The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  In fact, everyone stole in their house, one way or another. The last biscuit from the tin. Scraps of coal for a cold bedroom grate. Tony smoked in the pantry when he thought no one was looking. Clementine had a drawerful of cigarette lighters slipped from the pockets of men who wouldn’t dare complain. And hadn’t Mrs Penny stolen them? At least, that was what Clementine said.

  ‘Does Clemmie love Stanley?’ Barbara liked to understand the order of things.

  Ruby turned in the bed, forcing Barbara to turn too. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Doesn’t she want to get married?’

  ‘Not married, stupid. She wants a ticket.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘To the promised land, of course.’

  Now, in Clementine’s bedroom, all scattered with stockings and hairgrips, Ruby lifted the suitcase and turned it over, inspecting the bottom. But there was nothing to find there either. Disappointed, Ruby turned it back and dug into the pocket of her skirt instead, pulling out a few pieces of orange peel and scattering them inside the empty case. ‘Go on,’ she said to Barbara. ‘You too.’

  Barbara looked at the small orange furls lying on the blue-and-white-checked paper. ‘What for?’

  ‘To remind her not to leave without us.’

  ‘She wouldn’t, would she?’

  ‘Just in case.’

  So Barbara dropped one little piece of peel after another into the open suitcase, scattering them like confetti at a wedding. Or petals dropped on top of a coffin as it was lowered into a grave. ‘But what if it’s too expensive for three of us to go?’ Barbara always worried about money. Mrs Penny had taught her that.

  ‘Stanley will pay.’

  ‘But what if Stanley is killed?’

  ‘Then she’ll find someone else.’ Ruby pushed Barbara aside and shut the case, snapping the clasps into place. Clack-click. She stood up on the chair once more, lifting the little case high above her head and edging it back to where it had come from. When she stepped down, her hands were all grimy. She used the bottom of her skirt to wipe them. ‘Clementine,’ she said, ‘will never leave us.’

  Barbara stared at Ruby. ‘Father left us.’

  Ruby pulled the chair back to where it normally stood by Clementine’s bed. ‘That’s different.’

  ‘And Mother left us too.’

  Ruby shook her head. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Where is she then?’

  But Ruby was gone, slipping out onto the landing and down the stairs without any sort of reply.

  A month later the bombs flew in like rain. Cascade after cascade, just like the soldiers who had flooded out of London into the heart of Europe only the week before.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Tony. ‘It’s the bleedin’ Apocalypse.’

  This time even Mrs Penny didn’t tell him to mind his tongue.

  The bombs whistled as they fell, just to make sure everyone knew they were coming, but without giving enough time to run away. Tony called it a sick joke. Mrs Penny called it the crime of the century – Hitler’s secret weapon, sent to destroy them all at the last.

  In the shelter earth fell too, showering Ruby where she sat opposite Tony and Mrs Penny, fretting about earwigs and worms and small, crawling creatures getting under her clothes. Ruby hated the shelter. It stank of damp and the stuff they used to preserve the eggs, painted onto the walls in an attempt to prevent condensation. Mrs Penny made Ruby sweep it out when she had been naughty. It was always freezing, however warm the night outside.

  ‘Why can’t we stay indoors, under the table?’ Ruby complained.

  ‘Because,’ Mrs Penny said.

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Because I said so.’

  Rule number 20. The answer to everything. Or so it always seemed.

  Ruby knew she could die in the shelter. Suffocating in wet earth and mangled spinach plants, corrugated iron pressing down against her chest. She’d rather die in the open air, night sky soaring, the sound of swifts in her ears, everything around her blazing.

  ‘Perhaps we should sing a song.’ Tony was nervous. He kept jiggling his empty pipe against his front teeth.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tony.’ Even Mrs Penny seemed rattled. The bombs had been going on for a while now, night and day.

  ‘Where’s Clementine?’ asked Ruby.

  Mrs Penny and Tony glanced at each other then looked away. Mrs Penny brushed at the front of her dress, sweeping trickles of earth out of her lap.

  ‘She’ll be here later.’ Tony fiddled with his empty pipe. ‘Probably sheltering somewhere else.’ He knew it was strictly no smoking in the shelter. He hadn’t even bothered to ask.

  ‘I hope the chicken’s all right.’ It had taken Mrs Penny a lot of bartering to organize the centrepiece of their special meal. Razor blades and soap wrapped in paper, the odd pair of stockings distributed up and down the road. She’d handed over six packets of cigarettes and even some of Tony’s rum before the bird had been secured (though she hadn’t told Tony that yet). Even then it was a scrawny thing, ill-fed, hardly any meat on it. Still, Mrs Penny had high hopes. Who knew what might follow once its legs and breast were offered up?

  ‘I’m sure the chicken will be fine,’ said Tony. ‘After all, it’s dead already.’ And he squeezed out an asthmatic laugh.

  Mrs Penny rolled her eyes up to the rippled, corrugated roof. ‘God help us,’ she muttered. And she didn’t mean from the bombing.

  Ruby thought about the chicken with its golden skin, roasted now and sitting to cool by the kitchen window. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten chicken. Then she remembered something else they had all forgotten.

  ‘Where’s Barbara?’ she said.

  ‘Ruby! Ruby! Get back here this instant.’

  Ruby ran. She ran under black skies. She ran under cascades. She ran across what was left of the lawn and back towards the house. She ran to the scullery with its huge empty copper. She ran through the pantry with its packets and its tins. She ran into the kitchen with a chicken cooling on a blue plate. She ran to the parlour with its fat cherub perched on the mantelpiece, still missing an arm. She ran upstairs to Mrs Penny’s room with its hairnets and its Brazil nut. To Tony’s door, locked as always, box of treasure hidden beneath the bed. She ran to the highest floor of all, to the room where two little girls shared one little bed. Fat Barbara. Dumpy Barbara. Little pig Barbara. Not anywhere to be seen. Then she ran into Clementine’s lair.

  Outside five minutes later, and the bombs were falling like rain while Ruby stood in the street at the front of the house looking up and down the road. She heard it coming before she saw it.

  WHEEEEEEEEEEEE.

  And they said if that happened . . .

  Run!

  So Ruby did. Right towards where the rocket was about to land.

  There was a whistling, then silence when it finally arrived – that moment of quiet which meant it was going to drop right on Ruby’s head. Ruby stopped running then and just had time to think, This could be it! before down the cascade fell. Bricks and dust showering her head. Splinters of wood, of metal and of glass. Somewhere a voice calling, ‘Help me!’ Far away like some sort of distant echo. ‘Help me!’ Wondering for a moment if it was Barbara crying out for assistance, waiting for Ruby to come. Then she heard it again, right by her ear as she lay somehow in amongst the gravel. ‘Help me.’ Her own voice, calling over and over.

  Until . . .

  ‘Ruby? Whatever are you doing?’

  Ruby woke to find herself sitting in the middle of the road, her skirt all rucked up around her waist, one shoe still on her foot, the other disappeared. Behind her, number 14 was intact. In front of her, the neighbours’ house had vanished into dust. And the neighbours too. Then there was Barbara, standing in front of her, not a scratch on her fat little face.

  ‘Ruby,’ she was saying. ‘What are you doing? You know we’re not allowed outside when the Warning goes.’

  Mrs Penny cried. Neither Ruby nor Barbara
(nor Tony, for that matter) had ever seen Mrs Penny cry before. Real tears making small silvery tracks down her cheeks, all gone to ash like everything else. Their clothes. Their hair. And all the things in Mrs Penny’s kitchen. Every piece of china broken or smashed.

  ‘There, there,’ said Tony, his fingers patting out a hesitant rhythm on Mrs Penny’s arm, small puffs of dust rising from her sleeve. ‘We’ll get another chicken.’

  For the chicken was ruined too. Splintered with glass blown in from the kitchen window. There was no way to salvage even one little bit. Not a leg or a neck, not a thigh or a breast. Not even a wishbone.

  ‘Bloody bombs. Bloody Germans.’

  Neither Ruby nor Barbara had ever heard Mrs Penny swear. They stared at her from where they stood by the corner of the kitchen dresser, shrouded in plaster dust like a pair of ghosts. Everything was all topsy-turvy. These really were extraordinary times.

  It was bread for supper, the butter speckled with grit of some description. But they didn’t complain. Ruby was still hearing everything as though it was very far away. Tony was brushing up glass and swearing under his breath. Mrs Penny just sat in a chair and didn’t do anything.

  They spent that night hunkered down in the parlour, protected by its curtains, thick and green. Mrs Penny snored and Tony wheezed and Barbara lay silent as though she were already in a grave. She hadn’t said a word since she had appeared like magic and told Ruby off. Through the gloom Ruby watched the way her sister’s eyelashes made small, mousy curves upon her plump cheeks. Barbara could sleep through anything; or so Ruby thought.

  Ruby didn’t sleep at all. At least, that was how it seemed. All night in her mind she ran and ran through the tall, narrow house again, in and out of the coal-hole, the scullery and all the other rooms, looking for something she’d missed but couldn’t quite recall. It was only when dawn crept into the room under the thick green serge that she remembered. Clementine’s suitcase. Gone from the top of the wardrobe, just as Clementine was gone too. And the house opposite. A gap into which the sun shone and the rain fell and the wind blew for many years to come.

  PART THREE

  An Emerald Dress

  ADMISSIONS RECORD

  DOROTHEA WALKER née STIRLING

  Patient Admission No: 641

  Date of Admission: 24 August 1939

  Any previous Admissions: None

  Occupation: None

  Date of Birth: 18 July 1900

  Place of Former Abode: 14 Elm Row, London

  Bodily Condition & Mental Disorder:

  Physical health poor. Somewhat emaciated.

  Hair very long. Tendency to bite if feels threatened. Often refuses food. Hallucinations.

  Uncertain of surroundings. Constant wandering.

  May require restraint.

  Cause of Insanity: Death of twins.

  Signed (Director): Dr Gilbert Sanday

  Witness: Mr William Nye, solicitor

  2011

  London by train was an unexpected delight, luxury Margaret had almost forgotten existed (even of the second-class kind). Only a few short weeks since the Beginning of the End, and already she had raised herself from the indignity of the overnight bus and got herself a seat on an early train to the south. As they rushed towards the great metropolis, Margaret ate smoky bacon crisps from the trolley and wondered if perhaps the life she had led for thirty years was not yet over. Paperwork had its uses, just as Janie had declared. London had called Margaret and here she came.

  The trip was unauthorized. But then Margaret understood that her whole job was unauthorized in some way. Off the proper books. A woman whose life was discarded over landfill, chasing a dead person with no discernible past. Other than a piece of paper wrapped around an orange, something which suggested that, however she might have ended up, Mrs Walker once had the wherewithal to pay.

  One emerald necklace.

  Two earrings to match.

  A brooch in the shape of a star.

  Margaret had phoned in advance, of course. She was expecting a shop assistant, or a manager perhaps: Rose & Sons, jewellers of distinction, but got something different instead.

  ‘William Nye & Sons, solicitors.’ The voice down the wire was low and circumspect. And somehow Margaret wasn’t surprised that her search for paperwork had conjured a lawyer at last.

  ‘I’m calling regarding a Mrs Walker,’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Walker?’

  ‘From Edinburgh.’

  The voice hesitated for a moment, then moved on smoothly. ‘May I ask who’s calling?’

  ‘Margaret Penny.’

  The hesitation this time was more pronounced, the woman’s tone when she spoke again burnished with caution. ‘To whom do you wish to speak?’

  Margaret frowned. ‘To whom do you think I should speak?’

  ‘I’ll put you through to Mr Nye, shall I?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Margaret and was placed on hold.

  ‘No, dear. No.’ Mr William Nye’s voice when it came on the line ebbed and flowed like a distant sea. Margaret strained to hear. ‘Never had a client from that place.’

  ‘Oh,’ Margaret said. ‘That’s disappointing.’ Mr Nye was rather old, she could tell. ‘Perhaps one of your colleagues . . .’

  ‘One of my colleagues, yes, yes. But no, they don’t either.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Sorry not to be more helpful. Got to go now. Call by if you’re ever down this way.’

  Mr Nye’s voice drifted off and the receiver was replaced. But before Margaret could put down the phone at her end there was a click on the line and she heard those caramel tones once more. ‘Ms Penny. I’ll look forward to meeting when you come down. I’ve made an appointment.’

  The pause stretched out between them, two women breathing alongside the hollow echo of something left unsaid. It was Margaret who broke first. ‘I’ll look forward to it as well.’

  She paid for the ticket with a previously engineered sleight of hand – an expenses form liberated from Janie’s desk, the younger woman too busy rummaging in her drawer for a Yale-type key to notice anything untoward. Before she left that first time, Margaret had weaselled out the finance department in the basement just like a woman who used to be Administration Manager for a financial services firm. There was no hiding place where free money was concerned, not for Margaret Penny, anyway, not any more.

  She handed the form in herself. ‘Not regular procedure,’ said the Finance Officer, plucking at a spot on the underside of his jaw. But Margaret just pointed to where she had forged the signature in the relevant box. ‘Oh, Mrs Maclure,’ the young man nodded, stamping the form and reaching for his cash box. ‘She used to work for this department.’ It was the Edinburgh Way, working in Margaret’s favour once again.

  Four and a half comfortable hours later (no drunks, no sticky seats, no paper bags to be sick in), and Margaret stepped from the train in her stolen coat, straight into the pulse of London. People and noise and bustle and fuss. An explosion of everything she had missed. She took a breath, filling her lungs with grit and fumes, sweat and effluence, the dirty, slushy air of a city always on the move. Then she breathed out, pushing away that grey place in the north, frozen forever beneath its frigid dome of ice. As she gripped her small blue holdall ready for action (four pairs knickers, spare bra, toothbrush and a bottle of something called Innoxa borrowed from the back of her mother’s bathroom cabinet), someone barged past her, not even bothering to turn and make amends. But Margaret didn’t mind. Unlike Edinburgh, where not much seemed to shift from one day to the next, in London everything changed every hour, every minute, every second almost, everybody moving from one thing to the other without giving the past a second glance. Margaret knew what it meant. She could be whoever she wanted to be in London. And if she didn’t like that, she could be something different instead.

  Nye & Sons solicitors was tucked into a tiny backstreet on the fringes of the City. Just off Ironmonger Lane; Dickensian but real. Its entrance was m
arked by a narrow black door with a brass plaque polished almost to oblivion. Far above Margaret, glass towers loomed, windows glittering with pale January sun. But down at street level the plaque shone with a dull light, William Nye & Sons, worn down to a shadow of its former self. One more of a dying breed, Margaret thought, running her finger over the soft dimpled surface. Then she pressed the bell.

  The man who opened the door was old. Really old. Beyond decrepitude. Practically a cadaver. Margaret stood on the doorstep, the waft of decay drifting towards her, and wondered how it was exactly he still stood. This solicitor must be nudging ninety years old, overdue for the pit or the furnace a long time since.

  ‘Mr Nye?’ she said.

  The old man frowned as though this had once been his name but he couldn’t recall if it still was.

  ‘Mr William Nye?’

  Before dipping his head in agreement, hand tight on the doorknob as though to hold himself up: ‘Senior,’ he said, his voice quivering.

  Mr William Nye Senior, solicitor of a very ancient kind, was wearing full undertakers’ garb: black jacket, black trousers, black waistcoat with six black buttons. He was tiny inside them, all skeleton and not much else. Margaret wondered if he wore old-fashioned braces under his waistcoat to hold everything in place. The old man’s trousers ended well above his shoes. And his jacket was fastened out of sequence, one side hanging lower than the other. Margaret was sure that he would mind if he knew.

  ‘Margaret Penny,’ she said holding out her hand. The old man blinked, his eyelashes almost bald. He swallowed once, Adam’s apple bulging against the tight buttoning of his shirt. A little rime of saliva had gathered at the corners of his mouth like a small tide of salt. Margaret tried not to stare. The old man didn’t offer his hand in response, so she dropped hers. ‘You said to call by. If I was in the neighbourhood.’

  Mr Nye’s fingers twitched on the doorknob. ‘Margaret Penny,’ he murmured. ‘In the neighbourhood.’