Into Exile

by Joan Lingard

  Sadie withdrew her finger from the baby’s hand. His mouth drooped petulantly making both Sadie and his mother laugh.

  ‘Lara!’ called the voice again.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Lara. She gathered the edge of her sari in one hand and took the baby into the house. He watched Sadie over his mother’s shoulder. She waved to him.

  ‘I think perhaps I’ve made a friend,’ said Sadie triumphantly.

  ‘Two friends,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Yes. Two friends.’

  They went into their house. The entrance hall smelt of cat and boiled cabbage, though they had almost ceased to notice it now. Kevin took the key from his pocket and put it in the lock.

  ‘It’s not locked,’ he said in surprise.

  ‘Must have forgotten to lock it. Now that I come to think of it I don’t remember you doing it.’

  Kevin put his hand round the corner and fumbled for the light switch. The light went on, and he stepped back in astonishment.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Sadie, coming in behind him; then she too stood still and gazed at the room. It had been turned upside down.

  The drawers were open, and the cupboard door. Clothes were spread across the room, all their possessions had been pulled out and raked over.

  ‘What would anyone have against us here?’ said Sadie. ‘If it’d been at home –’

  ‘We’d have had a bomb through our window if we’d been in Belfast. But I don’t like the look of this at all.’ Kevin knelt down to pick up some of the things. ‘No one knows anything about us here. I think someone’s been in to see what they can steal.’

  ‘Steal? We’ve nothing worth stealing.’ Sadie shook her head with disbelief.

  ‘No one round here’s got very much. Depends what you have before you think anything’s worth stealing. Let’s see if anything’s missing.’

  A number of things were missing: their bright red mugs, the furry rug, a purple tray with pink flowers painted on it that Sadie had coveted for two weeks and bought only on Friday, when she had got her pay. She exploded.

  ‘Of all the mean, nasty –!’

  ‘They’ve taken our cutlery too,’ said Kevin grimly.

  ‘And the butter and cheese has gone. What kind of monsters can they be?’ wailed Sadie.

  Some of their clothes had also gone, the better ones, so that all they had left were the old ones they wore at weekends.

  ‘I’ve nothing to go to my work in,’ wailed Sadie. ‘I can’t go in jeans.’

  She raged and stormed; Kevin sat quietly on the floor, his face dark and brooding.

  ‘We should have locked the door of course.’ He sighed, stood up. ‘We’d better go and have a word with old Crackers.’

  Mrs Kyrakis’s door was closed and not a sound was to be heard behind it. Kevin knocked twice calling her name.

  ‘Sleeping,’ said Sadie loudly. ‘What an eejit!’

  Kevin knocked again, several times. A woman came past, her feet slopping along the linoleum in felt slippers. She was a thin woman who went up and down the street in an overall and slippers every day, her hair in rollers. She reminded Sadie of the women in her street in Belfast.

  ‘She’ll not answer,’ the woman said. ‘The place could go up in flames and she’d not pay any attention.’

  ‘I’ll break the door down if I have to,’ said Kevin.

  But the woman had already gone, not interested any further. She had dead eyes, thought Sadie. She shivered.

  ‘Mrs Kyrakis,’ said Kevin in a determined voice, ‘our room has been burgled and we would like a word with you. If you don’t open up we’ll have to call the police.’

  He knew he would not call the police, and so would she. If he did call them they would pay no attention anyway, and even if they did and they came, they would look round the house and shake their heads. They had plenty of other things to occupy themselves with. Two red mugs and a tin tray and some cheap clothes …

  ‘Mrs Kyrakis,’ shouted Sadie desperately. ‘For dear sake, can you not hear us?’

  A West African came into the hall and went up the stairs. He looked over the banisters at them.

  ‘This place is like a looney bin,’ said Sadie. She leant back against the wall and folded her arms. ‘I’m stopping here till she comes out. She’ll need to go to the loo sometime.’

  Kevin laughed. ‘I’ve seen that stubborn look on your face before!’

  The door opened suddenly, making them jump. Mrs Kyrakis stood there with the light behind her, holding a shawl round her shoulders.

  ‘What the devil you make that noise for?’ she demanded.

  A sweet, suffocating smell emanated from the open doorway.

  ‘Our room’s been burgled,’ said Kevin. ‘And half our things taken.’

  ‘There must be a thief in the house,’ said Sadie.

  The landlady shrugged. ‘What you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Come and see,’ said Sadie.

  Mrs Kyrakis pulled her own door shut and followed them up the passage. She stood at the door of the room, looked round briefly, then shrugged again.

  ‘What you expect me to do? Fourteen people live in this house.’

  ‘If we searched the rooms we’d probably find our stuff,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Search?’ said Mrs Kyrakis with amazement.

  Sadie’s shoulders slumped. Of course they couldn’t search the rooms. The inhabitants would never let them.

  ‘Sorry we bothered you,’ said Kevin sarcastically, but his sarcasm was wasted on Mrs Kyrakis.

  ‘Keep the door locked,’ she said. ‘Less bother that way.’

  She went back down the passage to her own room. They shut the door. Sadie sat down on the bed and thumped her fist on the eiderdown.

  ‘Rotten, stinking, miserable –’ She could not go on, she was crying. She seldom cried and the tears took her by surprise. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She felt Kevin’s arm round her shoulder.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll get over it. Sure, haven’t we got over worse?’

  ‘But we’ve not got much.’

  ‘We’ve still one another. Isn’t that the main thing?’

  She stopped crying. She smiled at him. He was warm and solid and no one could take him away from her.

  ‘Course it’s the main thing. But if I ever get my hands on the hallions that did it –!’

  Kevin laughed. ‘You’re a devil when you’re worked up. That was what I first liked in you.’

  They tidied the room, and to make herself feel better Sadie scrubbed the floor and cleaned the window. After that they sat in front of the one-bar electric fire scorching their ankles and discussed how they would furnish the house they had liked in the square in Kensington, the one that Kevin thought would cost fifty thousand pounds.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Early morning cold. Sadie shivered and wriggled her shoulders inside her old red dressing gown, glad at least that the thief had not taken that. It was old, of course, and had a hole that she had always meant to darn in one elbow. She had been given the dressing gown for her thirteenth birthday. She smiled when she thought of that for she had never expected to be wearing it when she was a married woman. She had fancied that she would be slinking around in a long filmy negligee. She giggled.

  ‘What’s the big joke?’ demanded Kevin, lifting the electric razor off his chin.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sadie. ‘Oh, just us. This room, and all.’

  ‘You’d better be getting on with my lunch or I’ll be late.’

  Kevin continued shaving, Sadie spread slices of bread with margarine and wondered what else to put on them since the cheese had been taken.

  ‘It’ll have to be jam,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’

  He did not mind as long as it was food and there was enough to fill his stomach. Working outside made him ravenous. When he had finished shaving he pulled on a heavy sweater and combed his thick dark hair. B
efore he went out he sat down in front of the electric fire to have a last heat, spreading out his hands, holding them close to the red bar. Sadie put the sandwiches into a plastic lunch box, added a wrinkled apple and filled his flask with hot sweetened tea. He was ready to go.

  He took his jacket from behind the door, slung it round his shoulders, lifted his lunch box and flask. She put her arms round his neck and rubbed her cheek against his. He kissed her.

  ‘Must go, love.’

  She nodded.

  She went to the window, drew back the curtain. On his way past he stopped and leaned his nose against the window, flattening it, making her laugh. She put her nose against the window too, so that it met his through the glass. Then he straightened his back, blew her a kiss and was gone, striding across the road, whistling, his jacket hooked over his shoulder on one finger. He seldom felt the cold and she often nagged him for not wearing his jacket. Whenever she nagged him she could hear her mother’s voice behind her like an echo. When she thought of being like her mother she was horrified.

  For a moment after he had gone she felt lonely. The street was still dark. A few men were on their way to work, one or two were coming back after night-shift. She closed the curtain, turning back into the room. The light was on, it might as well have been night. She did not have to go out for another hour. The warm bed tempted her, but if she did go back, getting up the second time would be all the harder and she might be tempted to lie in and not go to work at all. She did not like her work; it was boring. But so was Kevin’s, and they needed the money.

  She washed and dressed, putting on jeans and a sweater. She would leave early and buy herself a cheap dress in the shop. Now she felt better. There was a new day ahead and who knew what might come of it? She sang to herself while she washed the dishes and made the bed. As she tidied the room she wondered at herself for there was a time when anything remotely domesticated sickened her, but she wanted to make this room as nice as she could for Kevin and herself. ‘You’re the absolute end, Sadie Jackson,’ her mother used to say. ‘You could stir your room with a stick.’

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Sadie thought about her mother and father and brother Tommy. Every day the news about Ulster was bad and every day she half-expected a telegram. She would know what was in it before she opened it. Whenever she read of a bomb in a pub or a shop she would think her mother might have been shopping, or her father could have been having a pint of Guinness with his friend Mr Mullet on their way home from a Lodge meeting. She supposed he still went to his Lodge meetings; Orange Lodge meetings, where the Brethren pledged themselves to defend the Protestant faith. And Kevin’s family lived in a Catholic area, a stronghold of the IRA. His younger sisters and brothers roamed the streets playing at terrorists killing British soldiers. Yes, she and Kevin were well out of it.

  It was light when she set off. She walked quickly to the Underground station to join the crowds of snuffling, frowning, irritated people on their way to work. When she travelled on the Underground she thought what a terrible waste of energy it was, that people must wear themselves out before they were old doing this every day, and that their lungs must rot breathing in the filthy air and smoke.

  She squeezed herself on to a train, the door barely managing to close behind her. She had to stand of course and this morning could not even reach a strap to hold on to. Strap-hanging she rather liked, swaying with the movement of the train. Her back was pressed against the door, her nose rested against the coat of the man in front who seemed oblivious of his surroundings and was reading a newspaper. She squinted over his shoulder. BOMB EXPLOSION IN BELFAST said the headline, leaping out from the paper to hit her in the eye. FIVE KILLED TEN INJURED. Her heart beat faster, she felt sickness rise from her stomach to her throat. She stood on tiptoe, craning her head to read a bit more of the report. It was not in her area, or in Kevin’s. It was probably all right. It was strange: in a way she worried more about the bombs and shootings here than she had done in Belfast. There, they had lived with them, accepting them as part of everyday life; here, after only a few weeks away from it all, it seemed fantastic to expect to live with such horror every day. And you worried more about people when you couldn’t see them.

  She almost missed her station, having to jump off quickly at the last moment. She had to change trains and the next one was just as crowded. Two girls beside her were moaning about it being Monday morning. They looked half-asleep and must have put on their eye make-up in a hurry for it was blurred and smeared. The girls at Sadie’s work dressed themselves up as if they were going to a party and were never seen with their faces bare. They made fun of her behind her back for not being ‘with-it’. She knew, but did not care particularly. She called them ‘eejits’ under her breath. She had something much better than they did: Kevin. She smiled, forgetting the girls and the crowded train, and was still thinking about him and the way his hair curled round his neck when she reached her station. Again she jumped off at the last minute. Up the escalator she went, following the crowd, and surfaced into the outside world again.

  She was the first of the girls to arrive at the store. It was not a large store and not what was known as a ‘high-class’ shop. The supervisor was there in her shiny black dress and backcombed hair. Sadie never liked supervisors. She had had experience of them before, and department heads. The ones she had encountered were soured women fed up with life, hating to see anyone else enjoying it. Sadie did and usually showed it.

  ‘Well!’ Miss Cullen ran her eye down Sadie’s jeans. ‘You can’t serve behind a counter in those trousers.’

  ‘No, I know. But we had burglars last night …’ Sadie launched into a long story giving full details, but Miss Cullen was not interested. There was new stock to be unpacked and she had a headache. It was a typical Monday morning.

  ‘You simply cannot wear jeans in the store,’ she snapped, pinching her mouth so that the skin puckered all round it.

  ‘I thought maybe I could buy myself a dress and pay it off Saturday’s wages …’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Miss Cullen cut her off. She put her hand to her head. ‘But you’d better wait till Miss Robson comes in.’

  She went away muttering, shaking her head. Sadie went to the cloakroom to wait for Daphne Robson who was in charge of the dress department. Daphne was for ever changing her wardrobe; she was reputed to have thirty pairs of shoes, she wore false eyelashes so long and thick that Sadie wondered if she could see through them, and she talked endlessly of clothes and men. As far as Sadie could make out she had nearly as many men as she had shoes.

  Several other girls arrived and passed remarks about Sadie’s jeans.

  ‘New outfit, huh? Real cool!’

  ‘Mucking out the barn today, are you, ducks?’

  And there were lots of giggles.

  ‘Fancied a change,’ said Sadie airily. ‘Jeans are dead comfy.’

  ‘Miss Cullen’ll give you dead comfy!’

  The girls turned their backs on her and began to chat to one another, recounting stories of Saturday night and new boys met and old ones dismissed. Sadie had not managed to make a friend here. This puzzled her for she had never had trouble making friends before. Usually she found it easy to talk to people. It was probably because she was married, she thought. Most of the girls were single, they went around together, shared secrets. Two of them were married but they were older than Sadie and kept to themselves, exchanging notes of recipes or where to get cheap blankets, and at lunchtime they shopped together.

  Daphne Robson took Sadie along to the dress department, making it quite clear that Sadie was a nuisance, that otherwise Daphne could have had a last cigarette before she started work.

  ‘There you are, take your pick,’ she said, unlocking the showcases.

  Sadie looked through the dresses. Daphne leant against the counter, yawning.

  ‘Don’t take all day,’ she said.

  Sadie thought they were all terrible. ‘Can’t see anything I like.�
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  Daphne shrugged. ‘Maybe you should look in the kids’ department. Might be more in your line.’

  ‘There’s no need to be snarky,’ said Sadie clearly.

  ‘What’d you say?’ Daphne stopped looking bored and stood up straight.

  ‘I said you didn’t have to be snarky. I’m not a kid.’

  ‘Are you not?’ said Daphne, trying to imitate Sadie’s accent. ‘You’re damned cheeky though. You’d better get along out of here.’ She was angry now.

  ‘I’m choosing a dress first,’ said Sadie, standing her ground.

  ‘I’ll report you to Miss Cullen.’

  ‘For what? Offending you? Who the hell do you think you are?’ Sadie’s cheeks were hot, her temper was rising. ‘You think you’re the bees’ knees just because you’ve eyelashes on you that you could sweep the streets with and you mince around as if you was a model! If you want the truth, you’re a right looking sight!’

  For a moment Sadie thought Daphne Robson was going to strike her. She knew she had gone too far. It was one of her faults. But she got carried away when she was stirred up.

  Daphne Robson stalked off. Sadie took the least offensive dress from the rail. It was her size and the colour was not too bad, dark orange. She carried it back to the cloakroom where Daphne was in full spate telling the girls of Sadie’s impudence. One or two of the girls were giggling for Daphne Robson was not as popular as she liked to think, and many were bored with the tales of the thirty pairs of shoes and men, all of whom were more handsome and more desirable than anything anyone else could hope to aspire to.

  Sadie took off her jeans, put on the orange dress. She brushed out her hair in front of the mirror. She did not even glance at any of the others.

  ‘No wonder they’re shooting one another to pieces where she comes from,’ said Daphne. ‘If she’s anything to go by!’

  ‘Come on now, girls,’ said Miss Cullen, fussing into the room. ‘Time you were at your counters. The doors will be opening in five minutes.’

  The girls lifted their handbags, dispersed to their departments. Sadie was on the haberdashery counter with an elderly woman who had been serving cards of elastic and reels of thread for forty years. She told this to Sadie every day with pride. Sadie found cards of elastic and hooks and eyes most uninteresting though the reels of thread were better. The colours pleased her, trays of different colours shading from the very lightest to the darkest until the thread almost turned black.