The Safest Place in London

by Maggie Joel

  But nothing was untouched by the war. It was a delusion to think so.

  He found Odessa Street and it was, for the most part, intact. It was a short street parallel to the main road, easy to miss in the unfamiliar warren of streets that looked, to the untrained eye, identical. Two rows of Victorian terraces faced each other barely more than ten yards apart, two-storey buildings with front doors that opened directly onto the street A pub on the corner was boarded up and abandoned, and a number of the houses appeared similarly vacated. One house at the far end of the street had been hit and was no more than a hole in the ground, the houses either side untouched. Large cracks, a gaping crater and piles of debris littered the street. You’d have a hard time driving so much as a bicycle along this street, but then it seemed entirely possible no one here owned a bicycle. Washing lines crisscrossed the street from which one or two greyish sheets limply fluttered. A cluster of children, inadequately dressed for the winter, were playing a noisy game in the gutter. A couple of prams were positioned outside front doors—abandoned or containing babies it was impossible to know—and a woman stood in a doorway smoking, observing him.

  He could make out no house numbers. Indeed, most of the front doors did not even have letterboxes. Perhaps these people did not receive post. Perhaps they could not read. He didn’t know, and he felt, for a brief moment, ashamed of his ignorance.

  Gerald began to walk towards the woman in the doorway but she turned abruptly and went inside, the door slamming shut. The children stopped their game and stood up, gathering into a group, facing him expressionlessly.

  ‘Hullo,’ he called, expecting them to scatter as soon as he opened his mouth, but they did not move. It was unnerving. ‘Can you tell me which is number forty-two? The Levins?’

  None of them spoke or so much as gave an indication they had understood the question. He wondered if they only understood Yiddish. One of the children, a boy of perhaps eight or nine, in shorts and a pair of man’s shoes that were far too big for him and with which he wore no socks, stooped down, feeling with his hand on the ground and not for a second taking his eyes off the stranger. His fingers found what they were looking for—a stone or piece of rubble—and curled around it. Slowly he straightened up. There no malice in the child’s face, or fear. There was nothing.

  ‘I’ve a shilling here for the first one of you who tells me which is the Levin’s house.’

  That did it. They broke ranks as quickly as a platoon after parade, rushing forward. A stick-thin girl with a dirt-streaked face, no more than five or six, got there first. ‘That one! That one!’ she screamed, pointing to a house on the other side of the street and three down. Gerald tossed her the coin. She snatched it but at once the others piled on top of her and a ruckus ensued. Gerald left them to it, but as he approached the property a stone whizzed past his ear. He ducked instinctively even as the stone hit the wall of the house and rolled harmlessly away. He felt irritated, his irritation fuelled by the brief moment of fear. He wanted to bang their stupid, ignorant, lice-infested heads together and tell them that he had fought a bloody war for them, damn it!

  Number 42 had very little to distinguish it from numbers 44 and 40 on either side. The front door showed residue of paint so ancient its colour was impossible to guess; it might have been the original paint from the 1890s. Rubbish filled the gutter outside the house, dumped there or simply blown by the wind. Weeds grew in the cracks between the bricks but the doorstep was scrubbed clean, or had been scrubbed sometime recently. He caught a glimpse of a wisp of cloth hanging at the downstairs window. He knocked on the door twice, loudly, his heart beating fast.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Joe arrived back in Odessa Street in the late afternoon, approaching from the west by way of Silkweavers Row and Frenchmans Lane and so avoiding the main roads. He stopped in the shadow of the boarded-up Hero of Trafalgar pub, aware that any number of people might recognise him.

  But no one stirred.

  The street was silent, deserted, and its silence disturbed him. It was almost as though the people could sense there was going to be a raid. He had heard somewhere that birds and animals knew an earthquake was coming before it happened, that they flew off or slunk away into the undergrowth long before the first tremors could be felt. That was how it seemed to him, standing in the shadow of the Hero of Trafalgar pub.

  He thought: Nancy will believe I am in Liverpool by now, perhaps even in Dublin. She will expect me to have sent her a postcard and here I am, hiding in the shadows not twenty yards from home.

  Thinking this made his head throb. It made something surge up inside him that was part despair, part joy. He thought about the three days and three nights he had spent in a lifeboat adrift in the ocean wearing a dead man’s clothes and how he had expected to die but he had not died, and in light of that miracle he attempted to make sense of his current situation but he could not. It did not make sense. He wanted to see his wife and child. It could not hurt to see that all was well before attempting his escape a second time.

  As he waited a rabble of small children tumbled out of a doorway and began a noisy game. Mrs Bantry at number 4 came out onto her doorstep, her coat wrapped tightly around her, watching the children and smoking a Craven A. She was close enough that he could see the wisps of blue smoke from her cigarette whipped away on the breeze, he could see the dullness in her eyes that precluded either hope or fear. He remembered that Jack Bantry had knocked out all his wife’s teeth one drunken Saturday night. Jack Bantry was a prisoner in Burma now, Nancy had said. It seemed likely that Mrs Bantry, silently smoking her Craven A, wasn’t praying for the end of the war.

  It was a clear sky above and Joe was no longer sure what he waited for. He felt as though he had spent all his life waiting. What did it matter if Mrs Bantry saw him, if the small children noticed him or not? He thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and set off towards the children, passing Mrs Bantry, and making for his own house. He would see Nancy, he would talk to her, just for a minute. It flashed into his mind that he could persuade her to come with him, that the three of them, he, Nancy and Emily, could journey to Dublin together—why not? She might be persuaded, though it was a crazy idea, impractical at best, suicidal at worst. Still, the thought flashed across his mind—how could it not?

  His footsteps quickened as he neared the house and he remembered the trepidation with which he had approached the house three months ago at the start of his leave, uncertain of so much. Now he moved swiftly, reaching the door and letting himself in. Once inside he leaned against the door, catching his breath and listening, realising how tightly his nerves were wound. Upstairs he could hear the Rosenthal children, one of the boys left in charge barking out orders, suggesting that Mrs Rosenthal was out. But downstairs all was silent.

  ‘Nancy?’

  His voice was hushed, though it was daft to imagine that someone might be listening, that someone might be hiding in one of the rooms. He pushed open the bedroom door with his foot and looked inside, but it was clearly deserted, Nancy’s things, and Emily’s too, strewn about much as they had been that morning when he had left. He went into the kitchen and saw no sign of recent activity there either. Indeed, things were put away and cleaned up.

  They had had nothing when they had moved into the house, he and Nancy. They had gone to the pawnbroker on Hackney Road and dug out mismatching cups and saucers and plates, knives and forks and some funny little teaspoons that had ivory handles and would have been expensive once, but the handles came off as soon as you picked anything up and that had made them laugh, each mealtime, without fail. But today everything was put away.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table because his legs were shaking and weak. His emotion, his love, had made him weak. Had made him fearful. He had got this table for Nancy not long after he had come home on leave, when he discovered she had burned the old table for firewood the winter before. He had following Harry’s lead and scoured the bombsites and found this one, a car
d table, from a posh house up near Vic Park hidden in a back room beneath a half-crumbling wall and he had dug it out with his bare hands and carried it home over his head at midnight. And since then it had been constantly covered in newspapers and ashtrays and empty cigarette packets and the leftovers of their meal. For Nancy was unconcerned by housework. But now everything was neat.

  He looked around the room, feeling her presence all about him. He smiled, a warmth spreading through him as he imagined her coming home and finding him here in their home, seated at the table. Then all he had to do was persuade her to come with him, now, right this minute. It would be easy enough to leave it all behind if they left together. And in his mind he had already left it behind and knowing this brought a sort of calmness.

  But it was odd that everything was neat and tidy and put away.

  ‘We had chips!’

  He spun around to see one of the Rosenthal girls standing in the doorway in a long grubby dress, clutching a bedraggled doll in her arms. It was Pamela. Or Barbara. He had trouble distinguishing the younger ones.

  ‘Did you, luv? That sounds very fine. Your mum in?’

  The little girl thought about this then she shook her head very firmly.

  ‘Who’s in charge? Is it Billy?’

  Again she shook her head and stuck her thumb in her mouth and the other one, Barbara or perhaps Pamela, appeared silently beside her in an equally grubby dress. ‘We had chips for breakfast!’ said the second child, echoing her sister. ‘It was waiting for us when we come home from the shelter. Mum said it was the fairies what made it and left it for our breakfast.’

  This seemed unlikely but Joe didn’t argue. Whatever had happened had clearly made quite an impression. The kitchen didn’t smell like chips had been fried recently and he wondered when this marvellous event had happened. But it hardly mattered, did it, in the scheme of things?

  ‘Do you kids know where Aunty Nancy is, and Emily?’

  But they both just looked at him.

  The knock on the door made him jump. It shattered the peace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Gerald knocked a second time, louder, then he went to the downstairs window, cupping his hand against the glass, and peered in. It was a bedroom, tiny, cluttered and cramped. He made out an old-fashioned iron bedstead, a thin mattress, blankets. Against the back wall was a narrow Victorian wardrobe, its door hanging open, but it was impossible to see what, if anything, was inside it. On the floor were items of clothing, shoes strewn about, a suitcase standing opened and empty.

  He stepped back. It could be any room, belonging to anyone, recently vacated by the occupants who had just popped out to do their shopping or who had left in a hurry at the sound of the air-raid siren and never returned. It told him nothing. If there were no living relatives what became of a person’s things, of their house? What became of the rooms they rented? The local authorities would sort it out, he presumed; indeed, there was probably a department that dealt solely with the possessions of dead people.

  He stepped back and studied the upstairs window and at once saw a shadow pulling back out of sight. Gerald waited, standing there, gazing up, and sure enough, after a time, there it was again, a shadow at the window.

  As he tried to decide what to do, he saw a woman making her way breathlessly along the street towards him, a shopping basket banging at her knees and two small children at her side. She paused at the sight of him. Even from a distance of twenty yards or more he could see a dozen frightened possibilities flit across the woman’s face and she seemed poised to flee. Gerald had no clue how to reassure her so he just stood there and said nothing and after a while she started forward again, moving quickly like a bird hopping across a lawn, her eyes turned away from him, her hands grasping both the children—two little boys—tightly. They were coming to this house. He stepped aside, trying not to stare at her but still taking in a tiny shrunken figure bundled up in a headscarf and a man’s overcoat but with bare legs and light summer shoes. He thought at first it was an old woman though, as she neared, he saw she was quite young but terribly worn down. Something about her pallor, her eyes, her posture spoke of complete and utter exhaustion. The children, by contrast, eyed him boldly; the eldest, who was all of nine or ten, shivering in a decrepit old pullover and a pair of men’s trousers held up with string, pulled himself up sharply in a manner that suggested there was no father around.

  They had reached their door, number 42.

  ‘Mrs Levin?’ said Gerald, knowing it was not her but saying it anyway. At his words the women’s eyes widened for a moment then she turned away. The boy’s expression turned mocking.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he said. This earned him a clip around the ear from his mother. Clearly the boy had not yet learned that you do not speak to strangers, or not this kind of stranger.

  ‘Then I wonder if you can tell me—’

  But they were gone, the door opened, the mother bundling her children in, the door firmly closed.

  He went after her and knocked loudly and repeatedly, and when he stopped the silence was no longer the silence of an abandoned house, it was the silence of people holding their breath, hiding and waiting, not daring to move. He backed away. He had the same feeling from each of the windows in each of the houses, shadows watching him, darting away when he looked at them. The cluster of children across the street had fallen silent and they too were watching him, and for a moment he felt the same unease he had felt walking through the streets of Cairo at night, waiting to get his throat cut and his body thrown into the Nile.

  For God’s sake, would no one help him?

  He thought of the decrepit old woman at the station who had pitied him, the woman ambulance driver who had offered him a cigarette. He clung to these two oases of kindness in this desert of indifference.

  He left, turning and walking rapidly away, wanting to put as much distance as he could between himself and that house, this street. The day had faded, seeping away in a slow and protracted death, and the night lay ahead of him, unrelenting and endless. He shivered. He had not felt warm since he had climbed aboard the de Havilland three—no, four days ago. He wanted to be back there, in the desert, in the dusty, fly-blown, teeming streets of Cairo. He wanted to wind the clock back four days.

  Emerging again onto Bethnal Green Road at the start of the blackout he was lost for a time, trying to determine his location, trying to decide where he should go. He began walking in a westerly direction, hoping to find a bus. Instead he found a black hackney cab, pulling up at the kerb and disgorging a group of drunken sailors. He darted forward and climbed in before anyone else could

  ‘Where to, guv?’ said the cabbie, and behind them Gerald heard the first wails of the air-raid siren.

  ‘Clapham,’ said Gerald. ‘Take me to Clapham.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Joe froze. A knock on a door in Odessa Street meant a stranger, not a good stranger, never someone you wanted to see.

  He jumped up from the table. The two Rosenthal girls didn’t jump; they remained in the kitchen doorway watching him. At the second knock, louder this time, more insistent, he went to the back door ready to run, then he turned back and stood, undecided. And the two little girls watched. He put his finger to his lips, not that they had made a sound, and crept past them and went soundlessly up the stairs and they followed a step behind. Upstairs, he found Archie, who was third oldest, and Norman who was next after Archie and who was holding the baby. They were standing at the window staring down at the street below, and when they saw Joe the two boys shuffled wordlessly up to make room so that he, too, could see.

  Joe looked down and all he could see was the top of a hat and two khaki shoulders. It was an officer’s hat. The head looked up at that moment and they all stepped back out of sight. Then the knocking started again and they leaned forward and looked down again. The man was an army officer, there was no mistaking it. And now he pressed his face to the downstairs window. Then he looked up.

&
nbsp; ‘He’s seen us!’ squealed Norman.

  The thrill of it seemed to electrify the squalid little room and its occupants and for a long moment no one spoke. Joe looked at the four little faces of the Rosenthal children—five if you counted the baby, who gaped at him, wide-eyed and toothless. They waited to see what he would do. But he couldn’t think. He didn’t know what he would do. A panic had gripped him at the sight of that hat, those khaki shoulders. What could it mean that they would send the army to pick him up? The police, yes, the navy—but an army officer? Was the man from the ministry? From military intelligence? Had he been watching and seen Joe come into the house?

  His foolishness at coming here became horribly apparent.

  And having now seen them the man was not going to give up and there followed another knock, loud, insistent.

  Joe left then, sprinting back down the stairs, out of the back door and into the yard, across the fence and into the narrow laneway that ran along the back of the houses. A voice called out to him, he thought he heard his name called, and it might have been Mrs Rosenthal, though he could not be sure and he did not stop. There was a collapsed wall halfway along the lane that led into the backyard of a bombed-out house. He made for that, feeling his way, clambering through the rubble and popping out into another laneway. It was dark now, pitch dark, but out of nowhere someone shone a torch directly in his face. Before he could throw up his hands to shield his eyes he was wrestled to the ground, where he lay for a moment, bewildered and winded.

  ‘What’s your game then?’ sneered a breathless but triumphant voice right in his ear, so that it became clear that the person holding the torch was a police constable, massive in the blackout in his cape and domed helmet, the smell of cooked onions on his breath. Before Joe could think, before he could move, he was hauled to his feet.