Ellen Blake Destined To Return

21 - Sutterby Scout

It was pitch black in the tunnel where the train came to an unscheduled stop. The sleeping giant was hissing steam and other strange noises from the engine's boiler, which were eerily amplified down the tunnel. The only noises, attempting to compete for the airwaves, came from the whimpering and sobbing of a number of the passengers in the carriage.

'How long's it been?' asked a frightened Ellen.

She was trying to work out if she could still hear the faint traces of the air-raid siren. It was hard to make out with all the other sounds around her.

'Too long,' replied her brother. 'Although it's probably only been five to ten minutes.'

Although they couldn't see Billy in the darkness, they could hear and sense he was uncomfortable. He'd been shuffling about where he squatted.

'I don't like it,' he said. 'Something's not right. Why have we stopped and why for so long?'

'Of course it's not right,' said a tearful Marianne.

Like the majority of people on board they had all been startled by the siren. They had sat in silence for the few miles the train had travelled at speed before reaching the tunnel. The time was spent catching their breath, reliving the panic and recovering from the adrenalin rush. They were worried about what could be happening in the skies directly above them and also further down the track in York. Marianne appeared to suffer the most and softly wept, cocooned in an upright foetal position.

Speaking a little louder than a whisper, Ellen leant towards Marianne.

'How are you doing?'

After a few silent seconds Marianne mumbled something which Ellen couldn't understand.

'Scared,' she repeated this time a little clearer.

'Yeah. I think we all are.'

Ellen reached out her hand to try and hold Marianne's sympathetically. Unable to see and not realising Ellen's good intentions, Marianne flinched and retracted her hand as though a snake had lunged for her. She quickly realised her mistake and grabbed tightly to Ellen's shaking and slender hand.

'We've heard about the air-raid sirens at school,' said Ellen. 'To be honest I just thought it would sound like a loud alarm. Like a fire alarm. Then everyone would hear it, stop what they were doing and calmly take cover. But that was nothing like I imagined. It was painfully loud and shot the fear of God through me. I was frozen.'

'It was my first real air-raid,' said Marianne. 'We've had plenty of drills over the last two years and although they were tense they felt nothing like that. It was a hundred times worse than the drills. I'm still shaking.'

'Me too.'

Ellen gave Marianne's hand a comforting pat.

'But it wasn't just that I was scared,' continued Marianne. 'I mean I was. I was petrified. But all I could think of was where Mum was, where Keith was and whether they were both safe. How do we know whether there was a raid and God forbid, whether they actually dropped anything?'

Ellen could hear Marianne choking up again from the thought of these terrible ideas. She adjusted her position on the floor to sit closer and put her arm around Marianne, who obliged in resting against her.

'I know I'm no authority on this ...' said Aaron, 'but I did pay attention in physics lessons.'

'And?'

Ellen egged him on when he strangely stopped talking after mentioning physics, as though he was going to be berated as a physics geek.

'Okay. Yes. And I've seen a lot of disaster movies ... and well ... surely if something as horrible as a bomb was dropped from a plane ...'