But Esther had taken it, and put it in her pocket.
“I’ll tell you,” she said softly, and they all sat very still, Lilian staring at her, Ruthie looking at her gas mask case that hadn’t got chocolate in it any more and looked different because the chocolate wasn’t inside it, and the other two girls smiled at Esther, saying nothing.
“There’s …’ Esther paused—“things that smell. A dirty smell.”
“Like Number Two?” Lilian said breathlessly.
“Worse than that. Much worse.” Esther put her head close to Lilian and said in almost a whisper, “They’re STs.”
“STs?” Lilian said in an ordinary voice.
“Shh!” Esther looked over her shoulder, but there was no one in near enough to hear, just the few women outside Black Sophie’s in the hot afternoon sunshine. “STs. And the ones in the tin are all bloody—all covered in brown bad blood. That’s what happens when it comes out. It goes all brown and it smells bad.”
“Comes out of where?” Ruthie said.
Esther looked at her, very close to her, so that all Ruthie could see was eyes, and she stared into one of them, wanting to move her own eyes so that she looked at each of Esther’s in turn, but she couldn’t.
“When you’re in your thirteenth year it starts. Blood comes out of you, out of your private, and you have to wear STs, and put them in the tins in the lavatories, and when that happens, you can have liberties taken, and get into trouble.”
“What trouble?” Ruthie tried to see blood coming out of her private, but she couldn’t.
“Boys. They take liberties. And you get into trouble. And if they see the STs, all bloody and everything, then your face goes yellow.”
“Yellow? Why?” Lilian sounded as though she didn’t believe Esther.
“Yellow like a lemon, all over your face, and your tongue and your teeth, and your eyes, all yellow. That’s why they mustn’t see.”
“But you mightn’t know they’d seen,” Lilian said.
“Yes, you would. You’d wake up in the morning, and you’d be all yellow, and then you’d know a boy had seen, and then he might take liberties and you’d get into trouble.”
“You’re a liar,” Ruthie said flatly.
But Esther just smiled, so that Ruthie knew it was true.
Lilian stood up. “I’m goin’ home,” she said. “My mum said I got to go home for tea early.” She shuffled one foot on the ground, and stared at Esther. “I got to go.”
Esther looked up at her and smiled her smooth smile again.
“If you tell your mum you know, now, your face’ll go yellow.”
“It can’t. I—I got no—what you said. It can’t go yellow. And you said it was if boys saw it.”
“It happens if you tell, an ’all,” Esther said.
Lilian sat down again, and looked at Ruthie.
“D’you believe her, Ruthie?”
“No.”
“You do though, don’t you?” Esther said. “It’s true, ’nt it, Ruthie? Not like the rats. This is true.”
“Tell her about the hair on you, Esther,” Shirley said.
And Sandra nodded, too, and said, “Go on, Esther. You tell them.”
“When you get near the blood coming, you get hair on your private,” Esther said, and stared at Lilian and Ruthie.
“No, you don’t,” Ruthie said at once, but not because she didn’t believe her. Inside her head, she knew it was true, knew it was all true. There was the cotton wool her mother burned in the fireplace or put in the dustbin wrapped in paper. That was true. And it was all the same thing Esther was saying.
“I’ll show you, if you like. If you give me some more chocolate I’ll show you.”
“I haven’t got any more.”
“Next time you get some, you can give me that. And I’ll show you.”
Shirley stood up, and shoved at Sandra with her foot, so that Sandra stood up, too, and then the two of them went along the pavement to the alleyway by Mrs Cohen’s.
Esther sat still for a second, and then she got up too, and went after them, looking back over her shoulder at the younger girls.
“Come on, then, and I’ll show you.”
Lilian and Ruthie sat still for a little while, and then, not looking at each other, they got up and went to the alleyway as well.
Esther was standing against the wall in the coolness of the shadows, with Sandra and Shirley standing each side of her, and the three of them looked at the two smaller ones, the same smile on their faces.
Very slowly, Esther pulled her dress up and held the hem under her chin, watching the girls’ faces under her eyebrows all the while.
Ruthie stood very still, staring, watching the hands with the black edges round their nails, watching them very slowly pull Esther’s knickers down, so that her skin showed, so that her belly button showed, and then, the knickers were right down, just the middle part held between Esther’s fat legs.
It was very quiet in the alleyway, only the soft noise of traffic from Festival Street coming in, and the sound of Lilian breathing thickly next to her.
And Ruthie looked, and saw the soft straight lines of black, all the little lines pointing downwards, making a triangle that ended with its point against Esther’s white knickers.
“You can touch it if you like,” Esther said.
Ruthie didn’t move. She just looked at the black lines, at the knickers between Esther’s fat legs.
“Go on. Touch it,” Esther said.
Sandra leaned forwards, and put one finger against the hair, and giggled, and then Shirley did, but Lilian and Ruthie just stood very still.
“Scaredy cat,” said Esther, and suddenly pulled her knickers up again, and pulled her dress down, wriggling her bottom against the wall as she straightened it.
“If you forget the chocolate, your face’ll go yellow. Because I’ll tell your mum you know. All yellow, and then everyone’ll know you found out, and the boys’ll think you got STs, and take liberties, and you’ll get into trouble. The next twice you get chocolate, you give it to me, Ruthie. And you, Lilian. You get more’n I do.”
Lilian turned and ran, away down the alleyway, back to Festival Street.
Esther laughed, and said again. “The next twice, Ruthie, or I’ll tell.”
Shirley and Sandra giggled, and then the three of them went, arms round each other’s shoulders, out of the Festival Street end of the alleyway, and Ruthie was standing alone, looking at the bricks on the wall and thinking of nothing at all, just counting the bricks with her eyes.
After a minute or two she bent down and took the bandage off her leg, unwinding it so that it showed a line between the clean underneath part and the dirty top part. And she dropped it on the ground, and walked home, not limping any more the way she had ever since the night of the raid. It didn’t matter any more now.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE was making a picture like Lilian’s, the one of the lady in the big dress, kneeling on the hot pavement and drawing with big soft lines. The lines came big because the chalk was hot and soft from being in the sun. It was when she looked up for a moment, to stare up the street while she tried to remember what came next in the picture, that she saw him.
He was walking towards her, rolling a bit from side to side the way he always did—swaggering, her mother used to call the way he walked. He was wearing brown, like the men at the station, with a long narrow hat on his head, his curly hair standing up a bit on each side of it.
She wasn’t really surprised to see him: it was as though she’d known he would be there when she looked up, known she would see him swaggering along like he always had. Because she had really known she would see him, she didn’t do anything, just bent over again, and did another line on the picture, because she suddenly remembered the umbrella came next.
He came and stopped next to her so that his shadow went all over her picture.
“Hello, Ruthie,” he said, very softly.
“Hello, Daddy,”
Ruthie said, and looked up at him. The sun was shining so brightly round his head it looked as though he had a gold plate over it, like the pictures on the wall at school of men in long white dresses with gold plates on their heads.
“You’re getting big,” he said after a minute, staring at her.
“Yes,” Ruthie said.
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs. Do you want her?”
“Yes.”
“The door’s open,” Ruthie said, and started to draw again.
He leaned over and pulled on her arm so that she had to stand up.
“Go up and tell her, eh, Ruthie? Give her a surprise?”
“All right,” Ruthie said, and wiped her chalky hands on her dress before she turned to go into the house.
“Here—just a minute.” He took his hat off, and it went flat in his hand, and the button on it shone golden in the sun.
“Give her this, eh? Don’t say anything—just give it her.”
“All right.” Ruthie said again, and took the hat and went in. It was cool in the house, and she ran her hands along the cool banisters as she went up the stairs, counting them as she always did.
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen—Mummy? Where are you?”
She was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, and Leon was on the floor, crawling about.
Ruthie went over to the table and put the hat down in front of her mother, on top of the paper she was reading.
Her mother looked at it, and then put out her hand as though she were going to touch the hat, but she didn’t. She just stared at it.
“Where’d you get this?” and her voice sounded very thick, like it had the night of the raid when Ruthie’s leg got hurt.
“He said to give it to you.”
“Who said?”
“Daddy,” Ruthie said, and stared at the hat too. She’d known she would see him, really, but it was funny to be standing there looking at the hat when he was down in the street. “He said to give it to you for a surprise.”
“Oh, my God!” her mother said. “Oh, my God!”
“Shall I give it back to him?” Ruthie asked, but her mother said nothing, just looked at the hat on the newspaper.
Then Ruthie heard him, heard the stairs creak a bit as he walked on them. There was a quiet moment when he got to the top, and then he walked again, and there he was, standing in the doorway.
“Bessie?”
“He’s come up, Mummy,” Ruthie said, looking at her mother, but she just sat very still staring at the hat.
“Bessie? Are you going to throw it back at me?” and then he gave a thick sort of laugh. “You said always to throw my hat in first. Are you going to throw it back?”
“Go downstairs, Ruthie.” Her mother’s voice wasn’t thick any more, just high and bright the way it was when there were people about. “Go down and play. Don’t come up till I call you. And, Ruthie—take Leon. You can sit on the step with him. Don’t let him crawl on the road, just sit on the step with him.”
“All right,” said Ruthie, and picked up Leon, and went to the door. Her father came in so she could get through the door, and when she got to the top of the stairs, Leon heavy in her arms, he shut the door, click, so that she was alone with Leon in the dimness.
She sat on the step with Leon for a long time, holding him on her lap, and after a while Leon fell asleep, his head against her bare arm, and she liked that, rocking a bit from side to side, and pretending he was her baby and she was the mother, and he slept, and his hair got damp because he was sweating, and she could feel the dampness on her skin.
She could hear their voices upstairs, coming sometimes loud, sometimes softly, from the window, her mother’s high and thin, her father’s heavy and rumbling a bit. And then the voices stopped, and still Ruthie sat on the step with Leon.
Mrs Fleischer came out of her house after a while, and when she saw Leon asleep on Ruthie’s lap came tiptoeing over to her, like someone pretending to be very quiet, though she made quite a lot of noise really, a creaking noise when she moved. That was because of her corsets. Ruthie knew that because once she’d asked Mrs Fleischer, and Mrs Fleischer had laughed and told Ruthie what the creaking was.
“So who’s a little momma, then, eh, Ruthie?” Mrs Fleischer whispered very loudly, and Leon moved his head in his sleep, but he didn’t wake up.
“I am,” Ruthie said. “I’m a mother.”
“So what you doin’ down here with him, Ruthie? Shouldn’t you take him up so he could sleep in his cot, eh?”
“They’re busy. Mummy said to stay here.”
“So who’s busy?”
“Mummy and Daddy.” Ruthie looked down at Leon and moved her arm a little because it was getting stiff, but Leon still stayed asleep.
Mrs Fleischer stopped whispering. “Who?”
“Mummy and Daddy.”
“Your daddy’s up there?”
“Yes. I took his hat up and then he went up. He’s a soldier nebbish,” Ruthie said, and then smiled at Mrs Fleischer. “Did you know that? He’s a soldier nebbish.”
“He’s in uniform? In khaki?”
Ruthie nodded. “A soldier nebbish,” she said again, patiently.
She was used to telling people things lots of times because they didn’t listen properly. “I took his hat up first and then he came up, and Mummy said to …”
But Mrs Fleischer didn’t wait to listen any more. She was hurrying down the street towards Black Sophie’s shop, her back moving solidly over her thick legs which were nearly running, she was in such a hurry.
She went into the shop, and after a minute, they came out, all the women who were there, Black Sophie, and Mrs Fleischer and the others, and they stood and talked with their heads near each other, all staring up at Ruthie’s house.
The sound came then, from a long way at first, then closer. The women shifted and moved apart, like the ducks in the park when someone threw bread on the lake for them, began to move up the street towards Ruthie, and the siren got louder, and Ruthie stood up so quickly that Leon woke up and began to cry, just like the siren.
Mrs Fleischer got to her own door and shouted at Ruthie. “Come in mine, Ruthie! Bring the baby, boobalah—come in my shelter.”
But Ruthie shook her head, and went into the house. She’d have liked to go into Mrs Fleischer’s shelter but she’d have to ask Mummy first, or there’d be a row.
Leon was still crying, pulling away from Ruthie, and then her mother came down the stairs. She wasn’t wearing her dress any more. She had her thick dressing gown on, and her hair was untidy like it was when she first got up in the morning.
“Give him here.” She took Leon and pushed Ruthie towards the back door and the shelter.
“Where’s Daddy? Isn’t he coming down?”
“Hurry up—hurry up! The guns are starting….”
Ruthie could hear them, rolling and grumbling far away, and then there was a thicker noise, and the floor shook a little and her mother pushed her harder, out into the yard.
“Hurry up—for God’s sake, move!”
He came then, hurrying out of the house across the yard, his brown shirt unbuttoned, hanging out over his trousers, and Ruthie looked at his feet, saw he had nothing on them, not even socks, and she laughed. But she couldn’t hear her laughing because there was more rumbling from the guns, and more of the banging that made the ground shake. The shaking was like the wobbling you could see in the air over the hot road when you sat on the pavement and looked at the hotness. Her father was looking up into the sky, holding his hand over his eyes because of the brightness of the sun.
“Look—see over there—see, Bessie? Three of the buggers—see them? Over there …”
“Come on!” and then they were all in the shelter, in the damp smell of it, and her mother was lighting the oil lamp, and the door was shut tight against the sun and the heat and the noise.
She woke up when her mother began to take her clothes off. She was stiff because she had been lying
on one leg in her sleep, but when she moved her leg the prickling feeling didn’t matter because she could feel she was quite dry—not even a little damp the way she was if she’d had an accident a long time ago and it had started to get dry.
“I’m hungry,” she said, blinking a little against the suddenly bright oil lamp. “I’m hungry, Mummy.”
“So you’ll have to stay hungry. There’s only biscuits here, and we’re staying all night. You can sleep in your vest and knickers—come on, now,” and her mother wrapped her in the rough blanket and pushed her down on the bunk again.
“Where’s Mr Levine? Where’s Mrs Levine?” Ruthie said, then, because looking round she could only see her father sitting in the corner, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his eyes squinting while he looked at the book he was holding sideways to the light, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into his eyes.
“I don’t know. They never came home. They’re in a shelter somewhere else. Go to sleep—here, just a minute. You’d better use the bucket first. Come on.”
So Ruthie got out of the bunk and used the bucket and then got back onto the bunk, careful not to touch Leon, asleep at the other end of it.
“Can’t I have a biscuit? I’m hungry.”
“Oh, all right—only, for God’s sake, go to sleep.”
The biscuit was a big one, all crumbly and sweet, and Ruthie nibbled all round it very slowly to make it last a long time. She could hear the noise still, loud rumbling and crunching noises, and the lamp kept shaking, every time there was a crunch. And she fell asleep again.
And she was dry in the morning, too, when she woke to see her father standing by the open door of the shelter, looking out into the brightness of the early day.
“I’m dry. I’m dry,” she whispered to herself as she put her dress and sandals on. “I’m dry.”
They had breakfast; bread and cream cheese and tea, and an apple each for Ruthie and Leon. All the time at breakfast, they were quiet, her father just sitting and eating very quickly and drinking three big cups of tea, her mother having only tea, but no one said anything. Her mother’s face was long and tight this morning, with the lines by her nose and mouth showing very clearly, and Ruthie knew if she talked her mother would shout at her, so she just ate her breakfast and said nothing.
The Burning Summer Page 9
