Love among Belfast Blitz

April 1941, Belfast has escaped the worst of war, but it’s going to be destroyed from above, so that people will say, in horror, My God, Belfast is finished. Two sisters, four nights, one city, following

the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey – one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman- as they try to survive the horrors of four nights of the bombing which were the Belfast Blitz. These Days is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.

Lucy Cadwell, the London-based Belfast-born author, articulately captures pivotal moments in the emotional life of women.  Her story is about a doctor’s family during the Luftwaffe’s bombardment of Belfast in the spring of 1941. Florence Bell is a wife and mother capable of making her point “by something as seemingly innocuous as the angle of her knitting needles”. Emma and Audrey, Florence’s twenty-something daughters, struggle to resolve their own conflicts. Emma is obliged to conceal her love affair with an older and more experienced man. Earnest Audrey, worries about her lack of passion for a devoted fiancé who enjoys her parent’s enthusiastic support. Philip Bell, the father of the family, a fond husband, and a hardworking doctor whose practical skills are soon to be tested by the city’s unexpected exposure to war. Wee Betty wishes to grow taller, and Maisie, a temporarily fatherless child whose chosen confidante is a China-faced doll.

At that time Belfast was the most densely populated city in the UK and was woefully unprepared for the Luftwaffe’s attack, reliant for its defence on the support of the RAF that never arrived. One thousand civilians died as a result of raids, and a further 100, 000 were left homeless. Caldwell describes “bulging hessian sacks” Stuffed with unidentified missing limbs. Emma’s inability to accept the idea of loss and react to a horrifying episode in Belfast’s history. A hypnotised Audrey and her doctor fiancé standstill. Observers watching the first magnesium flares begin to fall. The pilots are laying an incendiary carpet and as an appalled Audrey murmurs “ It’s so beautiful: so terribly beautiful”.

 These Days by Lucy Caldwell, Faber £12.99, 288 pages