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The Calla Lilies
A short story by
David Earle
2
Copyright © 2003 by David Earle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, brands,
media, events and incidents are product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9858479-9-9
Cover by Wendy Hoag Design, Inc.
www.hoagdesign.com
Cover art of Calla Lilies by Torrie Smiley
www.torriesmiley.blogspot.com
3
I never really knew for certain what month it was when the bombings
first began, for I was only a little girl of six years at the time. That
event, though unforgettable because of its nature, was something the
family never spoke of in later years. It was just too horrible and tragic
for any one of us to willingly recall. So throughout my childhood
whenever I looked back on that night I just assumed that it was the
month of September because the Calla lilies were in bloom.
My Mum's garden, her pride and joy one might say - second to
her beloved children, of course - was always a bountiful display of
brilliant colors that would begin in early Spring with the blooms of the
Crocuses popping up through patches of snow, followed by the
Hyacinths, Tulips, Irises and Daffodils, as if not to be outdone in
beauty by the preceding members of their bulb family.
And so it would continue unto late autumn. Mum's timely
ritual of replanting her bulbs; Begonias, Dahlias, Gladiolus, Amaryllis,
Roscoeas, as well as practically every type of lily one can dream of;
African lilies, Madonna lilies, Easter lilies, Oriental lilies, all blooming
as though on cue at their own specific months of the year so that there
was never a moment when the garden would be void of any color,
except for those long grey and white months of winter.
Bulbs, however, were certainly not the only floras growing in
Mum's garden. In true English cottage garden style there was a mixture
of perennials and shrubs that added to its overall old-fashioned charm.
Donald Wyman Lilacs, Anabelle Hydrangeas, Gardenias, Hollyhocks,
Daisies, Peonies, Foxgloves, Candytuft, and Forget-me-nots were only
a few of the plants I can recollect.
A quaint knee-high picket fence surrounded the garden as a
division from our neighbors to each side of us as well as the footpath
along the front. I remember there was nary a passerby who could not
resist a moment to stop and admire the picturesque loveliness of it all.
Knowing this made Mum so proud. And the park-like bench she had
positioned in the middle of the garden must have only added to their
temptation to enter through the arbor, adorned with its fragrant, ruffled
4
yellow climbing roses, and pass the birdbath to where they might take a
seat to relax and draw in the beauty surrounding them.
To the contrary, the garden in back of our house was not as
eye-appealing as the front. The obvious reason for this is that it was
not on display for the public to see as was the front garden. However,
this space was well allocated and maintained to support Mum's herb
garden, a meticulously planned patchwork of vegetation, with a sizable
portion set aside as a play area for myself and my fourteen year old
brother, Tom. But with the outbreak of war Mum's herb garden was
commandeered by Father to make way for a vegetable patch. His
means of giving heed to the patriotic call to "Dig for Victory" because
mandatory rationing was so hard on everyone. Each member of the
family had a ration book that had to be taken to the grocers and
butchers that you were registered with for all of your provisions.
Practically everything was rationed; sugar, butter, cheese, eggs, meat,
bacon, and the rationing allowance of only twelve ounces of sweets
every four weeks, which was certainly the most appalling ration of all
for a child of my age! So with Father's vegetable patch it really was a
luxury for us to relish in the seasonal harvesting of fresh potatoes,
cucumbers, melons, carrots, squash, zucchini, green beans, and
tomatoes.
Our play area, on the other hand, was dug up for a far more
dire yet necessary purpose. Long before the arrival of my baby sister,
Mary, our own little revered spot of land, usually strewn with outdoor
toys, made way for the family bomb shelter, or Anderson Shelter as it
was commonly known. After digging a three foot hole my father
erected the corrugated iron that he later covered with sandbags and turf.
Inside were bunk-beds, two beds to each side beyond the entrance and
two more at the far end. It may sound roomy, but in actuality it was
just the opposite. Even with three of the occupants merely two children
and an infant, it was still very much a claustrophobic feeling until all
were bedded down. Being a family of five in a bomb shelter with six
beds left an available spot for our next door neighbor, Mrs. Humphries.
And considering little Mary would always sleep either in the arms of
our mother or alongside me, this meant an additional vacant bed. But it
was just too congested to entertain the thought of having another adult
sharing our little hole in the ground. Besides, Father liked to keep that
ready space handy in case we happened to have a visitor over at the
moment an air raid would commence. A circumstance that became all
too common.
5
Mrs. Humphries was really not as old as I thought her to be at
the time. She was only in her early forties. But to a six year old
anyone over the age of twenty seemed old. Still, Mum was only thirty
six, yet, by all appearances she seemed far younger than the seven or
eight year difference between herself and Mrs. Humphries. Perhaps a
broken heart can cause one to age in appearance more rapidly than one
who has never been subjected to such misfortune. For Mrs. Humphries
was no sooner a bride when she was forced to bid farewell to her love
as he marched off to fight in the first World War. He never returned to
know of the son she later bore him. Her life thereafter was a never-
ending struggle of working long hours to keep the house her beloved
bought for them prior to their marriage, and to raise her son Christopher
as best she could with the help of a nanny. Then, as though some cruel
twist of déjà vu had been thrust upon her, she once again found herself
in the role of saying good-bye to her boy as he shipped off across the
channel to fight the same enemy that killed his father.
It was only less than half an hour after war was declared on the
3rd
of September 1939 when the first air raid siren, a false alarm,
sounded over London. These air raid drills carried on for almost a full
year, eventually diminishing the sense of fear in most Londoners as the
routine wail of the sirens increased. But the repetitiveness of those
dreadful sirens is something I personally never grew accustomed to.
That deep low pitch that would suddenly catch you by surprise at any
time of the day or night, like a startling shriek of a ghost disrupting the
calm over the city and then slowly rising in tone to a sustained cry only
to inevitably descend again to that same mournful pitch it began with,
would never fail to penetrate me with fear. At first the sirens made me
cry. But soon I tried terribly hard to show that I was a brave little girl
by holding back the tears, only to have my feeble attempt to display
courage become offset by a silent wide-eyed look of constant fright.
To this day the memory of those sirens makes me shudder.
Accordingly, with the start of each air raid, we would head
immediately to the nearest shelter, whether it was a public shelter in the
underground or one of the numerous specially built shelters at the
schools, or our own private Anderson shelter. It was important, we
were told, never to be above ground, particularly out in the open, if one
could possibly help it. Furthermore, we were also instructed to always
have with us our gas masks at all times. Dreadful things really. The
smell of that rubber strapped over your face. I remember hating mine.
Yet during the first air raids everyone wore them because they were so
6
afraid. But as time wore on, and the air raids became more frequent,
everyone, including myself, opted to just carry the bloody thing with
them while filing down into the shelters.
Mum did her best to make our bomb shelter as homey as
possible with a throw rug, comfortable bedding, and a couple of
hanging pictures. Certainly if there was even a shred of sunlight
penetrating into that dark space she would have cut flowers from her
garden and placed them throughout. But despite her most ardent efforts
it still remained through my eyes to be a perpetually cold, damp,
unwelcome hole in the ground.
I can still see my brother, along with his friends if they were
about, squinting up at the sky eagerly searching for an enemy plane as
they would make their way towards the shelters. In time, however, this
type of scene would change when it became unmistakably obvious that
the Luftwaffe was overhead.
This opportunity first presented itself during mid-August,
eleven months after the war began, when we heard the sounds of heavy
bombardment upon the airfields around London. This was the first
time Londoners could actually hear the sounds of this war. But there
was really no great anxiety among the adults, which had a calming
effect on us children as well, because enemy bombing raids of British
airfields began a month prior. By early August the German air force
included in its attacks aircraft factories and radar stations, and then
again switched to other targets such as docks, factories and railway
stations. But still no one ever imagined while listening to the distant
muffled booms occurring outside of the city that this madman Hitler
would possibly consider dropping bombs on us innocent civilians.
However, that all changed on the 24th
of August when central London
was hit with heavy bombardment. It was later said that the bombers
that struck at London on that day were mistakenly off course and were
aiming for the Thames estuary. Nevertheless, it signaled a warning to
us all that the city and its civilians were not off limits to the enemy.
I never saw the planes as we hurried into our home shelter on
that day. I only heard the explosions and thought that there were
fireworks shooting off somewhere. Despite the terrifying sound of the
sirens, the loud crack of those exploding bombs had the opposite effect
on me. "Let me see! Let me see!" I begged my father as he practically
dragged me by my arm to the safety of our shelter. "Let me see!" I
wanted to see the fireworks.
7
History books would later prove me correct on my assumption
as a child that it was the month of September when the Calla lilies were
in bloom and the first major bombing of London, on a scale
unimaginable, first began. It was the start of the Blitzkrieg, or what
would become more commonly known as the Blitz.
It was a lovely day. Sunny with just a slight haze and
pleasantly warm. I remember that it was a Saturday because Father
was off shopping and Tom was at the park flying his model Spitfire. It
was 4:30 and Mum was in the kitchen pouring herself another spot of
tea while I was out front in the garden hosting my own imaginary tea
party with my doll, Rebecca, on a miniature table with matching chairs.
Then I heard it, a droning sound, unlike anything I had ever heard
before, similar to a swarm of bees but much deeper in tone. Someone
called out from across the street, "Look! Look! Look! They're
coming! They're coming!" Just as I looked up and caught my first site
of enemy aircraft that chilling wail of the sirens began. As thick as
flies the planes fanned out overhead blackening the blue sky. Later,
after the war, I would learn that there were 348 bombers escorted by
617 fighters on that day forming a twenty mile wide block of aircraft
that filled eight hundred square miles of sky, a truly unbelievable and
spectacular sight that very few Londoners failed to witness. So
transfixed was I on this display of air force might and danger going on
above me that I never noticed Mum fleeing the house, with Mary in her
arms, until she took hold of my hand.
"Come along, Annie" she said in a calm voice, hiding her own
alarm for my sake.
Into the house we hurried, down the long hall to the kitchen
and out the back door. As we made haste to the bomb shelter at the far
end of our garden I remember the shadows the planes were casting on
the ground like swift moving clouds. I looked over my shoulder in
time to glimpse Mrs. Humphries, still wearing an apron that she was
using to wipe her hands, following behind us as she rounded the corner
of our house. Despite the circumstances I could not help but find her
awkward off beat sprint a bit comical because of her slightly
overweight figure, those dark horn-rimmed glasses, and that hair she
always pulled back so tightly in a bun.
Once safely inside Mum hardly ever spoke a word while she
rocked Mary in her arms who began to cry the minute the door was
shut. I was grateful for her cries because it all but drowned out
completely the sound of exploding bombs going on in the distance.
8
However, there was no hiding the look of worry in Mum's eyes. Father
was out there somewhere, and Tommy as well. Her little boy was at
the park. Did he have the good sense to take cover in the nearest
shelter? I know that for the following two hours the concern over those
two is all she could think of. Mrs. Humphries, on the other hand, made
up for Mum's silence by doing her best to keep our spirits up with
chatter about anything she could think of other than what was going on
outside, as though it were just another drill.
"We 'ad bombs over London during the Great War too, ya
know. Zeppelin raids they were" she finally said as if realizing for the
first time we were under attack. Then, with a reassuring smile she
added, "We got through it then, and we'll get through it now."
Quite some time after Mary had stopped her crying there came
a sudden stillness from outside. It was so quiet we could hear each
other breath.
"It's over" said my mother.
Cautiously she opened the door. Everything outside of our
shelter appeared fine. The attack was mainly spread over Bristol, Kent,
the industrial and dock property on both sides of the Thames, East
London and the aerodromes North and South of London. Near these
areas fire and smoke dominated the skyline. There was a sense of
disbelief that, for the time, overshadowed any fear I previously felt.
We all moved to the front of the house and out onto the street
where we joined our other neighbors who were also staring at the same
horrific site off in the distance. Mrs. Humphries stayed with us until
Father arrived home approximately twenty minutes after we left the
shelter. He had been downtown shopping and took refuge in a
shopkeeper’s basement. And it was only minutes after Father arrived
when we heard the footsteps and loud voice of Tommy calling out to us
as he came running down the street towards home. He found safety in
a public shelter and chose to stay there until he was absolutely sure it
was safe to leave.
My father was an A.R.P. warden, which stood for Air Raid
Precautions. It was an organization responsible for organizing the
defense of London. His voluntary duty was to help out wherever
needed after a bombing, whether this meant searching for victims,
helping put out the fires, or assisting those who had been bombed out
of their homes to find shelter and necessities. And it was only less than
an hour after Father had arrived home when he was donning his tin hat
9
in preparation to set out to do his civic duty. I remember being quite
adamant over not wanting him to go.
"No! Don't go! Please don't go!" I cried while pulling on his
arm in our front hall.
Suppose a burning building fell on him? Or what if the planes
returned and he was not here to protect us? The fear had returned. And
it took some gentle persuasion on his part to assure me that he would
return home safely and that no harm would come to me even if it meant
him fighting each and every one of those Germans fist to fist on his
own. Now with the Germans high in the air with bombs and Father
down on the ground completely unarmed I am certain this may have
sounded a bit ridiculous to me even then. But somehow I believed him.
Every word.
With Father gone Mum tried to bring a sense of normality to
the household. She went to work preparing us a belated supper. Tom
sat outside on the doorstep watching the red glow on the horizon. Mary
was nestled in her crib fast asleep after all the excitement. And in the
same room we shared I had just settled down on my bed for a moment
to reflect on the happenings over the past four hours when no sooner
had the large grandfather clock in the hall struck eight chimes the
sound of the air raid sirens began again followed immediately by the
same droning heard earlier, only louder. I sprang to my feet and threw
open the curtains covering my window wanting to see with my own
eyes if it could possibly be true, a second attack, but in doing so
completely forgot the blackout rules of never opening a curtain with an
inside light on.
"Annie! Come away from that window!" Mum yelled.
Certainly her cause for alarm was justified. It was a serious
offense to break the rules of blackout. When the war broke blackout
material was quickly made available and Mum went right to work
lining our existing curtains and making blinds to put up each night over
the other windows in the house that were without curtains. Stepping
outside after dark was stepping into almost complete darkness.
Streetlights were out and the headlights of cars and busses blanked off.
London, of course, was not the only city in the dark. The lights were
out all over Europe, and eventually the world.
I drew the curtains shut so fast I almost tore them from the
curtain rod. And Mum had no sooner picked Mary up from her crib
than suddenly there was what sounded like a tremendous clap of
10
thunder. So powerful was it that the entire house rattled. Mum and I
looked at one another for only a moment, speechless, our eyes as wide
as they could possibly get.
"They're bombing us! They're dropping bombs on us!" were
Tom's frantic yells coming from down the hall as he ran into the house.
Seconds later he swung himself into my room diverting our
attention onto him. His skin was pale with fright, his eyes as large as
ours.
"A huge explosion! Just down the street near --"
Boom! Another blast, louder than the one that preceded it, had
at this time actually shook the house. The lighting fixture that hung
from the ceiling in the middle of the room danced on its cord and then
swung lazily about.
"To the shelter" Mum ordered us.
I grabbed my doll Rebecca and we all ran to the kitchen. But
once the back door was opened I froze at the site and sounds of the
utter chaos happening beyond its threshold. The whistles of the falling
bombs and the sounds of them exploding was everywhere, the ones
close by where sharp and piercing in contrast to those far away which
were soft and muffled. I heard fire engines and people shouting. The
sky was aglow in a deep orange from the fires burning all around, and
the smell of smoke filled the air. I was simply terrified that if I were to
step outside a bomb would fall on me.
"No! No!" I screamed. Mum took hold of my wrist but I sat
down right there on the kitchen floor refusing to move.
"Annie, behave! We've no time for this! We'll be safer in the
shelter! Now you get yourself up and move!"
Mum was rarely ever cross with me, although I am certain I
gave her ample opportunities to be so throughout my childhood. But at
that particular moment I knew it was no time to test her limits. So I
raised myself up off the floor and the three of us ran across the back
garden. What a sight it might have been to an observer to watch these
two children followed by their mother, with an infant in her arms, run
across patches of squash, zucchini, and tomatoes amid the smoke,
bomb flashes, and the sounds of sirens, whistles, planes, and
explosions. Although our back garden was not at all that large, on that
night, at that point in time, the distance between the house and our
11
bomb shelter seemed enormous. When I finally reached the door to the
shelter I stopped myself before entering and turned around to Mum.
"Where's Mrs. Humphries?" I asked.
Mum looked in the direction of her house next door and called
out, "Ruth!"
"Mrs. Humphries!" Tommy joined in.
"Hurry in now. She'll come along" we were assured.
As the first one to enter I hurried to the bed at that far end,
confused as to why Mrs. Humphries was not at her usual one step
behind us. Was she afraid to step outside of her house as I was? Mum
took one last prolonged glance towards her home before closing the
shelter door. Tom had already taken upon himself the responsibility of
lighting our oil lamp.
There we sat, each of us on separate beds, staring at one
another in silence under the dim glow of a single lamp, waiting for that
knock to come at the door from Mrs. Humphries. But only less than a
minute had passed when suddenly a horrendous blast, louder than
anything I had ever heard in my life before or since, shook the shelter
to its core causing the small room to fill with a cloud of falling dirt and
dust. I was too overwhelmed with shock to scream, yet was still able to
run to Mum's side where I threw my arms around her tight fearing we
were all going to die.
Seconds after the explosion we heard the thuds of bricks and
lumber hitting the ground and rooftop of our shelter. What followed
was a strange silence that only lasted an instant until gradually the
noise of the planes and bombs returned us to our senses. Quite
amazingly up to that point Mary had managed to sleep through all of
the chaotic events going on around her. But the impact heard and felt
from that explosion was enough to finally awaken her, although, much
to everyone's relief, did not make her cry.
Despite the fact that not a single word was spoken by any one
of us, it was unmistakably evident that the one question on each of our
minds was, had our home taken a direct hit? Will it still be there when
that door is opened? Little by little other unnerving questions also
arose. Is Father safe? And what about Mrs. Humphries? Will we all
live through this night? There was no masking this worry etched on the
faces of my brother and me. Mum, on the other hand, noting our fear,
maintained a brave and remarkably calm front on our behalf and
12
actually began to sing to us in her soft gentle voice in a loving effort to
bring comfort to our nerves.
"For a while we must part
but remember me sweetheart
'till the lights of London shine again
And while you're over there
think of me in every prayer
'till the lights of London shine again"
A cluster of loud bangs, possibly incendiary bombs falling on
our neighborhood, made Tom and I jump. But Mum held fast with not
so much as a twitch, as though the explosions sounded off on deaf ears,
while she continued her song with neither a beat nor even the slightest
quiver in her voice.
"Please don't cry while I'm gone
wear a smile and carry on
'till the lights of London shine again"
I cannot recall precisely how much time had elapsed from the
moment we entered the shelter to that point when Father flew open its
door, only that it was very shortly after that horrendous blast. Fifteen
minutes perhaps, but definitely no more than thirty. His look of panic
was instantly changed to an expression of relief when he saw us all safe
and huddled together on the same bed close to Mum.
"Thank God" I heard him sigh.
He then grabbed hold of us in a tight embrace while explaining
how he ran home as fast as he could the second he saw the explosions
occurring within our neighborhood.
Tom wasted no time hurrying over to the doorway where he
exclaimed in a vocabulary typical of a young boy; "Wow!". Mum
passed Mary into Father's arms and followed behind Tom. With a deep
gasp she cupped her hand over her mouth at the sight she laid eyes on.
It was then my turn. With far less eagerness than my brother I slowly
crept my way to the door. I spoke not a single word, nor even a gasp.
What I beheld was too horrific for me to muster any kind of a response
as the others did. To explain to you that what I witnessed was a vision
of hell would sound cliché. So too would the word apocalyptic.
13
Therefore words alone could not do justice to the image laid out before
me.
Next door, Mrs. Humphries home was a pile of rubble with
magnificent flames leaping up from it towards the sky. Bricks and
pieces of wood littered our garden. Small embers were glowing on
parts of our roof. All around us the night was aglow from this raging
inferno, so close I could feel its heat. In the distance I could see that
several other homes down our street were ablaze. So too were the
homes behind us. In fact, so it was that on the horizon we were literally
surrounded by great fires. Hundreds of them. Immediately above the
fires the sky was a furious red, while further up, amid searchlights and
the flashing specks of light made by antiaircraft shells, a shroud of
smoke cast in pink hung over the entire city. Even the barrage balloons
stood out in pink rather than silver. I remember thinking how pretty
they looked up there. Like big pink balloons you would find at a
birthday party. How could there be such a beautiful display amidst all
this madness?
"Tom, I'll need you to help me put those embers out up on the
roof."
It was the first time my father spoke to my brother as though
man to man, rather than man to child. It was indeed a sort of passage
for young Tom. From that point forward Father treated him as more of
an adult and less of a child. And I could see the pride light up in Tom's
eyes when this opportunity was bestowed upon him to brave the
outside danger and do his part to help out, rather than stay with the
women inside the shelter.
"Those bloody bastards aren't through with us yet. You three
better stay inside 'till it's over" Father added.
And he was right. The raid had really only just begun. Mum,
myself, and Mary stayed awake in that shelter until the wee small hours
of the next morning when at approximately 4:30 the last raids had left
the Greater London area.
Daylight brought a new sense of reality to all that had
happened throughout the night. Father and Tom managed to save our
house from burning to the ground, and along with the help of other
neighbors brought the flames of Mrs. Humphries home under control to
prevent it from spreading. Our home itself surprisingly survived with
little damage. There were windows blown in, glass everywhere,
14
kitchen cupboard items shattered on the floor, as well as knickknacks
from the shelves in other rooms throughout the house. But the worst of
the sustained damage was directed on Mum's garden. Where ash and
debris had crushed most of the foliage, the remainder was trampled
under the feet of the good Samaritans who had been scurrying about
back and forth trying to put the fire out next door. Even the birdbath
was toppled over, though not broken. But what I remembered most
about that scene was the place where the Calla lilies had been so
beautifully in bloom less than twenty four hours earlier. Now they
were crushed and hidden under ash, shards of glass, bricks, pieces of
wood, small fragments of furniture and tiny bits of other items that had
belonged to Mrs. Humphries. There was nothing left of them. Nothing
at all.
If I thought that morning that the bombing raids by the enemy
were over, I realized the truth later that day. They came again at dusk,
and then again the next day and the next. In fact, London was attacked
every night for fifty-seven consecutive days ending on the 2nd
of
November. But the raids on London by no means ended then. They
continued, but not every night as the Luftwaffe stopped concentrating
on London and started bombing other towns and cities. Additionally
the intensity of the bombings did not decrease over time either. On the
night of 10 May, 1941 London lost 3,000 of her citizens. It would be
the largest number of fatalities in a single night during the Blitz, and
also marked the end of the Blitz itself - an eight month period that
killed an estimated total of over 20,000 men, women, and children in
London alone.
Throughout this entire duration Londoners developed a
business as usual mentality. It was Hitler's intention to destroy the
willpower of the British people with his indiscriminate bombing raids.
But these terror tactics of the Führer only reinforced the moral fiber of
the British population with a will to endure. By just carrying on with
their daily lives was the strongest weapon against the enemy.
Commerce continued. People adapted. Father put wiring in our bomb
shelter so that we could have an electric light and use a small heater
during the cold winter months that lay ahead. Even children of all ages
conformed amazingly well to the rigors of death and destruction going
on around them on a daily bases.
I remember each morning after a raid my brother and our
friends would go around the neighborhood searching for pieces of
15
shrapnel, each trying to find the biggest piece. I, however, did not
partake in this ritual scavenger hunt. Unlike all the rest, or so it
seemed, the bombing of that first raid left me emotionally scarred. I
withdrew into my own little shell. I rarely spoke, never played, and
stopped smiling. There was a constant underlying tension and fear in
me. If the house next door could get blown away, then there was
nothing stopping the same from happening to us during the next raid.
Confusion also played a dramatic role in the makeup of my
emotional state. Why was this man Hitler dropping bombs on us?
Why was he setting fire to our city? Why was he destroying our homes
and shops? Why was he killing people we knew and friends I went to
school with? Why? Why? Why? Although my parents did everything
they could to console me and explain to the best of their knowledge the
rudiments of warfare as well as the political tensions, invasions of
countries, and the thirst for world power that led to this conflict, it all
still made no sense to me at the time. Reasons such as these rarely find
understanding in the eyes of a child. And I was no exception. If ever
there were a time in my life when I could have benefited from the skills
of a professional therapist it would have been during that period, when
I was six years old. But therapy was not as popular then as it is now.
Even if it was it is doubtful there would have been enough therapists in
all England to accommodate the masses who were bravely putting on a
courageous front on the outside, but suffering with frayed nerves on the
inside.
And so it was that a year to the day after that seventh day of
September attack a remarkable revelation occurred in me on my way
home from school. It happened as I sulked my way up those flagstone
steps leading to our front door. There I suddenly stopped having
noticed something that had always been there before. I slowly looked
around, and as if seeing them for the first time realized that the Calla
lilies were once again in bloom. There they were, standing tall and
firm with their deep green shiny leaves and flowers with yellow pistils
encircled by delicate silky-white cone-shaped petals. Recalling how
they looked after that fateful night one year ago, I thought for certain
they would never rise up again. But rise up they did. Despite being
trampled on and rained down upon by ash and debris, they still
managed to push their way up through the soil, thrive, and bloom again,
as beautiful as before. I realized then and there that this really should
have come as no surprise to me, being that year after year they always
managed to overcome the same adversities that the long cold winters
would bring. And then it occurred to me, suddenly, as though a light
16
had been turned on in my dark and dreary little world I only existed in,
that if those Calla lilies could survive and renew themselves after
experiencing the same trauma and effects from those bombing raids as I
had, then why should I not be able to do the same? Indeed, over the
year I had observed older children and adults; my parents and strangers;
all carry on with their lives in the same manner as they were before the
attacks. However, they were older and stronger, while I was younger
and fashioned myself as being weaker than they. Yet, unlike Mary, I
was old enough to comprehend all the horrors going on around me.
But with the sight of those Calla lilies I acknowledged to myself that
the human spirit is certainly stronger than some bloody plants. And if
they can rise above it all and bloom again, then so shall I.
I recognize that it may sound terribly bizarre to everyone that I
would be able to free myself from all the fear, sadness, insecurity and
depression that had been tying me down with the mere sight of those
Calla lilies. But one must understand that for a child, counseling from
parents, sermons by clergy, or stirring speeches from a Prime Minister
may do absolutely nothing to restore the morale and hope that might
otherwise be achieved through the simple symbolic image of a flower.
Henceforth, much to the surprise and delight of all who knew
me, the old Annie was suddenly back. Never again would I shut down
emotionally as I did for the whole year following that September night,
even though the war would continue to rage on for another four years.
In fact, it did not end soon enough to avoid brother Tom from serving
his duty. He saw combat in The Battle of Burma and returned home
unharmed to tell about it.
Christopher Humphries also returned, but to the heartbreaking
image of an empty lot where the place he called home once stood and
the mournful conclusion that both of his parents were gone. Victims of
two separate World Wars.
As for me, during those final years leading up to the war's end,
I not only grew physically but also mentally with the clear
understanding that when the war is over, when all would be right again
with the world, there will continue to be other trials in life to deal with
and overcome. Nothing lasts forever - neither happy times nor sad
times. They all come and go, and through it all we must carry on.
17
Today my home is Manhattan. I came to America in the mid-
sixties at about the same time of the so-called 'British invasion.'
Although my reasons for coming here had nothing to do with rock n'
roll, but rather a promising career decision that would ultimately
advance my goals in the world of advertising. I still can recall, as if not
so long ago, that it was only my first day in America when I fell head-
over-heels in love. In love with this city called New York. I say to you
without hesitancy that it has been an ongoing thirty-seven year love
affair that continues to this day.
My downtown flat is in Battery Park City on Murray Street.
Only one block away from where there once stood two towers, so high,
and so mighty. With every look at these two giants their proportion
would never fail to inspire awe in man's achievement. Side-by-side
they stood as though two noble and proud citadels keeping watch over
their island. At night they were gleaming twins, beacons to those from
afar. On overcast days when their tops would disappear into the
heavens they appeared as pillars holding up the clouds over the diverse
yet equally restless city dwellers below. I saw them go up, and I
watched them come down. Now, only the vacant brown earth is all that
remains as a testimony to the tragedy that befell them and the 2,823
soles who live on in the hearts and memories of their families, friends,
and even strangers alike.
It is from my balcony that I am able to observe an unobstructed
view of this hallowed ground. And it is also on this balcony where I
have a flower box from which Calla lilies had been in bloom on that
day, another September day, when they were buried and died under the
layers of concrete dust that rained down upon them from high above.
But now, once again, under a sky so blue and a brilliant autumn sun
they have risen - strong, resilient, impressive, striving upward as
though expressing in defiance, 'We're back!' Oh, look how they have
bloomed!