Maggie’s Kitchen

by Caroline Beecham

  ‘Really?’ she said, her relief mixed with guilt. ‘What about Upper Street? Is Sutton Chambers okay?

  ‘Yes, Rose will be safe. Bloomin’ miracle, but she’ll find everything right as she left it. Wish St Paul’s had been as lucky. It’s tragic, Maggie, really tragic. Parliament and the National Gallery too . . .’ He sighed. ‘Well, you’d best be getting yourself home. I expect your shift will be starting soon enough and they’ll be needing good sustenance today.’

  Maggie nodded. ‘Bye then, Bill.’

  ‘See you, love.’

  Thinking about her boss hovering at the kitchen door, beady eyes watching until all the girls had arrived, she picked up her pace; for Mr Ferguson, not even the worst raid yet would be a good enough reason to be late.

  But Mr Ferguson would just have to wait a bit longer. Right now Maggie had to collect the ingredients for Churchill’s rarebit and make her way over to Gillian’s house so that she could feed the girls before the older ones left for school. There was a small loaf in the pantry that she had been saving for tonight, she recalled, and enough cheddar for one—but that could be stretched for the three girls by mixing it with some milk and her last remaining egg. It would be good to give the girls this treat; this could be the last time Maggie saw them for a while, she knew, for Gillian was expecting the children to be evacuated again at a moment’s notice. Gillian was so isolated without her husband and family that she welcomed any company and support Maggie could give her. Maggie understood how she felt, with her own father dead and her mother no longer around.

  When she stepped inside her gate she had to duck beneath the old apple tree that dominated the small walled garden, its splayed branches home to dozens of young dew-speckled apples, now covered with soot. In just a few weeks she would be able to make a rich apple pie or something more adventurous that she would never have the chance to try at the canteen: pork stuffed with apple and sage, perhaps, or an apple charlotte. Maybe she should speak to Mr Ferguson today about a vegetable garden and then see if it might tempt him to introduce some new dishes; anything to improve the meals they were serving at the moment.

  Approaching the house, she pulled the keys from her pocket.

  The Victorian house was built at the same time as the rest of the houses in the street; solid brick walls, slate roofs that seemed to float above the buildings and meld with the grey of the dawning skies, windows tall enough to allow in the long reach of summer but small enough to keep out the drafts since the summers were never long enough. Only the front doors were unique, each one painted in a colour of the owner’s choosing—at least, they had been until recently. If you had looked down the street twelve months ago you would have seen pops of bright red, cornflower blue, grey and green. Now they were all dark grey or black, military-issue colours for the blackout. Mrs Foster’s door had been postbox red, a clear streak of which was now visible beneath the lock; her hand had been shaking so much that her key had missed the keyhole.

  Maggie took a deep breath and waited for her hand to stop trembling before trying again. Pushing the door closed behind her, she leaned back against it, slipped the keys into her coat pocket and closed her eyes.

  Her eyelids blinked open to see a small group of grazing cows, among them a number of calves suckling, the broad open fields flattening out around them and the hills rising up behind. The walls of the hallway were filled with her landlady’s paintings, rich oils of pastoral scenes that Maggie would never have chosen herself but had grown accustomed to in the short time she had been here. These small rooms on the ground floor were her own private sanctuary, and although they were furnished according to someone else’s taste—velvet sofas from a previous era and curtains that would look better in a nursing home—this was her home for now and she felt relieved as she looked around, and grateful to Mrs Foster for accepting the low rent that was all Maggie could afford on her wage.

  Her sense of relief was abruptly shattered by a noise—footsteps creaking across floorboards and an unexpected screech as a lock was wrenched, splintering the wood.

  She tensed, unsure which way to run, not knowing whether the noise was coming from inside or out. But then she saw a dark fleeting outline that sent a shiver up her spine, causing every hair on her body to stand on end.

  Her exhaustion and fear suddenly forgotten, Maggie rushed down the hallway and into the small kitchen, just in time to see a pair of shabby black boots disappear out the pantry window.

  ‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing? Come back here!’

  The small kitchen had been ransacked; stone jars pulled from shelves, tins and pots upended, the contents spilled across the worktops. The breadbin was empty, her weekly ration and homemade soda bread gone. She looked in the meat safe; the bacon was gone too. That was everything for the week; there was no way she could replace them now, nothing she could do. She could try to eat at work, but Mr Ferguson was so mean it was unlikely he’d allow it. She had the emergency larder concealed at the back of the pantry for safekeeping, although the small portions of flour, baked beans, coffee, evaporated milk and rice recommended by the Ministry of Food wouldn’t last her long.

  Standing a cream china pot upright and replacing the lid, she reached to the back of the pantry. But there was an empty space where the emergency food pack should have been.

  Her mouth fell open in dismay, then she raced for the back door.

  Outside, she noted that Mrs Foster’s prized hen, Matilda, was still in her coop. That was something to be grateful for, at least. The back gate was never locked so she easily pushed through and out into the back lane in time to see a nimble figure turn the corner into St Peter’s Street.

  Maggie ran for the corner and was soon sprinting down the tree-lined avenue, passing people as they straggled back to their homes from the Angel underground a few streets away. It was where she would have gone if they had been given more notice of the raid.

  ‘Hey, miss, you okay?’ an MP shouted after her.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied over her shoulder, realising how odd she must look, running so fast after the raid was over. ‘I’ve got to catch my dinner . . .’

  The figure seemed to be getting further ahead but, even though she was short of breath and her body still ached, she wasn’t giving up. She had lived in Islington most of her life and knew it like the back of her hand; they were headed towards Regent’s Canal, which was mostly deserted now, its residents long gone. There certainly wouldn’t be many places to hide; the rats had moved in as soon as the men had left for war and the women and children for the countryside, but even the rats had now set their sights higher and were beginning to inhabit the crowded streets around her.

  Across the road another Georgian terrace gave way to a landscape of rubble and earth and there was the thief, scaling a mound of debris with the confidence of a mountaineer on a bona fide expedition. Behind the rubble stood Maggie’s old school, Noel Road primary, a three-storey Victorian building; proud sole survivor, erect and defiant.

  She watched as the small figure disappeared inside.

  As she squeezed through the temporary fencing, taking care not to snag her clothes, Maggie felt a lot calmer, her anger transformed into curiosity about this thief who had come all the way to Danbury Street to steal her food.

  In the dim light of dawn she could see the school windows were boarded up. Signs warned DANGER: KEEP OUT and UNSTABLE BUILDING and for a moment she hesitated; perhaps it was best just to let the culprit get away. But no—she was intrigued now, and so continued on, slipping under the rope that cordoned off the dilapidated building, stepping over the wreckage and edging around the larger fragments of fallen masonry, one of the building’s once-elegant gargoyles staring up at her from the ground. Reaching the front door, she tugged at the brass handle. The door’s bottom edge screeched across the stone floor. She stopped for a moment, listening.

  There was only the whisper of wind down the long corridors and the banging of a forgotten window somewhere. She stepped i
nside.

  The musty furniture, the faint chemical smells, damp books and lingering cooked lunches; she wasn’t sure if they were real or imagined as memories of her own school days came flooding back. It occurred to her suddenly that the thief she had been chasing might be a child. Who else would hide in a school, know their way around, be small enough to fit through her window and daring enough to try? The thought of a child living here, scavenging for food, made her more determined to find him or her. But the school was vast; where should she begin to look? As she moved past the empty classrooms she thought about where she would hide—near a kitchen or toilet, somewhere with running water, if there was still any available.

  Mrs Stoner’s thick Scottish brogue echoed around her as she passed the home science rooms: ‘Maggie Johnson, you will not handle the utensils before you have washed your hands.’ She was the only teacher Maggie ever truly liked, the only reason that she finished school when so many of the other girls left before they were fifteen, and one of the reasons she had become a cook.

  She moved past empty classrooms into the back part of the building, where hardly any light penetrated into the concrete rooms; the common rooms were here, she remembered, next to the kitchens. It was as if the intervening decade had vanished; she was looking at the same chipped wooden doorframes and breathing the same clouds of chalk dust, inhaling the same bitter smell of boiled cabbage. She was a schoolgirl again, struggling to swallow inedible meals. The only difference she could see was that the metal lockers and filing cabinets had gone—no doubt taken away to be melted down and reinvented as objects that might help in the war effort.

  A shallow light flickered from under one of the doors; it was the entrance to one of the storerooms. Her footsteps slowed: instinct told her that she was getting closer now, but she hadn’t even considered what she was going to do when she confronted the intruder.

  She flexed her fingers, suddenly aware that she was empty-handed, carried no weapon or tool with which to defend herself. Was this how Peter had felt before he was killed? She didn’t even know if he’d had a chance to defend himself, the details of his death had been so vague. She pictured the telegram, its stained paper and the uneven typeface; ink thicker on one side of the letter than the other, the typewriter clearly damaged or the ribbon nearly at the end of its life, and she remembered thinking it a mark of disrespect to send notification in such a way. And then she had read the words:

  It is my painful duty to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office notifying the death of Peter James Marshall. The report is to the effect that he was killed in action.

  She had tried to find out more from the men he served with and from the ministry but it was pointless; the rest of the infantry were still drafted or convalescing, and the injured soldiers hadn’t been able to help. Lieutenant Douglas Potter had been a friend but was either unable or unwilling to talk; he didn’t reply to any of her letters and finally they had been returned unopened from the Surrey address where they had been sent. Peter’s captain advised her that he was very sorry but he was unable to discuss the matter. And so she had been left to her own imaginings, in which he had endured hours, perhaps days, of unimaginable pain before suffering a violent and lonely death. Or perhaps he was in a prisoner of war camp somewhere, or recovering in a hospital here in England, but with no memory of who or where he was. She had read stories like this and heard reports on the radio of families being reunited when loved ones had long been given up for dead. Why not her, why not Peter?

  She placed her hand on the doorknob, readying to turn it.

  It was possible, after all, that these last eleven months had just been a terrible mistake. That somehow, somewhere, Peter was still alive. That one day, he might return.

  Her heartbeat had settled, her breathing more regular now.

  She turned the knob and eased open the door.

  The momentary brightness faded and she could see a small figure sitting cross-legged on the floor in the centre of the room, scruffy black boots tucked beneath him. He was holding her bag of bread in one hand, while feeding himself with the other, only his big brown eyes moving as they flicked up and down her.

  He was much younger than she had thought, only about eleven or twelve, but with a knowing look that was usually the reserve of an older child. His light brown hair was matted and longer than was the norm, his complexion pale except for a scattering of freckles. From his grubby hands and torn clothes she guessed he had been living rough for a while; the freckles could even be dirt.

  He didn’t stop eating, but carried on watching her as she looked around, scanning the room for signs of anyone else.

  But there was no one else, she quickly realised, nor any signs of the storeroom it had been. Once textbooks and boxes of pencils and chalk had filled the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined three walls of the room, but now carved wooden toys, metal cars and model planes, all made from discarded junk, had been carefully arranged so that they looked as if they were ready to take off or drive away. There were half a dozen flickering candles propped upright in glass jars beside them, giving the collection the appearance of a bizarre childish shrine.

  ‘These are amazing,’ Maggie said, momentarily forgetting what had brought her there. ‘Did you make them?’

  The boy shoved another handful of bread into his mouth.

  ‘You by yourself?’ he asked, still chewing.

  She nodded. ‘You’re clearly very hungry, but why steal from me?’

  ‘I’ve seen you,’ he said, spraying crumbs. ‘You work in the canteen.’

  She was surprised. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Must have plenty of food over there. Figured a cook would be taking a bit extra home.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong, and that food is supposed to last me. What are you doing here anyway? How old are you?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Where’s your family?’

  ‘That’s none of your business either.’

  He looked younger now, the bravado gone and the fullness of his stomach enabling him to relax as he leaned back against the legs of a chair.

  ‘I could report you, you know. Stealing, breaking and entering—they’re criminal offences. You could be in a lot of trouble . . .’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said, his bravado deserting him now.

  Maggie raised an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘They’d lock me up,’ he said, looking panicked. He sat up straighter.

  ‘It’d teach you a lesson. Come on, tell me where your parents are and I might let you off.’

  He said nothing, so she waited, moving over to pick up one of the model aeroplanes. It had beer bottle-top wheels, a crushed tin can body and its rough edges had been filed down, the intricate wires and clips that knitted it together crafted into shape. A tiny pair of pliers sat on the shelf below alongside another half-built machine.

  ‘So you making your own private fleet?’

  ‘That’s a Spitfire,’ he said, adding, ‘One of ours.’ He pushed the fringe out of his eyes.

  ‘It’s really good,’ she said, rotating it in her hand, examining the detail of the tiny propeller and the small door at the back that opened for the imagined cargo it might hold.

  The boy’s gaze also stayed on the machine, the hint of a proud smile playing on his lips. He reminded her of Ernest; not just in his appearance but because her brother, too, had loved making things, building with his hands. One week a cubby house for them to play in, the next week a billycart to take up to the highest point of the heath and race, screeching and breathless, to the bottom. He had always been the one to invent the games and the one to break the rules, with Eddie and John constantly following in his wake, trying to repair the damage he left behind.

  ‘Helps the nights go quicker—especially when there’s a raid,’ he said, rising and coming over to take the model from her, placing it carefully back on the shelf.

  ‘Don’t you go to the shelter?’
/>   ‘Waste of time. Get blown up trying to get there. I’m better off just stayin’ ’ere.’

  ‘But what do you do for food . . . when you’re not stealing it?’

  ‘There’s good allotments round here, few hens for eggs too, if you know where to look. I get by.’

  ‘When was the last time you had a proper meal . . . a hot meal?’

  He looked at her, the vague ghost of memory flickering across his face.

  ‘Can’t remember . . . a few weeks ago, I suppose. Last time I had some meat, anyway.’

  She considered him for a moment as he lowered himself stiffly back down to the floor.

  ‘So you a real good cook then?’ he asked.

  Suddenly she was aware of the time passing. ‘Do you know how late you’ve made me?’ she demanded.

  ‘What kind of things do you make?’ he asked, as if he hadn’t heard her.

  ‘Lots of things, but the food at the factory is pretty simple; it’s all soups and stews. Best thing when you’re cooking for lots of people. Heaps of potatoes and vegetables makes it go further. Other than that, it’s whatever we can get hold of.’

  ‘You make shepherd’s pie?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What about scones, can you make them?’

  She smiled. ‘With my eyes closed.’

  The boy’s face had transformed, his expression dreamy— so like Ernest’s when it came to food; she thought she could almost see his mouth watering.

  He sighed. ‘Here you are,’ he said, holding out the emergency pack he had stolen from her.

  Maggie reached for it, then let her hand drop to her side. ‘You keep it. You look like you need it more than I do.’ She considered him for a moment. ‘Tell you what, I’ve got to go to work now, but you know where I live. Come by tonight at half past six . . . you tell me where your family are and I’ll give you a good hot meal.’

  He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You mean it?’