Outside, somewhere far off, rockets fell. One hundred an hour, coming down with a whistle and a buzz. If she concentrated Ruby could hear the faint WHEEEEEEE as they flew in, the clap and crump as they hit. Inside the shelter, earth trickled from the corrugated roof. Just like her sister, Ruby would have preferred to be outside. With the swifts. The dark clouds sliced with blue. Standing defiant in the middle of the road as the rockets flew over her head. At least there she could watch for Clementine to come home too.
In her palm, all hot and damp, Ruby turned and turned something, just in case. Heads to the north. Tails to the south. A lucky coronation penny waiting to come good.
‘What’s that you’ve got?’ Even in the dark Mrs Penny never missed a trick.
Ruby curled her fingers hard around the coin, pushing her small fists deep into the folds of her skirt. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing, my eye.’ But Mrs Penny didn’t persist. Ruby had always been sly. A liar and a thief. Forever being instructed to go and sit in the coal-hole under the street. But tonight Mrs Penny would not insist. Down here with the stink of London mud gathering in like a grave, rules shifted and morphed into different shapes. Everyone needed something to believe in, particularly during times as wicked as these. Besides, Mrs Penny was holding a talisman of her own. A Brazil nut carved with the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not.
In a dark moment, in a dark corner of the house, as Clementine had returned from her nook in the pub a few weeks before, Tony had blocked her way. Rum shone wet on his lips. ‘What’s happening with the American?’ he said, one hand flat on the dirty plaster wall, the other gripping the wooden banister so that Clementine could not escape. ‘Your mother’s arranging a chicken. Don’t want it to go to waste.’
Clementine turned her startling eyes away from the man who had once saved her from a coal-hole, but who stank now of sweat and the black remains of a pipe. ‘She’s not my mother.’
Tony leered at Clementine. ‘Might as well be.’ A cake with a butter-icing swirl. A name on a label, scratched out.
‘Get out of my way, Tony.’ Clementine put her hand to the wainscot, as though to propel herself up and out of his grip.
‘Not until you tell me.’ Tony leaned in towards her, air wheezing through his chest.
‘Tell you what?’ Clementine shifted, her back against the wall now, staring at the big-bellied man in front of her, her eyes radiating disgust.
‘I’ve heard all sorts of things.’
‘What things?’
‘That soon they’ll be shipping out.’
Clementine touched a finger to her hair where it lay across her forehead. ‘Well, you seem to know more than I do.’
Tony laughed then, phlegm rattling in his throat. ‘I can tell when you’re lying, Clemmie.’
‘Why would I be lying?’
‘All that treasure for yourself.’
Razor blades and cigarette lighters. Magazines with cars as big as boats.
Clementine took her hand away from the wall and ran it down the front of her skirt as though to brush off all sorts of filth. ‘All you ever think about is money, Tony. Don’t you realize there’s more to life than that?’
‘Like what, Clementine?’
Beans in colanders. Horses galloping along endless rails.
‘Well, if you don’t know that by now, I can’t help you.’ Clementine moved forwards, ready to push her way past.
Tony shifted closer, only an inch between them, his breath rank with milk always on the turn and the sweet stench of rum bought on the cheap. ‘I’ve only ever been good to you, haven’t I?’ he said, trapping Clementine with the bulk of his body as though trapping a sheep against the rails of a pen. ‘Thought there might be something in return.’
Clementine laughed then, a hollow sound echoing up the narrow stair of the house. ‘You’ve had plenty, don’t you think?’
Tony put his mouth close against Clementine’s ear. ‘Always room for more,’ he breathed, leaning his body forwards just a little until it touched the place where Clementine’s legs criss-crossed beneath the smooth fabric of her skirt.
Clementine’s eyes flashed all of a sudden, flat and glassy in the gloom. ‘I don’t do that any more,’ she said.
Tony’s breath was damp on her neck, staining her skin where all those soldiers had queued to lay their heads. ‘I’ll give you something in return,’ he murmured.
Clementine twisted her head away. ‘I don’t want any of your money, Tony.’
Tony’s fingertips pressed into the bone running above Clementine’s breasts. ‘Not money.’
‘What then?’ She breathed in shallow sips of air so as not to inhale his stink.
‘I’ll tell you a secret.’
Clementine stilled for a moment. ‘What sort of secret?’ Secrets were the currency that flowed through her veins.
‘One you’ll want to hear. About your mother.’
‘I told you, she’s not my mother.’
‘Not Mrs P. Your real mother,’ he said.
For a moment there was silence between them, the whole house waiting to hear what might be revealed. Then Clementine shifted her body, brushing for a moment against his. ‘All right then,’ she said, dipping her hair towards him.
At last Tony leaned back. ‘Good.’
Clementine moved fast then, quick as a deer disappearing into a wood, up one stair, then the next. ‘But not me,’ she said before he could reach out and grasp her. ‘I’ll give you Ruby. Isn’t it little girls that you like best?’
Two days later, and Clementine had taken her sisters for a trip. A treat, she said, just for them and no one else. A journey into the heart of the city to visit a cathedral that would never fall.
Up, up and up some more they had gone, climbing a secret, spiral stairway inside the tower towards where a dome would loom above them like the sky. Up, up past small windows covered in grime. Past black ironwork and tiny wooden doors set flush to the wall. Up, up past a maze of hidden corridors, glimpsing men in tin hats turning to wink or to grin, the murmur of their voices seeping through the stone. Clementine always had known how to get into places others could not. ‘Tell no one,’ she had said when they first set out. ‘And I’ll show you something special, just for us.’
How could they not follow her after that?
It was Ruby who came out first, through a narrow door into a huge open space – a walkway set high in the roof, nothing but an iron railing between her and oblivion on the black-and-white tiles far below. She headed straight for the edge, rising on tiptoe to peer over, heart beating with the thrill of the height.
Barbara came next, breathing hard, eyes wide with fright, heart pitter-pattering at the thought of her body falling, falling. She pressed herself hard to the wall, hot palms flat against cold stone, as far from the railing as she could get.
Clementine came last, laughter rising like a lark into the high arc of the dome. ‘Don’t worry, Barbara,’ she said. ‘It’s quite safe. Nothing can knock this church down.’ Not its pinnacles or its turrets. Its statues stapled with iron. Nor its great winged angels. St Paul’s was a monument to survival amongst a wasteland of rubble and brick.
Ruby pointed to where the walkway carved a path around the dirty wall and back to where they stood. ‘What’s it for?’ she said.
Clementine laughed again. ‘Secrets. It’s the Whispering Gallery. You stand here and whisper your secrets and they come out on the other side.’ She pointed across the great expanse of nothing. ‘Shall we try it?’
‘Yes,’ said Ruby, clapping her hands, the echo bouncing back as though she was somehow applauding herself. Secrets were something she was good at.
‘There’s just one thing, though.’ Clementine stood with a hand on the edge of the precipice. ‘They have to be real secrets or it won’t work.’
Clementine sent Barbara to the other side first, a small pig pressed in towards the wall, shuffling along with one tiny step after another as though it might som
ehow save her if the worst came to the worst. She was only halfway round when Clementine put her mouth next to Ruby’s ear. ‘Do you want to know a real secret?’ she said.
Ruby was excited. ‘Have we started?’
‘Not yet. This is just for you and no one else.’
Ruby looked over to where Barbara was still making her way to the far side. ‘What is it?’ she breathed.
‘I’m going to visit Mummy.’
‘Mummy’s dead.’
‘No, she’s not.’
From each side of a wide open space, two girls, one startling, the other ordinary in every way, whispered secrets to each other in the hope that they would learn something new. Round and round for ten minutes, Ruby setting one secret off, Barbara stranded alone on the far side trying to gather it in. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ Barbara kept calling, her tiny, plaintive voice drifting over the cavernous space.
‘You’re not listening hard enough,’ Ruby called back.
‘You’re not whispering loud enough,’ Barbara replied.
‘Don’t be silly. You can’t shout a whisper.’
But even then Ruby had known the truth. It wasn’t the volume that was to blame. It was the nature of the secret that mattered the most.
They tried for five minutes more with no success. Then Ruby said, ‘Let’s swap.’ And turned to Clementine to see if she agreed.
But Clementine had vanished. Slipped away through the narrow wooden door and back down the winding staircase like a whisper all of her own. Ruby leaned over the rail and looked down to the black-and-white tiles on the floor far below, to a man standing in the shadow of a pillar. She knew at once what it meant. For the real secret was Stanley. And next to him, her sister Clementine, small hand inside the buttons of her lover’s coat. Ruby stared down into the abyss, feeling the prick of another secret pressed into her palm. Small and star-shaped with a red stone at its heart, a tiny brooch offered to her by Clementine in return for a promise made but not yet kept.
‘If I give this to you . . .’ Clementine had said, as little pig Barbara continued her slow shuffle towards the other side of the dome, ‘you must keep it somewhere safe. Otherwise they’ll think you stole it.’
Pennies from Tony’s pocket. Powder puffs from Mrs Penny’s drawer. Ruby knew that Clementine was right. Everyone stole in their house. Even Barbara had a hidey-hole out in the wilderness of the back garden, nothing in it but a little pink pig made of tin and a blue slipper freckled with mould. Also something Ruby hadn’t expected – one of Mrs Penny’s silver teaspoons, miniature apostle attached to the end. The moment Ruby had seen it she’d wanted one for herself. So the next time Barbara was in the scullery washing out a sheet and Mrs Penny was at the butchers queuing for meat, Ruby took one, scooping the silver spoon from its purple velvet cocoon: no longer twelve apostles, but ten.
Ruby gazed at the small, sparkling thing lying in her older sister’s hand. ‘Is it precious?’ she said.
Clementine had laughed, then. ‘Of course, Stanley gave it to me. But I think it will suit you best.’ Ruby put out her hand to take the little brooch, but Clementine closed her fist. ‘You can have it,’ she said. ‘But there is something I want you to do for me first.’
Ruby watched now as far below the two lovers whispered their own secrets to each other – Stanley bending towards her sister, Clementine standing on tiptoe, small incisors gleaming in the dark. She held her breath as Stanley put his hand into the pocket of his overcoat and held something up. Two slips of paper, like two tickets for a boat. And in the other an orange full of sweet juice and hard little pips. Ruby felt it then, the rush inside her chest. For she knew that the promise she had given to Clementine would be made good soon.
A month later as Ruby huddled in the shelter and the bombs flew in like rain, Clementine took a train from the centre of London to a place where grey asylum walls rose up from landscaped grounds. When she arrived, she knew at once that she was in the right place.
She stood in the huge entrance hall, decrepit in its fading splendour, staring up at the cavern of the roof. The ceiling had been painted grey, like everything else in Clementine’s life. But not for much longer, she hoped.
‘Can I help?’ A woman in a uniform addressed her from behind a bundle of files.
‘I’m looking for Ward Three,’ Clementine said, bringing her gaze back down.
‘Oh yes. It’s that way.’ The woman pointed towards a long, empty corridor behind closed doors. ‘But you’ll need an escort. All the rest of the place has been given over to the wounded. I’ll take you if you want.’
Down corridors, along passageways, through rooms that stank of iodine and blood. The heels of Clementine’s best shoes tapped out an urgent rhythm on the hard floor coverings as they walked, echoing against the ceramic tiles that curved up all the walls. They passed doors locked tight and others that opened to reveal a million injured soldiers (or thereabouts) splayed out on the beds. Legs and arms shot off. Skulls with missing pieces replaced by small tin plates. Here they were, all the men who had marched to glory with rifles held high above their heads. Splashing out of the surf. Running across a sodden beach. Scrambling for the safety of a dune that crumbled constantly beneath their boots. Men who had crawled past gun emplacements and tangles of barbed wire, past German soldiers, only nineteen, with their sudden haunted faces and their calls of ‘Nein! Nein! Nein!’ Men who had marched onto the fields and plains behind the cliffs, past the bodies of the dead, slumped over, face down in the road, or lying bloated in the rain. Here they were, sleeping now in a ward with a hundred others, saved to go on with life. Salvation. That was what Clementine wanted too. And for Stanley to take her home.
Just one more thing first.
Far, far away, down a corridor that led nowhere but here, Clementine and her guide came to another set of locked doors. ‘It’s not ideal,’ the woman in uniform said. ‘But they had to go somewhere once the war began.’
Through the glass pane Clementine could see a small nurses’ station portioned off from the rest of the space. Behind that, row upon row of beds stretching out like graves. ‘There are so many of them,’ she murmured.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Do they ever get out?’
‘Oh, no.’ Her escort was certain about that. She tapped on the door to attract the attention of someone inside. ‘Couldn’t risk them wandering about now that the soldiers are here.’
Inside, the smell was terrible. A foetid cloak of disinfectant and stale urine, the sweet stench of perspiration left unwashed. Clementine put a hand to her nose and tried for a moment to breathe through her mouth. To her left was a nurse, fat and pink-faced, lolling on a chair. Next to her a matron in a grey dress. The woman in uniform who had escorted Clementine was talking to the matron and gesturing back at her as she spoke. The matron nodded, then pointed towards someone at the end of the ward.
Sitting on a bed, far away at the furthest possible point, was a woman dressed in a regulation asylum gown. At first to Clementine she seemed identical to all the rest. Emaciated. Feet bare. Body angled and gaunt. The woman swayed back and forwards where she sat, just as the others swayed too, some of them standing between the beds, or wandering up and down the central aisle. They all seemed to be talking to themselves, muttering words, occasionally raising their hands or shaking their heads. But where the other patients’ scalps were shorn, all around this woman’s head was a cloud of silver hair.
Clementine started towards the end of the ward, walking fast before either the matron or the fat nurse could tell her to stop.
‘Ten minutes!’ the matron called out. ‘No more.’
Another patient appeared by Clementine’s side, walking with her for a step or two like a ghost. ‘Have you come for me? Have you come for me?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ said Clementine.
‘Sorry.’ The woman bobbed her head. ‘So sorry.’
‘Ivy!’ the nurse with the florid cheeks shouted. ‘I’ve warned you before. Don�
��t touch.’
Ivy rolled her eyes back. ‘So sorry. So sorry.’ A sudden white glaze before her normal stare returned.
Clementine kept her own startling eyes to the floor until she came to the final bed, no one left to encounter but the woman with the halo of hair. She glanced at the woman’s toenails where they rested on the linoleum floor, thin and curled like the talons of a bird. Then the woman raised her head.
Clementine stared for a moment, just as the strange, pale woman stared back. It was Clementine who spoke first. ‘Hello, Mummy,’ she said.
They sat side by side on a bed covered with a thin blanket of cloth – a mother and a daughter, together again at last. Dorothea swayed back and forth, back and forth, her hand gripping Clementine’s wrist. ‘My angels,’ she repeated over and over. ‘My angels.’
‘No, Mummy. It’s Clementine.’
But Dorothea just swayed and swooped some more, the springs of the mattress groaning and singing beneath them as though to match the music in her head.
It was Clementine who broke the impasse, reaching for the small brown suitcase she had brought with her. Nylons and knickers. An underslip thin as a ghost. A nightgown. A bottle of toilet water. And a hairbrush with a handle made of bone. ‘Shall I brush your hair, Mummy?’ she said.
At once Dorothea stopped swaying. ‘They took it,’ she said. ‘They took it.’
‘Or would you like to brush it yourself?’
Clementine laid the brush down on the bed between where they sat. Dorothea stared at it, transfixed, then lifted her hand to her own hair as though she had only just noticed the cloud of gossamer all around her head.
Ten minutes, and Clementine sat brushing and brushing Dorothea’s hair from the crown right down to the tips. Over and over Clementine brushed, singing as she did, until the hair almost sang too. ‘Oh my darling . . .’ Until a ragged chorus rippled round the ward in response.
The Other Mrs Walker Page 19
