The Memory Of Falling Embers

“Angela. Up.”

Her eyes shoot open. The long, undulating cry takes a moment to break over the sound of her racing heart. Red light is flashing through the window. Her breath holds in anticipation of the boom.

It doesn’t come.

But the siren grows louder, closer. Her mind returns to her. The tightness in her chest snaps like an elastic band, showering every limb in the cold wash of spent adrenaline. With a steady exhale, the next inhale comes easily. 

Slowly, she sits, letting her legs fall over the side of her bed. Birmingham’s sirens hadn’t moved. And she left England seventy years ago.

Kurt's hearing aids are out, his snores boast a blissful sleep in every echoing oscillation. There’s no falling back asleep with that — even if her heart agreed to slow.

She stands, the stiffness in her knees reminds her that more than a few years that have passed since that siren rang. But, like she had in those days, she lets her hand guide her along the wall to the front room. There, the curtains are drawn. The small retirement community in a far away corner of Canada hadn’t seen so much as a petty thief since before she and Kurt had moved there. The siren cuts off as she moves the curtains aside. 

A fire engine is parked in front of her neighbor’s door. She turns away, feet a muffled thump over the soft warm carpet. At the back door, her hand finds the pack of cigarettes and plastic lighter on the counter.

In the night air, a spark of light illuminates her stony face. She sucks the fire in and puffs then releases the flame. A long, steady drag leads into a slow, deliberate exhale. Her nerves fall away in time with each breath, her eyes move over the moon-lit garden. 

The fire engine’s lights, dance along the top branches of her fruit trees dressed in spring flowers. In fall, the fruit they’ll bear would’ve been more precious then the money in her pocket, once. In a time when her mother had scolded her refusal of a banana, because she’d stood in line for over an hour to get it.

Her mother.

Angela sighs out a puff of smoke. Of course it was her mother’s voice she’d heard in time with the siren. They’re mixed now, one cannot exist without the other. And they’re both gone, the siren, and her mother’s voice. Silenced by the passage of time. Not too soon, like the forty-three thousand civilian lives taken in less than two years when fire fell from the skies. 

Her cigarette burns away in the dark, a disembodied ember. There’s a porch light, of course, but the tension in her chest desires darkness. She was born in a time when darkness meant safety and another floating ember had cut the dark, eighty years ago.

It must have been near the end of the blitz. Birmingham was the worst hit city after London and Liverpool. She was born three months after Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany. There were many nights with sirens, but this was the one she’d been old enough to remember. 

It was early Sunday morning, awoken from her first restful sleep in a week. Coal rations limited their hot water usage, so Saturday was bath night: the only night they could light the fire and the boiler to run the bath. Nothing was as blissful as going to bed with warm feet. Her memory didn’t look fondly on England’s weather, she was always cold. The warmth of bath night was wonderful, despite the dreaded rags in her hair that would create perfect curls in the morning. Their discomfort was a small price to pay for warmth.

Aunt Kit and cousin Wendy were staying with them. Aunt Kit wasn’t actually her mother’s sister, they’d been friends since childhood and her mother preferred her over her own sister. Kit had received news that her small city was targeted for bombing, so she fled, staying with Angela and her mother. In hindsight it’s odd that she’d go to a city that saw more raids than her own, but fear does things to people. Perhaps she just wanted the comfort of a friend’s face, and her stiff British upbringing wouldn’t allow her to admit it. To Angela, however, it’d been a wonderful night, between the rarely warmed house, the larger than average dinner (with Aunt Kit’s ration coupons), and a long romp around the victory garden with Wendy. Angela fell into bed next to her mother’s warm body, full, content and exhausted.

Then the sirens called. 

Slow at first. It could be the hum of a mosquito in your ear. Then it crept higher. Louder. An inescapable, elevating note. Then it fell, to climb again.

“Angela. Up,” Her mother said.

Eyes open are no different than eyes closed in total darkness. Few know that kind of dark. When you can’t tell if something is laying over your eyes or if there’s just an absence of light. It could terrify anyone who hadn’t been born into it, but Angela had known this darkness her whole life, and this darkness meant the fires above couldn’t find her. This darkness meant safety. At dusk every window was shut and drawn with blackout curtains. Street lights remained extinguished, and all the essential automobiles such as taxes, buses and emergency vehicles were fitted with deflectors, or even just black tape, to cast their light downward – away from the sky – where the Germans were. 

When the sun set, the world was dark, silent, and still.

She put her hands out to feel around her, unfamiliar with the furniture in her mother’s room. Aunt Kit and Wendy were in Angela’s room. Another blessing. Angela feared loneliness. 

When the planes would come and the sirens would sound. She imagined the horror of one day opening her bedroom door to a hole where the house had been, her family would be gone and she’d be alone; like the families down the road in every direction, on every side of town. Without warning, at random, they’d be gone where the bombs fell.

“Fetch your jumper,” Her mother said through the black. “Quickly now, love.”

Anegla’s fingers brushed the walls, feeling her way to the door. The sirens’ wail quieted the thrum of her heart and the protesting creak of the door when she moved into the narrow hall. Her hand kept her close to the wall, with her feet timidly thap thapping over the hardwood floor in the lull of the siren’s call. 

That’s when she spied it: a red orb floating in the dark. The air fell away from her chest, catching so tight at the base of her exhale, she couldn’t pull a new breath. Her movement was arrested by the sight of the fire falling. 

Were her bedroom curtains open? 

Aunt Kit didn’t know she was supposed to shut them! 

The Germans had seen their house!

The orb fell through the air, and she forgot her body, forgot to move, or scream, or think. Just staring through wide saucer eyes. Like a cat cornered by a dog.

Then, the most peculiar thing happened. The orb paused. Hovered. And rose again. 

It was then that smell came to her nose. Cigarette smoke.

Her mother’s footsteps passed Angela as her breath came new and easily. 

“Come now, love,” She said. “Fetch your jumper. Quickly.”

Not a bomb. Something else…

Curious, Angela’s feet moved, finding her way to her room. 

“There are blankets and pillows in the shelter,” Her mother was explaining. “Might be a little cramped but we’ll ma—”

“I’m not going,” A voice breathed as the orb fell. It hovered just below Angela’s eye level, then jerked sideways, casting a shower of embers that winked out before they touched her floor. It was a cigarette.

“Ridiculous,” Her mother dismissed. “You came here to escape the raids.”

The orb rose again, growing brighter to illuminate Aunt Kit’s cold, tired eyes, and fell with the sound of a slow exhale. “But I haven’t,” said Aunt Kit. “So if I’m going to die. I’ll do it in bed, instead of a cold, wet hole.”

“Mummy,” A voice whispered.

“Go with Aunt Sue, Wendy,” Kit said. Another flick sent sparks into the air.

The only reply was the siren. 

“Come Wendy,” Angel’s mother snapped. “Your mother will join us when she’s come to her senses.”

The orb lifted to unveil glistening eyes. “Go on love.”

A hand caught Angela’s arm, more tightly than she was accustomed to, and she was pulled away. Worry weighed her feet down. The adults said people who didn’t shelter would die. 

“Is Auntie Kit going to die?”

Wendy made a small gasp.

“No.” Her mother’s voice was sharp.

“But she’s not coming down—”

“She’ll come to her senses in a moment. Tell me you have your jumper.”

“Yes, mummy,” Angela said. Her mother stopped to help her get it on — no small task in the dark. 

“I don’t have mine,” Wendy moaned.

“We have to move love, there’s extra blankets in the shelter.”

The coat was in place, and her mother’s hands fell away. Angela knew the feel in the air when the wall gave way to the stairs and she’d explained earlier to Wendy how to hold the poles in the banister and feel for the edge of each stair with her foot. Now, she was excited to demonstrate this in the actual act, but only her cousin’s crying worked through the dark as her fingers fumbled for each wooden piece. 

The bottom was reached when the floor became cold, and more solid under foot. Her mother asked Wendy for her hand while Angela felt her way through the familiar maze.

Her fingers brushed over the wireless radio, a Christmas gift from her father. With rationing tight, it’s a wonder what it must have cost him. She loved it more than anything else they owned, apart from her books of course. A few months ago she’d been listening in the bath and a sudden uplifting melody caressed her ears. The rise and fall of violins and flutes, cellos and clarinets had taken her out of the damp, cold, bombed out city and into the clouds. Her skin buzzed in the current of pure emotion, motionless in the warm water as the small tiled room took the song to unimaginable beauty. Colorful images filled her thoughts. She closed her eyes and let the music carry her away. Her first time experiencing Mozart. Then all together the song had stopped, followed by a more popular song of the day.

She’d screamed hysterically, and her mother came rushing in, and it took Angela several minutes to become coherent enough to explain what had happened. She begged her mother to bring the song back and Sue explained that it was on the radio. She couldn’t possibly make it come back, she’d just have to wait until it came back on again.

Angela still ran her fingers over the dials, knowing what her mother would say, but she asked anyway “Mummy. Can we bring the radio? Please.” 

“No love, can’t make any noise, remember.” She sighed over the clack of her pumps hitting the floor. “Find your shoes.”

Angela caressed the dials for a second longer, then joined her mother and pulled on her old, worn Mary Janes. They were a size too big, with the fronts scuffed and patched from constantly tripping. Initially, the ministry had issued a fair ration for clothing, but by this point, it wasn’t enough to purchase new. So the civilian population had set up a clothing exchange, and her mother had attended “mend and make due” courses to create a deep hem on all of Angela’s dresses, which she’d turn out as Angela grew. The shoes however, had to be exchanged. When her toes threatened to break through the front, they’d be traded for a pair she’d trip over for months. 

Beside her shoes was a small box filled with items she could carry out on a night like this. While Sue helped Wendy find her shoes, Angela lifted the lid to feel through its contents, ensuring everything was accounted for: a small, glossy hardcover book (Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter), and the new addition from that afternoon: Wendy and Angela had cut pictures of women from a magazine modeling undergarments, and Aunt Kit had used her skilled hand to draw a number of dresses and clothing items that the young girls colored and decorated to dress the paper women. They’d played with them for hours. 

When Wendy had managed to get her shoes on — she wasn’t as adept in the dark as the Birmingham ladies were — they moved through the dining room to the kitchen, and out into the backyard. 

The siren cut an otherwise tranquil night. The cool air was still, the scent of earth and the soft sweetness of her mother’s prize-winning hydrangeas carried up from around the “Victory Garden” (the ministry’s endearment for the patch of vegetables all Brits were instructed to grow for themselves). The midnight moon, casting its silver light over the sleeping cabbages, beets, carrots and peas; would have been a beautiful sight, were it not for the sheer openness of the sky. In fact, the moon was so dazzlingly bright, it was a small wonder that the ministry hadn’t told it to conceal itself!

They hurried to the great mound in the back of the yard, like some giant shadowy turtle ready to hide them. As Angela sprinted in, she half expected to look up and see a network of planes transversing the full moon.

The Anderson shelter was assembled by her father and grandfather during one of her father’s infrequent visits. He’d purchased it for seven pounds and it consisted of several steel panels which he and mum’s father had constructed over a dug out hole in the back of the garden, then piled dirt on top. Older Angela had more memories of its later use as a garden shed, and a cool retreat on the rare hot summer day. 

While assembling the shelter, the men talked, or rather, her grandfather talked. This WWI veteran who’d outgrown his use to the British armed forces, made up for it with his his keen interest in the war. When he’d asked her father if the “air raids kept him busy,” Angela’s dad gave a muted reply. She didn’t know what that meant until she was much older and learned what her father had done in the war. His connections in the military before the war, as Colonel Dix-Perkin’s batman, managed to keep him on English soil. Well, English waters to be more accurate. He fished the dead bodies of German pilots from the waters.

Her grandfather was satisfied with her father’s quiet affirmation. An understandable sentiment from a resident of the third most heavily bombed city in England. The city where close to two thousand tons of explosives had fallen from the skies in less than two years. Where, more often than not, the night was interrupted by the warbling cry of the air raid siren and thousands of civilians lost their lives, with thousands more injured and scarred for life. Thousands of homes and businesses were gone in a flash of light. 

But her father, the gentle Welshman, who’d always had a song under his breath, came home different: quiet and reserved. Over the years Angela’s imagination created visions of ghostly white bodies floating on the waves, broken and bloated, and her gentle father pulling them out with that same, quiet reluctance he answered her grandfather with.

After the war, her parents would grow to despise each other. Her mother didn’t lose her husband and yet she did in those cold waters. Absent the brotherhood of war but present in the worst it could offer, he was gifted his life and became all the more broken for it. After she endured the bombs, the death of her neighbors, and constant fear for the safety of her child. She’d tried to join the war effort, but Angela’s anxiety had stopped her. One day in that horrible porridge-smelling daycare had been enough to make her ill beyond function (she’d had a panic attack), and was whisked away to the doctor. He firmly informed her mother that her work was making Angela sick and she simply had to stay home. Raise a child under a falling sky.

When the trio reached the earthy damp shelter, and Wendy was wrapped tightly in several blankets, her mother firmly shut the door and switched on the ARP lamp. Angela’s uncle was a supply officer and had “found” the lamp for them. It was electric and had a flap that directed the beam of light downward, making it harder to see from the air. It wasn’t strictly forbidden for civilian use, but they were mostly designated to the air raid patrol wardens whose duty was to maintain the nightly blackout. Owning the lamp might draw questions.

A match was struck, a burst of light above the narrow beam from the lamp, and the smell of sulfur was overtaken by the rich scent of tobacco. It wasn’t such a taboo thing in those days, besides, it would be a failed heart that would take Sue at the ripe age of eighty-nine. 

Sue released a thin stream of smoke, the small gray clouds rolled and billowed along the top of the beam as the siren carried on. In time, it’s call fell and didn’t rise again, finally leaving silence behind. There were no footsteps, no voices, or rumbling cars. Save the rogue dog, or hooting owl, the city sat and waited.

Angela opened her box, pulling out the paper dolls. Her mother’s face was shadowed above the beam of light, but Angela heard her sigh. “Five minutes darling,” Her voice whispered. “Quietly.”

Angela tried to engage Wendy, but she only stared longingly at the door, shuddering under her blankets. 

“Aunt Sue,” Wendy asked. “When’s mummy coming?”

“Soon love,” She said. Her hand appeared in the beam of light, scooping the glossy white book from Angela’s box. Holding the cigarette between her index and middle finger, she opened the cover. “Let’s read a story while we wait. Sleep a little perhaps?”

“Alright,” Wendy breathed, her dim shadow lay out on the bunk, pulling the blankets up around her face. 

Angela stowed away her paper dolls, gladly laying her head into the cold pillow. She lived for stories. 

“Mary May has a picture book with colored pictures,” She whispered.

“Does she now,” Her mother asked, a smile in her voice.

“Yes,” Angela whispered. She could see the glint of Wendy’s eyes on her. “Her cousin in America sent it to her. She said all their books are in color.”

“Hmph, yes,” Her mother returned to a curt tone. “What a luxury it must be to choose not to go to war.”

“Mummy said America is on our side now,” Wendy whispered.

“Yes well…” Sue sighed. “They had to be attacked first it would seem.” 

“Grandpa said they wanted to help us all along,” Angela said. 

“They’ve helped us before,” Her mother replied. “In any case, enough about America.”

“I heard at school that they were sending children to Canada,” Wendy said. “My teacher said Canada is America’s neighbor.”

“Yes,” Sue said, her voice growing shorter. “In any case, just color the pictures with your imagination.”

She tilted the book into the light, lifting the cigarette to her mouth, the white cylinder crossed into a ghostly shadow before fading into another floating ember. When her hand returned to the book, she began to read, bringing the smell of tobacco with her voice. The cold was part of Angela’s existence then, it didn’t stop her fade into sleep.

The cigarette almost falls from Angela’s fingers as a shuffling noise interrupts her reminiscence. She turns in time to see Kurt’s towering form come around the divide of the hall. She breathes, returning her gaze to the shadow-cast garden.

“Da lightsh,” he grumbles, voice thick with sleep and the Danish accent he refused to surrender. He joins her, pulling a cigarette from her pack. The glint of flashing red lights in his ear shows he’s replaced his hearing aids. 

Angela takes in the smoke. She nods, then hands him her cigarette so he can light his. He breathes in the night air. A moment of silence passes between them.

“The sirens actually,” she says. 

He glances at her as he lights his cigarette, then gives her’s back. In time he nods.

“What are you tinking?” He asks.

“Remembering,” She sighs, looking at the light of her cigarette. “When my aunt Kit refused to go down to the bomb shelter…Do you know I can’t remember what happened that night.” She takes a deep drag. “She lived past the war so we must not have been bombed that night…Or maybe we did. The house survived. Maybe she was just lucky.”

“Mmph,” Kurt nods, his eyes lingering on her face. In the same year the fire had rained on her from above, the fire had found his doorstep. While her mother fought by making due, his mother had fought with silence. A silence that kept the family under his floorboards safe from the eyes that sought them. 

And now, they too are gone, Angela and Kurt. With their mothers, who’d seen the world fall into war twice before they were thirty. The ones who fought the silent fight. The ordinary people doing extraordinary things while the world was on fire. The one’s who were there are leaving. But their stories remain.

They’re gone, but remembered. 

Always.