‘The whole place is on fire! The children – we must get them out.’
She rushed back the way she had come and slamming the baize door, ran breathlessly up the stairs. She banged on the door of Matron’s room.
“Get up quickly,” she called, “the house is on fire!”
She rushed back into the dormitory. Sister Williams was still sleeping and it wasted some precious moments before she realised what was happening. Mona shook her roughly.
“Hurry! We’d better wrap the children in blankets and get them outside.”
“Is it as bad as that?” Sister Williams asked.
But Matron, hurrying past the door, commanded, “Get every child into the garden. We don’t want to take any risks.”
The children were far too sleepy to be of any help. Mona and Sister Williams wrapped blankets round them and snatching up the piles of clothes that lay beside every bed and cot ready for the morning, put them into their arms.
“Hold on to those,” they ordered, and carried the children downstairs.
Once outside in the garden, it was easy to see how the flames had got a firm hold on the kitchen quarters. The whole place was a blaze of light and very soon people were arriving from the village.
The A.R.P. wardens produced stirrup-pumps and someone shouted that they had sent for a fire-engine. Mona had little time to worry about anything except the children. Only as she was carrying the last of the toddlers downstairs, did she realise that the fire was getting worse, that the hall was full of smoke and that now, coughing and choking, she had to grope rather than see her way to the front door.
She handed the child over to Matron and turned towards the house again. As she did so there was a sudden rending crash and the ceiling of the dining room collapsed.
“You can’t go back now,” one of the men shouted to her as she made for the door.
“I’ve got to,” she cried, “there’s another child in there.”
She had not forgotten Peterkin, but she had deliberately left him for the last, afraid that exposure to the cold might be bad for him and hoping against hope that the alarm was not as serious as it appeared. Now she realised she had done a very foolish thing. He was two floors up and the fire had got a firm hold over the lower parts of the house.
“The firemen will be along in a moment,” the man argued.
He put a restraining hand on her arm. Mona shook herself free and rushed through the doorway.
The smoke was dense, and for a moment she felt it must suffocate her. The flames were already licking their way across the baize door and along one side of the hall, but the stairs were still untouched. She scrambled up them, holding her breath, her smarting eyes tight shut, guiding herself by a hand on the banisters.
She reached her own room to find Peterkin still asleep. Quickly she snatched a blanket off her own bed and picked him up. He gave a little cry and she spoke to reassure him,
“It’s all right, darling. You’ve got to go downstairs and I’m going to cover you up, right over your face.”
He didn’t understand and she could feel him struggling against the enveloping blanket. She held him tightly to her breast and started on the downward journey.
Now the smoke seemed to grip at her throat. She felt that it was impossible to breathe, impossible to go on. There was another rending crash and she wondered what had fallen, but still she forced herself forward until suddenly, as she reached the foot of the stairs, she felt the flames leap at her, saw their yellow tongues, evil and menacing, surrounding her.
There was only one thing to do – to make a dash for it. She knew where the front door was straight in front of her and it was open, the draught blowing the flames higher, making them leap and dance like some devilish fantasy.
“Help me, God help me!”
Mona wasn’t certain whether she said the words out loud, but she knew that in that moment of her prayer, strength would be given her to save Peterkin’s life.
‘I must save him,’ she thought.
She held the child even closer and put her face into the blanket that enveloped him.
She went forward but it was difficult to go quickly. She felt a sudden agony of pain in her legs. She heard her hair singe and her own voice scream with the torture of it.
Then there was the coolness of the night on her face – the burden of Peterkin was being lifted from her arms – people were touching her, hitting her – there came a merciful oblivion and she knew no more.
Twenty
Mona opened her eyes and took in her surroundings. She was in a small white room, and as she moved, a nurse came to the bedside and raised a glass to her lips.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked.
Mona had been vaguely conscious for some time of voices of people, of an agonising pain that seemed too intense to be borne but which faded away into a grey oblivion.
Sometimes she dreamed and knew that the fantasies that crept through her mind were dreams. Now she remembered reality.
“Peterkin! Is he all right?” Her voice was broken and hysterical.
“The little boy?” the nurse asked in a clear, pleasant voice. “Yes, he’s quite all right. You saved him.”
“H-he wasn’t burnt?”
The nurse shook her head.
“No, he was quite all right, all the children were. You were the only person who was hurt.”
Mona closed her eyes. Gradually she became aware that one of her hands was bandaged, that something weighty seemed to be holding down her legs and that there were bandages round her head. She opened her eyes again.
