Beauty Chorus, The Read Free

and stale sweat escaped the tight embrace of her tweed coat.
    Stella blinked. ‘Yes, yes I am.’ At the sound of her voice, so unlike theirs, several people looked up. Cut-glass, that’s what they called it around there.
    ‘Visiting family?’ the woman probed, needles flashing in the light of the paraffin lamp.
    She nodded. ‘My aunt—’ At the sound of another bomb overhead she broke off. Those awake held their breath, mentally tracing the path of the bomber, the rat-tat-tat of the
anti-aircraft guns. The breath caught in Stella’s throat, she gagged slightly.
    ‘Oh I know,’ the woman whispered. ‘You get used to it. I’ve complained to the warden about the stink down here. Oxford Street, I ask you, and here we are living like rats
with the chemical closets overflowing.’ A muffled moan came from the furthest bunk and she tutted again. ‘Those two should get themselves off to the courting shelter. Don’t want
that sort of goings-on in here.’
    As the bomb exploded, everyone exhaled. Not them this time. A muffled cheer filtered through from the next-door shelter and Stella heard a Glenn Miller record strike up.
    ‘Your aunt you say?’
    ‘Sorry?’ She pulled her attention back to the woman’s tired, puffy face. ‘Yes.’ She ran a hand through the waves of her blonde, newly bobbed hair. There was a
bruise on her forehead. In the confusion as the warden ushered her into the shelter, she hadn’t ducked low enough for the door, had banged her head on the way in. ‘I’m staying the
night with Dorothy, Dorothy Blower.’
    ‘Well you picked a good one!’ A man laughed from the shadows. ‘Worst so far. The last few nights it’s been like the Great Fire all over again.’
    ‘You’re Dot’s niece? Fancy that,’ the woman said. ‘We’re in the flats opposite. Where is she? Surely she’s not at home in the middle of all
this?’
    ‘No, I lost her on the street. It was all such a rush.’
    The woman laughed indulgently. ‘She’ll be fine, don’t you worry. Dot likes the shelter down the road a bit – you know how she likes her cards.’
    Stella didn’t know that. She had only met her a few hours before. She jumped as another bomb exploded. Dust motes drifted down from the ceiling, hissing in the flame of the paraffin
lamp.
    ‘Not used to this are you?’
    ‘No.’ Stella instinctively looked up as the baby whimpered again. She longed to hold the child, just for a moment, to feel the weight of him in her arms, the warm, soft skin.
    ‘Hush.’ The woman reached over, smoothed the baby’s blanket.
    ‘Is he yours?’ Stella asked.
    ‘This little one?’ The woman shook her head. ‘His dad was killed at Dunkirk, and his mum …’ Her eyes clouded for a moment. ‘Well, that last raid got her.
Bless her, she was only nineteen. Worked in the munitions factory with me. I’ll look out for him until her family turn up from Kent.’ She carried on knitting. ‘Do you have
children?’
    ‘Yes, a boy.’ Stella folded her arms across her stomach.
    ‘Is he with your aunt?’
    ‘No, I—’ The tears caught her suddenly.
    ‘There, there love.’ The woman’s knitting slipped softly to her lap as she put her arm around Stella. ‘Let it out. A little cry is good for us all now and then.
There’s not a woman here who hasn’t lost someone.’
    Stella pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her coat. Her fingertip brushed the letter folded carefully there.
    ‘How did he …?’
    ‘Oh no, he’s alive still.’ Stella wiped at her eyes, quietly blew her nose. ‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ she said, quickly recovering herself. ‘I do feel
silly, and in front of a perfect stranger. Please excuse me.’
    They heard the staccato crack of gunshots as planes flew overhead. ‘We’re all friends now,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Eileen by the way.’
    ‘Thank you, Eileen. I’m Stella, Stella Grainger.’
    ‘So where is he, your little lad?’
    ‘David?’ Even the sound of his name was