by Dawson, Jill
I’m chucking my gas mask into its box, into my case, and that makes me remember Miss Clarkson saying that you need soap to stop the lens misting up. And if we’re going to see Nan again she’ll need some soap, won’t she, for her gas mask. The bar in my hand is cool, smooth. I think it must be brand new. There are no suds on it, or black veins in it, like the only soap I’ve seen before.
That phrase. East End slum kids. Hearing it made my skin prickle. Then I felt something else. Not shamed, as Bobby always called it. No, not me.
She hates us. She can tell we’re poor and she hates us. I don’t know how she can tell because I didn’t tell her but somebody must have done. I picture Elsie’s skin, its scaled redness. Outdoor skin, hard and nasty. Elsie doesn’t need it, does she? Nothing will make her beautiful. But lovely Nan, with her soft crumpled face. Nan, at home right now, knitting and clacking her gobstoppers. I close my eyes and I can see Nan so clearly, lifting up the soap and sniffing it and smiling. Yes. This lovely perfect thing is surely hers?
So we arrive back at the billeting lady’s house, and because there are so many unhappy children, and unhappy people looking after them, it seems quite a few of us are going home. She can’t think what else to do with Bobby and me, she says, if a decent home like the Salmons’ at Drove Farm isn’t good enough for us.
(We’ve never heard Elsie and Bert’s name before. “Salmon’s a fish!” Bobby says. That explains it then. She was a cold fish, with scaly red skin, not an apple after all.)
“Didn’t you even like the horse?” the billeting lady asks, fetching her whistle and getting us to line up outside her front door. “Mr. Salmon’s the best horseman in the Fens. You were spoiled indeed. I was so touched when he brought that splendid Suffolk Punch with him to show you, that very first day—how kind was that?—and I remember neither of you batted an eyelid . . .”
I’m not listening to her. I’m surprised to hear from some of the others now marching down Fore Hill in a crocodile towards the station, that they’ve had letters, sixpenny postal orders and even visits from their mums and dads. It’s cold now, and the leaves aren’t conker-colored; they’re gone altogether, just skeleton trees. It’s hard to hear what Peggy Burchwell is saying, but I can make out the tune, and I know the words. It’s “Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put the teachers at the top. Put Miss Clarkson in the middle and we’ll burn the blinkin’ lot” until we get to Ely station and are allowed to mill about a bit, like a bag of marbles that’s been opened. We can roll out and bump into each other.
Archie Markham is carrying a funny thing that’s as big as him. It looks like a vase made out of a basket, which Bobby is jealous of, because it’s an eel hive and Archie can use it back home to catch eels; the man he’s been staying with is an eel catcher and he let Archie bait the hives with dead cats and rats and horrible stuff like that, and this makes Bobby more and more jealous, until Bobby says, “If your eel catcher likes you so much why is he sending you back?” And then Archie bursts into tears and they start a fight, which they have both missed a lot.
Archie tells Bobby that he smells of beets and farts and they laugh and make up.
Archie whoops then—he’s spied some Beech-Nut on the floor. He shares it with us, biting the piece in three, and then says that anyway this is only a “phony war,” and hasn’t been a war at all, no bombs falling, all our families are hunky-dory. We’ve only been away three months. We’ll be back in time for Christmas.
That word though. Bombs. I’ve managed not to think about them until now. Bobby and Archie love talking about them, running about with their arms out, like airplanes, making bombing noises. Is our house—Nan, I can’t think of Nan—all blasted to the ground then or bursting into flames? My fingers curl around the bar of soap in my pocket. I lift my hand to my nose to secretly sniff the silky smell and then hold it again, feeling its smoothness, turning it over and over. How happy Nan is going to be with me. She’ll never want to leave, or go anywhere at all, after she’s got the soap.
And then—horrible!—here’s Elsie bustling onto the platform in her dreaded camel coat. We’re on the train, we’re just sitting down, the billeting lady is going to travel to London with us, and she stands up as she sees Elsie, and rushes to the window, lifting the curtain and pushing the window down: I think she’s worried that it’s something important, something forgotten. But I know what it is and my heart nearly stops. Elsie’s found out. She’s coming to get her blinkin’ soap back! I clasp my hand tightly around it and begin singing, loudly as I can, so that no one will hear what Elsie is saying: I’m going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried line!
The guard blows his whistle and the train slides away. When I look down, the tracks are blurring into lines. Elsie is hurrying beside us on the platform, mouthing something and waving, but it’s hard for her to keep up. She doesn’t give up. She’s breathless and redder than ever and at last I hear what she’s saying, just as the train is picking up speed.
“Bert! Uncle Bert sends you his love! He says goodbye.”
What, she ran all the way to tell us that?
Elsie’s round face through the window is strange, worried. I remember that when I first met her I didn’t think her expression unfriendly. She has big eyes, chocolate-drop color, like her dog’s. I see in them now something very puzzling, a thing I’ve not seen in anyone’s eyes before. Mum has never looked at me like that. Nan has no reason to. Although it’s new to me, I suddenly know exactly what it is, and a feeling like a spanner turning over in my stomach locks it away. I think it’s going to be useful to me. I’m going to store it up. Like the way I know who is hiding the ball behind their back, in the Queenie game. My way of reading people. Ah, I think. I want to smile. Elsie feels guilty. That’s what guilty looks like. Even so. That Lux soap is in my pocket.
On the train home, I’m sick in a paper bag that the billeting lady holds out for me. She makes me stand near the open window in the corridor for the rest of the journey, eyes on me like a hawk. She thinks I’m “sickening for something,” but I know better. It’s just thinking that’s doing it. Of Mum. Where is Mum? Of the hospital, if we have to go there. Of the house with no furniture in it and no Dad there to shout “watcha!” up to us and sweep me off my feet and tickle me with his scratchy beard and put his hand in his pocket and find a sixpence for me. The sick feeling from thinking about Vera again. Vera in a white bonnet, string tied under her chin, and a grey blanket, like a wet bandage, all soaking on her. Vera is a horrible, fearful thing, too ugly to look at or think about, and doing it makes my stomach turn over again and hotness creep up from my belly and rush at me.
They must have had the funeral without us. Nan mentioned it before we left. Vera’s with the angels now, learning to play a harp. There must be a mini-sized coffin somewhere with soap-colored satin inside it and a boiled empty baby, like a penny guy. And Dad will never see her again, and maybe we’ll never see him again. And if we don’t watch out we’ll all go exactly the same way. Boiled up in a big pot until our heads burst like steamed puddings in a cloth.
I know that’s what happened, really. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to tell me, but I know it was Mum’s fault. She didn’t want any more blinkin’ babies. Children made her go a bit doolally, Nan said. So she did something so wicked, or stupid, no one would believe it. Put Vera in a pot. Cooked her up. Or dropped a kettle of water on her. It’s like when Nan used to cry, “Moll, what’s got into you?” Has something got into Mum? A devil maybe. And now we’re going to see her again, because the billeting lady says she’s written to our mothers and they’re going to be at the station to meet us.
I feel sick again.
But as the train chugs into that busy London station with the high church roof with all the windows in it like Ely Cathedral and all the pigeons flitting about up there, I’m grabbing my bag from the seat and pulling faces at Bobby, and suddenly I see him. He’s grinning through the windo
w of the train and just holding a cigarette at his mouth in that way he has, his silver-blue eyes smiling, smiling. He has a smart black hat on and braces and a tie and a new-looking jacket, and he’s chipper, that’s what Nan would say, or is it dipper? Or maybe it’s dapper? Anyway, he’s one of those words, she really would say it, and he’s dark and smart and sparkly; he’s the loveliest, newest, most shiny thing I’ve ever seen.
“Daddy!”
He’s wheeling me and wheeling me, and kissing my hair and kissing Bobby’s head as Bobby ducks away from him, and he takes a hand each and he’s nearly crying as he hugs us; I can really tell how much he’s really missed us, the way he keeps his mouth buried in my hair for a long time, until the billeting lady comes up and says, all rude and stiff, that she has instructions to hand the children over to a Mrs. Ida Dove and Dad says that’s our nan and signs something and he gives the billeting lady a wink, which sends her away all fluttery like the pigeons. And clippie-cloppy on her shoes. When her back is turned, Dad makes this little movement, rubbing his hands behind her, as if her backside is hot. We’re so happy that we’re squealing, me and Bobby; we sound like the pigs when Bobby pulled their tails.
Dad says he knows a shop where you can get five donuts for just five pence, and let’s go and buy them—and eat the lot! Or Sally Lunn’s, he says. You choose, kiddo.
“Can we go down Romford Market and see the eels in their buckets, getting the heads cut off of them?” Bobby asks. He’s obsessed with eels since Archie Markham got that eel hive. Dad just laughs.
“We’d better go see your nan. Tell her I’ve been and got you.” He puts his face close to Bobby. “Tell her the old scallywag’s out and about again!”
We both know better than to ask. Out from where? For how long? Any case, we’re thinking about buns and eels and Sally Lunn’s. I’m thinking of the soap in my pocket and Nan’s face when she sees it. And Dad with his sweet-smelling hair, glossy with the cream he slaps on it. The prickly feel of his face with all his stubble, like kissing a hedgehog. And a new toy—he says he’s got something spanking new that he says we’ll love. He promises to show us when we get home.
Where’s Mum? I want to ask. Is Mum out, too? Which house are we going to? Is the house all bombed away or do we have another one? Why were you away so long? I fight these questions. Squish them down.
Dad loves me best though for my best skill: keeping mum, he says. Keeping my lips sealed. I can do that. He’s so tall and so swingy, he can “show out” as he walks along, with all the ladies looking at him, and he has something new: a limp, and as he limps by, the ladies cock their heads at him like little birds, their hands on their hips and smiling, so, so sweetly, and kindly. He’s like something royal, like a prince or a soldier as he limps quickly through the station, touching his hat here and there to people. The dog’s bollocks, Mum would say. Or a dream.
3
Keeping Mum
Christmas comes and goes with not much kerfuffle: just an orange for Bobby, which he can’t open and tries throwing down the stairs, and a golliwog for me, and a Mr. Jollyboy for Bobby that Dad found in a house after it had been abandoned. The Mr. Jollyboy is the best thing in the world. That’s the spanking-new thing Dad was talking about. It’s all wooden with a black cap of hair (just like Dad’s) and a painted red shirt and black boots and jointed shoulders, knees, and arms; and if you wiggle the stick in its back and put him on a flat surface, he can really dance. Dad does this for us and makes Bobby nearly wet himself laughing.
The Mr. Jollyboy comes in a box with a picture of four laughing children on it, and a kind man with grey hair. The box says, “The most amusing toy of all times. Keeps everyone in fits of laughter.” I try not to feel cross that Bobby got the most amusing toy of all times and I’m Dad’s favorite and I got a golliwog.
We’re back now in the house on Lauriston Road, and we visit Mum in the London hospital, and Dad says she’s not all her ticket, which means she’s not right in the head. She’s waiting there for something. Some decision to be made—a court case, or something. I don’t understand, but I know she won’t be there for long, that’s what Dad says, and so of course I imagine that she might come home soon. Whenever I think of this my stomach turns over. I should be glad, I should want her to, but I feel sick and I’m ashamed of it. I keep picturing her in her hospital bed. She’s in a pale blue nightie with forget-me-nots on it, all tied up at the neck, and she seems thin, suddenly, and old, and made of paper. She doesn’t look at me when I step forward to kiss her—with Dad’s hand pushing me in the back—and a thin worm of dribble glitters at the corner of her mouth. The hospital smells and the nurses aren’t nice to us, and won’t let us look at their little watches pinned to their pockets (although one of them gives Dad a cigarette and they all admire his limp), so we only go the once. Matron says Mum is just a dipso, which means nothing to me. I think I didn’t hear her properly.
That nightie. Forget me not. I want to, though.
The months go by with me trying not to think about Mum, think about anything at all, but I listen to the grown-ups, and everyone is worried, all the time. Now it’s late summer and nearly a new school term and I’m seven and not six years old, and suddenly London is different. Yesterday, Sunday, there’s a roar. Right on top of us. I look up and see a plane like a silver fish, like a roaring shark, and I’m a little minnow in a pond. Three flash over. Pop pop pop.
Nan comes to the house and begs Dad to let us go away again, because now there are air-raid sirens every single night and we have to spend so much time under the table. “Weeping Willie,” Nan calls the siren, and afterwards that’s how I think of it: like Wee Willie Winkie rushing through the town—are the children safe in bed?
After she’s gone on about this, Dad says okey-dokey then, we should go back to Ely, to be billeted with that same family, and he’ll talk to our teacher, Miss Clarkson, about it. I shout and put my fingers in my ears every time Dad mentions it to me, while Bobby looks at me in surprise and says, “Bang bang—all those rabbits! Didn’t you like the plum pie we got?” In the end Dad says Bobby can go on his own and I can stay with him, as long as I’m a good girl and make him his breakfast every morning, and help him by filling a pram (Vera’s old pram) full of coal whenever he tells me to and pushing it up to our house from wherever he finds it.
But a while goes by before it can be arranged. Nearly Christmas again and we’ve had a new bomb by then, one called Satan, which hit the Post Office Sorting in Mount Pleasant, and now we won’t get any Christmas cards from anyone.
When Dad takes Bobby to the station, bits of London are roped off and wardens are not allowing cars to go up this road; there’s a bomb in a square near the station that’s unexploded. Dad just tuts and takes another direction. Bobby is excited: he’s got his shilling knife in its leather case, and his rucksack with some barley sugars again, and his train ticket, that somehow the teacher got for him, and he asks him from the backseat, “Dad, you know your bad leg—can I look at it?” and Dad nearly jerks the car off the road and looks at Bobby in the wing mirror, and taps his fingers on the steering wheel and then says, “You cheeky monkey. You watch that!”
Poor Bobby looks startled. He didn’t mean anything, he just wanted to look. We neither of us ever know which things are going to make Dad cross.
Now we pass a road where a house has been burning and it’s black and you can still see smoke coming off it and Bobby stares, says “wow” at the big pile of bricks, the scraps of cloth hanging to the bare walls at the side of the building and a man standing all bleary-eyed, just standing and staring at us, holding his cap and flapping at himself as we drive past. We pass piles of blue-green glass, watch men stand there shaking frames from windows, sweeping the glass into little heaps. We fall quiet, as we pass the open doors of a church, glimpse piles of sleeping bags, people with bundles of clothes, but Dad is staring straight ahead, whistling under his breath.
It’s the first time Bobby and me are going to be separated. I’m sad, and I keep thinking that Nan said we should never be, that it’s my job to take care of Bobby, but Bobby doesn’t seem to be bothered—he’s too little to care I suppose, and the only bit he minds about is not ever meeting the Luftwaffe, or managing to gather up any good shrapnel or, better still, any bayonets. He can’t wait to lie on his stomach on a boat, on the River Lark, holding a punt gun and waiting for the ducks to appear so he can shoot one. He says he’ll make sure and bring us a chicken when he comes to visit and all the eggs we want. (I try to remind him of how mean Elsie was with our dinner, but Bobby has a short memory. When I carry on he says it’s because I didn’t help out enough with the beets and the Campaign; Bobby on the other hand is Not Afraid of Hard Work.)
“Save me some shrapnel, a whopping piece, if you find any!” Bobby says.
Best of all would be if I could find a gun—then I could hold off the whole of the Waffen-SS in the back garden.
His little face at the window of the train is more monkey-like than ever, with his hair recently shaved because of lice and his ears waggling as he mouths goodbye and waves to us.
