She began to cry again, as she could almost hear her mother shouting at her, asking her where the milk was, why she had dawdled.
“That your house over there?” the man said, and Ruthie nodded, the crying in her too thick to let her talk properly.
And then he was there, in the middle of the crowd, and the people round the street door scattered and shifted, coming round behind the man to stare over his shoulder into Ruthie’s crying face.
“She’s here—look, Mrs Lee—they’ve found her—see? She’s here!”
And then she was pulled roughly from the man’s arms, and it was her mother, holding her so close and tight she could hardly move or even breathe properly, and Ruthie tried to pull back, to look at her mother’s face.
“I’m ever so sorry, Mummy,” she began in her thick crying voice. “I’m ever so sorry, Mummy, but it wasn’t me broke the milk …”
But her mother said nothing, just holding tightly on to her, putting her face into Ruthie’s neck so that Ruthie could feel her cheek against her skin, all hot and smooth.
“Mummy?” she said again. “Are you cross, Mummy? I didn’t mean it, honest—I tried to get home quick, really I did. Mummy?”
The others were all talking, chattering busily to the man who had brought her home, asking questions, talking about sending Ruthie to the country again, exclaiming over her poor mother, and Ruthie wriggled harder than ever to get back so that she could see her mother’s face.
This time, she managed it, and her mother looked at her, and Ruthie looked at her mother, in the dim evening light, and Ruthie was suddenly not frightened of her any more. Her mother’s face looked so different, as though some of the skin had slipped off the bones under it, all sagging, and her eyes looked very big, all puffy underneath, as though someone had stuck some putty there.
“Aren’t you cross, Mummy?” she said wonderingly, suddenly knowing quite well she wasn’t. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying, Mummy?”
“Oh, my God,” her mother said, her voice sounding different to its usual high hard sound. “Oh my God …” and the tears spilled over her eyes again, while Ruthie stared at her.
And then, suddenly, the sirens started again, wailing close and shrill, and the people round about scattered, started to run.
“Bring her down our shelter, Mrs Lee,” Mrs Fleischer shouted. “My Lenny’s here—he’ll have a look at her, see she’s all right. Come on, Mrs Lee—Lenny’ll see to her, so go get the baby—come on, already!”
The man in the tin hat said quickly, “That’s right, ducks—you go on down the shelter. I’ll get the baby—where is he? Upstairs, is he? I’ll get him for you—you go on down the shelter, make yourselves a nice cuppa—that’s what you want—a nice cuppa …”
Ruthie, still held tightly, felt herself being bounced into Mrs Fleischer’s house, along the passage, out into their back yard towards the shelter, and as they passed the bottom of the stairs, Lenny came down, holding a brown carrier bag, his long legs swinging as he clattered down the stairs.
“They found her, Lenny—like I said to Mrs Lee they would, they found her. She’s coming so you can see she’s all right—so’s you can look after her!” and even in the rush along to the shelter, her voice was full of pride as she said it.
In Mrs Fleischer’s shelter, Ruthie’s mother sat down in the bottom bunk, holding Ruthie tightly on her lap, and Mrs Fleischer waited at the doorway for the man in the tin hat to bring Leon, and as soon as he did, shut the door firmly behind him as the crumps and rumbles began to come again, shaking the light they had hanging from the middle of the roof.
Ruthie, remembering suddenly, said, “The milk, Mummy—the man broke it, Mummy—Leon’s milk.”
“It’s all right, shnooky, it’s all right,” her mother said, her voice still thick and different. “I got some from Mrs Cohen—it’s all right, baby. I shouldn’t have let you go—I shouldn’t have let you go—it’s all my fault—my God …” and her face went all creased and she began to cry, tears running over the putty under her eyes, streaking her face with dirt that had rubbed on to it from Ruthie’s dress.
“Now, now, Mrs Lee—so it’s all right, already. So don’t cry—don’t upset yourself with a lot of aggravation. She’s here, ain’t she? So all right—she’s here. My Lenny—he’ll make her fine, eh, Lenny? No need to cry, no need you should upset yourself no more, believe me, Mrs Lee—my Lenny, he makes sure she’s all right.”
Lenny sat down next to them, and smiled at Ruthie.
“So how’s my best girl, eh? Got a few wallops, have you?”
“Oh, no,” Ruthie said, surprised. “No one walloped me, Lenny. He was a nice man—he got me out, and he was nice—though it was him broke the milk …”
Lenny laughed, and looked up at his mother.
“Kids,” he said, sounding very grown up, older than Mrs Fleischer even. “Kids—aren’t they marvellous?”
Ruthie’s mother was looking at her now, pulling at her dress to take it off, so that she could see if Ruthie was hurt, exclaiming over the bruises on her shoulders, and biting her mouth when she saw the long graze all down her leg, trying not to cry as she looked at it. But Ruthie looked down at her leg interestedly, admiring the dirty huge blood-caked mess, delighted to see a really big patch of blood.
“Will I need a bandage?” she asked and grinned a very big grin when Lenny said gravely that she would need an enormous bandage, after he had cleaned it up.
So Ruthie sat and watched him, enjoying the way her leg came clean as he mopped away with a piece of cotton wool he had taken from his carrier bag, using stuff from a bottle he also had in his bag, even enjoying the way her leg hurt as the stuff cleaned the graze.
And then, when her bandage was on, and she was tucked up in the bottom bunk with the sleeping Leon at the foot, with a big sandwich of brown bread and sardines in her hand, she thought sleepily about the way grown-ups were frightened of raids.
She knew why now, why raids were a trouble, because of the things they made happen—or the things you thought they would make happen. Really, of course, the grown-ups were a bit silly. The things you thought would happen because of the raids didn’t—so it wasn’t that that was frightening. It was just thinking about it that was frightening. She would have to tell them, she thought, biting at her sandwich, enjoying the way the bandage felt tight against her leg under the blanket. She would have to tell them sometime. And then she fell asleep, even before she had finished her sandwich and the voices of her mother and Mrs Fleischer and Lenny talking and the rumble of the raid outside got mixed up with the yellow light from the roof and the taste of the sardine sandwich.
CHAPTER NINE
SANDRA and Shirley and Esther were leaning on the wall behind them, and Ruthie tried to pretend she didn’t know they were there. She kept her head down over her red book and tried to finish her picture of an aeroplane with bombs in it, but the picture didn’t want to come any more because the girls were looking at Ruthie.
Lilian next to her on the edge of the pavement was making a picture, drawing on the ground with a piece of broken red brick, making a beautiful woman in a big dress, with a hat that covered all of her face, with a basket of flowers in her hand, and a big umbrella held in her other hand. This picture was one Lilian was very good at, and she drew it all the time. Ruthie watched her make the frilly edge on the big umbrella, and tried to pretend the big girls weren’t there.
“Your leg better?” Esther said, and Ruthie kept her head down watching Lilian, as though she hadn’t heard.
“Esther says, is your leg better?” Lilian said, and stopped drawing. “Esther said, Ruthie.”
Ruthie stretched out her leg in its bandage and looked at it. It was better really, because it didn’t feel stiff any more, but she still had a bandage on. When her mother tried to take it off she screwed up her face and said, “Fff …” to show it hurt but she was brave, so her mother left it on. Ruthie didn’t want the bandage to come off because she like
d it so much.
“Not yet,” she said, and held her leg out stiff to show it wasn’t better.
Esther came and squatted down on the pavement next to her, and looked at the bandage.
“What was it like when you hurt it?” She looked at Ruthie then, her eyes sliding sideways, and Ruthie, who had started to look at her, at once looked at her leg again. “Was it awful?”
Ruthie thought about what had happened in the raid, and though she didn’t want to, she felt her mouth turn up in a smile. “Yes. It was awful.”
The other two girls had come over now, and were sitting on the kerb too, so they were all in a row, the three big girls, and the not so big girl, and the small one who was Ruthie. Shirley leaned forwards and put her chin on her knees, so that she could look at Ruthie along the row, and she opened her eyes very wide.
“Were there rats?”
“Rats?” said Ruthie.
“My mum says there’s rats where the bombs were. They eat all the dead people underneath. They start at their fingers, and then they eat their ears, and then their cheeks, so that they’ve got holes in their faces and their teeth show through. Great big rats.”
“And if there’s someone who isn’t dead yet, they eat them, too, until they are,” Sandra said in a very soft voice. “All the time they go nibble nibble nibble till their teeth show through the holes in their faces. Were there rats where you were, Ruthie?” and the three big girls looked at each other and giggled and shoved at each other with their shoulders.
Ruthie looked at her legs, one with its bandage and the other with the browny-blue circles showing on the skin, and thought about it. Were there rats? She couldn’t remember properly. She wrinkled up her eyes till everything looked hazy and sparkly at the edges and tried to see what it had been like in the raid. After a moment of trying, she could see it. She could see her legs stretched out under the lump of wood, and her hands holding the bottle of milk, and then she couldn’t see any more.
Lilian, next to her, breathed hard and put her hand out to touch the bandage on Ruthie’s leg.
“Ooh, Ruthie, was there? Was there rats? It must be awful to be ate by rats….”
And now Ruthie could see them, see them walking about on her legs, the big dark-coloured rats with tails like string, like the dead one Mrs Levine had found in the shelter once, only these were alive, and walking about on her legs.
She opened her eyes properly, and looked at the girls in a row next to her, at Sandra leaning forwards, at Shirley and Esther with their shiny eyes and the smooth smiles on their faces and she said comfortably, “Oh, yes. There were rats.”
Shirley’s face changed a bit, not so smooth now. “Go on,” she said. “I bet there wasn’t.”
“There was!” Ruthie could see them now, without wrinkling her eyes up, see them quite clearly, walking about on her legs under the lump of wood. “There were—oh, I think there were seven of them, all walking about on my legs, eating me.”
“Ooh, Ruthie,” Lilian wailed. “There wasn’t!”
“Yes, there was!” Ruthie was annoyed. “I wouldn’t say there was if there wasn’t.” The rats walked about on her legs more quickly, sniffing with their pointed noses. “Seven of them.”
The rats all moved on to one of her legs, the one with the bandage, pushing their noses against the edge of the bandage so they could eat her leg underneath it. She wrinkled her eyes again, so that the bandage would go away from what she was seeing, but it stayed there, so the rats pushed their noses under the edge, and started to nibble.
“They ate me like anything,” she said. “All the time. That’s why my leg’s sore.” And she moved it, and said, “Fff,” softly.
“You ain’t ’alf a liar,” Esther said, but not with any real crossness in her voice, looking at Ruthie with a smile across her wide face, all her teeth showing. “You’re a rotten old liar.”
“I’m not so!” Ruthie said. “You see if I am. I got a bandage on, haven’t I?” and she stuck her leg out even further so they all had to look at it.
They sat quiet for a while, saying nothing, Lilian looking at Ruthie’s leg with her face all worried, and Sandra and Shirley not smiling any more, but staring over the road at the gap where Mrs Levy’s house had been. Esther sat and smiled, twisting her finger round and round in a piece of her hair, and Ruthie sat and watched the rats go away when the men came and got her out, all of them running under the stones. It was nice to watch it happening.
“You was there five hours,” Esther said softly after a while. “Didn’t you want to go to the lav all that time?”
“No,” said Ruthie, dreamily, watching the men carry her back to the crowd of women in Aspen Street.
“Wouldn’t it be awful if you had to go, if you couldn’t hold on any more, and you got all—messy,” Esther said, very softly now. “And when the men came, you were all wet. Wouldn’t it be awful?”
Ruthie felt her face get stiff the way it did when people talked about being wet, and said nothing, and the picture of the men carrying her went away, and she was just looking at the sun hot on the road of Aspen Street.
“Suppose you had to go Number Two …” Shirley giggled, and shoved Esther with her shoulder. “Suppose it was that, and then the men came, and you were all …” and she giggled some more, bubbly, in her throat.
“And the men’d have to take your knickers off, wouldn’t they?” Esther said, her fingers turning rhythmically in her hair, her eyes shining again, staing at the road like Ruthie was. “They’d have to take your knickers off, because of it, and then they’d …” she took a deep breath—“they’d have to wipe you, wouldn’t they? And then they’d smack your behind, all bare, they’d smack it and smack it, holding you over their shoulders so you couldn’t move, they’d smack you, for being all dirty, and you’d have no knickers on….” Her voice sounded thick, and Ruthie looked at her, though she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help it.
“And they’d carry you back to your house, all bare, and they’d take you up to your bed, and throw you on it, and keep on smacking you until you fainted, and went all limp—all limp, with your eyes shut, and your head thrown back, and your hair falling over the edge of your bed….”
Ruthie thought about the men who had found her, tried to see them smacking her, but they wouldn’t. They just carried her, and talked and called her ducks.
“They were nice,” she said.
Esther looked at her then, and stopped twisting her fingers in her hair, and then she shoved at Sandra.
“You don’t know nothing, you don’t. You’re just a baby, you are. You don’t know nothing, and you’re a liar. Rats and all that! You’re a rotten liar.”
“I am not! And I know lots of things.”
“No, you don’t!”
“I do so. Lots of things. Things you don’t know.”
Ruthie stared at her, and made her face look angry, but she wasn’t really. A bit of her was a bit surprised because the big girls were talking to her properly, as though she were their friend, were taking no notice of Lilian who was sitting all quiet. The big girls were just talking to Ruthie, showing they knew how she was getting nearer and nearer to being like them.
“What do you know?” Shirley said, shoving her face towards Ruthie. “What do you know? I bet you don’t know nothing.”
“I bet I do,” Ruthie said. “You try and see.”
“I bet you don’t know about the things in the teachers’ lavs at school,” Sandra said suddenly. “You don’t know about them, do you?”
“What things?” Ruthie blinked, trying to think. “Anyway, you can’t go in there.”
“We been in there, haven’t we, Esther?” Shirley said, and Esther nodded very slowly.
“We’ve been in there. And we looked. I bet you don’t know about what’s in the tin at the back, do you.”
“I do so,” Ruthie said, but she knew they didn’t believe her.
“There’s things in there …” Shirley nodded her head. “
Awful things, they are.”
“I know,” said Ruthie.
“What things?” Lilian sounded breathless, her voice a bit scratchy because she hadn’t been talking. “Tell us, Shirley. Go on, tell us …”
“You’re not old enough to tell.” Shirley sounded triumphant. “You’re only nine. You’re not old enough.”
“Yes, she is,” Ruthie said. “She’s nearly as old as you. You’re not twelve yet.” It made it sound younger than saying she was eleven, saying she wasn’t twelve yet.
“I’ll be thirteen in a little while,” Esther said. “I’ll be twelve next week, and when you’re twelve, you’re nearly thirteen. You’re in your thirteenth year. And my mum says she’s going to tell me everything then, when I’m in my thirteenth year, because that’s when you got to know. But I know already.” And she laughed. “And I told you, didn’t I, Shirl? I’m the one that knows everything first, aren’t I?” and the other big girls nodded.
“What’s in the teachers’ lav, then?” Lilian said again, and the girls looked at each other.
And then Esther said softly, “What’ll you give me if I tell you?”
“I haven’t got nothing to give you.” Lilian looked worried suddenly. “I haven’t got nothing. Tell us, Esther, go on.”
Ruthie looked at Lilian’s face, and felt very big, bigger than any of them, though she was the youngest.
“I got some chocolate, Lilian.”
She took the chocolate out of her gas mask case, carefully undoing the buttons, and taking out the chocolate in its blue paper and putting it down on the pavement.
“That’s because you don’t want to let on you don’t know neither,” Esther said. “’Nt it? That’s why you’re giving Lilian the chocolate!”
“No, it’s not!” Now the chocolate was out of her gas mask case and she could see it, Ruthie wanted it for herself after all. She had been saving it up for eating in bed, and now she was sorry she had felt big enough to be nice to Lilian who wanted to know. “No, it’s not,” and she put her hand out to take the chocolate back.
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