The Burning Summer

by Claire Rayner

  THE BURNING

  SUMMER

  Claire Rayner

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-037-0

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

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  M P Publishing Limited

  Copyright © 1972, 2010 by Claire Rayner

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  ISBN 978-1-84982-027-1

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  For the children who came after.

  CHAPTER ONE

  RUTHIE had forgotten how noisy London was. She often forgot things like that, things she shouldn’t really forget, and when grown-ups asked her about the things she had forgotten, and she said she didn’t know, they got that stiff look on their faces.

  Now she stood on the platform, with people rushing all round her, and the train grunting crossly behind her, and blinked at all the noise. Everything was such a dull colour, and she looked at all the brownness around her, and wondered about the colour. There were a lot of men, all wearing brown, a brown that looked like the water in the stream at the bottom of the auntie’s garden, but she’d forgotten already. She had seen the garden only that morning, she knew that, but already she had forgotten what it was like.

  “Right, ducks.” The guard behind her put a hand on her shoulder and started to push her forwards, towards the end of the platform, and, obediently, Ruthie trotted along in front of him.

  “We’ll find your mum double quick now,” the guard said, as Ruthie dodged past the legs of the men in brown who were walking about on the platform, carrying big sausage-shaped bags on their shoulders. “Soon find ’er, we will, and then you’ll be all set, won’t yer, ducks?”

  “Yes,” said Ruthie, a little breathlessly.

  The man pushed her through the gate at the end of the platform, saying something to the man who was collecting tickets about “one of the vaccies”, so that the man nodded and didn’t seem to care that Ruthie hadn’t got a ticket to give him.

  Now they were in the big part of the station, and the noise was bigger, too. She could still hear the trains behind her, the rushing noise of steam, but now there were a lot more people, lots of men in brown, some in black, shouting at each other, laughing, banging things about.

  She stopped walking, and tried to see her mother in all the crowd, and then suddenly she was very frightened, because she had forgotten again. What did Mummy look like? How would she know her? And would her mother remember what Ruthie looked like? She knew grown-ups didn’t forget things as easily as she did, but perhaps her mother would have forgotten, all the same, and Ruthie would have to stay in this brown station for ever and ever.

  She felt the crying that was always there inside her start to climb up her chest, pushing against her neck, and she tried to push it down with her tongue, holding it against her teeth to make a roof but the crying came up, very tight and pointed like a needle. Her mouth opened by itself, and the crying came out, loud and high, and her eyes got hot and big as the tears came out and ran down her face.

  “It’s all right, ducks,” the man said, crouching down beside her, and wiping her face with his sleeve. “It’s all right, ducks.”

  But Ruthie cried more and more, so that people stopped and looked at her. “Poor little mite—what’s the matter? Lost her mum, has she?”

  And then, suddenly, her mother was there, bending down next to the man, and putting her hands on her shoulders, and Ruthie knew she hadn’t forgotten after all. It was Mummy, looking just the same, with her yellow hair, and her egg-shaped eyes with the line in between, and the red mouth with the double-pointed shape at the top of it.

  “All right, Ruthie,” she said, in her bright sharp voice, the one she used when other people were listening to her as well as Ruthie. “All right, Ruthie, nothing to cry about, dear—I’m here.”

  And now Ruthie’s crying changed inside her, feeling different, warm and comfortable, and she felt her mouth go soft again, and began to enjoy the wetness on her cheeks.

  The man was talking to her mother. “Right, lady. Here’s her bag, now, and she’s been fine—not a peep out of her, all the way down. It’s a long run but not a peep out of her. Good little soul, she’s been. Ta, lady.”

  And then he was gone, and Ruthie and her mother were together in the middle of the crowd of brown people.

  “Come on, Ruthie.”

  Ruthie began to trot again, running along beside her mother, feeling the tears dry on her face, tasting the last of the salt of them on her upper lip, and holding on to her mother’s hand very tightly.

  They went to a big room, full of women, some of them in brown clothes like the men on the platform, a room full of smoke, and the high comfortable noise of women talking.

  “Thank you—thanks a lot—hope he hasn’t been any trouble,” Ruthie’s mother said to one of the women, stopping next to a big pram.

  “No trouble at all, sweet little feller—he’s a dear little chap.”

  Ruthie peered into the pram in some surprise. She’d forgotten about this, too. The baby. One of the aunties had told her there was a baby now, a brother, she’d said, a sweet little brother sent from God. Ruthie looked at the baby lying on his back in the pram, holding his hands in front of his very small face, staring at his fingers with blue eyes that had milky lines round the blue part, his mouth open and pink.

  Her mother put Ruthie’s suitcase on to the pram, and backed out of the waiting room with it, while the women peered into it, and smiled at the baby and made noises at him with their mouths.

  “Hold on, Ruthie,” her mother said, so Ruthie held on, and let the pram pull her along.

  The street outside was very bright and hot, and smelled of dust and petrol, and Ruthie stared around her as they hurried along, looking up at the big red buses and the cars and the lorries.

  “This is London,” she said to herself, letting her mouth make the words, though she didn’t let any sound come out. “This is London.”

  It was so funny to have forgotten, because it was just the same really. When she had lived in the auntie’s house, in the houses of the other aunties, she had kept saying, “I want to go back to London”, to everyone, even though she had quite forgotten what London was like. Now she was here, now she had been sent back, it was the same as it used to be, nearly the same. Some of the windows looked funny, shop windows with wooden fronts instead of glass ones, some of the glass ones with pretty patterns of brown paper criss-crossed all over them, and there were piles of brown sandbags along the pavements, stacked round big silvery bunkers. But the buses were the same, though they had brown paper criss-crossed on the windows too, and the cars and lorries were the same. So much brown.

  While they waited to cross a road, she looked up at the sky, to see if that was the same, too, and then she stared, her head so far back she could feel her hair on her neck. Up in the sky, a blue sky with pretty clouds like pieces of cotton wool, there were fish, beautiful silver fish, with soft rainbow colours all round them, all round their fat tails. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, and Ruthie pulled on her mother’s hand, and said, “Look
—look, Mummy, look! Fish—lots of fish in the sky.”

  Her mother looked up briefly, and then began to cross the road, pushing the pram so quickly Ruthie had to run to keep up.

  “Barrage balloons,” she said. “That’s what they are. Come on—it’s a long way yet.”

  It was a funny name for such beautiful fish, Ruthie thought, and she ran along beside the pram, her head still back, staring at the fish moving lazily, turning a little, seeming to bounce a bit in the blue sky.

  She began to get very tired after a while, as still they walked pushing the grey pavement away with their feet, and Ruthie’s legs begn to feel very heavy and hot, and her feet hurt because they were so hot. She told her mother she was tired, but her mother just said, “Nearly there—not far now,” and went on walking, bent a bit forwards over the pram, watching the people as they walked so that they wouldn’t bump into them, her face very stiff and shut up. So Ruthie said no more about how tired she was.

  And then, suddenly, they left the big main road they had been walking along, turning a corner next to a little sweet shop, and Ruthie stared at the street they were in.

  It wasn’t a very long street—she could see right to the end—and the funny thing about it was that at the end there wasn’t just another road, but a shop, with a dark alleyway next to it, like a tunnel, and through the tunnel, Ruthie could just see a square of brightness with tiny people walking past.

  There were houses on each side of the street, all joined together, with a door, and then two windows, and then another door, and then two windows, all the way on each side right to the end. Some of the doors were open, and there were wooden kitchen chairs outside them with women sitting in them, shouting across at other women sitting on chairs outside their doors.

  Her mother stopped outside one of the doors, halfway down, and lifted Ruthie’s case off the pram, to put it down next to the door. She took a key from her pocket, and opened the door, and Ruthie stared at the door, very surprised.

  “Aren’t we going home?” she asked. “I thought I was going home with you.” She felt the crying begin to come up inside again.

  “This is home,” her mother said. “This is where we live now.”

  Ruthie tried to remember what home was supposed to be like, but she couldn’t. She had forgotten again. She was sure it hadn’t been here, in this street, but her mother said it was home now, So it was.

  She followed her mother to the stairs inside the house, staring at the narrow passage with its yellow and red lino on the floor, and a big brown curtain hanging across it beyond the stairs. At the top of the stairs, her mother stopped, and opened a door, and pushed Ruthie inside.

  Ruthie stood and looked at the room, while her mother went downstairs again to fetch the baby. It was a small room, with a big window on one side, and a table in the middle, with two chairs next to it. There was a couch, and a sink, and a gas stove and a curtain hanging across the space under the sink, a pink curtain that Ruthie looked at happily. She liked pink. It was the nicest colour in this room, because mostly the room was brown and a sort of dirty yellow colour.

  Her mother came back, holding the baby, and another woman came with her.

  “So this is your Ruthie.” The woman was very fat, and her head was very small, and it looked as though she hadn’t got a neck at all, as though her head was stuck on her shoulders without a neck just like the people Ruthie made out of plasticine.

  “So hello, Ruthie,” the woman said, her voice wheezy, as though she wanted to cough. “So is it nice to be home again? You had to come home to your momma, hey? Couldn’t stay in the country? So what was the matter? Didn’t you like the country?”

  Ruthie looked at her, and tried to remember the country. But she’d forgotten, of course, so she said, “I don’t know,” and the woman laughed, and pinched her cheek hard with a hand that smelled like cooking, all oniony.

  Ruthie was very tired now. Too tired really to think much. It was so funny, suddenly to be so tired. She sat in a chair by the table, while her mother put a kettle on the gas stove, and the woman talked to her mother very wheezily, and the baby lay on the couch and made grizzly noises. Ruthie tried to listen to the woman, to understand what she was saying, but her voice just sounded thick, all soft and wheezy and thick, and Ruthie couldn’t hear her words properly.

  But then her mother started to talk.

  “So what could I do? They told me, she kept running away—wouldn’t stay anywhere. No sooner they settled her, but she was off again—found her in all sorts of places, they told me. So could I leave her there? I tell you, I got enough troubles without having her here in London—it’s all I can do to look after me and the baby without her here as well, but what could I do? Leave her there? They said a hostel, but they tried one, and she carried on there—ran off again. So what could I do?”

  The woman looked at Ruthie then, sitting at the table, and said in her thick wheezy voice, “So why you keep running off, Ruthie? Why don’t you stay in the country like a good girl? Your mother’s got enough troubles, believe me. She shouldn’t have to worry about such a big girl like you—seven you are, Ruthie, a big girl. Why you keep running off like that?”

  Ruthie blinked at her, and said again, “I don’t know,” and she really didn’t. She couldn’t remember anything about the country, anything at all. So all she could say was, “I don’t know.”

  Her mother gave her a piece of bread and butter, and some cheese and a big cup of tea, and while she was eating, while the woman and her mother went on talking, she tried very hard to remember about the country, about running away, but it was no good.

  Her mother put her to bed, then, in another room, a room with a bed and a cot in it, and she fell asleep too quickly to think about anything at all any more.

  CHAPTER TWO

  RUTHIE was sitting on the edge of the pavement, her dress spread carefully all round her, enjoying the warmth that came up from the hot kerbstone through her thin knickers. There were two reasons for sitting there. First because the warmth was so nice, travelling up through her skin right through her bottom to meet the heat that was coming down through her shoulders from the sun above; and secondly, there was always the hope that the warmth would dry her knickers which were a bit wet already. She hadn’t been up for long, and it would be a while yet before her mother would call her from the window to come and go to the lavatory. By that time, perhaps her knickers would be dry, and her mother wouldn’t know she had wet them so early in the day.

  So she sat, blinking a little in the bright sunshine, stroking the brown rexine case of her gas mask, letting her thumbnail run along the grooves, enjoying the possession of the lovely thing. Ruthie loved her gas mask. It was her very own, given to her by the Government, and they had told her it was her special one, that she must never leave it lying around, that no one must ever take it away from her. It was hers as nothing else had ever been. Her clothes belonged to her mother. Whenever she got new dresses, her mother reminded her that they cost a lot of money, that they weren’t bought to be spoiled, that Ruthie must take care of them because her mother had to struggle so hard to buy them for her. So Ruthie could never really enjoy ownership of the things she wore as she could enjoy the ownership of her gas mask the Government had given her.

  Ruthie was very attached to the Government. She had a hazy vision of him: an old man in a long white nightdress, with a big white beard like Mr Lipshitz’s. When she thought of him, she saw a big map of England, with the Government sitting on a big chair in the bottom left-hand corner, down in Cornwall. The children from next door were down there with him. They had been sent down there to be with him away from London when the war started, like Ruthie. Only they were still there. Her mother told her that quite often.

  Across the road, Mrs Levy came out with a broom to sweep the pavement. Ruthie’s mother was always very rude about Mrs Levy, though never to her face, of course. When she met her, she would nod and smile, and say nice things like it was hot again, wa
sn’t it? But when she was sitting upstairs in her window, and saw Mrs Levy come out with her broom, she would snort, and say, “Look at her! Silly old cow! Sweeping the road, yet! Got eyes in her toochus, that one. What she can’t see from her window, she’s got to come out and watch with her broom.”

  Ruthie would stare down at Mrs Levy, and try to imagine what it was like to have eyes in your toochus. Once she had peered over her own shoulder while her mother was washing her, and said, “Have I got eyes in my bottom, like Mrs Levy?” and her mother had slapped her lightly and laughed. So Ruthie still didn’t know. She used to wonder if Mrs Levy kept the eyes in her bottom closed, or open, and whether she cut holes in her knickers so that she could see through with the extra eyes, but she knew better than to ask Mrs Levy. Mrs Levy had no teeth, and Ruthie didn’t like talking to her, because her mouth looked so empty and black when she opened it.

  Ruthie looked away from Mrs Levy, in case she should call across to her, and looked down the street towards Black Sophie’s shop at the end. There wasn’t much to see yet. There were two women standing talking outside the shop, with big plaited straw shopping bags hanging flat and empty from their hands, their heads close together as they talked. One of them was Mrs Coram, who lived three doors away from Ruthie, and Ruthie stared at her, at the tight waves of her wig, and the deep lines on her thin face. She liked Mrs Coram because of her wigs. She had two, one she wore every day of the week, and one she wore on Saturdays. Her mother had told her that Mrs Coram was very froom, and that meant she went to the synagogue every Saturday and wore a special wig.

  “Religious people wear wigs,” Ruthie’s mother said. “They cut all their hair off when they get married and make wigs out of it, and then they wear them on top of their hair ever afterwards.”