by Maggie Joel
He had told Nancy if he got caught he would get fourteen years and she had not believed it. She had said, What if you explained it to them? If you told them we was starving, that you took one or two things. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe it would be only a short stretch. He had told her fourteen years’ penal servitude. He would be lucky to get fourteen years. Theft on this scale, and from the docks, was a capital offence. He was glad he had not told Nancy this.
He followed Harry into the kitchen where his brother’s girl, Myra, was seated at the kitchen table wrapped in a lurid turquoise dressing-gown, her hair in a net, smoking an Embassy and knocking the ash into a saucer. Her lips were made-up and a perfect red bow coloured the end of the burning cigarette. She looked up at Joe’s early-morning arrival, her green eyes narrowing as she blew out a slow stream of smoke. She said nothing and her expression registered nothing. Myra did not care for Joe. It seemed to Joe that Myra did not really care for anyone—except, presumably, Harry. It was Sammy who had first brought her home the summer before the war and she had been Madge Carter then, in a cheap uniform selling cigarettes and ice-creams at the Regal in Mare Street. Now Sammy was in the nick and Madge Carter was Myra Cartier and it was a long time since she had trudged the aisles at the Regal plying her Pall Malls and her choc ices.
Harry looked at her irritably. ‘For God’s sake, get some bloody clothes on.’
When she had gone, resentfully, pulling her gown about her with a flounce, Joe pulled out a chair and sank down. He felt light-headed. He needed rest, to sleep. He needed to drink something, to eat something. His head throbbed. He concentrated for a moment on just sitting.
After a time, his head settled, the kitchen came back into focus and he looked about him, confused, as anyone is confused when returning to their childhood home after a long time away, after thinking they might not see that home again. He thought of the kitchen as it had been when he was a kid. It had been a communal room then, four families sharing it as they had all shared the outside lav in the backyard. There had been a gas ring in each room in those days, where each family did their own cooking, and this area here had been the scullery, being the only room in the house with a sink and cold running water. When his mother had moved in the only water had come from a pump in the street. Now they had running water and a kitchen all to themselves and briefly, before the war, gas lighting in the street. It was confusing.
Upstairs a door slammed.
Joe lifted his head. He wondered if his brother and Myra had got up early with the dawn or if they were just turning in for the night. That seemed more likely. He couldn’t imagine any other reason they’d both be up at this hour. Harry certainly had not been on fire-watch duty. He had been thirty-three at the outbreak of war, which put him well within the age range for active service, but a medical exemption certificate had kept him out of it. This certificate had been provided by a helpful and hard-up doctor in Stepney whom a lot of young men had visited in those first heady weeks of the war and who now resided in the same wing of Wandsworth Prison as Samuel Levin. During those same weeks of September and October ’39, Joe had waited at home with his new bride for his call-up papers, which had come soon enough. The difference between himself and his half-brothers had, at that time, never seemed so clear to him.
And yet here he was, a little over four years later, and the difference between him and them was no longer clear.
Upstairs another door slammed and he watched a flicker of irritation pass over Harry’s face. Why did they stick together, Joe wondered, Harry and Myra? They only ever seemed to irritate each other. If Harry wanted to score some point over Sammy by stealing his girl he had surely made that point long ago.
‘Tell me again what happened,’ Harry demanded in a low voice, frowning. He had not sat down. He paced up and down the kitchen.
‘It’s what I said. They was expecting me. Docks Police, six or seven of them, and a copper. Plainclothes. Soon as they see me, it was all up. I’d be banged up on a charge—half a dozen charges—right now if I hadn’t legged it.’
‘Did you go back to your house?’
‘’Course I didn’t.’
‘They arrest anyone else?’
‘I didn’t see, I were too busy running. No, I don’t think so.’
At some point the sun had risen and a sliver of daylight crept into the gloomy room. Harry went to the window and twitched the blackout aside, taking a quick glance up at the sky before replacing it.
‘Why’re you here, Joe? What d’you expect me to do?’
‘I need papers,’ Joe said, and, seeing his brother unmoved: ‘Blimey, Harry, if you can’t get me new papers who the hell can? You could fit out the entire German army with new identities if you wanted to, just from the stuff you’ve got lying about in the house.’
‘Yeah, and if he handed over four quid I’d fit out Hitler himself—and chuck in some clothing coupons for good measure,’ replied Harry with a piercing look. ‘You got four quid, have you, Joe?’
‘I’ve got what I’m standing up in.’
Harry turned away, shaking his head. ‘I don’t keep none of that stuff here any more. It ain’t safe.’
‘Then what am I supposed to do?’
He hated this feeling of dependency. Harry had come to him in the pub and offered him an opportunity; that was what he had called it. What Joe had seen was a way to stick it to the government, to the navy, to the men who had sent him off to sea and left him to drown alone in an ocean when they didn’t even get their feet wet. He had taken control of his own destiny. But now his destiny was in the hands of his brother.
‘You have to help me,’ he said.
‘If I do, it’ll be the last time,’ said Harry.
A narrow and treacherously steep staircase in very poor repair led to the upper floors where, in Joe’s youth, a family called the Brownsteins had lived, and above them a family called the Buchmans, who had disappeared one night never to be heard of again. The Buchmans had been replaced by the Lipinskis, who in turn had been succeeded by the Mollers. Mr Lipinksi had fallen down the upper flight one Saturday night and had landed on his head and lain insensible and unable to speak in his bed ever after. The Brownsteins eldest boy had died of scarlet fever in one of these rooms. And the Mollers’ baby had fallen from the top-storey window and perished, and some had said it had been thrown by Mrs Moller herself in a fit of despair. Mrs Moller had died herself not long after and, though no one had said it, everyone had known it was by her own hand. The Brownsteins and the Buchmans and the Lipinskis and the Mollers were long gone but still it felt odd climbing the steep staircase to the upper floors. Joe still expected the elderly Mr Buchman to come out of his room and shout at him. But now his mother lived where the Moller children had slept, and she sat in a chair in the room where Mr Moller had impregnated his wife year after year.
Joe reached the top of the stairs and paused. This was where his mother—at seventy, her body stooped and broken by years of childbirth and poverty—now spent her days. She never came downstairs or received any visitors and no one could remember the last time she had set foot outside the house—it might have been his own wedding day. Her sole contact with the outside world was through Harry and Myra and what she spied in the street far below from her upstairs window. How much she knew of, or cared about, the various illegal goings-on in the rooms downstairs and in the houses on either side of her was unknown, for she said little and when she did speak it was often to enquire after the husband who had abandoned her thirty years earlier.
She was seated now in her chair by the window in the same black crepe dress and mob-cap, her fingers in the same woollen mittens, that she had been wearing on Joe’s last visit three months ago. Whether she had moved in all that time he could not tell.
‘Mum, it’s Joe.’
She turned her head sharply at his greeting but her eyes remained on the window as though his presence was no more than a sound heard in a distant room. The blackout had been pinned up t
o let the day in and a starling was perched unsteadily on the sill outside, buffeted by the wind. Mrs Levin studied the starling and when Joe came into the room the starling froze, sensing movement, its black eyes flickering, its wings shivering in preparation for flight.
‘Nasty vermin!’ she shouted furiously. ‘I hate them.’
Alarmed, the starling flew off.
Joe pulled up a chair beside her and sat down. ‘You been alright, have you, Mum?’ he said, watching her warily. Each time he saw her she seemed to have aged a little more, her cheeks a little more sunken, the skin on her face and neck and fingertips a little more transparent, her eyes a little more clouded over. But her voice was strong enough. ‘Are you getting enough to eat?’ he asked. He never saw her eat. It seemed possible she didn’t eat at all.
But the starling—or a different starling—had returned to the sill and she was fully taken up with retrieving her stick and rapping it furiously against the pane.
He had come to see her in this room the day before he’d left to join his ship three years ago and she had been angry with him. Angry because he had not got himself out of it like Harry had, like Sammy had in his own inimitable way. He was a fool, she had said, and perhaps he had been, for which one of them—Harry or Sammy or himself—was about to flee the country forever? The war would end and Sammy would come back and Harry would take over every house in the street and Joe would be gone. She would be gone, too, he realised, looking sideways at the old woman seated beside him.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Last night there was so much noise I couldn’t sleep.’
‘There was an air raid. You ought to go down the shelter.’ He knew she would never go down to any shelter.
‘That weren’t no air raid. That was some tart turning tricks with some soldier down ’neath my window. Went on for ages, it did, and then she knifed him and robbed him and buggered off, far as I can tell. There was blood on the street.’
There was no blood on the street. She had told him this story many times. It was some incident she had heard about years ago or had witnessed, perhaps, as a girl. Sometimes Joe wondered if the story was about herself. He had long ago decided he’d rather not know.
‘Well, it’s quiet now,’ he said.
The daylight had come and gone and Harry had been absent the whole time. He returned at nightfall, slipping back into the house, shaking the raindrops from his coat and bringing a rush of cold air into the kitchen.
‘Here,’ he said, thrusting an envelope into Joe’s hands.
Joe turned it over, strangely reluctant to open it. Inside the envelope was a set of papers with the words NATIONAL REGISTRATION IDENTITY CARD stamped in big official lettering on the front and on the back: MUST NOT PART WITH TO ANY OTHER PERSON. Well, this person had parted with it. Joe opened the cover and read: Septimus John Vasey. What sort of name was that? There was also a buff-coloured ration book made out in the same name. He wondered if Septimus John was dead. He stuffed the papers in his pocket. He did not feel like a Septimus. The name had a sinister ring to it that he could not quite explain.
‘Anyone come?’ said Harry to Myra, who was seated at the kitchen table, where she had passed most of the day, smoking and flipping through a magazine, ignoring Joe. She shook her head, not looking up. Nancy sat like that too, perhaps all women did: legs crossed, an elbow on the table, cigarette held between index and middle finger an inch from her mouth, staring through narrowed eyes at endless photographs of the Royal Family and American film stars. But Myra had a diamond ring on her finger, she had another on her other hand and the silk dressing-gown she wore really was silk, not imitation, and the coat hanging on the back of her chair was fur, and not rabbit either, perhaps not even fox. It paid then, this life they lived, even if it meant living like you were under siege, always expecting the worst. But we’re all under siege, thought Joe, we’re all expecting the worst. The only difference was Myra had diamonds and silk and fur.
The stolen identity papers pressed uncomfortably into his side.
Harry wanted him to leave first thing in the morning, had provided a change of clothes—an old man’s hat and a suit that smelled like an old man had died in it—and a walking stick. ‘Use the stick and walk with a limp anytime you see anyone in authority,’ Harry had said. ‘That way people might not question why you’re not in uniform. And keep the bandage, it adds to your cover. And travel by day, it’s less suspicious. You’re bound to be stopped if you travel after dark.’
And Joe thought: It’s not just that he’s worried the whole operation’s in jeopardy. It’s more than that. Harry wants me to get away to safety.
The thought confounded him for a moment.
They passed the evening playing cards using fake clothing coupons as stake and Myra listened to a comedy program on the wireless with a frown on her face as though she was listening to a Ministry of War casualty list. When the news came on Harry got up and turned it off. He poured them both a Canadian scotch and Myra a crème de menthe. She was in her dressing-gown, her hair back in its net, but she still wore the diamonds. They would both be here after he had gone, Joe realised, after he had made it, with any luck, to America, and it occurred to him to ask his brother to keep an eye on Nancy and Emily. He would not have dreamed of it twenty-four hours earlier but now it seemed possible. He would ask Harry in the morning.
He passed a restless night in the armchair, eventually giving up and silently smoking as the dawn crept over the hospital buildings. Tuesday morning.
They had not agreed on a time for Joe’s departure but already Harry was up and dressed and bundling him towards the front door. ‘Be careful if you get a train from any of the mainline stations,’ he said, his usual taciturnity overcome for once. ‘The entrances are all watched. Someone’s bound to stop you. Enter through the Underground station or jump a train once it’s pulled out the station. Avoid Victoria and Kings Cross. Use Euston.’
Joe listened and nodded, trying to remember, but it was hard to take it in. He reached out and laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder. It occurred to him they would probably never meet again. He pushed down the panic that seemed, now, always to be just beneath the surface.
They had reached the door and Harry eased it open cautiously, letting in the wan yellowish daylight. He stood perfectly still as a cat would, scanning the street, tasting the air, then he nodded and stood aside. As Joe passed him in the narrow hallway Harry said again, ‘Remember: Euston. And use the walking stick.’
Joe nodded.
Harry gave him a quick push through the door, and under his breath he murmured, ‘Good luck,’ or it sounded like good luck.
Joe stepped out into the cold dawn, realising he had not asked Harry to keep an eye on Nancy and Emily. He turned back but the door had already closed behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Despite the fading light of the dimly lit loft Gerald could see the whites of Diana’s eyes, the controlled panic on her face. There was a wildness, a desperation about her that silenced him. She was playing some dreadful game, he saw, was caught in some ghastly delusion and she needed him to play along. It seemed to him that she teetered, they both teetered, on a brink.
‘Gerald, you’re being quite absurd.’ She said this with a little laugh, as though he had suggested she go to church without her gloves and hat, that she drink her tea black. She had turned away from him as she spoke and now she climbed back down the little stepladder with slow measured steps.
Gerald followed her, watching as she went over to the range, was aware of her moving things about: pots, crockery, a storage jar. None of it was quite real.
‘How could she be someone else?’ she went on. ‘I mean, Gerald, you’ve been away such a long time. When you saw her, Abigail was only a day old. And now she is a three-year-old child. Quite grown. It’s hardly a wonder you don’t recognise her.’
He could not see her face as she said this, only her back, which was perfectly straight, and her shoulders, which
were perfectly still even as her hands moved feverishly over the things on the range.
‘You must be hungry,’ she said, as though the matter were now settled. ‘Do let me make you some supper. Mr Inghamthorpe gave me some eggs. Just think! I can do you an egg like I used to before the war. Would you like an egg?’
‘Diana, stop! For God’s sake, stop this!’
Gerald placed his hands very slowly on either side of his head, pressing his fingertips into his scalp. If she didn’t stop talking he knew he would go mad; already his sense of himself was slipping. The sand beneath his feet was rushing away into a hole and he was rushing with it.
At his words she had flinched as though he had struck her, but she did not turn around. She must know that what she was saying was a lie or, if she did not, then it was she who was mad. One of them, he realised, must be mad.
‘I have photographs of her. Photographs you sent me.’
Gerald went to his bag, unfastening it with fingers that were thick and clumsy. He got it open at last, fishing among his things until his fingers found his pocketbook. He pulled it out and shook it vigorously so that any number of scraps and notes and cards fell out, falling any which way onto the floor, and among them were the three photographs, taken one year apart each Christmas. Three dark-haired little girls with dark eyes and dark eyebrows, a wide forehead, largish ears, the same contrary, slightly sullen expression on her face each time, in the last one a little ball in her lap.
‘See! Here! This is her!’
He stood up, stumbling and unsteady. Diana was standing a little distance away, looking not at the photographs that he held out to her, but at his face. He lurched over, thrusting the photographs at her, making her look, but she would not—or could not—see them. The frozen mask that had descended over her face prevented her.
‘For God’s sake! Look, look!’ And when she did not, he grabbed her hand and forced the photographs into it, he took hold of her head and forced her to look. ‘You took these! They are your photographs! What have you done? Who is the girl upstairs? Who is the girl in these photographs?’
