by Tobias Hill
Dora goes deeper. It’s greener here. The walls are suntraps and rubbish traps. She’s getting near the sunken ground – the old elder is close to it – but she doesn’t like the smell here, which is of cats, and worse.
She’s thinking of the noise through the walls. This month new people have moved in next door, a young plasterer and his wife with singsong Liverpool voices. They’ve been nothing but nice to Dora, but she finds it hard to talk to them. At night she can hear them doing it. She knows Solly must hear it too.
Going at it like animals, Mrs Platt says, though Dora doesn’t see how she can hear them, three flats away, and upstairs.
It’s offputting, the sound of them. Their pleasures embarrass Dora; their joys shame her. She is not a prude. When they first came to London it was the same for them – worse – with the old lady next door, Mrs Gash in Cable Street, who banged on the wall and shouted horrible things (In out, in out, all fucking night!).
Dora isn’t ashamed of the act of love. But it has been hard with Solly, in that way, ever since he came back. Still she loves him, but it has been difficult. In that way.
And in other ways, too, it hasn’t been easy. There is too much that Dora can’t explain. She hasn’t kept things from Solly. She has told him what she can, about the bombs, night after night, and the fires; and the boy she lost, stillborn, and what the doctors said about the chances of another. She has told him how alone she was. How, when things were at their worst, she blamed him for her loneliness.
Sometimes the telling is not enough.
Well, but that’s enough of that. Other people have suffered worse. They’ve all had their wars. Chin up, is what people say. Onwards and upwards, Solly says, when he’s pretending to be a plucky Englishman. Shining uplands, and all that.
She clambers over a low wall, and there is her best elder. As it is every year, the injured trunk is heavy with flowers. It looks romantic, in the ruins, like a tree in an old tapestry. Dora knew it would.
She has put her basket down, is reaching to cut the first head, when she sees the man. He’s lying in the willowherb, not far beyond the tree. His beard is creamy yellow. He looks as if he’s been asleep, but his eyes are open now, and on her.
‘What are you doing here?’ he says. ‘What are you doing here, with scissors?’
He has a newspaper in the crook of one arm. Dora can see a bottle inside it. His coat is open; under it he wears a suit with a peppercorn waistcoat. The suit is shiny with dirt. His trousers are undone, and his shirt is pulled up round his belly. The flesh there, and the flesh of his face, is red from the sun, and unwrinkled. He’s all baby fat, as if some pressure fills him up from the inside.
He gets up slowly on one elbow. Oh, Dora thinks, but he looks just like St Nicholas.
‘Scissors,’ he says again. ‘There’s no call for that. I won’t touch you. What do you want with me?’
‘Nothing,’ Dora says. ‘I’m scrumping. I mean I’m cutting.’
The man holds up the bottle. ‘Have a drink with me.’
‘No,’ Dora says, ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Drink with me. Why won’t you? I saved it for you special. Put away your scissors, I won’t touch you. Oh, it’s you again.’
He’s squinting past Dora as he ends, and she turns and finds the little boy beside her.
‘Go on, Maurice,’ the boy says, but the man frowns and rears up.
‘What is it now?’ he yells.
His anger is that of a sick man. The boy steps closer. ‘It’s alright, Maurice,’ he says. ‘It’s clocking-off time now.’
The man screws up his face at the sun. ‘Is it already? Oh, ruddy hell. If it’s clocking-off, then it’s time to go home.’
The boy helps him to his feet. When he has his balance, the man pats the boy, gestures at them both – not rudely; it’s more of a salute – then starts off towards the Hackney Road fence, his voice rambling through the undergrowth.
‘– Good day to you, good health to you. Sleep well, won’t you? . . .’
Dora turns to the boy. She takes a breath. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
The boy doesn’t reply. He only stands, watching her. ‘You rescued me,’ she says, but the boy shakes his head.
‘Maurice wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘No,’ Dora says, ‘of course not’ – too quickly, because she doesn’t want to think about what Maurice would have done. She busies herself, finds her purse, and takes out tuppence. ‘Here you are,’ she says, and when the boy takes the coins she smiles, to leave it there.
She turns back to the elder, picks up her basket, and starts to cut. The man frightened her, but Dora does what Dora does with so many frightening things: she doesn’t think about it, and soon the trembling goes out of her arms. Everything is well again.
Except the boy is still there.
She can feel him, behind her. He hasn’t gone away. After a while she begins to watch from the corner of her eye. He has sat down behind her, on a low, crumbling wall.
It makes her awkward, as she picks. The truth is that it annoys her. She wants to forget the drunkard, but the boy won’t let her do it. Once she looks around, certain that he’s watching her, but he isn’t at all. He’s lying on his back, asleep or gazing up into the blue. She can’t be sure: his face is turned.
I’m a selfish woman, Dora thinks. He made the man go away, and all I did was pay him off, like a dustman or a salesman. That wasn’t gracious. It was brave of him. And I’ve no right to mind him being here. It’s not my home he’s in. And even if it were mine, he’s just a little boy. Let him be near me, if he likes.
She glances at him one more time, and he’s looking at her.
In Danzig, in her childhood, Dora had a bird in a cage. Her father bought it for her. It was a tiny cocky thing, unafraid of anything. Each afternoon her mother would put it out, on top of the old courtyard well, down behind their apartment; and every afternoon, the neighbours’ cat would come and sit by the cage. It would curl up there, its eyes full of adoring hunger.
That’s the look she sees in the boy’s eyes.
It’s only for a moment, and then it’s veiled, gone, and he’s only a little boy again, lying on a sunny wall, watching her pick elderflower.
Still, it’s unnerving, and so is the secluded silence that falls around them. Dora doesn’t like silences, especially not when she’s with strangers. They make her think of the rockets in the war, the ones that you could be sure would miss only as long as you could hear their engines.
Once she drops her basket. Some of the flowers come bouncing out, and in the nuisance of picking them up she makes up her mind to talk again. At least that will be better than this quiet.
She says, ‘Do you play here alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘You shouldn’t. It’s dangerous here.’
‘You’re here,’ he says then, and she has no answer to that.
She dusts off the fallen flowers. There is the sound of bees, and a scrapmonger’s bell and cry, somewhere back where people live. She cuts another flower, and then there’s no more room in her basket, and she has the best of them. Her morning has been spoiled, but at least she has the elder.
‘There,’ she says, and dusting off her hands, she smiles at the boy.
‘Finished! And now I’m going home. Thank you again.’
‘It’s alright,’ the boy says, with a wretchedness that gives her pause.
‘Aren’t you going home too? It must be time for your dinner.’
He shrugs, puts his hands in his pockets, and stays seated like that, shoulders still up. Like a little old man hunched against the cold, Dora thinks; and just like that, she remembers him.
‘But I know you,’ Dora says. ‘Don’t I know you? I’ve seen you before.’
‘In the Birdcage,’ the boy says, and Dora laughs.
‘Yes! That was you, wasn’t it? I was inside, and you were outside. It must have been cold,’ she says, but the boy shrugs again.
‘It doe
sn’t matter now.’
‘I don’t really go there,’ Dora says. ‘To the Birdcage. That was my only time.’
She doesn’t know why she says it, but the boy nods as if he forgives her. He gestures at her basket. ‘What’s that?’
‘Holunderblüte. You call it elderflower.’
‘Can you eat it?’
‘No, but I make a drink with it.’
‘Like in the pub?’
‘Not that kind of drink. Like lemonade. But I think this is better.’
The boy nods. He wipes at the dirt on his cheeks. ‘I like lemonade,’ he says.
She wonders if he’s slow. He seems a bit that way. His face – except for that one look – is so often expressionless.
‘Do you live nearby?’ she asks, and when he nods again, ‘Which side?’
The boy kicks his feet together, bouncing the worn canvas of his shoes. After a while, he says, ‘I live here.’ And he points – along the line of his wall – towards the sunken ground.
‘What do you mean?’ Dora says, but her voice is weaker, now: she has an inkling; she isn’t sure she wants an answer.
The boy bounces his feet again, looking by turns at them and at her. Then he jumps off the wall and begins to trudge off, down towards the sunken ground.
‘Wait,’ Dora says, ‘wait –’
When she catches up with him he’s standing by the flooded pit. The water is rank in the sun. It smells of sewage and decay.
This is silly, Dora thinks. I don’t like this any more. And she is going to tell him so, she has already turned to speak, when . . . is there something there?
Down the hole, above the water, she sees a slit of darkness. She can make out bricks, burned bricks, and, to one side, the black foot and angle of a timber prop. There is a bit of cellar there, or a shelter. The owner of the house might have dug another chamber, for the neighbours or the servants. Now the roof is almost collapsed, and nothing is left but a last bit of space.
Dora goes closer. She squats down in the weeds. The space is not as small as she’d thought. As her eyes adjust she begins to see shapes deep inside. Huddles. Nothing moves. She thinks they must be heaps of blankets or old tarpaulins.
‘Oh,’ Dora says. ‘You poor boy.’
She puts out her hand, but he shies, the way an animal would duck away from an insect or a blow.
‘It’s alright,’ Dora says, ‘it’s alright, I didn’t mean to touch you.’
And then for a while she says nothing. She stays, squatting by the hole, with the boy standing beside her. He doesn’t look at her, but neither does he move away.
He’s little, Dora thinks. He could be seven or eight, younger than Bernadette’s boy, but his looks are somehow older. It’s hard to tell, with the dirt and scars. She thinks perhaps he’s small for his age.
‘This is where you live?’ she asks finally, and when the boy nods, ‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says.
‘Alone?’
‘Yes. It’s mine,’ he says, and cuts his eyes at Dora, as if she might mean to take the pit from him.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Pond.’
‘Just Pond? Don’t you have another name?’
‘Moon.’
‘Moon Pond? That’s a strange name for a boy! It sounds like a Chinagirl,’ she says, and – just for a second – the boy’s face wrinkles in amusement.
‘Not Moon Pond,’ he says. ‘I’m just Pond.’
‘But Pond is a family name. You must be Something Pond. Don’t you remember your first name?’
He shakes his head, then wipes his face.
‘I’ve looked for it. I’ve looked, but I haven’t found it yet. It’s hot today.’
‘Yes, isn’t it! Very hot. Pond,’ Dora says, ‘are you thirsty?’
But he only shrugs his shrug: a practised, dumb equivocation.
‘Or hungry?’ she asks, and is glad when he nods.
‘Mostly,’ Pond says.
Dora stands. She brushes herself down. A thrill runs through her. In her mind something has been decided.
How extraordinary, she thinks. How mad. It is so unlike her, this decision, it is such a brave and sudden thing. But she wants to do it, she needs to it, and she will: it is hardly even a choice. Her mind has been made up for her.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘you know, I have food at home. There’s enough for three. If you’d like to come and have something with me . . .’
The boy, Pond, examines her. It’s more than watchfulness. His face is expressive again. His eyes are green and narrow.
‘What is it?’ Dora asks, and smiles to encourage him; but Pond’s eyes stay the same.
‘Three,’ he says.
‘Oh yes!’ Dora says, ‘well, because there is my husband.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Solly,’ Dora says, and she thinks, My God, what will Solly think? But Solly loves her, doesn’t he? That has never changed, however hard things have become. Solly will do anything for Dora.
‘And I’m Dora,’ she adds, ‘Dora Lazarus.’
The boy looks her up and down. He nods, as if content with what he sees. ‘What kind of foreign are you?’ he asks, and Dora blushes and blusters and laughs.
‘What a question! Well, I’m German. And also Jewish.’
‘Those are nice names,’ Pond says.
‘You think so? Really I’m Isidora. And Solly is really Solomon.’
‘Like the king,’ Pond says.
‘But you’re clever,’ Dora says. ‘Where did you learn about the king?’
‘In books.’
‘You have books?’
‘Not now,’ Pond says, and takes her hand. He, too, has come to a decision.
3. Autumn
After school they go out to play: Jem, Floss, Iris and Pond.
Their numbers make them brave. They’ve come clear across Long Debris, but this is where the Troll bridge is. You can’t play Troll anywhere else.
The bridge is made of brick and wood. The wood is old railway timber. Once the bridge was bricks and stone, but that was in another time. There’s a field beside the bridge, with chickens in a chicken run and one drayhorse, all ribs and hips, with its nose in a bag.
The horse is still. A lane goes under the bridge and into the trees, blue as slate in the evening light.
An old lady with a terrier peers at them as she goes by. Floss smothers a giggle in her fist. Maybe Iris will make her a troll!
Troll was Jem’s game first. It was his idea, but Floss made the rules. This is how it goes:
One hides. He goes under the bridge, down in the lane where the echo is. That one’s the troll. The troll calls Who goes on my bridge? Then it climbs up as fast as it can, and it waits. It listens to the bridge: no looking. When it hears a child it jumps out and shouts, Troll! If no one’s on the bridge, the troll has to go back, down in the wet where the echo is. But if anyone’s on the bridge, then they turn into trolls.
Then all the trolls hide under the bridge. They climb down where the echo is, and they all call out together.
Who’s the troll?
Iris is. Her face peers out, a sad imp. ‘I don’t want to be it,’ she calls.
‘Well, you are,’ Floss calls back. ‘It’s decided. You have to do it now.’
It would be better if it was one of the boys. It would be best if it were Pond. Then Floss would win for sure, the way she did before Pond came. And Iris’s a bad troll. She’s too scrawny for climbing, and sometimes she gives up and plays alone with her made-up friends.
They start. Jem is caught first. Sometimes, Floss thinks, he plays to lose. He just likes them to like his game. He wipes his specs and sighs and climbs down to where Iris is. They whisper for a bit together: then,
Who goes on my bridge?
Their voices mix with the echo. It becomes one sound, like that of the markets. It’s all one voice in the end.
Pond always waits too long. Floss is braver than him
. She doesn’t run – that’s a mistake – but she goes first, crafty, crabwise. She’s hardly on the bridge when there’s a splashing and Iris pops up. ‘Troll!’ she shouts, but Floss won’t have it.
‘Cheat. You weren’t in the echo place. You have to go back down.’
Iris does. They start again. This time Pond goes with Floss, but just behind. He shadows her. Floss twists round and glares at him.
Go away! she mouths, and he backsteps, like a dog, keeping his eyes on her. He’s chicken. He’s just like the people he lives with now, the watchmaker who works in the Lane but never shouts like a real coster, and his wife, who’s even shy of Iris.
Still, it’s Floss who’s caught.
Who goes on my bridge?
It’s just Pond now. He’s so quiet. He waits. He waits. He waits.
One more crossing and the trolls have lost; but it’s hard when there are so many of them. Jem pokes his head out early, grinning madly. He shrugs and clambers down. He’s getting tall: the climbing is easy for him.
Who goes on my bridge? the voice says again.
Pond creeps out. He ghosts forwards. He puts a foot on the timbers. The wind catches a newspaper and it flutters like a broken wing. He’s alright. He’s almost there. He’s so careful. His body is sure.
A man is walking up towards him. Under his cap his face is dark. He whistles as he comes. Pond stands still as stone. His sores itch as the man passes. His feet aren’t a child’s feet, and the trolls don’t come for him. The man is halfway across the bridge when he stops whistling. He slows and stops. He peers back at Pond.
‘You alright there, chum?’
‘Troll!?’ Floss screams behind them. ‘Troll!?’
When they’re done they sit together, dangling their legs.
‘Jump,’ Floss says to Pond. ‘I dare you.’ And he looks down from the parapet as if he really might; but then he shakes his head.
Jem tosses pebbles. The air smells of rain. Sweat is drying on their skins. The cold will get into them soon, the hunger will sharpen in them, and then they’ll have to go. Down by the trees the horse whinnies.
‘When I’m rich,’ Floss says, ‘I’ll own a horse, and I’ll feed it proper. And I’ll own a swimming pool.’
