Under the Apple Tree Read Online Free Page A

swayed
    slightly. ‘I expect I’m just a bit hungry.’
     
    Miss Marsh gave her a sharp glance. ‘A cup of tea and
    something to eat for you, my girl. Come on — there’s a stall
    over there, they’ll see to you.’ She led Judy over to a
    makeshift stall where an urn was boiling on a large stove
    which appeared to have been built out of bricks salvaged
    from the piles of rubble. A woman in a green uniform was
    dealing out mugs of tea and sticky buns to the firemen and
    soldiers who were still desperately trying to put out-the fire.
    Gratefully, Judy ate a bun, surprised to find just how
    hungry she was, and swallowed the tea. She smiled a trifle
    shakily at the supervisor. ‘I feel a bit better now. Sorry
    about that.’
    ‘That’s all right. You’ve got more colour in your cheeks,
    anyway. Now, I’m off back to Southsea. Don’t forget — it’s
    the Royal Beach Hotel — and once you’re sure you’ve seen
    everyone, you’re to go straight home. Don’t stay here too
    long, anyway. If they haven’t arrived by mid-afternoon, they
    won’t be coming.’ Her face twisted a little and she turned
    away. ‘I’ll look for you at the hotel tomorrow morning.’
    ‘Yes, Miss Marsh.’ Judy watched her walk briskly away.
    She knew well enough what the supervisor had meant.
    There might be casualties, even deaths, amongst the staff. In
    the chaos that the raid had caused, nobody knew what might
    have happened.
     
    How did other places manage when this happened to
    them? she wondered. Places like London, Bristol, Liverpool,
    Coventry. They’d been through this as well, yet somehow
    they still managed to carry on.
     
    Perhaps that was the answer. Perhaps that was all you
    could do. Just carry on.
     
    It was growing dark again as Judy walked wearily down
    October Street and turned into April Grove. The pall of smoke
    was still drifting above the rooftops, and with no street-lights and every house blacked out there was no glimmer of cheer in
    the devastated streets, no hint of warmth in the bitter cold.
    What will we do if they come again? she wondered. How could
    we stand another night like last night?
     
    She came to her grandmother’s door and knocked. It
    opened, and her aunt drew back the blackout curtain for
    Judy to push past. They felt their way down the short, dark
    passage to the back room, where she found the family sitting
    round by the glow of a small fire with a kettle resting on the
    coals, and the light of a single candle. Her mother and
    grandmother sat in armchairs on each side of the fire, and
    Dick and Polly were on kitchen chairs in front of it. Dick
    got up and moved his chair aside, pulling another into the
    space for Judy.
     
    ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘It’s horrible outside.’ She
    shrugged off her coat and hung it on the inside of the door
    to the staircase.
     
    ‘Oh Judy, thank goodness,’ her mother said. ‘We were
    starting to get worried about you.’
     
    ‘I’ve been down the Guildhall Square, looking out for the
    other people at work. They’ve moved the offices out to
    Southsea.’ Judy sank down on the chair and stretched her
     
    hands out to the fire. ‘It’s awful, Mum. The whole place has
    gone. The Guildhall’s still burning, and they say everything
    inside’s been destroyed. All those lovely pictures, and the
    wooden panelling, and the carpets - everything. And there’s
    street after street just ruined. You can’t get through some of
    them at all. Someone told me there’d been nearly three
    thousand fires. Three thousand! How could they hope to
    put them all out?’
    ‘It’s wicked,’ Cissie said, her voice trembling. ‘Wicked.’
    ‘It’s war, Cis,’ Dick said. ‘There’s worse happening than
    a few pictures and carpets getting burned. People are being
    killed. Like that young woman just up the road here.’
    ‘What young woman?’ Judy looked at him. She’d visited
    her grandmother often enough to know most of the
    neighbours in April