main has burst up the roads' ' said a boy near the door. “That's why, but perhaps I could get water there."

 Mary handed him the kettle and he took it gratefully, thankful to be doing something at last. To be rejected as not strong enough for the rescue bands had cut deep. In a moment he was back in triumph and setting the kettle on the fire. The smaller children had dropped asleep in awkward poses and in & corner of the kitchen, Mary's neighbour, Janet (when had she come in?) sang softly to two whose cuts and bruises made sleep impossible. The owner of Toots, her mouth wide and her eyes closed, sat stiffly asleep, still holding the unwelcome baby. 

Then down the street came a party of men and John and the old man staggered in, worn with a night of searching. The women found seats for them clearing the sleeping children out of the way and they sank down with their heads in their hands. They had seen such sights that night as they never wished to see again. ‘The old man, worn as he was, still called vainly for vengeance: 

"If we let one of those fiends get back alive..!" He muttered under his breath, but John was silent, trying hopelessly to adjust his thoughts. He had talked glibly enough of war in the air, but he had not dreamed that the reality would be like this. If this is war he argued with himself, then anything but war. 

The snow had ceased and the world was very still in the early morning calm, the kettle making a purring accompaniment to Janet's soft lullaby. Suddenly through the stillness came the sound of the church clock striking six, It rang through “he room with its sharp message of normality, of daily life beginning again and each responded in his own way.

 “Time to get up," recorded Katy's subconscious mind, “warm drinks for the children, breakfast to get, baby to bath.” At once she was alert. Her Job was still there, a bigger harder job, but still the same. Life must go on for those who survived. 

"Janet," she called, softly, “can I look for cups in your house? There's none whole here, Robin, take a can and get more water we shall be wanting it.. Anne, can you find sticks to keep the fire going?" 

The woman holding the baby woke with a  jerk. 

"Was that six o’clock striking?” she asked. “Is it morning? Someone must have done something about it by now." 

The old man raised his head slowly. “Then the church still stands,” he said. 

Across the room, Janet smiled at him.

“Yea,” she said, with a note of thankfulness, “the church still stands.”

But the old man was not thinking as she thought. His mind was painfully working it out. “Then everything hadn't gone," he said, “if the morning papers can't get through, we may get news by wireless.  We shall know what is happening. We shall hear if they brought those devils down.”

 “Hush!” said Mary, pausing at the door on her way outs “Don't let us talk of killing now. it is saving life we must be thinking of today, not destroying. It's building up, not bringing down.” 

At her side the boy Robin spoke suddenly, his hand clasping the brimming jug of water, his eyes bright with excitement. 

“It's going to be an adventure starting everything from the beginning again isnt it?" he said, and while the old man shook his head in bewilderment, the others lifted tired eyes to follow tho boy's gaze. Over the snow-covered ruins of their town the first rays of the sun were playing, turning the desolation to peaks of beauty.