Unexploded

by Alison Macleod

  He blinked hard. ‘You deserve more.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I do.’

  ‘I am … very grateful to you. Not just for … but because I believe you changed me somehow …’ His throat was tightening. He had to turn to the window. ‘Leah, I can’t tell you how much I –’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You cannot tell me, can you?’ She rose from the chair.

  Did he dare? ‘There is a concert, an outdoor concert, weather permitting. On the evening of the 16th.’ He plucked at his cuffs. ‘At the top of Race Hill. The old racecourse.’ It was the last risk he’d take. For her; he’d take it for her. ‘I’m afraid I cannot arrange a box, but I would see to it myself that one of my staff collects you and returns you safely home.’

  At the door, she hesitated and the line of her shoulders relaxed.

  ‘I am told that the pianist once played for the Tsar.’

  Her hand hovered over the knob.

  WINTER & SPRING

  37

  Snow fell through December, dimming the town. Pipes froze. The clock in the Clock Tower stopped. The power failed. Hearts failed. Dogs drowned, surprised by the icy sea. Still Brighton braced itself for disaster, for enemy ships on the horizon. The wait was a cold fever. Dread flattened hope like a late frost, and its residents stifled in the cold as they had stifled in the heat.

  Outside Mrs Dalrymple’s bedroom door, in the hush of a shadowy corridor, Evelyn knocked twice, and, hearing nothing, entered with Philip. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust; for her mind to navigate a path through the intimate gloom. The room smelled of candle wax. Its windows were covered with a heavy maroon brocade.

  The details separated themselves only reluctantly from the shadows. Mrs Dalrymple’s foxtail stole hung limply over a gilt screen. Her rings lay scattered across a rosewood poudreuse, their sparkle all but lost to a chaos of puffs, powder, pots, gap-toothed combs and yellowing brushes. A tall taper was lit at either end, while, across the room, on a chest of drawers, a Christmas hamper stuffed with biscuits, flowers, cheeses and imported fruits rotted fragrantly. The room was part boudoir and part mausoleum.

  A fortnight before, Mrs Dalrymple had formally taken to her bed for no apparent reason, although she still received occasional visitors beneath its silk canopy. Three days before, she had announced to Philip from her window that she was dying. He had run in from the terrace to inform his mother, and now Mrs Dalrymple lay in state, propped, haggard and wan against fat bolsters, and covered in an eiderdown of pale gold satin.

  Evelyn envied her neighbour the privileges of age. There were dark mornings these days when all she could hope for was more sleep and a delay to the tyranny of the new day. Sometimes she wandered out to the terrace for air and found herself staring, mesmerized by the spot where the tin and its two terrible pills lay buried.

  After everything that had been said, Geoffrey had not given the woman up – Otto’s inadvertent comment had made that clear – and yet here she was, playing her part of the dutiful wife and neighbour. Why, she wondered, do we seem unable to speak of the things that matter most?

  I am alone, she wanted to say. I am so alone.

  The old lady opened one eye and looked past her. ‘Is that you, Philip Beaumont?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Dalrymple,’ he whispered from the gilt shelter of the screen. He turned his head away, but it was no good. In the reflection of a speckled looking glass, her bloodhound eyes were drooping lower than ever.

  ‘I hope you’re not growing up, Philip Beaumont.’

  ‘I’m not trying to, Mrs Dalrymple.’

  ‘What is it I’ve told you?’ she creaked.

  ‘Men,’ he repeated balefully, ‘are execrable buggers.’

  ‘I should like it very much if you would wind up my music box. It is here on my nightstand and plays “Für Elise” rather charmingly. My late and wayward husband bought it for me in Switzerland as a token of his undying guilt.’

  ‘Is there anything else we might get you, Mrs Dalrymple?’ said Evelyn, seating herself gently at the edge of the bed. ‘A glass of water or tea or a hot-water bottle? A book perhaps?’

  The old woman arched a frayed eyebrow and expelled a sigh. ‘Clarence used to nestle here, right here beside my hand.’ Her gnarled fingers groped the air uselessly.

  Philip approached the bedside table, took the miniature music box in his hands, wound the tiny handle, and laid ‘Für Elise’ close to his ear. But it was no good. He could still hear every mournful word.

  ‘I cannot imagine what variety of animal would make off with Clarence.’

  He wound the handle again.

  ‘Philip, please. It’s very delicate.’ His mother patted the edge of the bed. Pat, pat, pat. He’d never known so dreadful a sound. ‘You miss Clarence too, don’t you, darling? Come and tell Mrs Dalrymple about your birthday.’

  He nodded, pale as the white Christmas rose withering in its vase on the nightstand, but he didn’t move.

  ‘Philip turned nine last week, didn’t you? He had sponge cake with jam and a trip to the cinema.’

  Mrs Dalrymple knew. He knew she knew. His innards were jelly.

  ‘And did you enjoy yourself, Philip Beaumont?’

  He nodded quickly and whispered in his mother’s ear: ‘May we leave now? I don’t feel well.’

  ‘It’s rude to whisper,’ she chided. ‘Wait for me in the hallway, please.’

  Outside Mrs Dalrymple’s door, the shadows swallowed him whole, yet even in this other dimension, every word rang out.

  His mother: ‘Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like Geoffrey to send for our family doctor?’

  Mrs Dalrymple: ‘I am better left to die, Mrs Beaumont, without being bullied on my way by any doctor.’

  ‘Yet if you’re not feeling well –’

  ‘If one is dying, one is generally not feeling well, and that is also why the last thing I need, incidentally, is noise.’

  ‘Noise?’

  ‘Noises. Plural.’

  ‘From the Park?’

  ‘Through the walls.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘I hear noises through the common wall.’

  Evelyn shook herself. ‘Ah! So sorry. I have asked Philip not to tramp down our stairs but I will –’

  ‘From Number 5. Odd little sounds. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘You must ask your husband to investigate.’

  Evelyn smiled as convincingly as she was able. An eyelash fell into her eye and she tried to blink it away. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Mice, I should think, or a bird in the chimney.’

  ‘I’m not sure you understand me. Kindly remember, Mrs Beaumont, that we must all keep our eyes and ears open these days.’

  Was it a warning?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly and in the correct tone. ‘We must all be vigilant.’

  Remain alert.

  Train yourself to notice the exact time and place where you see anything or anyone suspicious.

  Make certain that no stranger enters your premises.

  38

  Father Christmas was not put off by the Luftwaffe. He left a boy-size RAF helmet and goggles, a card game called ’Vacuation, a box of pencils, a new sketchbook for Philip’s aeroplane drawings, The Wonder Book of Science, an orange from Spain and a diablo.

  From his parents, Philip had a knitted hat, a pair of red mitts and a shiny half-crown coin fresh from the Royal Mint. He gave his mother a bookmark and a box of lilac-coloured notepaper that his grandmother had helped him to buy. He’d chosen lilac because lilac was his mother’s favourite flower. He gave his father a shoehorn and a shoe-polish kit. His father gave his mother a box of soaps and a new nightdress that was, he told her, the latest in parachute-silk couture. His mother gave his father a blue silk tie and a matching blue handkerchief for his breast pocket. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘a colour I can correctly name! Excellent.’ He folded it Fred
Astaire-style and popped it in his pyjama shirt pocket.

  His mother smiled but not with her eyes. Later, she came in from the Park with red, raw hands and brussel sprouts that were solid with ice.

  After morning service at St Peter’s and a long visit at his grandmother’s house, Philip investigated, for the first of several times, Mrs Dalrymple’s suspicions about Number 5. He pressed his ear to its back door and ate his entire Christmas orange on duty, but he heard nothing at all, neither gull, mouse nor ghost.

  When he gave up and went back indoors, he found his father in his chair, blowing smoke at the ceiling, and his mother in her chair with her chapped hands folded in her lap. He strapped on his RAF helmet, spread out on the floor, opened his new sketchbook and tried again to draw a Spitfire that actually looked like a Spitfire while the King’s voice rolled gravely on. ‘If war brings its separations, it brings new unity also, the unity which comes from common perils and common sufferings willingly shared. To be good comrades and good neigh-bours in trouble is one of the finest opportunities of the civilian population …’

  His mother sighed and reached for her book. His father glanced at her, frowning, and asked Philip if he liked his new coin.

  Then New Year came and fireworks weren’t allowed, but Lord Baden-Powell died so they made do with that instead as Scouts from all over Sussex gathered on The Level for a mournful jamboree. Philip watched it all from Hal’s window through Orson’s new Christmas binoculars. Hal’s man was there to dress Hal and carry him from his bed down the stairs to his wheelchair, which waited outside on the drive. Hal’s man was called Marion and had arms like oil drums.

  Marion buckled Hal in and heaped rugs over his legs. He pushed his hands into mitts and placed a sheepskin cap over his head. Then he whistled for his greyhound, who was called Dirk. Orson said that sometimes on their walks, Dirk towed Hal’s chair down icy streets, and Hal’s face lit up with what everyone agreed was happiness.

  ‘Coming, Beaumont?’ said Orson. He pushed Dirk’s lead in his pocket, in case Hal fancied a tow.

  Outside, Marion let Orson and Philip push Hal’s chair, one at each handle, until they reached the frozen boating pond where Marion told them to wait while he and Dirk nipped up the road to put a bet on. Then he disappeared into the crowd, with Dirk trotting to heel.

  On The Level, thousands of Boy Scout legs were turning blue in the cold misery of the day. Grown-up men in Scout uniforms boomed out prayers and hymns through loudspeakers. Orson complained about the obstruction to Hal’s usual route. Philip peered through the binoculars.

  ‘Tubby! Look! There’s Tubby!’

  It had been months.

  Orson put on his specs.

  Tubby was taller but as thin as ever. ‘Poor Lord B-P,’ he said after he’d escaped the ranks of boys. His knees knocked.

  ‘Tell him,’ said Orson, although they stood together in a huddle, ‘that he may borrow one of Hal’s blankets.’

  Philip gawped. ‘Crikey, thanks, Orson. Thanks, Hal.’ He laid one of Hal’s blankets across Tubby’s shoulders, Red Indian-style. Orson passed his cornet of sweets to Philip, and Philip passed it to Tubby. ‘Ta very much, Orson,’ said Philip.

  ‘Ta, Phil,’ said Tubby, ‘it’s my lucky day,’ and Philip felt something warm and sweet buzz through his chest.

  Orson stowed the cornet in his pocket. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Are we ready?’

  ‘What about Marion? He told us to wait here.’

  Orson took up position behind Hal’s chair and nodded at Philip to do the same. ‘Is Norman coming?’

  ‘Are you coming, Tubby?’

  ‘’Course,’ said Tubby. ‘I’ll help you push.’

  The sun was falling fierce and red by the time they made it to the promenade. Behind them, the windows of the Queen’s Hotel were on fire. Before them, on the derelict beach, a roll of razor wire blew past like tumbleweed. Tank-traps rose like dark, squat lookouts. The wind was up. The tide was swollen with winter.

  Orson parked Hal at the railings. ‘What larks!’ said Tubby.

  They eased themselves through a small gap in the fence and made a dash down the beach, weaving their way through the anti-landing spikes as if the entire beach were an obstacle course and this was Sports Day at school. Orson waved them into the shelter of the Pier, out of the roar of the wind. Tubby was still smiling when Orson gave him a sherbet lemon, told him to sit down, took Dirk’s lead from his pocket and strapped him, looping the lead round and round his middle, to a steel pile.

  Philip felt strange. Orson hadn’t said anything about a game.

  Orson turned to wave cheerily at Hal on the prom.

  ‘I’m It!’ Tubby laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Orson. ‘You are. So close your eyes and count to two hundred.’

  The sea hissed up the beach. Seaweed lay rotting everywhere and, not far from the Pier, the carcass of a dog rolled in the surf. Philip stared at Tubby, transfixed by the dream of what you could do if no one was looking.

  ‘Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen …’

  Orson tugged hard on Philip’s arm. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two …’

  ‘The tide’s on its way in, not out.’ But already he could feel himself succumbing to the spell of Orson’s orders.

  ‘Hurry, Beaumont. Hal’s all by himself.’

  Philip turned, trudged back up the beach, and was halfway to the prom when he stopped. Was it a game? He looked from Tubby to the waves to Orson and back again. Then he remembered Clarence.

  The stones crunched loud beneath his feet as he ran. ‘Tubby’s not a Jew!’ he panted at Orson. ‘I told you before!’

  ‘You don’t know what one is.’

  ‘We can’t leave him down there.’

  ‘He’s a good pretend Jew.’

  The sea churned. Tubby’s count was growing fainter. When they reached the prom, Hal was trembling in his chair.

  ‘Hal, look!’ sang Orson. ‘Can you see the little Jew? He’s going to have a wash.’

  ‘Crikey. Hal’s having another fit.’

  ‘No he’s not, Beaumont. He’s shivering and he’s sad. You can’t just forget your promise now that we’re here.’

  Philip felt his brain go limp. Hal was shaking, Tubby was on number one hundred and forty-three, and the sea was already lapping at him like a tongue.

  He shook himself and turned.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Orson hollered. ‘I haven’t said it’s time!’

  Philip was running and sliding back down the shingle, the stones turning underfoot. ‘Tubby doesn’t understand!’

  ‘Traitor! You traitor, Beaumont! You’re no friend of ours! Not now you’re not! Do you hear me?’

  He wobbled into a run. Clarence was dead, Tubby was still forbidden, and now, Orson would hate him for ever because that was how much he loved Hal.

  39

  In the solitude of his kitchen-turned-apartment, Otto didn’t hear the footsteps on the terrace, and as the door creaked opened, tea from the pot splashed and scalded his hand. He’d forgotten to turn the key in the lock.

  The brown top of a head appeared, then a small face. The boy could have been the ghost of another.

  ‘I heard someone,’ the boy said. ‘Are you a tramp?’

  Otto looked and then quickly turned away. The boy’s arrival was a shock in his afternoon, but even greater was the shock of the resemblance.

  At Sachsenhausen, Dr Metzger had rigged up a mechanized hammer that could deliver a blow to the head every five seconds. Before he died from his injuries, Jakob – a bright-eyed boy who’d once lived with his mother, his baby sister and a pet goose called Gigi – went insane.

  ‘Am I a tramp?’ He ran cold water over his hand. ‘No …’

  ‘You look like a tramp.’

  ‘That’s because I am a painter, and the two are easily confused.’

  ‘Why does your hair look like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like it does.
’

  ‘I cut it myself. I’m getting quite good. I don’t even need a mirror.’

  ‘You do,’ said the boy. ‘You do need a mirror.’ He peered into the kitchen, observing its odd state: the table pushed up against the wall; the mattress in the middle of the floor; the vegetables and drawings that littered the countertops.

  ‘Have you stolen those vegetables from the Park?’

  ‘I have.’ His heart was leaden. Go, go, he wanted to say. But he lowered himself to his haunches, and met the boy at eye level.

  The boy stepped past him. ‘Why do you keep your shutters closed?’

  ‘You know already: I am a shameless vegetable thief. This said, I would be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone I was here stealing vegetables because the police would lock me up.’

  Philip didn’t want to say that he, too, understood the fear of prison. ‘Are you foreign?’ he asked.

  ‘Do I sound foreign?’

  ‘You do a little.’

  ‘Well, that’s because I’m Welsh.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Now then!’ He went to the sink and rinsed out a second cup. ‘Tea?’

  Philip nodded. Tea was foul but no one had offered it to him before in a grown-up way.

  The following day, three cheery taps sounded on the door, and he appeared again, bearing his sketchbook. ‘Father Christmas brought it,’ he said, and, in that moment, something crossed his face. ‘Were you here on Christmas Day?’

  ‘I was,’ said Otto.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘I’m rather good at being on my own.’

  ‘Without any goose or presents?’

  He smiled. ‘I am Jewish, you see, and we have different holidays.’

  ‘You’re a Jew?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A Welsh Jew.’

  ‘A Welsh Jewish painter?’

  Otto nodded. ‘A Welsh Jewish painter vegetable thief.’

  ‘Why do you say “Velsh”?’

  He could see the boy trying not to laugh at him. ‘It’s the vay ve speak in Vales.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Truly. For example, you and I would say “Paris”, but Parisians themselves would say “Paree”. It is the same only different.’