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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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!