The one that stayed behind: an extract

The one that stayed behind by is the story of her close-knit family of seven children jolted into a tragedy of colossal repercussions that maimed and split her family in different directions overnight in World War II. She lost her father and two elder bro

That one Saturday in March 1942 remains in my mind to this day. It was in the afternoon. The siren had sounded so often that day that there was no point in going up and down at the end of each raid, so we all remained in our little room. I was 10 at the time. I was dressed for church with a felt beret on my head. Mother had had a strange dream the night before, she said, and had to tell someone about it. In her dream mother had seen a black, ugly sea and in the middle was Our Lady, the Star of the Sea, as we used to call her. After a while she saw the heads of many people on the surface – then the sea turned blood red. “It was so vivid,” she said, “I can still see them bobbing up and down.”

Father was hovering in the corridor and mother asked him to come in for tea but he, satisfied that we were all safely gathered together in the shelter, said: “Let it wait.” I’ve got to see someone about a business deal. He promised to meet me here, up on top. With that he disappeared up the stairs. Charlie and Joseph were sitting on the top step of our room with their backs to the people thronging and crowding the corridor of the shelter, counting each flicker of the light bulb hanging in the centre of our room. Charlie announced that each flicker meant a bomb was exploding – one, two, three, and another and another.

I was sitting on a chair by the steps, still wearing my beret ready to go to confession as soon as the raid was over. Paul, Mario and baby Maria were huddled on the floor. Maria was playing with some pans from mother’s kitchen. Then all the lights went out. I was thrown from my chair. I heard a great clanking of chains and saw a brilliant flash of light as powerful and fast as lightning as it swept down the corridor over all the people huddled there, some sitting, some standing. One great moan came from them as if they were breathing their last breath. Then total silence. I think the blast from the explosion must have hit our little room for I seem to rememer nothing for some time as if I had been asleep. When I awoke, no one was moving or speaking. Everyone seemed to be buried in a black pit.

I stretched out my arms to feel about me, my fingers closed around pots, the kettle, perhaps, then the faces of my brothers and sister. But no one moved at my touch and it was too dark to see. I tried to speak: “Where are we?” I managed to say.

A voice answered me. It was my mother’s close by. “Is that you, Dolly?” She used to call me Dolly when I was a baby. “Are we in hell, mother?” “Yes, Yes! No, perhaps not! Stay close,” she replied. “I have some matches, I’ll light one, Stay put.” She lit a match and then another. How far that little light shone in the pitch dark! I saw faces around me, not moving, just faces. No one else had woken up and we didn’t think of trying to wake them. Don’t ask me why. Mother’s thoughts had turned to father for she asked me, “Where’s father?”

“He went upstairs to the entrance, didn’t he?” I said.

Striking matches as she went, she climbed the first step. Then the next. I followed her like a sleepwalker. In the wide corridor on our doorstep, mother’s foot touched a small body. It rolled over, “That’s Joseph,” she said.

I was quick to answer, “No, it can’t be!”

“It’s him all right. Look at the rip of his jumper where I pulled him back.” She was right. It was Joseph indeed, intact yet the size of a rabbit. Somehow we were not amazed at such a horrible sight, not even mother. We knew we were in hell. And everybody was dead. What else can one expect in hell? We seemed not to make a fuss – things were unfolding so slowly. Thank heaven for mother’s courage! Or perhaps she had not been so affected by the blast, as she had been in the far corner of our cubicle. “Where’s father then?” she asked again. Mother had begun to rely on me even in those early days. After all, I was the eldest girl and girls were supposed to be more responsible for the welfare of the family.

Still in a dream-like state, we moved a little way along the corridor from our room, mother still striking matches as we went. The air was thick with a black dust hanging like a heavy cloud, but we began to see what lay around us. The left side of the shelter seemed to have been swept clean of all the people as if by a big broom, blood covering the white concrete floor. They lay in a heap stretching to one of the blocked exits. Carefully mother walked on a few steps further, fearing she might slip on the blood. Her feet touched something and she went over to look. It was a man’s leg with a long thick sock and an army-style boot. “This is father’s” she said. “No it isn’t!” I quickly contradicted her not wanting to believe it myself.

“It is so,” she cried. “I can tell, this is his army sock, this is the boot he was wearing.”

The next minute she started laughing so shrilly I knew instantly it wasn’t right somehow. I had learned in school about the laughing hyena and I knew that her laugh had to be stopped. I don’t know why I did what I did then. All I knew was that her laugh was unnatural, crazy. It made me afraid of my own mother...