The Wayward Wife

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘Call it resourceful,’ Bob said. ‘Heck of a ride, though. Heck of a ride. We scrounged a couple of gallons of gas from an army truck at a checkpoint somewhere near Ashford. It’s great what you can pull off if you work for the BBC.’

  ‘You saw it then? You saw the fires?’

  ‘Are you kidding? The whole goddamned sky was ablaze. The closer we got to London the more detours we had to make.’ He leaned against the sagging door. ‘God, what a ride that was.’

  The mechanic emerged from the rear of the van, shaking his head. ‘Buggered up proper,’ he said, then, to Susan, ‘Sorry, miss – but it’s not my job to fix it. We’ll need to wait for the electrical chaps.’

  ‘Of course, you will,’ Bob said. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ the mechanic said.

  ‘Busy elsewhere, I guess,’ Bob said. ‘I could run her down to the depot for you, if you like.’

  ‘The depot?’ the mechanic said.

  ‘Our place at King’s Cross.’

  ‘Your place?’

  ‘The depot, yeah. Surely you’ve heard of the depot?’

  ‘’Course I’ve heard o’ the depot.’

  ‘There you are then. Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘I ha’n’t got the keys,’ the mechanic said.

  ‘I have.’ Bob dug into his jacket pocket and produced a ring with three keys on it. ‘All bona fide, see.’

  Clearly at a disadvantage, the mechanic capitulated. ‘You takin’ the lady with you?’

  ‘She’s my navigator.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure, like?’

  ‘Sure, I’m sure,’ Bob said.

  He helped Susan into the cab and followed her on to the bench behind the wheel. He closed the door as best he could, fitted a key into the ignition and fired the engine.

  ‘Where is this depot?’ Susan said.

  ‘What depot?’ Bob said, grinning.

  ‘Dear God,’ Susan said, ‘you really are—’

  ‘Resourceful?’ Bob suggested.

  ‘Incorrigible,’ said Susan.

  Salt Street Mews, like much of central London, had escaped the overnight raid unscathed. Vivian had spent most of the night on the roof fire-spotting. The spectacle of flames and smoke, flares, searchlights and the incredible din of ack-ack guns banging away had been exhausting. As soon as she stepped into the house, however, her resolve took over and, pausing only to change her clothes, she headed straight for the typewriter to put in an hour or two on her new book.

  She was pecking furiously at the keys when Basil, bathed, shaved and dressed in his Sunday best, appeared at her side with a breakfast tray.

  She glanced up at him and scowled.

  ‘I must say, Chucks,’ Basil told her, ‘you’ve never looked as lovely as you do now.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Vivian.

  ‘No, truly. There’s something incredibly stimulating about a woman wearing only a dressing gown and a steel helmet.’

  ‘Sarcasm does not become you.’ Viv paused long enough to take off the tin hat. ‘Why are you all done up?’

  ‘I am not done up,’ Basil said. ‘I have merely made myself presentable.’

  ‘You’re not going to the office, are you?’

  ‘Of course, I am.’

  With the forefinger of her left hand Vivian added a semi-colon to the text on the page in the typewriter, then, picking up a fork, pierced the surface of the egg that Basil had poached for her and dipped a piece of toast into the yolk.

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Indeed, it is,’ Basil said. ‘But it’s also wartime and war, as we are learning all too quickly, is hell. I may not be home for a day or two, possibly not until the weekend.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve a strong suspicion yesterday’s raids might signal the beginning of the Luftwaffe’s attempt to soften us up for an end of the month invasion.’

  Vivian ate a mouthful of toast and washed it down with coffee. ‘Hitler won’t invade.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Basil said. ‘He probably won’t risk a landing until he’s absolutely sure our airfields are out of action. We’re a long way from that happening. Hence the increased number of raids to weaken our morale.’

  ‘He’s just mad at Churchill for bombing Berlin.’

  ‘Actually, he’s just mad,’ said Basil. ‘Eat your breakfast, Viv, and assure me – word of honour – that you’ll take care of yourself until we meet again.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Basil, you’re not going off to join the army.’ She paused and sat up. ‘Are you?’ She dropped the fork, pushed her chair back from the desk and scrambled to her feet. ‘Oh, my God! Don’t tell me you’ve enlisted.’

  ‘No, no, dearest. My goodness, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’ll be no further away than Portland Place if you need me.’

  ‘I do, Basil. Oh, I do need you,’ said Vivian.

  ‘If it’s anything urgent pop round to Broadcasting House and flash your guest pass. If that doesn’t work have them call me.’ He drew her to him and peered into her tear-stained face. ‘What is it? Vivian, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I love you, you idiot,’ Vivian said, snuffling.

  ‘Oh!’ said Basil, nonplussed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before.’

  ‘Well, damn it, I’m saying it now. I love you and I’d rather not lose you. So be careful, Basil. Please, please, be careful.’

  ‘I will,’ Basil said. ‘I promise you, I will.’

  He kissed her and, picking up his overnight bag, left her to pull herself together, finish her breakfast and presumably get on with her book.

  It was close to nine on Sunday morning before Breda returned to Pitt Street. She was surprised to find her house still standing. The night raid had reduced many buildings to smouldering ruins and the sight of people picking over the rubble in search of some small thing around which they could begin to rebuild their lives was chastening.

  Carrying their belongings on their backs or pushing prams and handcarts laden with salvaged goods, the homeless of Shadwell headed for schools, rest centres and any temporary accommodations they could find. Vans and lorries came and went. Fire tenders, exhausted firemen clinging to the rail, rattled along the bottom of Docklands Road and in one side street an isolated group of soldiers was cautiously probing the debris for an unexploded parachute bomb.

  Billy was very quiet. He walked by Breda’s side carrying a bundle of comics that his grandfather had saved for him and a brown paper bag of chocolates that Nora had tipped from the box that Susie had brought her.

  What Billy made of it and what he would remember in later life Breda couldn’t begin to imagine. Then, suddenly, there was her house, roof in place, walls upright, windows still in their frames. Mrs McNair, three down, was sweeping debris from the pavement while old Mr Johnston, who’d never done a hand’s turn in his life, beat dust from a coconut mat that had once said ‘Welcome’.

  Breda had spent the night in the larder in Stratton’s.

  Her father-in-law had staggered in just after the siren announced the second wave. He’d told them that the quays, warehouses and some of the ships in St Katharine Docks were on fire, that he, high up in the cabin of a crane, had watched incendiaries dropping and dive-bombers strafing the barges and that the glass of the cabin had blown in and he’d only just managed to shin down the ladder before the coaster at the quay below had been blown to smithereens.

  Billy, all agog, had swallowed his grandfather’s lurid tale without question, but Breda was not so sure. Ronnie’s old man was prone to exaggeration. She doubted, for instance, if a union representative had ordered him to find shelter and, when the all-clear sounded, to scuttle off home.

  Nora’s neighbours had been carried off by their grown-up children who apparently thought there were safer places to shelter than Stratton’s Dining Rooms. By 2 a.m., when the raid was at its worst, Breda had been inclined to agree with them. The larder had been shaken by explo
sion after explosion. Nora had prayed and fingered her rosary and Matt had been too scared to deliver his usual speech about pagan superstition.

  Prompted by Breda, he’d fiddled with a water bottle, the kettle and the little paraffin stove and had made them all cocoa which he’d laced with rum from a bottle hidden under one of the mattresses, a potion that had blunted their fears somewhat and had helped get them through the night. Billy had slept through most of it. He’d wakened only when one ear-splitting crash signalled the loss of a chimney or part of the roof.

  When morning had finally arrived and Breda had crept out to see what damage had been done, however, she found that it wasn’t a chimney-head that had been blown down but the whole front wall of the shop.

  She’d expected her mother to throw a fit at the extent of the damage but Nora had been unusually sanguine. ‘Sure and this will take a bit of clearing up,’ was all she’d said, had sent Matt upstairs to check the bedrooms and, picking about in the kitchen, had managed to salvage enough unspoiled food to make them all a breakfast of sorts.

  Breda unlocked the front door of her terraced house and, with Billy close behind, stepped into the little hall.

  The place reeked of smoke. There were fragments of glass on the torn lino, a broken mirror on the hallstand and the stairs were covered in dust. Soot had fallen from the flue and piled up in the grate in the kitchen. There was no electricity, no gas and only a thin trickle of water from the taps at the sink. The window above the sink was cracked and the frame so loosened that when she touched it, it almost fell out.

  She hurried to the back door, yanked it open and, heart in mouth, looked across the yard to the outhouse which, thank God, was all in one piece. Mightily relieved, she returned then to the kitchen to clean out the fireplace, sweep up the glass and make the place tidy for Ronnie coming home.

  For many years Nora had attended Mass at the Church of St Mary and St Michael up on Commercial Road. On that particular Sunday, however, with half the streets in the borough closed off and rubble everywhere, she chose to go no further than the little Church of St Veronica tucked away in Pound Lane at the far end of Fawley Street.

  At one time, long before Nora had arrived in Shadwell, the church had been a Carmelite monastery, a small, shrug-shouldered building that you would pass without a second glance, but on that Saturday night its crypt had proved a godsend to those in search of shelter.

  The church itself hadn’t escaped unmarked. Roach’s Motor Garage at the blunt end of Pound Lane had suffered a direct hit and the back side of St Vee’s had caught some of the blast. Nora rather expected Mass to be cancelled but, shortly after nine, a young priest appeared on the steps to explain that Father McFall had been injured, not, thanks be to God, too seriously but for that reason, among others, confessions would now be heard in a temporary cubicle in the side chapel followed by Mass in the church as soon as the area had been cleared of debris.

  Nora trailed the other communicants indoors. Looking up, she saw that part of the roof had been holed and some windows smashed. The crucifix from behind the altar had been removed and lay at an angle against the wall close to the statue of Mary, untouched in all her glory.

  She watched the curtain of the temporary confessional open and close. A chap not much older than her son-in-law emerged, then a young woman in the uniform of the ARP rescue service who was so overcome by emotion that she had to be helped away by one of the Boy Scouts who were clearing fragments of glass from the pews.

  On the way to church Nora had seen the corpses that the rescue squads were pulling from the rubble and grieving women clinging to the selfish hope that the corpse would be somebody else’s husband, someone else’s child. Now more than ever she needed penance and forgiveness if only to lend her prayers validity and ease her fear of dying or, worse, of losing Matt or Breda or, worst of all, her grandson, Billy.

  She watched the curtain sway and a woman come out and, looking round, realised that she was the last person on the bench. No help for it now, no turning back. She rose, brushed the skirts of her coat, adjusted her headscarf and slipped through the curtain into the vestibule where an old wooden draught-screen had been set up in lieu of a grille, a chair, a single, solitary chair, placed before it.

  She drew the chair as close as she dared to the blank wooden surface and, clearing her throat, asked, ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the answer, clear and curt.

  ‘Father, forgive me for I have sinned,’ Nora said, though, at that particular moment she was no longer sure what sin meant or who was paying the price for what.

  At first it seemed like the height of folly to appropriate a BBC OB vehicle to tour the blitzed streets of the East End. Once they’d entered the worst hit areas of the docklands, however, it hadn’t taken Susan long to realise just how enterprising Bob had been. Many roads were closed to all but rescue workers. Repair men struggled with broken mains, sewage pipes and torn cables, while small groups of soldiers ferreted in the rubble in search of body parts. WVS stalls had been set up to serve the workers and mobile canteens provided a measure of comfort – hot sweet tea and jammy buns – to homeless citizens.

  Bob had seen it all before. He knew what to do to make the best of the situation. He drew up the van to the edge of a crowd, leaped from the cab and, before a copper or officious warden could chase him away, called out, ‘BBC, we’re from the BBC,’ and pointed towards the van to confirm his credentials.

  Seated in the cabin Susan saw what a seasoned reporter Bob Gaines really was, a practitioner of good, old-fashioned pad-and-pencil journalism who relied on anecdote not observation. She watched him tease quotes from anxious mothers, weary wardens, cocky corner boys and one poor old woman who had lost absolutely everything, including – and here she began to cry – Timmy, her cat.

  ‘Timmy,’ Bob said as he climbed back into the cab. ‘Who ever heard of a cat called Timmy?’

  ‘You’ll use it, though, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure, I will,’ he said. ‘Won’t be a dry eye this side of Memphis before I get through with Timmy.’

  ‘And the old woman?’

  ‘You don’t get it, Susan, do you?’ He started the engine. ‘There are thousands of old women like her out there but only one Timmy. When it comes to war no one can truly latch on to the big picture. One old woman with a lost cat named Timmy, that much they can handle.’

  A St John’s nurse and a middle-aged man in gumboots shepherded a string of six children across the street; young children, half-clad, carrying not dolls and teddy bears but a cup or a bowl or a crumpled scrap of cloth that might once have been a blanket.

  Bob leaned on the steering wheel and squinted through the windscreen. ‘Now I wonder where they’re headed? Is there a school around here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Susan said.

  ‘I thought the East End was your home turf?’

  ‘Not this part,’ she lied. ‘In any case, it all looks different.’

  ‘Not that different,’ said Bob. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Fawley Street – I think.’

  She resisted an urge to direct him down the next street on the right so that she could look into Thornton Street and see if Stratton’s had survived a second night’s bombing. She watched the children pass by the van and then, to her relief, felt the van jolt and inch down Fawley Street towards the canopy of smoke that hung over the transit sheds of the Western Dock.

  And then it stopped.

  ‘Hey,’ Bob said, nodding. ‘How about that?’

  She leaned across his lap and looked from the window.

  ‘Geeze!’ Bob said. ‘He’s kissing her? Why’s he kissing her?’

  The couple was standing outside the shell of Brauschmidt’s butcher’s shop where Ronnie had served his apprenticeship. The shop had been boarded up for months and there was precious little left of it now, only the façade reaching up into burned-out rooms where Herr Brauschmidt and his wife had lived for forty years before decamping to America.r />
  The man, no youngster, pointed out to the woman a pretty little cluster of flowering weeds that clung tenaciously to the ledge that separated the shop from the flat above and, while Bob and Susan watched, the couple kissed once more.

  ‘Now there’s a story if ever was.’ Bob groped for the door handle. ‘One old guy and one old dame spooning on the pavement. What the hell is that all about?’

  ‘No.’ Susan caught at his sleeve. ‘No, Bob, don’t interfere.’

  ‘What’s gotten into you, Susie?’ Bob said. ‘Don’t you know a good story when you see one?’

  ‘Leave them alone. Please, just leave them alone.’

  Reluctantly, Bob removed his hand from the door.

  ‘I never figured you for a romantic, Susan,’ he said. ‘Do you know them, is that it?’

  ‘No,’ Susan said. ‘I’ve never seen them before in my life,’ then, in the nearside mirror, watched her father and Nora Romano grow smaller and smaller until they vanished from sight.

  23

  She remembered how bad he’d looked when he’d limped off the train that had brought him back from the war in Spain. He looked like that again, she thought, only worse. The mandarin collar of the heavy wool serge tunic had chafed his neck so badly that blood oozed from his Adam’s apple and the uniform was so thoroughly soaked that she had to peel it off him practically strip by strip.

  He stood naked before her, too exhausted to be embarrassed, and let her sponge him with warm water from the kettle and rub him down with her own special bath towel. He looked bad, Breda thought, really bad but also rather magnificent, with his pale skin and long stringy muscles and the haggard face that hinted what he’d look like in ten or twenty years’ time.

  ‘How long’ve you got?’ she asked.

  ‘Four hours.’

  ‘Do you want to eat first, or sleep?’

  ‘Sleep.’ He winced when she massaged his shoulders. ‘Had some Bovril at the station; that’ll do me.’

  ‘Bend over.’

  Stooping, he let her draw his head down into her lap to dry his hair. He groaned and closed his eyes.