A Childs War

by Richard Ballard

  “Nothing to stop us going up to see Geoff and Hetty now, is there, girl?”

  “No. But we were going anyway. We’d made our mind up.”

  George accepted this answer and Edna ironed the things she intended to take in the case. Geoff met them at Paddington and a taxi took them through central London past some buildings that were shored up with timber, and some that were now only shells, alongside others which were still standing and occupied but which, as George remarked, looked sadly in need of a coat of paint. Self-sown plants had grown in profusion in some of the ruins and were coming into flower, but the streets were clear for the buses and taxis and the few cars that were to be seen.

  Hetty’s hotel building stood proud among the survivors and the casualties around it. They left the taxi and stood at the door, looking around them. Edna kept commenting on how normal everyone looked in spite of what had been happening here on and off for years on end, but she was not pleased when George quietly said,

  “Perhaps we should’ve stayed on too.”

  “But we didn’t and that’s that,” was all she could think of to say, and she busied herself by adjusting her old, but still best, hat with the veil attached as she walked through the hotel entrance, greeted by the elderly doorman in his black and gold livery who did her good by calling her Ma’am as his hand went to the brim of his own hat.

  Since Hetty would be busy for another hour, Geoff took them to the basement to see the exhibition arranged to show what a V1 was like, consisting of a specimen that had not damaged itself very much in its terminal plunge on a building nearby. They all felt the irony, even if they could not call it that, of a place that had been an air-raid shelter exhibiting this monster bomb as if it had been a war trophy. Alex would have been interested in it had it been a real aeroplane, but he had heard that many airmen regarded the flying bomb as a hybrid freak - words that George had explained to him -and gave it no more than a cursory inspection. George and Edna were showing signs of obvious distress in this ghoulish place underground and Geoff regretted his own curiosity that had made him bring them down here. He took them up in the lift to the flat on the top floor where they could see out over what remained of the roofs of London WC2 and down into the busy square below. They found themselves in a very comfortable living room, sumptuously furnished by the standards of George and Edna’s own mixture of rescued and second-hand pieces of furniture. There was even a portrait of Edna’s sister by an artist who lived round the corner and drank in the bar here. Geoff understandably said he did not care for it overmuch.

  The original herself was not long in coming off duty, and she brought in a trolley with all sorts of good things to eat and drink prepared beforehand on it. They sat down to eat in the armchairs with the trolley between them and plates on napkins in their laps and Edna was determined to call the napkins serviettes, which caused Alex a little confusion for the space of about ten seconds until he found that smoked salmon was what he had been searching for all his life so far and George indulged a liking for Parma ham that he had forgotten he had. Edna made a meal of potted shrimps on tiny pieces of bread and then there was tinned fruit salad for everyone, just like that brought home from Wheatley by George, enhanced by the taste, new to Alex, of condensed milk. He found he did not enjoy what Hetty called real coffee, but the fizzy lemonade was entirely to his liking. He knew he had tasted it before, but could not remember when.

  After they had eaten, George and Edna were shown their bedroom and Alex had another with a window under which there was an upholstered bench. When he stood on this, he found he could look out on Leicester Square itself.

  The afternoon was spent on a walk with George to the Embankment, along the river to Parliament Square, briefly into the undamaged nave of Westminster Abbey, up sandbagged Whitehall, past the Admiralty to Trafalgar Square and along the Strand, with questions and explanations all the way. Something else to eat was provided back at the flat and Alex went to bed in the interesting room, leafing through a copy of Punch, which he had never seen before, until Edna and the others had stopped talking in the next room. He got out of bed and warily lifted the blackout curtain to look at the quiet dark outside.

  II

  George, Edna, Alex and Hetty had the wireless on over lunchtime the next day when it was announced that General Eisenhower’s deputy, someone called General Bedell Smith, had received the unconditional surrender of the Germans from General Jödl, who had signed a joint document with him and generals from Britain, France and Russia at a place in France called Reims on the day before. As a result of this, all hostilities in Europe had ceased two hours ago at eleven o’clock. Another act of surrender was being signed this very day at the Soviet headquarters in recently occupied Berlin, again with representatives of the three other allies present.

  Alex’s parents and aunt looked at each other in silence and then he could see the tears begin to run down the women’s faces and his father turn away for a moment before they all smiled and George said to him,

  “Alex, the war’s over!”

  They watched Hetty get up and go to the kitchen and return with a bottle such as Alex had never seen before, standing in what looked like a silver bucket full of ice, with gold paper all round its neck, and the words “Moët et Chandon” printed on its label, which he was not able to say.

  “They’re French words and this is a drink called Champagne, which I’ve been keeping ready for today,” Aunt Hetty explained.

  “But you told me when we were on holiday a long time ago that the French had let us down!” Alex said to George, with the image of the woman without her clothes before the hostile crowd in France appearing involuntarily behind his eyes once more.

  “They’re all right now,” said George. “They resisted the German occupation and then fought alongside our troops in their own country and across the Rhine. They certainly share the victory.”

  By this time the bottle was open and the glasses filled with not a drop wasted or splashed under Hetty’s housekeeperly touch and the adults lifted their glasses and said “Happy days!” to each other, with Alex joining in with a half glass given him quickly by his aunt before anyone could argue.

  “German surrender or not,” said Hetty, “This place won’t run itself, and there are rooms to get ready before the staff have the same idea as us! I’ll see you later. Finish that bottle: there are five more for this evening when Geoff’s home.”

  When Hetty had left, George and Edna fell into each other’s arms again and Alex was brought into their embrace. After about five minutes, none of the three knew what to do. Alex felt he was in the way to some extent as he heard Edna whisper to George,

  “We’ll have to wait . . .”

  A few minutes later Alex, feeling sleepy and not energetic at all, was poured into his jacket, a reach-me-down from John Patterson left behind at Oxford for when he should need it, and an attempt was made to repeat part of yesterday’s walk with Edna coming too. There were so many people out of doors, all walking about happily, some arm in arm across the pavement so that George and his family had to flatten themselves against a wall or step into the road to avoid them. When the road itself started to be taken up by young servicemen and women in uniform, similarly linked arm in arm, they called the excursion off and went back to Hetty’s flat. From inside, they heard people singing from time to time. George and Edna kept very quiet, thinking of the ruins in Raynes Park they were not able to rebuild, and wondering, without reference to each other, what was going to happen to them when the house they lived in was no longer available, which might now be at any time. Hitler was dead. The soldiers who had survived would come home. But there were still one or two things for George and Edna to sort out.

  “We’ll go back tomorrow, girl, and see what can be done.”

  “Is there anything we can do to us stop having to live with your mother?”

  “I suppose I could tell the dairy that they can do what they like and we’re not leaving.”

  “I s
uppose that will do a fat lot of good,” said Edna.

  Alex was given the impression that, even if he were not there now, they would still stay apart from each other, regardless of the feelings they both had after the champagne and before they had gone out. When Geoff had come in, Alex could not help noticing the contrast between his rather crestfallen mother and father and his exuberant uncle and aunt. He did not go to bed until ten and was left to his own devices over washing and cleaning his teeth. That had happened more often than not lately in any case and, after he had said goodnight, they did not come in to see him.

  In the room he had been given the window was ajar behind the blackout curtain and he could hear, in contrast to last night, loud noises in the street. He did as before, stood on the padded bench and looked under the blackout. People were going wild outside, some dancing, nearly all singing, though not the same songs as each other. Allied flags were being waved. There were people in uniform, people not in uniform, someone with very little on at all, even people sitting on the roofs of beleaguered buses with bottles in their hands from which they drank frequently and deeply. They were all being happy together. Then Alex realized why this scene was totally different from anything he could remember: some of the street lamps were on, and the headlights on the vehicles were no longer covered up in any way. The downstairs windows of the buildings still occupied were fully lit with no blackout in front of them. He was enjoying all this and he wanted to respond to the happy shouts that were rising frequently to his ears as he occupied his fifth floor grandstand.

  Then he felt Edna’s hands on his shoulders. She quietly said,

  “Into bed now, Alex. You don’t want to watch a whole lot of drunken fools in the street.”

  He obeyed because he was tired and had had his small share of the five remaining bottles himself, but he did not consider people who were dancing because more than five years of war were over to be all that foolish. As he snuggled into his sheets, he called his mother “old misery guts,” but he made sure she was safely out of earshot before he did.

  His dreams were sparkling ones and the people involved were unstintingly cheerful. He had heard the phrase “uninhibited behaviour” on certain respectable lips used pejoratively about what they had seen outside during the afternoon. As he dreamed, he fancied he knew what the meaning of it would be for those who had come out of years of fearful shadow into a light that made them feel free and happy.

  Then there was no more until George, shaved and dressed, gently shook him awake.

  “Come on,” he said, “Time to get up and go home. Be as quick and as quiet as you can.”

  He found his clothes and put them on, washed his face and cleaned his teeth in the bathroom and then found both his parents ready to leave. His uncle and aunt were nowhere about. They left immediately and not until they were in the street, making for the underground station, did Alex dare to ask,

  “Why didn’t we say good-bye to Aunt Hetty and Uncle Geoff?”

  “We did that last night,” replied George, quietly.

  “Yes. For good and all,” added Edna summoning all her supplies of vehemence.

  Alex was not told the details about their great falling out. He was sorry not to see them again, because he liked them. He did not ask George any questions until they were on the train from Paddington - and only then in the hopes of cheering him up:

  “Why is this line called the Great Western, Dad?”

  “There you’ve got me,” George replied. “But I imagine it’s like Great Britain that became bigger when they added Scotland to England and Wales. The man who built it was called Isambard Kingdom Brunel and he wanted to build a railway line westwards to Bristol, which was to be followed up by a sea voyage to New York. He had some great iron ships built to sail out of Bristol, but the businessmen in Liverpool had a harbour that didn’t silt up in the way the one at Bristol did and took his trade.”

  While George responded to his son with what he was able to call to mind out of a deep well as it were, rescuing himself for a little while from his deep misery, Edna who had no such resilience, feigned sleep in order to isolate herself. She had lost the elegance of yesterday, and George regularly looked up at her between his bits of information for Alex with a worried expression on his face. By the time the train left Reading, Alex himself went to sleep, to a certain extent deliberately, as he sensed his father’s distress and could not understand it enough to be able to help. This journey laid down the rules that became more and more a feature of the family game in the coming years.

  When Alex woke briefly at Didcot, he saw that his father was holding a handkerchief to his eyes and was glad for his sake that they were the only ones in the compartment now. He did not know about the thousands of displaced persons wandering about in central Europe, so he could be excused for wondering why his parents had to be so unhappy when everyone else was so glad that the war in Europe was over.

  He thought it best not to show George or Edna that he was awake and resolutely kept still with his eyes shut. He heard George say to Edna,

  “I wish you hadn’t said those things to Hetty last night.”

  “I wasn’t going to put up with her looking down on us like that.”

  “But she only said she was enjoying her new life and intended to keep her place at the hotel now the war is over.”

  “It was the way she said it, George, as if to pooh-pooh whatever we might be thinking of doing. She knows we’re in such a fix over not being able to go back to our old life and just sat there smug, counting her own blessings and not caring a tinker’s cuss about us.”

  “But I wish you hadn’t called her a selfish bitch with no concern for her own flesh and blood. That’s what got Geoff’s goat and the reason for his being angry and telling us to be gone by the time they got up in the morning.”

  “If that’s the way he’s going to talk to me after all I did for Hetty when she was a girl and poor old Mum had died, then I’m glad to see the back of him, and her too, with her stuck up la-di-dah ways. Who does she think she is?”

  “Well,” replied George, “There’s nothing we can do about it now. We can’t go back and say we’re sorry. It’s such a pity, though.”

  “Sorry! Say sorry! I thought you would back me up George, but you didn’t. You just let him say that and bundled me into the bedroom. Did you see the look on his face as we went? I don’t care if we never see either of them again. They made it quite obvious they didn’t want to see us!”

  Alex heard Edna start to cry and then to sob. He opened his eyes and pretended to be waking up.

  “Is it far to Oxford now?” he asked, to cover his pretence.

  Edna stifled her crying, holding her handkerchief over her nose and mouth, and announced, “I must go along to the toilet,” and left the compartment.

  “Mum’s upset,” George said to Alex.

  “You look a bit unhappy, too,” his son replied.

  “We’ll be there soon,” was all George could think of to say.

  As the train was slowing down to come into the station, Edna pushed the sliding door back and came in to retrieve her small case from the luggage rack. George stood up next to her to grapple with the big one with one hand while he put his free arm round Edna’s waist. Alex saw her flinch and move aside. So George got the case down with both hands, and looked grim as he slid the compartment door open again and the three of them left the train and stepped down to the platform without offering assistance to one another.

  Peace in Europe had come, but the war was leaving scars hitherto unnoticed while the adrenalin was still needed. Now these scars were seen and fingered as their causes were sought. Hopes of erasing them were probably vain. All three Rylands went to bed unhappy in the house in Botley Road that night and each one was closed off from any consolation that could be offered by either of the other two.

  III

  A certain normalization began which affected what the shops could sell. Haines’s shop over the road was suddenly sell
ing bananas. Edna saw people on a Saturday morning leaving the shop impatiently tearing the skins off the ones they had bought, not wanting to delay the rediscovery of the lost taste until they reached their homes. She called Alex down from his room where he was putting his shoes on and, still wearing her pinafore despite her own criteria of respectability, took him over the road so that he should have a banana to taste before they were all sold out. She bought a bunch of six: two each, she thought, and kept them in the brown paper bag until they were indoors. She took one out of the bag, made Alex sit at the kitchen table and solemnly taught him how to peel it. She said,

  “Go on then, have a bite.”

  Alex did, and the taste was fantastic to him. It was something he remembered, but was yet fresh to him. He must have tasted a banana before the dangers of the War in the Atlantic prevented their dispatch from the Caribbean, but the experience had been submerged in all that had happened since. He was so thrilled with this until now forbidden fruit that he agreed to save up the other one until dinnertime. No subsequent banana ever tasted as good as that one.

  A later experience was not so happy. Haines’s shop was also the origin of it. Ice cream was for sale there. Edna was anxious to produce some more happiness and had taken Alex to buy a cornet for him. Outside the shop, before they crossed the road to come back, she put it in his hand but did not tell him how to deal with it. He turned it upside down and was left with the empty cornet, feeling foolish and angry. Edna felt the same and exploded into her repertoire of disappointed words of rebuke. Alex tried to repair the damage he had caused by cramming the cornet into his mouth and saying how nice it was, but the scoop of ice cream in the gutter, which you could see from the front room window, remained for several hours. The rediscovery of that taste had to wait for several weeks since, as Mr Haines explained to Edna next day when she tried to make up for her own shortcomings, that delivery was a one-off and there would not be any more for some time.