Free Put Out the Fires by Maureen Lee Page B

remembered it and the houses were jammed together as if they’d been forced down by a giant hand into a space far too small. It was something she’d never noticed when she lived there. On the other hand, the railway wall at the end of the street seemed taller than before. She’d never realised it was as high as the roofs and it looked rather oppressive, like the wall of a prison. The girls used to play ball against the wall when she was a child, though she rarely joined in. She was far too busy practising the piano. On the few occasions she did, everyone had been impressed by her ability to play with three balls, apparently forever, without dropping one.
    In those days, steam trains had run beyond the wall, and the belching smoke used to cover the washing with little black smuts. Her father had written some years before to say the line had been electrified.
    There was no moon that night. She’d already experienced the blackout, and during the journey had been concerned she wouldn’t be able to find her way in the pitch darkness. After all, it was twenty years since she’d left the street. But she needn’t have worried. An air-raid was in progress and everywhere was lit up as gaily as a carnival.
    The long thin fingers of searchlights swept across the black sky, and every now and then flares fell like exploding stars and it was bright as daylight for a while. The flares were usually followed by the sound of an explosion, as a bomb was dropped by one of the planes which were occasionally caught in a probing searchlight. Barrage balloons glinted decoratively, like lights on a Christmas tree.
    But the greatest illumination came from a fire, a great roaring fire, which was very close, somewhere on the docks, she guessed. She could hear crackling and was sure it must be a timber yard. The woman felt convinced she could even feel the heat from the dancing, twisting flames which leapt up into the sky, though it was probably her imagination, as perhaps was the pungent smell of burning.
    The area where she stood actually looked quite pretty, the houses with their windows crisscrossed with sticky tape to prevent the glass from shattering, the wet roofs and cobbled streets, all sheathed in a glistening pink glow.
    Chimneys puffed smoke which made lacy patterns against the fiery sky.
    There was the sound of fire engines in the distance and of people shouting, though the area around Pearl Street was relatively quiet. There were voices coming from the public house by which she stood. She tried to remember what it was called and looked up at the sign when the name wouldn’t come to mind—the King’s Arms! Her father used to go there for a drink on Saturday nights. Perhaps he still did.
    The woman regarded everything around her with a curious lack of emotion. Even when a bomb dropped close by she didn’t flinch, but remained, as still as a statue outside the pub, as if entirely unaware of the danger she was in. There was only one emotion the woman was capable of feeling at the moment, the same one which had kept her going throughout the last two years, and that was an implacable, all-consuming hatred of Adolf Hitler and every German who had ever lived.
    She sighed, and picked a small suitcase up from beside her numb feet. It was time she went home. Even she was able to see she couldn’t stand there all night. A flare fell, closely followed by a bomb. It was stupid, if nothing else, to risk her life so near to home considering all she’d been through.
    The woman crossed the street and knocked on the door of number 3. When no-one answered, she knocked again, and after a while, a voice shouted, “Coming!” She felt shocked when a very old man answered the door and wondered if she’d come to the wrong house. It wasn’t until she noticed the familiar dark-red wallpaper in the hall and the black and red linoleum, that she realised it was the right house after all, and this old man was her father.
    “Hallo, Dad,” she said.