The Safest Place in London

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Fancy us seeing you here,’ Milly said, as though they had met somewhere quite improbable, like a West End show or a posh teashop in Piccadilly, and not in the only shelter for miles in the suburb they had both worked in and both, presumably, still lived in. The remarkable bit was that they had never run into each other before tonight. Or perhaps they had, Nancy realised. Perhaps Milly had seen her many times but had never before stopped her.

  In which case, why now, why tonight?

  Milly’s eyes were very bright and they did not blink, not once, nor did they leave Nancy’s face.

  ‘These are my two boys. Nigel and Adrian. Boys, say hello, please.’

  The two small boys regarded Nancy with a curious intensity. ‘Hello, please,’ they responded in unison and their mother gave an indulgent, slightly irritated smile.

  ‘How d’you do?’ Nancy replied, unnerved by their unblinking gaze, unnerved by Milly’s unblinking gaze. The bunk they were seated on was very low—they were stacked three high and this was the lowest bunk and the space between the thin little mattress and the slats of the bunk above was about the distance from hip to shoulder. The two little boys could sit quite happily cross-legged on the bunk with no inconvenience. Milly, and now Nancy, had to hunch down so that their heads were almost below their shoulders. It was restrictive. It was oppressive.

  ‘They’re both bright as buttons,’ Milly said, leaning forward a little and speaking slowly, carefully, as though she had said something not commonplace at all, but quite profound. ‘Their dad says he can’t understand where they get it from but you only have to look at Reg to see it.’

  The boys, who were bright as buttons, continued their silent scrutiny.

  Reg was Milly’s husband. Nancy had met him once when he had come by the shop after work to see Milly and had found him dull and unimaginative. If his boys were bright as buttons they certainly didn’t get it from their dad. But if Milly believed in her husband, who was she to mock? They had never been friends—Milly had not encouraged it, but was not some guilt attached to herself, to the other girls, Miriam and Lily? Had they, perhaps, excluded Milly? Was it not their fault that Milly had remained outside, alone? And now here they were, she and Milly, both married, both mothers, both sheltering in a raid, and really what was there to set them apart?

  ‘My Emily’s just turned three,’ Nancy said.

  But there was something to set them apart, something awful and earth-shattering that could not be undone, that even a war could not soften.

  Milly leaned forward so that her face was inches from Nancy’s and quite suddenly the very air around them turned chilly.

  ‘Do you think I care?’

  Nancy sat perfectly still. She had wondered in the weeks after she and Joe had begun courting what it would be like if they ran into Milly one evening at the pictures or dancing at the Palais, but they never had run into her, not once in all that time, and gradually the likelihood of it had diminished and the likelihood of Milly finding out, or caring, had diminished with it. Now it was certain and immediate. For Nancy Keys was Nancy Keys no more. She was Nancy Levin and the woman seated before her, an inch from her face, was the girl Joe would have married, and never mind the house overlooking the park or the two neatly dressed little boys, this was the real Milly Fenwick.

  ‘Do you think I care?’

  Nancy pulled back sharply, unable to reply, unable to get up and leave, and the hand that had shot out and grabbed her wrist and had not let go since suddenly tightened painfully and she stifled a gasp. Milly’s face had been in shadow but now it was an inch from own face and was enormous, bloated, and Nancy could not move. The fingers tightened around her wrist. The unblinking eyes narrowed a fraction and there was something triumphant in them.

  ‘I saw him. He was here, not an hour gone. I saw him! Joe.’

  There, she had done it, said his name out loud at last, and perhaps it was the first time she had said it in all these years. How odd it must sound to her, how familiar yet unfamiliar the word must feel on her lips.

  ‘He’s a deserter.’

  And now Nancy could not move; though she recoiled from those lips, from those words, she could not move.

  ‘You got a bloody nerve! Sitting there, telling me my man’s a deserter! He did his bit, went off to serve his country. Not like some—’

  ‘I know what I saw!’

  There was a strange light in Milly’s face, her eyes gleamed like a child on Christmas morning. Like a child who has murdered both its parents on Christmas morning because it did not get the presents it was expecting.

  ‘You saw nothing! Joe’s home on leave.’

  ‘I saw him.’ Milly’s breath was warm in her ear. ‘Creeping about in civvies, an old duffle coat, no hat, black trousers. I saw him looking over his shoulder like he knew the coppers were after him.’

  Throughout this the little boys had sat unmoving, dispassionately observing every detail. Now Milly cocked her head a fraction towards them.

  ‘My Reg rounds up men like that every day. Don’t he, boys?’

  ‘Our daddy’s a policeman,’ they said in unison.

  ‘And what he does he do with deserters, boys?’

  ‘He arrests them and throws them in prison where they belong.’

  It was grotesque. Did they even know what they were saying? There was something inhuman about them.

  ‘Where has he run to, Nancy? His brothers’ house? Does he think he’ll be safe there?’

  ‘You know nothing—’

  The fingers pressed into Nancy’s wrist. She felt her tendons protesting, the bones crunched together. And Milly leaned closer, Milly said what she had waited five years to say: ‘You think you can steal my man and get away with it? You’re nothing but a cheap tart.’

  The two little boys sitting unmoving behind her, their eyes wide, slowly licked their lips.

  ‘He deserved what he got and you deserve what you got: a cowardly deserter.’

  ‘Say what you like! It don’t change nothing.’ And now, finally, Nancy could say what she had waited five years to say: ‘He chose me over you!’

  She wrenched herself free—and for a moment she was free—but Milly’s words pursued her: ‘We’re going to the police station, Nancy Keys, just the minute we get out of here!’

  Nancy fled, tripping and falling in her haste to escape, throwing out her hands to break her fall; a woman tried to help her up but Nancy pushed her away. She needed to run but she could not, the ocean of bodies in every direction was too great. She scrambled down off the platform’s edge, falling again onto her hands and knees, pulling herself up and finding herself at the tunnel entrance. She paused to catch her breath. She had come too far down the platform, was at the wrong end of the station from where Emily waited for her. She looked down at her hands, which were dirt-encrusted and cut and beginning to sting. Her stockings were torn. She needed to catch her breath.

  Milly’s hatred swam around her, it cut into her as the tiny pieces of grit cut into her hands. You loved him once, thought Nancy. You loved Joe. But the journey from love to hate, it turned out, was a short one, and one that was rarely, if ever, made in reverse.

  She could not catch her breath. People were watching her, curious, wondering. For there were families sheltering here, right inside the tunnel. She made herself stop, straighten up, stand quite still, at the mouth of the tunnel. It drew her gaze, pulled her in. It emitted a strange musty, damp, electrical smell. A wind whistling distantly blew the scarf about her head, whipped the strands of hair into her eyes. The very last family sheltering the deepest inside the tunnel were wrapped up like Arctic explorers, only their eyes showing, huddling like people on a mountain top or on the edge of a precipice. And beyond the last family was darkness. If you went inside, if you walked far enough, you would reach Liverpool Street. It was perhaps a mile, which was no distance at all on the surface but underground in the darkness would be an eternity. She had never been afraid of the dark—for why be scared of som
ething you could not see?—but this darkness, it leaped like a flame, touching something quite primeval within her, and she shivered. When she peered into the darkness after just a few yards there was nothing. A void. Probably sound itself was obliterated, though she heard the wind again. Anything might go on inside there and no one would know. A girl had been raped a few months back, down here during a raid, and no one had heard a thing. You could bring someone down here and finish them off, do away with them, and no one would ever know. You could put your hands around someone’s neck and strangle them or slip a knife between their ribs—if you had a knife—and no one would know.

  She thought of Milly Fenwick and her two little boys who would go to the police station just the minute they got out of here.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If she had not had Abigail with her perhaps Diana would have gone to help him. As it was, she fled, her child clutched tightly in her arms.

  She ran and she did not stop, pushing past everyone who got in her way, jumping over bodies and stumbling and almost falling and getting up again and setting off once more. She did not look back. She did not look into any of the faces that appeared before her, rearing into view and vanishing again. She did not think about the face she had just seen on the floor of the latrines, crumpled and hovering on the very edge of existence; she did not think of the blank, empty faces of the three men who had surrounded Lance and who may or may not have noticed her and her child. She leaped from the platform and fell, plunging to the ground and landing on the blue travelling case, which was untouched and unharmed exactly where she had left it and which broke her fall though it badly bruised her knee.

  ‘Mummy, you’re hurting me!’

  Aghast, Diana righted herself and carefully placed Abigail on the ground, smoothing down her hair, trying with shaking fingers to locate the hairband which had come off in their mad dash and was now around Abigail’s neck. ‘There, that’s better, isn’t it? I’m sorry, darling. Mummy’s sorry.’ Her voice sounded high, unnatural. Her fingers would not stop shaking.

  ‘Mummy, why did we run away from Uncle Lance?’

  Lance staring with empty eyes, staring into the face of death. She had done nothing to help him. She had not lifted a finger.

  ‘Sshh, darling.’ She stroked her child’s hair. Forced herself to stop. Made herself clench her fingers tightly to make them stop shaking. But what could she have done? Her own safety, hers and Abigail’s, was paramount. He would not have expected her to do anything, any more than he would have gone to her assistance. He had said it himself: he knew the risks. He had brought it on himself.

  ‘But why, Mummy? Why did we run away?’

  All the same, she had not tried to find a policeman. She had not alerted any of the wardens. She did not even know for certain he was dead.

  ‘It’s a game. We’re just playing a silly game. Now, sit still. Mummy’s . . . a little out of breath, that’s all.’

  Someone would call the police. But perhaps, by then, they would all be out of here; perhaps the raid would be over? It would be best, she realised, if they had left by the time the police were called. It would be best if Lance—

  ‘Everything is going to be just fine, you’ll see. We’ll be going home soon and then we can have a lovely breakfast together, can’t we?’

  For the night could not last much longer and the little blue travelling case was still here, safe and sound and stuffed full of Carnation milk and tinned peaches and American coffee and bars of chocolate and pilchards and sugar and dried milk and tea. Diana pulled it to her and held on to it. She closed her eyes. She no longer thought about Lance Beckwith, who had once been John’s friend. That part of her life was over.

  Diana had not tried to find a policeman. But a policeman was trying to find her.

  He made no sound, or none that she could hear above the now-constant rumble and distant booms above and the ebb and flow of voices all around, but still something made her look up. At first all she saw was a solitary figure picking a path through the chaos and her eyes went to him and passed on, not stopping, barely registering. Then they slid back for no other reason than that this was a man not in a uniform but in a worn mackintosh, hands deep in pockets, a hat pulled low and a shadow at his chin that suggested he had not shaved in many hours. Dressed like a gangster but not a gangster. Somehow she knew instantly—horribly—that he was a policeman, a fact that was confirmed by the presence of a uniformed constable a step behind him.

  They were making their way steadfastly, unwaveringly, towards her, and her body went cold with terror.

  She did not run—there was no question of that. Instead, Diana closed her eyes, buried her head in Abigail’s hair, tried to catch her breath. They had found him then. And he was dead. But if he was not dead? For an injured man could speak, a dead man could not.

  ‘My, don’t you look pretty?’ she said to Abigail, holding on to her child because her whole body was shaking and if she looked into her daughter’s face nothing bad could happen. But she could not see Abigail’s face. She saw through a very long tunnel herself, a tiny figure, from the moment that she had first run into Lance outside Boots that morning before Christmas and she saw every moment since, herself hurtling, unstoppably, towards this point.

  ‘Madam? Is this case yours?’

  Slowly she turned to look at him. The policeman was standing before her and she saw an exhausted face caught in the moment where youth slides uneasily and perhaps prematurely into middle age, his voice dull, eyes circled by dark smudges but still searching her, still taking in every part of her, everything that was Diana Meadows, all that she had done and not done, from her smallest lapse in judgement to her involvement in wholescale organised criminal activity. Behind him an ageing constable with watery eyes and broken veins on his nose waited patiently, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

  ‘Madam?’ A note of impatience now. A man used to asking questions of strangers, used to interfering in other people’s business, and Diana’s stomach plummeted down, down, so far down it seemed to pin her to the floor. Her hand, the one that was holding on so tightly to the small blue travelling case was burning. If she released her grip she knew the palm would be branded with its mark forever.

  Forever. She had destroyed forever. Her future was now a police station, an interview room, charges, a formal arrest, the shameful telephone call to their family solicitor (a man who had come to their wedding and whose shocked gaze she would not be able to bear), a court appearance, newspapermen and smug reports in the local paper pored over gleefully by everyone she had ever known. And prison. For there was every possibility the magistrate—sickened and outraged by the constant stream of petty and not-so-petty thefts coming before him—would decide to make an example of a well-to-do middle-class housewife who ought to have known better and hand down not a hefty fine but a prison sentence.

  And there was Gerald. She would kill herself, she realised, before she let it come to that.

  But . . .

  Diana peered at the policeman, her heart thumping, the blood surging in her ears. ‘I’m sorry. What did you ask me?’

  The policeman sighed. ‘I said, is this child yours?’ And he pointed not at the little blue travelling case with its damning cargo of contraband, but at a child, that woman’s child, the thin little lank-haired thing with the ugly red woollen hat who had been abandoned a while ago by its mother and was lying wrapped tightly in a blanket mutely watching them.

  ‘Oh!’ Diana gasped and the policeman and the ageing sore-footed constable and the people all around them and the platform itself wavered in and out of focus, in and out of existence for a moment as everything shifted once more.

  She started laughing. Could not help herself. It was a dreadful sound and there was no humour in it. The policeman and the constable and even Abigail all watched her. She made herself stop. ‘No!’ she gasped, and another little laugh escaped. ‘Not mine. Certainly not.’

  ‘Do you know where its mother is?
’ He did not ask the child itself, who was awake and was regarding him, regarding them all, malevolently, some inbuilt reflex telling it to distrust any policeman, to distrust anyone.

  (‘Mummy, I can’t find Teddy,’ said Abigail, but no one seemed to hear her.)

  ‘Yes, yes, I saw her. She is up there, with a family,’ said Diana, for she had seen the woman, just for a moment, as she and Abigail had emerged from the latrines, and she pointed now to the spot where she had seen the woman, getting to her feet in her eagerness to show the policeman where, to describe the people, the place, in detail.

  The policeman and the constable left and for a long time—it felt like a long time but perhaps was not so very long at all—she was elated, her elation gradually softening to a sort of lightheaded calmness. A near miss, she told herself, she told Abigail, who did not appear to really understand nor fully appreciate their narrow escape.

  And when the station rumbled and shook and dust began to stream from the ceiling and cracks to appear in the walls, and as all around them heads lifted and muffled screams and shouts rippled the length of the platform, Diana did not gaze up, Diana did not scream. Far away bells could be heard and sirens, though they were surely too far underground to hear such things so perhaps she imagined that. This thought—of being safe so far underground and at the same time of being trapped beneath the ground—had worried her a few hours ago, had induced a paralysing and breathless sense of vertigo and claustrophobia all at the same time. But not now. Not now they had survived the near miss.