by Maggie Joel
Behind him, distant and distorted, someone cried out, a man’s voice, then a woman’s. They were on to him and he had only the smallest of head starts. And probably they knew the ground and had men and torches and perhaps dogs. It hardly mattered—he pressed on. The ground banked steeply downwards and he found himself at the water’s edge and he remembered he had crossed a river to reach the police station. He paused, fighting for breath, hearing the rush of the water. Otherwise it was perfectly still and silent. The darkness and the covering of snow deadened all sound. Even the shouts of his pursuers had ceased.
In his arms the child squirmed and fought but he pressed her face hard into his coat, steeling himself against his own brutality. He was doing this for her. It was the right thing to do. He would not let the child thwart her own rescue!
But how was he to cross the river? He turned to the left and made his way, slipping and sliding in mud, along the river’s edge. If there was a riverside path he could not locate it. If he was not careful he would have them both in the water. But there was the bridge, a dark shape dead ahead, the sound of the water muffled as it rushed beneath the arches. He scrambled up the bank, finding the road he had somehow missed before, and was up and on the bridge. But almost at once he lost his footing and fell to his knees and, weighed down by the squirming, terrified child, found it impossible to get up. She let out a scream, pounding furious fists against any part of him she could find.
It was almost a relief when they caught up to him. A constable and the sergeant came out of the darkness and onto him, one grasping the child, tearing it from his arms, the other pulling his arms back almost out of their sockets. He did not fight them. He had nothing left.
‘Let go of him! LET HIM GO!’
It was Diana.
‘Take the child to safety, please!’ She was still some way off but she spoke in such a way that the policemen released him; their hands were full anyway with the screaming, kicking child. They had pulled him up to his feet in order to tear the child from him but now he sank to his knees once more in the snow.
And Diana appeared and kneeled before him. How oddly ghostlike she looked. He was uncertain if it was the darkness and swirling snow that gave her this ghostly look or if she was, in fact, a ghost.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. She lifted him by his shoulders, searching his face. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’ She brushed the snowflakes from his lashes and nose.
He put his hands on her shoulders, gripping her, returning her gaze. ‘Diana, it’s not real.’
And she sat back on her heels.
‘I know, Gerald, I know it’s not real. I know she is not our child. I lied to the police but I won’t lie to you. I’ve already told you what happened. But perhaps I didn’t explain it well enough.’ He shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘What does that mean?’
But she looked away, at the panicked child, the two cursing policemen, the inspector a long way behind still making his awkward way towards them. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she spoke calmly and steadily: ‘I need a child. I’m thirty-nine. I won’t have another baby. Gerald, nothing can replace Abigail, our child. But I need this. I need her. And I believe she needs us. Can you not see that?’
Someone had put a blanket around him and sat him on a chair. So far as Gerald could tell no one had been left to guard him. The constable had placed a mug of hot cocoa in his hands. They had left him in a room—not the inspector’s office, not the interview room—and he could hear distant voices on the other side of the door and he presumed they were discussing him. It was curious how little it seemed to matter to him what they said. The cocoa steamed quietly, a few lumps of the cocoa powder and flakes of dried milk floated on its surface. Gerald blew on it, instinctively, because that was what one did with a hot drink. When they had first placed the mug in his hands he had not been able to feel its heat; now the warmth was slowing penetrating his fingers.
Diana had said, I need her. And I believe she needs us. Can you not see that?
And now, oddly, he could see that. He could see that his wife needed this child. That she was not mad or delusional or deceitful. She was desperate. And perhaps the child needed them. He wondered why he had not seen it this clearly before. Perhaps he had just needed her to say the words, Nothing can replace Abigail, our child.
It all seemed surprisingly simple and straightforward. He sipped the cocoa and waited for them to remember him and come and get him.
After a time, the door opened and Diana came in. He looked up at her gratefully. He could see the inspector behind her, frowning, still making up his mind, unhappy at the sudden and unpleasant turn that events had taken earlier in the evening. Diana kneeled before him and took both his hands.
‘Darling, the inspector is concerned that you might be a threat to—to Abigail or to myself. Or to yourself. He needs to know that you’re quite alright now. Then he’ll let us go . . . won’t you, Inspector?’ She glanced over her shoulder.
Brighouse muttered noncommittally under his breath.
‘Darling?’
Gerald nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, quite alright now.’ He summoned a smile for his wife, another for the inspector. ‘So sorry to have been such a nuisance. Don’t quite know what came over me. I think what I need is rest.’
He stopped, and Diana looked pleased with this. She turned again to the inspector.
‘Aye well,’ said Brighouse with another of his frowns. ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Mrs Meadows; you know yer husband better than I do. But you mek sure you tek my advice and contact that doctor I told you about first thing. I’ve seen a lot of this kind o’ thing up here. I’m no stranger to it. You tek my advice.’
‘Oh, I most certainly will, Inspector. Thank you. You have been so very kind.’
A car was found and the constable dropped them back at the cottage. It was approaching midnight, or long after midnight, and the child clung to Diana and eventually she lay on the back seat and slept, the teddy bear with the missing ear clutched in her arms. The constable lifted her up and carried her inside and Diana led Gerald to the armchair by the hearth. There had been a fire in the grate earlier and he gazed at the half-burnt logs in anticipation of a new fire. He could hear Diana dealing with the constable, thanking him when he promised to look in on them in the morning, he was too kind, they had all been too kind. He heard the door shut.
Diana got the fire restarted, found a blanket and laid it over him, placed another one over the child. She poured him a tiny whisky and one for herself, and arranged herself at his feet. The child lay curled up in the other armchair.
For a while neither spoke.
‘How did you do it?’ said Gerald eventually, nodding at the sleeping child who two days before had been kicking and screaming and uncontrollable in the corner of the room.
‘I bribed her with a bar of chocolate,’ said Diana, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘She’s rather fond of chocolate. Tomorrow we’ll need to see if we can get hold of some more. I’ve used up my current supplies.’
Gerald gazed at the burning logs and thought about his wife bribing the child with a bar of chocolate.
At his feet Diana shifted, moving her legs to a more comfortable position.
‘You found them, didn’t you? Her people—you found out who they were?’ she said, her voice very low, almost disembodied in the darkness.
‘Yes I did. Almost certainly.’
‘And there was no one, no other family?’
‘None that I could locate, no.’
She gave a small sigh. ‘Poor little thing.’ And then, ‘Don’t tell me their names, Gerald. Do you mind? I think I’d rather not know.’
‘Of course not.’ A log collapsed with a soft crack, sending out a tiny shower of embers. ‘Would you mind if I asked you a question?’ he said. ‘Just one, and then the subject will be closed.’
‘Of course.’
‘The child’s mother. What was she like?’
Gerald nodded, pleased with this. Pleased with his wife.
AFTERWORD
Joe Levin tasted seawater on his lips and, oddly, it made him smile. The B&I steampacket bucked and rolled as it headed into a squall and the seagulls swooped excitedly, trying to keep pace.
The Irish Sea was gunmetal grey, as welcoming as a day out at the seaside in winter. But Joe smiled. He sat on the deck and pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders and concentrated, a pencil wedged between his teeth, a postcard on his knee. The postcard showed a view of Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building on one side. He had bought it just before he had boarded the steamer and he studied it now. It had been strange to be back in Liverpool, however briefly. The week he had spent in the naval hospital after being torpedoed now seemed like another world, seemed like it had happened to another person.
He sucked on the end of the pencil, thinking. After a time, he began to write to his wife and child.
AUTHOR NOTE
London experienced a ‘little Blitz’ between January and April of 1944, which began with the raids on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 January. This raid did not hit the Bethnal Green area and the events I describe in Bethnal Green are entirely fictional. Bethnal Green Station was still under construction at the start of the war and was used extensively as a shelter during this period though it escaped any direct hits. The ‘horrible death by suffocation’ to which Nancy Levin briefly alludes at the end of Chapter One refers to the 173 civilians killed in a crush entering Bethnal Green Station during a raid on 3 March 1943, an incident that falls outside the scope of this novel but which is well-documented, as are the fates of the Polyanthus, the St. Croix and the Itchen.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due—as ever—to my agent, Clare Forster, and my publisher, Annette Barlow, for your invaluable and continuing support, guidance and belief in me; to my editor-extraordinaire, Ali Lavau; to my dearest friend and supporter, Tricia Dearborn; to my dear friends Liz Brigden and Sharon Mathews who will appreciate the underground/overground reference; to my mother Sheila Joel who made the arduous journey with me by public transport to Chalfont St Giles, and my aunt, Anne Benson who was on the train that got stuck outside Neasden; to Peter Brigden for allowing me to use the story of the midwife; to Brian Christie who supplied invaluable information on Chalfont St Giles; to all the wonderful people at Curtis Brown and Allen & Unwin for your assistance, support, expertise and encouragement during the writing and publication of this book; and to the fine people at the Australia Council for the Arts who continue to provide me with encouragement and inspiration and who allow me the space to write, in particular Carolyn Watts and Michelle Brown.
SOURCES
The following publications, histories and memoirs proved invaluable in the writing of this book.
A Bethnal Green Memoir: Recollections of Life in the 1930s–1950s by Derek Houghton, The History Press, Gloucestershire, UK, 2009.
A Short Guide to the Parish Church of Chalfont St Giles: An Outline of the History of the Church by Anon.
An Underworld at War: Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War by Donald Thomas, John Murray, London, 2003.
Bombers and Mash: the Domestic Front 1939–45 by Raynes Minns, Virago, London, 1980.
Cairo, Biography of a City by James Aldridge, edited by Jimmy Dunn, Little Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1969.
Carry on London by Ritchie Calder, English Universities Press, London, 1941.
Desert Rats: The Desert War 1940–3 in the Words of Those Who Fought There by John Sadler, Amberley Publishing, Gloucestershire, UK, 2012.
Going Green—The Story of the District Line by Piers Connor, published by Capital Transport Publishing, London, 1993.
London’s East End—Life and Traditions by Jane Cox, Seven Dials, 1994.
Many Histories Deep: The Personal Landscape—Poets in Egypt, 1940–45 by Roger Bowen, Associated University Presses, Cranbury, NJ, USA, 1995.
Our Street: East End Life in the Second World War by Gilda O’Neill, Viking, London, 2003.
Social History of the Jews in England 1850–1950 by V.D. Lipman, Watts & Co., London, 1954.
The Bull’s Eye by Reginald Bell, Cassell, London, 1943.
The Jewish East End, 1840–1939 edited by Aubrey Newman, The Jewish Historical Society of England, London, 1981.
The Story of the London Underground (Unapix Entertainment Inc., 1999)
Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations and the Status of Women During World War Two by Karen Anderson, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, USA, 1981.
Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London by Jean Friedman, University of Kentucky Press, USA, 1999.
Women in Wartime—The Role of Women’s Magazines 1939–1945 by Jane Waller, Macdonald Optima, London, 1987.
And the following history websites:
http://www.desertrats.org.uk/history.htm
http://ww2history.com/testimony/Western/desert_rat
http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=700
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Tank_Mk_VI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_III
http://www.griffonmerlin.com/2011/02/11/recreating-wartime-cairo/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Polyanthus_(K47)
http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/crews/ship3075.html
http://www.leithshipyards.com/ships-built-in-leith/1939to-1945/114-hms-polyanthus-yard-no-309-flower-classcorvette-royal-navy-built-1940.html
http://ianchadwick.com/blog/the-sinking-of-the-st-croixseptember-1943/
