The Burning Summer

by Claire Rayner

  Mrs Ward and Miss Fletcher sat them all down in rows on the benches, and Miss Fletcher started to read a story, one about Joseph and the coat of many colours, while Mrs Ward stayed near the door, her head on one side as it was when she listened to things. Ruthie didn’t listen to the story. She had suddenly discovered her knickers were wet again, and she felt miserable in the way she always did as she felt the dampness strike her skin when she sat on the cool wooden bench. While Miss Fletcher’s voice went on about Joseph, Ruthie began to make up a story for her mother.

  The other children were all using the buckets, that was why she couldn’t get to one in time. When the siren went, she was just going to the lavatory, but it was too late, Miss Fletcher wouldn’t let her go. Mrs Ward made her drink all her milk when she wasn’t thirsty and that had made her get wet, she couldn’t help it because of drinking all the milk when she wasn’t thirsty. She had to think of the story she would tell carefully, because the shelter was a cool place, and her knickers wouldn’t get dry sitting there, not like sitting on the kerb in the hot sun. And after a siren, her mother was always more cross than usual, and Ruthie would need a good story to get over that.

  It wasn’t a very long siren. Miss Fletcher hadn’t finished the story of Joseph when the all-clear came.

  “They must be going further over,” Mrs Ward said, waiting till the all-clear from the near place took up the sound, not trusting the one that came softly from further away. “Come along, children. All clear—come along.”

  They stayed in the playground after that, running about in the hot sun, throwing bean bags to each other, standing in line to do exercises, turning their bodies from one side to the other while Mrs Ward called, “One and two and one and two….”

  When it was time to go home for dinner, Miss Fletcher gave them all books to take with them.

  “Try and read these books yourselves at home,” she said, as she put a book carefully into each child’s hand. “And tomorrow we may be able to have a real lesson about them. Ruth—er—well, dear, you can take one, too. But don’t worry if you can’t read it properly. I’ll try to help you tomorrow….”

  When they were outside the school gate, back in Festival Street, Lilian came to walk next to Ruthie.

  “What you got a book for? You can’t read this one properly. It’s a hard book—for juniors, and you’re an infant.”

  “I can read,” Ruthie said defensively. “I’m seven. I can read.”

  “Not hard books like this,” Lilian said. “You shouldn’t be here, anyway. You should be evacuated with the other infants.”

  “So should you. All children should be. Juniors as well.”

  “My mum can’t do without me,” Lilian said smugly. “I’m all she’s got. She couldn’t bear to let me go. That’s why I’m not evacuated. Not like you, runaway. Piddle-the-bed, runaway, piddle-the-bed!”

  “I’m not!” Ruthie shouted “I’m not—I’m not! You’re a shickser—you’re a shickser!”

  Lilian pinched her hard, and ran in front of her to dance up and down, waving her hands in Ruthie’s face.

  “I’m better than a piddle-the-bed Jew-girl. Piddle-the-bed Jew-girl! It was you Jews started the war—piddle-the-bed! Piddle-the-bed …”

  And she spat hard in Ruthie’s face, and ran across the road leaving Ruthie to go home by herself. Ruthie was very upset by this. It was dreadful to spit, the worst thing you could do. When she had done it once, trying to make the spit go through the bars of a drain while she sat on the kerb, her mother had come out to her, and smacked her hard, shouting at her. It was filthy to spit—vulgar.

  So Ruthie went home on her own, sad about Lilian. To spit and not to be Jewish—it was an awful thing. Worse than wetting your bed, really, though that was bad enough.

  There was a bicycle leaning against the wall next to the front door when she got to the house, and Ruthie went cold inside. It was the woman from the Council again, come to see her mother. When she came, her mother got angry, and after the woman had gone, she was worse than usual to be with, even worse than after a siren.

  So Ruthie went to the lavatory before she went into the front room upstairs, opening the door wide when she pulled the chain so that her mother would hear and know she’d been a good girl.

  The woman was sitting in a chair by the table, papers in front of her, and her mother was standing against the window, holding Leon, who squirmed and dug his feet into her middle so that she had to keep moving him from arm to arm.

  Ruthie slipped into the room and went to stand next to her mother, close, so that she wouldn’t be seen very easily.

  “Really, Mrs Lee, it would be better,” the woman said, smiling at Ruthie very widely. “Hello, dear. How are you?”

  Ruthie said nothing, only staring at the woman.

  “She’s fine,” Ruthie’s mother said loudly. “Best off where she is, right here with me. She’s a problem child, so she’s best with me.”

  “I quite see that, Mrs Lee.” The woman’s voice was bright and she spoke slowly and evenly, like Mrs Ward did when she talked to Rachel Kaye who was a bit slow. “I do understand. But with a baby like yours you could go together, you see. I can’t promise you, of course, but we might be able to find you a proper home, not a hostel, though perhaps it would have to be a hostel for a little while …”

  “I’m not going,” Ruthie’s mother said. “I’ve got to stay here. My husband …”

  “But, Mrs Lee, I’ve told you—we’d be able to let him know where you are. We’d see he found you …”

  “Sure—just like that.” Ruthie’s mother sounded thick suddenly. “You’ll find him. Like I haven’t been trying for weeks? How can you find him if I can’t? They’ve been looking for him long enough …”

  The woman looked warningly at Ruthie, and interrupted.

  “Have you been to school, dear? What lessons did you have this morning?”

  “There was a siren,” Ruthie said.

  “Oh—yes, of course. A siren. Well, next time you go to school, perhaps you can have proper lessons, mm? You see, Mrs Lee? There’s her education to think about, too, isn’t there? As well as your safety …”

  “Ruthie, go to Mrs Cohen’s. Get me some lockshen, and a quarter of cream cheese—go on.” Ruthie’s mother shoved her forwards, reaching round Leon to her apron for her purse, then dropping her hand before it got there. “Tell her to book it.”

  So Ruthie went running along Aspen Street quickly. She liked going to Mrs Cohen’s. It smelled nice in her shop, and the old woman would give her little pieces of herring, or rings of white pickled onion that made her mouth water at the smell, even before she put it in her mouth, sometimes giving her whole green pickled cucumbers she could suck the seeds out of.

  It was all very funny, this business with the woman from the Council. Like the soldiers nebbish who came sometimes. Whatever it all was, Ruthie knew it was about her father, who was a soldier nebbish as well. When people talked to her mother about her father, they looked sideways at Ruthie, and sent her away, not just telling her to go and play like they did when it wasn’t anything special, but making errands for her to do. That was how she knew it was something she wasn’t to know about.

  Mrs Levy asked her once if she missed her daddy, and Ruthie had just looked at her and said, “Yes,” because that was the right thing to say. But she didn’t really.

  They had been in Ireland when the war broke out, she and Mummy and Daddy. She’d been playing in the street, and he had come to get her.

  “We’re going on a ship, lovey,” he’d said, and Ruthie had been glad. They’d come to Ireland on a ship, and Daddy had laughed when they went on it, smiling at Ruthie’s mother, saying it’d be all right this time, he’d be careful in future, no more running off. And Ruthie’s mother had raised one eyebrow, and said she’d believe that when it happened.

  But the war had come, so they went on a ship again, and it had been full of people being very sick. Ruthie had looked at all the people be
ing sick, and her mother had taken her arm and held it very tight and stared at her with one eyebrow up the way she did when she was angry, and talked with only her mouth, keeping her teeth shut. “Don’t you dare be sick,” she’d said very quietly. “Just you dare …” and Ruthie hadn’t.

  Then they had got on a train, and Ruthie had fallen asleep. She had woken up, feeling sore with her legs cold and prickly because she had been lying on them pulled under her, and she had seen her mother standing on her toes kissing her father through the little window that was open on the top, and her hair had looked funny with a blue light on it from the only bulb in the middle of the railway carriage.

  “Where’s Daddy going?” Ruthie had asked, when she realised that her father was outside the train and they were staying inside it.

  “To the army,” Ruthie’s mother said and Ruthie knew better than to ask any more questions.

  Ruthie’s mother had talked about him at first before Ruthie had been sent away to the country, reading bits out of letters from him, bits like “Tell Ruthie to be a good girl and not to wet her bed”, or “Tell Ruthie to be a help to you and look after you for me”.

  But since Ruthie had been sent back from the country she hadn’t talked about him, at all, didn’t read bits out of letters because there weren’t any letters.

  Mrs Cohen’s shop had a lot of people in it when Ruthie went in. She stood by the counter for a long time, trying to make Mrs Cohen see her, but she was talking to the other women.

  “Terrible, it was,” one of the women said. “I tell you, you shouldn’t know of such things. In the next house to my Sadie, seven of them went—seven in one go. The house wall, right on the shelter it went, and seven of them there was in there. My Sadie, she said when she come out it was like she was in a strange country—none of the street was there, all a pile of stones. And when she goes to look for her own house, the things she sees—you shouldn’t know of such things …”

  “Must you talk of it then? Bad enough it happens, without you talk of it …” This from Mrs Salmon who had one of the big girls who lived in the street, one of the big four ones who wouldn’t play with Lilian or Ruthie.

  “So? You shut your eyes it goes away?”

  “I tell you, if a bomb got your name on it, it got it. What can you do? You wait and see! So if it happens, it happens. You don’t talk of it. You just wait and you live ordinary and you don’t talk of it. You stay together, and if it happens, you go together. What else?”

  “My Sadie, she’s gone. Gone out to the country. And, I tell you, if she gets a place, I go, too. I don’t wait for no bomb with my name on it. Soon as she gets a place, I go to her and the children, God bless them.”

  Mrs Cohen laughed, fat and happy. “I can see you! I can see you living in the country. I go mad out of London, and so would you. So we stay—like me, you stay. I tell you, you go Monday to your Sadie in the country, so Friday I cut a herring ready for you like usual, you’ll come back. Don’t give me none of your stories.”

  “It’s true, as I stand here, it’s true, Mrs Cohen. You don’t eat no herrings when a bomb got your name on it. I go to the country and do without herrings—but I eat! Better eat no herrings than eat nothing because you ain’t alive to do it …”

  Mrs Salmon caught sight of Ruthie standing against the high counter, and said sharply, “Shvag—der kinder,” and Ruthie put on the blank face she always did when people said that. It meant that she shouldn’t have heard what was already said and shouldn’t hear what was going to be said, so it was best to look as though you hadn’t been listening anyway.

  “Please can I have some lockshen and a quarter of cream cheese?” she said.

  “Sure, Ruthie, sure. You got the money?”

  “Mummy said book it.”

  Mrs Cohen turned her mouth downwards and started to nod her head up and down resignedly as she weighed the cream cheese.

  “Always I should book it—book it! I got books just for Mrs Lee to fill up and never clear?”

  “So what can you do?” Mrs Salmon said comfortably. “You let children go hungry because …” she looked sharply at Ruthie —“you know why because.”

  Mrs Cohen licked a pencil and wrote in the blue book that hung from a piece of string next to the cash register.

  “Sure, I know. Do you see me saying no? So I book it! Voos machst du? There’s a war on! While I got, I give. Your mummy clear the book when she can, eh, Ruthie?”

  And Ruthie took the cream cheese and the blue bag full of yellow twists of egg vermicelli and nodded, not quite sure what else to do but nod.

  “Yes, Mrs Cohen, thank you, Mrs Cohen,” she said, and ran home, to take the things up to her mother.

  The bicycle had gone when she got there, and she went upstairs slowly, not sure whether her mother would be as usual, or angrier than ever because of the woman from the Council and having to book things at Mrs Cohen’s.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  YOU could never tell how people would be. Instead of being cross, and nagging Ruthie after the woman from the Council had been, as she usually did, Ruthie’s mother was happy and warm.

  They had a lovely dinner, lockshen and milk, with cheese sprinkled on the top and apples afterwards, and they played the Ruthie-is-Mummy-and-Mummy-is-Ruthie game. Ruthie liked this. She sat in Mummy’s place at the table, and told her mother what to do, to eat her dinner up like a good girl, and Ruthie’s mother sat small in Ruthie’s usual chair and said, “Yes, Mummy. Can I have a sweet if I eat all my dinner up, Mummy?” and Ruthie looked stern and said, “We’ll see. You eat your dinner up first and don’t make a mess on your dress and then we’ll see.” It was a very good game.

  After dinner, they tidied up together, putting the dishes in the cupboard under the sink, straightening the cover on the couch so that the broken part on the arms didn’t show, and sweeping the floor. Ruthie was allowed to shake the mat out of the window, and when she accidentally dropped it, and it went thump on the pavement underneath, Ruthie and her mother laughed till the tears ran down their faces. When they had finished tidying up, and Ruthie had dragged the mat upstairs again, Ruthie’s mother sat down in the armchair by the window, and made a lap for Ruthie.

  This was nicest of all. Leon was asleep in his cot in the bedroom, and it was very quiet outside in the street, everyone inside having their dinners away from the heat. Ruthie sat on her mother’s lap, and stroked the hand her mother rested on her knees, and sang inside her head.

  “It’s better like this, Ruthie, schnooky,” her mother said. “So it’s safer out in the country, but it’s better like this, eh?”

  “I don’t like the country,” Ruthie said.

  “It’s all right for some of them. But for me, I couldn’t stand it. What would I do all the time? Better we stay here. If it happens it happens.”

  “Who puts the names on the bombs, Mummy? Does he have a register like Miss Fletcher, and put names on from that?”

  “Names? What names?”

  “Mrs Salmon says if a bomb’s got your name on it, it’s got it, and what can you do? Who puts the names on?’

  Ruthie’s mother held her very tightly suddenly. “Mrs Salmon was only joking, lovey. She didn’t mean it. Just joking.”

  “Oh.” Ruthie couldn’t quite see what was funny about bombs with names on them, but if it was a joke, it was, so she laughed.

  “When will the bombs stop having names on them?” she asked then.

  “When the war’s over.”

  “When will that be? What will we do then?”

  “You ask too many questions. Ask, ask, ask! If I knew, I’d tell you. Who knows? I don’t.”

  So Ruthie didn’t ask any more questions.

  After Leon woke up, they all went down to Black Sophie’s shop. Ruthie liked this. The women in the street used to go down to Sophie’s shop most afternoons. They would sit in the room at the back of the shop, on kitchen chairs, and the back door to the yard would be open, and they would drink tea and talk, a
nd sometimes when people came into the shop and called out to Black Sophie to come and serve them, Ruthie would go with her, and Black Sophie would let her put the sweets on the weighing machine and count out the money for the change.

  Black Sophie’s shop was lovely. It was very dark, and there was a counter with a flap you lifted to go through to the room at the back. It smelled of sweets, liquorice and chocolate, and fruit drops, and there were big jars in rows on the shelves, full of sweets and toffees in papers. Best of all, there were piles of pretend boxes of chocolates behind the counter, and Ruthie would sometimes pile them up in heaps and play shops herself, selling the chocolates to people inside her head.

  But this afternoon, Ruthie and her mother and Leon went into the room behind the shop right away, and Black Sophie gave Ruthie a long black ribbon of liquorice, all rolled up flat, with a big red sweet in the middle.

  Ruthie looked at her mother when Black Sophie gave her the liquorice, and said, “No, thank you very much,” but Black Sophie just laughed and said, “So take it, boobalah! Let her have it, Bessie. I give to all the children, so I shouldn’t give to your Ruthie? Let her have it already.”

  Ruthie’s mother frowned slightly.

  “I don’t want she should grow up to be greedy, Sophie, always looking for what she can get out of people …”

  Black Sophie laughed, fat and wobbly, her tiny gold ear-rings bobbing against her fat shoulders. She was so fat her neck had sunk into her shoulders and her ears rested right against the black cloth of her dress.

  “Please God she should grow up! I tell you, she’ll be no shnorrer, your Ruthie. She’s a good girl, eh, dolly?”