Chapter 1
Friday, 19 January 1917
Oily smoke rose from the smouldering bundle of rags. He covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief. He should leave. It was dangerous here. But he had to be certain the fire took hold before he left.
He stepped over the girl lying at his feet and prodded the rags with the toe of his boot. A small flame flickered, quickly multiplying into more and larger flames, spreading, looking for fuel to feed their hunger.
They had been walking out for several weeks before he’d asked her to let him have a look inside and, at first, she’d said no. ‘It’d be more than my job’s worth. Nobody’s supposed to know what we do.’
‘You are a silly.’ He laughed and pulled her around to face him. ‘Everyone in Silvertown is aware of what the factory does.’
‘That’s as may be, but it don’t mean I have to let you see inside.’
He took her into his arms and kissed the point of her nose. ‘What harm will it do?’ He kissed her right eye, then her left one.
‘For all I know you might be a German spy.’
He held her back from him and looked into her eyes. ‘Do you think I am a spy?’
She looked away and mumbled, ‘How do I know what a spy looks like?’
‘Well, he wouldn’t look like me, I’m sure,’ he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice. ‘I am only a news reporter trying to do my job. Nobody got in Conan Doyle’s way when he wrote about a munitions factory. The Annandale Observer published his Moorside article last month, so I could do the same as he did, and give it another name.’ He gave her a slight shake and released her from his arms. ‘If that’s how you feel, perhaps we shouldn’t see each other anymore.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve never met any reporters before, and I thought it strange you wanted to get into the factory.’
He relaxed and pulled her into his arms again. ‘I will be able to write a better article if you show me where everything takes place, and there’s been so much in the newspapers about us not having enough ammunition for our men at the front. It’s bad for morale that, so I need to prove we are doing something to increase the supply.’ He hugged her tight. ‘But if you don’t want to do your bit and help – well, the public will have to go on believing we can’t provide our fighting men with what they need.’
He whispered endearments to her, stroked her, made love to her. By the end of the evening, she agreed to do what he wanted.
‘It will have to be Friday,’ she said, ‘after everyone’s finished for the week. The chemist on duty will be in the lab, and Albert, the night watchman, should be in his hut. If you sneak past him, I’ll make sure the side door’s unlocked.’
* * *
Friday was dark, the moon obscured by clouds, which suited him nicely.
‘This is the melt-pot room,’ she said after she let him in. ‘This is where the trinitrotoluene is melted before they pour it into the casings.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous? TNT is an explosive.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Not according to the bosses. They say an awful lot more heat would be needed before that could happen.’
‘You’re a very brave girl.’ He pulled her into his arms and kissed her long and hard before he strangled her.
With a last glance at the fire, he turned and ran for the door. It slammed shut behind him. He kept on running until he rounded the side of the building and passed the watchman’s hut, where Albert lay slumped on the floor, before slowing to a fast walk when he reached the road. It wouldn’t do to draw attention, but he wanted to get as far away from the factory as he could before the blaze became an inferno.
He had timed it well. The factories had closed for the weekend. The shopkeepers had pulled down their shutters. And most folks would be having their evening meal or enjoying a pint at one of the many pubs.
He hurried on and had just passed the fire station on North Woolwich Road when the crackle of flames, and the heat searing his neck and arms, forced him to look back. The windows of the factory glowed red, the flames behind them flickering and spiralling in a macabre dance.
A distant shout alerted him to the danger he was in, and he darted up a side street where he would not be so easily observed. The clang of the bell on the fire engine beat in his ears, getting louder and louder. Doors opened. Men, women and children tumbled out of their houses onto the pavement, staring aghast at the factory a few streets away.
Men rushed from door to door, banging and shouting, ‘The factory’s on fire.’
More people joined them, and soon there was a crowd of panic-stricken people, all running. He ran with them. There was safety in crowds.
Yellow, orange, and red flames leapt from the roof. Sparks rose and fell back to the ground, like shooting stars, smoke billowed upwards in great clouds, and the stink of burning chemicals stung his nostrils. But still he ran. While behind him the blaze increased, turning the evening sky crimson.
Victoria Dock was on his right when the first explosion came. The ground shook, buildings collapsed, and sparks showered the area, starting smaller fires where they landed. A fiery glow bathed everything in a blood-red vision of hell, silhouetting the houses left standing against the inferno. Then the second blast, louder, more spectacular, filled the sky with a display that would put Guy Fawkes to shame. A sizzling lump of flying metal flew past his head, singeing his hair and embedding itself in the road in front of him. The flour mills in the Victoria Dock crumbled under the force of the blast, and a gasometer at the other side of the river on the Greenwich Peninsula exploded, sending a glowing fireball sky-high.
His lungs felt as if they were exploding, but he turned and ran. Ran for his life.
Chapter 2
Sally
‘Be a love, and pop out the back and get some milk from the food safe.’ Sally’s mother wiped her floury hands on her apron.
It was Sally’s sixteenth birthday and her mother was baking her a cake, although goodness only knows where she obtained the flour and eggs. But Silvertown was a place where neighbours helped each other. No doubt they rallied around to find the necessary ingredients.
She grasped the iron hook resting in the fireplace and swung the trivet hob towards her. Soup, bubbling in the pot, spat angry droplets on the burning coal. The hook which she dropped into the fender, left a residue of soot on her fingers, and she rubbed her hands with the towel draped over the fireside chair.
‘You coming with me?’ She held a hand out to the toddler playing with a wooden train on the rag rug. Molly’s fascination for fire worried Sally, who feared her sister might burn herself if left to her own devices.
Molly’s face lit up. Still holding the toy, she scrambled to her feet. Sally leaned over and picked her up, enjoying the feel of the squirming body in her arms. How was it possible to love a child so much? Particularly someone so tiny and doll-like, with her mass of red-gold curls, blue eyes that melted her heart, and a curiosity any back-alley cat would find hard to match.
‘An afterthought,’ said Dad when she was born, ‘another mouth to feed and clothe.’ This was at a time when the family was struggling to survive. How were they to know that soon they would be at war with the Hun and everything would change?
Sally missed her father after he left home to join the fighting. She didn’t know where he was, except it was somewhere foreign, but she feared it was France. ‘Don’t worry,’ he’d said when he boarded the troop train. ‘It should all be over by Christmas.’ That was more than a year ago, and two Christmases had come and gone.
Pushing thoughts of her father from her mind she hoisted Molly into a more comfortable position on her hip before stepping outside the back door. Mum was waiting for the milk.
The food safe in the dark corner to the right of the door was illuminated by a strange light. The sky above glowed crimson, and smoke tickled her nose and caught in the back of her throat. A bell clanged in the distance, and the sound increased until it seemed the noise came from the next street.
All thought of the milk left her and she rushed back into the house. ‘Fire,’ she gasped. ‘The sky is the strangest colour of red I’ve ever seen, there’s a horrible smell of burning, and the fire engine bell is deafening.’
‘Is it the factory?’ Her mother grabbed the edge of her apron and scrubbed the flour from her hands.
‘I don’t know. But we can see it from the front of the house.’ Sally wrenched the door open, unable to suppress a gasp of terror at the sight of flames leaping from the factory roof.
‘Best get out of there, lass.’ Geordie, their next-door neighbour ran past her brandishing a stick which he used to thump each door he passed, shouting, ‘Fire, fire. The factory’s on fire.’
‘Mum, Mum, we have to leave.’ Her words tumbled out in a rush. ‘Before it blows.’
‘I’ll get the coats,’ her mother said.
‘We don’t have time.’
But she was already returning with them over her arm.
‘Hurry, hurry!’
Her mother turned to lock the door.
‘There’s no time for that.’ She grasped her mother’s hand. ‘Don’t you understand? If the factory blows there won’t be any house left. Now run.’
Men, women and children erupted from houses. Fear permeated the air like something visible you could reach out and touch. The crackle of the blaze, the clanging bell of the fire engine, and the screams and shouts of the panicked crowd combined, heightening the urgency to flee from the conflagration.
Sally dragged her mother along the street while she balanced Molly on her hip. Her breath whistled out of her chest in painful gasps but she kept on running. She’d worked in the factory long enough to understand how dangerous this fire was. At any moment it could explode, taking all the houses and everyone in the vicinity sky high.
They must have run more than a mile before she was forced to stop. Unable to retain her hold on Molly who slid down her hip to the ground; Sally bent over and grasped her knees. She no longer had enough breath to keep on running.
‘Have we come far enough? Are we safe?’ Her mother hoisted the toddler into her arms and cradled the child’s head against her neck.
Sally straightened. ‘I don’t know, but my legs are like jelly and I had to stop. We’ll go on in a minute.’
She leaned against the wall, out of the way of the mass of people continuing to run, and that was when she saw him on the opposite side of the road. He’d stopped to look back at the inferno. But Rosie wasn’t with him. Her friend had talked about her date with the reporter tonight. ‘Ever so posh, he is,’ Rosie said. So, where was Rosie?
The force of the factory exploding pushed all thoughts of Rosie and her boyfriend from Sally’s mind.
Chapter 3
Kirsty
Ixworth Place Section House, two miles further east from the headquarters of the Women’s Police Service at Little George Street, provided bed and board for London’s women police. This was the place Kirsty Campbell called home. She had been a policewoman for more than two years, ever since the two main suffragette societies abandoned their militant activities, at the start of the war, to form England’s first women’s police service. Her move from the Women’s Freedom League to become one of London’s first policewomen, had been effortless.
Today’s patrol had been uneventful, evening and night ones were more exciting. Darkness lent itself to all kinds of disreputable activities. However, whether or not the patrols were uneventful, it made no difference to the effect on her feet.
With an effort, she forced her unyielding leather boots off and massaged her toes. Next, she removed her skirt and jacket, rubbing her body vigorously to relieve the itch of the coarse material. She didn’t mind the roughness of her uniform, nor the itch. She was proud to wear it as a serving woman police constable.
Before the war, such a thing would have been unthinkable, but now, women were doing all sorts of jobs usually reserved for men.
The wooden floorboards chilled her bare feet, but she resisted enclosing them in shoes until she was ready to leave her room to find something to eat. There was a kitchen in the section house, and Kirsty shared the cooking task with three of her friends because the warden in charge of the building did not provide meals.
Martha grinned at her when she entered the room. ‘I managed to persuade the butcher to part with four meat pies,’ she said. She ladled potatoes onto a plate beside one of the pies.
Kirsty nodded her thanks, grabbed a knife and fork, and pulled a chair over to the table. She sliced the pie in half, savouring the aroma, before cutting a smaller section and popping it into her mouth.
‘What do you think about our new orders?’ Martha sat down opposite her.
She waited until she finished chewing. ‘It should be exciting.’
‘Where is Gretna anyway?’
‘I don’t think we’re supposed to mention the name,’ Kirsty said, ‘but it’s on the west coast of Scotland.’
‘Interesting. I haven’t been back there since we left in 1911. Will you take time to visit your parents in Dundee?’
Kirsty frowned. ‘What would be the point? What would I say to them? I’m sorry I left six years ago! That would be a lie because I’m not.’ She pushed a potato around the plate. ‘They disapproved of me then, they will disapprove of me now.’
‘Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe they’d like to see you now.’
Kirsty snorted. ‘And pigs might fly.’ She was unable to keep the note of bitterness out of her voice.
She had hardly finished speaking when there was a rumble and the building shook. Her plate slid towards the edge of the table forcing her to make a grab for it. ‘That was close,’ she said to Martha who was retrieving the contents of the sideboard from the floor.
Ethel, who had eaten her evening meal earlier and had gone to polish her boots and belt in readiness for her early shift the next day, stuck her head around the dining room door. ‘Who’s with me to go and see where the bomb landed?’
Kirsty laid her plate on the table. ‘It must be nearby, the house shook with the impact.’
She pushed past the cluster of policewomen congregated at the open front door and stepped outside, but was unable to see any damage nearby, nor any Zeppelins hovering overhead; however, the sky was an eerie red colour like nothing Kirsty had ever seen before.
‘What’s happened? We thought it was a bomb.’
One of the women said, ‘It’s an explosion of some sort. I was coming off shift when the blast almost knocked me off my feet and the whole sky lit up. Whatever it is, seems to be in the east of the city, over by the dock area.’
‘Zeppelins, do you think?’
‘Probably, although I didn’t notice any.’
They stood for several minutes watching the deep red glow spread over the entire city.
‘The docks must be on fire,’ someone said.
‘That’s more than ten miles away.’ The speaker shrugged. ‘No danger of it spreading here.’
Kirsty remained at the door and watched long after the group dispersed, wondering what kind of blaze was big enough to redden the sky over all London. She couldn’t help wondering what size of a bomb would be capable of doing that, and how much damage had been left in its wake.
Eventually, she returned inside to eat the remainder of her now cold meal and to throw herself in bed afterwards, where she tossed and turned for the rest of the night.
* * *
Kirsty woke with a start the next morning. She looked at the clock and groaned, roll call was in ten minutes. She’d never be ready in time and she hated getting black marks.
There was no time to wash so she grabbed the facecloth from the wash stand next to her bed and scrubbed her face. A cat’s lick her old nanny had called it. At least she’d folded her clothes last night so they wouldn’t be creased, and her boots and belt were shining. She scrambled into her shirt, lifting her chin to button it tight to the neck, then secured her tie under the collar before stepping into her skirt, nearly overbalancing as she did so. Her stiff leather boots were a struggle to pull on, and the laces insisted on tying themselves in knots. She was still fastening her jacket buttons as she raced down the corridor.
She stopped at the duty room door. Blast, her hair wasn’t combed, but her hat should hide it until she had a chance to attend to it later on.
‘I am glad you could join us, Campbell,’ Sergeant Gilbert said in a withering tone.
Kirsty slid into position at the end of the line of policewomen. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she mumbled.
‘Don’t let it happen again.’
‘No, ma’am.’
The sergeant picked up a piece of paper from the desk behind her. ‘Those of you allocated your shifts will proceed as normal, but Campbell, Fairweather, Stewart, and Dakers, you will proceed to Silvertown where there has been an explosion. Your main task will be to document the fatalities and list those injured in the blast, but you will also provide support and assistance to the population wherever it is needed. You will work in conjunction with the rescue teams.’ She laid the paper on the desk. ‘Dismiss.’
‘Anyone got a comb?’ Kirsty asked, removing her hat as soon as the sergeant left the room. She took the one Ethel held out, and dragged it through her short auburn hair. ‘Thanks,’ she said returning it. ‘Now, who knows anything about this explosion at Silvertown?’
‘I’m just off night shift and there’s a lot of talk on the streets.’ Doris yawned. ‘Apparently, the munitions factory went up and most of Silvertown has been flattened. I don’t envy you your job this morning.’
Kirsty shivered. She would prefer to be out on patrol.
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