by Tobias Hill
Floss liked her granddad. He used to give her Scottish shillings. She has a silver rattle he made for her christening.
Cut off. Like when you trim the blooms. You cut away the dead wood, the spent petals, stems and leaves, so that the punters see only the good. But Dad isn’t dead wood. Even though he got cut off he’s still well, he’s never spent.
Mum sits down. ‘Now, Floss,’ she says.
‘I didn’t do nothing!’ Floss exclaims, but her mum tsks.
‘Your father and I’ve been talking. I know you won’t like it, but I’m telling you and you tell your sister. I don’t want you going on the waste ground any more. You’re to stay off, both of you.’
‘What, Long Debris?’
‘All of it. No climbing fences. And never you mind why.’
Floss sulks, but her heart’s not in it. ‘For how long?’
‘Floss,’ her mum says, and her dad stubs out his cigarette.
‘It can’t be forever.’
‘No, not forever.’
‘So how long, then? A week?’
(And her voice has changed, though she doesn’t know it. It’s hard and sure, now; it’s the voice Floss uses with the other children. She sounds as unyielding, now, as her father, when he dickers a bargain.)
‘How long?’ she says again, but it’s her dad who answers.
‘You’ve been running wild,’ he says. ‘It’s time you were growing up.’
‘It ain’t fair.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ he says, and Floss knows by his eyes she will.
‘Bed now. And tell your sister,’ her mum says, as Floss grates back her chair.
The bedroom is all dark but for where light creeps in from without. As her eyes get used to it she can make out Iris in the gloom. She’s talking to herself, sitting the way she always sits when she’s playing her made-up games, with her head on one side, like a waiter. ‘What?’ she says to the air. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose so.’
She starts when Floss gets into bed. ‘What did they say?’ she asks, in her normal voice.
‘None of your business,’ Floss says. ‘Come on, will you, what are doing, just sitting there, muttering?’
When Floss gets in, Iris does. ‘I was waiting for you,’ Iris says. ‘Is Mum coming soon?’
Floss sighs. ‘Who cares?’
They lie side by side in the darkness. ‘We’re not to go in Long Debris,’ Floss says at last, bitter.
‘It’s not Mum’s fault,’ Iris whispers. ‘I think something bad happened there. I saw after school, there were all policemen –’
‘Who cares?’ Floss says again, ‘I don’t.’
She’s tiring now. It makes it hard to brood. She rolls into Iris’s flank. ‘I heard you,’ she whispers hotly. ‘Talking.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Iris says. ‘Anyway, I’m allowed to talk to him.’
Him is Semlin. Semlin is Iris’s made-up friend. She’s had him for a long time, just as long as they’ve lived in London.
Floss says, ‘What does he look like, then? Is Semlin handsome?’
Iris giggles. ‘Of course not!’
‘Well, what does he look like, then?’
‘He doesn’t look like anything,’ Iris says, and yawns. She is falling into sleep; the softness of it dulls her sister’s malice.
‘I can’t see him,’ Iris murmurs. ‘He’s not real.’
As if it’s Floss who is making things up! As if Semlin is her friend. She can feel Iris, shifting into sleep beside her.
‘If he’s not real,’ Floss whispers, ‘then why’s he called Semlin?’
‘Because that’s his name,’ Iris says, with the false simplicity of dream. And then they’re both asleep, one on the heels of the other.
*
EXTRA FOOD EXPECTED FOR CHRISTMAS
MORE TEA AND SUGAR
Mr Strachey, Minister of Food, stated at Westminster yesterday that there is an expectation of extra rations of tea and sugar for Christmas this year. There will still not be as much sugar as there was last year, although it is hoped there will be more tea.
Rather more poultry is anticipated. Fresh fruit, except apples, should be available, and at the beginning of December there may be another small allocation of dates.
_____
BORSTAL FOR £60 ROBBERY
Three boys, GEORGE EDWARD KNIGHT, 16, labourer, JOHN RONALD KNIGHT, 16, labourer, and JOHN ROBERT YEOMANSON, 16, driver’s mate, were at the Central Criminal Court yesterday sentenced to three years at a Borstal institution after pleading “Guilty” to two charges of robbery, and one of breaking and entering a dwelling-place and stealing therein. The RECORDER, Sir Gerald Dodson, expressed hope that they would be detained for the full period of time.
It was stated that the three lads had escaped from an approved school. While lodging at a Maltese Café in Pitsea Street, Ratcliff, they broke into a house at night at Shoreditch and attacked the male and female occupants, threatening them with an iron bar, and robbed them of £60 and various articles.
_____
MAN’S REMAINS ON BOMB SITE
BELIEVED KILLED MONTHS EARLIER
The remains of a man were found at 11 a.m. yesterday in the flooded cellar of a condemned building near Columbia Road, Shoreditch.
The remains were discovered by Paul Jones, dairyman, of Ezra Street, one of whose milkers had strayed into the condemned building. The remains were taken to Leman Street Police Station where a post mortem examination indicated that death occurred between three and four months ago. The cause of death was likely blood loss caused by multiple lacerations made by a sharp instrument – possibly a knife. In a statement to the press to-day, Police-sergeant Richard Wise, of Leman Street, stated that the remains have been reasonably well preserved by the enclosed cellar and the water in which they lay.
The three-storey Georgian house where the remains were found had suffered considerable bomb damage during the war. The man was about 5ft.8in. tall, and wore a covert coat, an overall suit and a knitted brown waistcoat. Police-sergeant Wise stated that the man is believed to have been living in the derelict building or in its environs. Officers from Leman Street and Scotland Yard were examining the bomb site to-day.
This is less than half a mile from Bacon Street, where Gerd Visser, an unemployed seaman of no fixed address and a native of the Netherlands, was found unconscious having been attacked and wounded in a similar manner in March this year, but there is no evidence to connect the two events.
*
A boy is walking down the road. He is slight. No one looks at him twice.
He is going home to his old home. Sometimes he still returns to it. It’s hard because it’s dirty and Dora hates dirtiness. He wants to do what Dora likes but sometimes he has to do this. He has to check if it’s still his. He has to look at the things that matter. He likes to sit in there, or lie ever so quiet where the clay has taken his shape. So sometimes he visits, and then he goes back to Dora and Solly.
It’s true that he has Dora and Solly. They want to be his mum and dad. They’ve given him room in their own home. They give him kites. It has happened perfectly, like you see on gravestones: Gone to a better place. But you never know. Be careful. Sometimes people change their minds and sometimes their hearts. Sometimes they pass on. The boy has gone to a better place, but neither places nor people last forever.
If he could keep his old home he would, but other things always want it. It’s a good place, a place he’s fought for, but now he’ll have to let it go. Already his smell is fading. When his smell is gone something will come, the rats or a fox or a bad man, and then the only home he’ll have will be with Dora and Solly.
That’s why he’s visiting now. Pond is collecting his things.
It’s Sunday, early morning, meagrely lit and mizzling. Pond moves through the flower market’s fringes, towards Long Debris’s southern fence. There are policemen there today, big blue men in ones and twos, but they’re as slow as Jones’s milkers, they don’t know whe
re they’re going any more than cows do, they don’t know the ways like Pond does and they don’t see him duck the fence and edge into the jungle.
He comes to the pit. The ground is damp around it. He takes care climbing down because his shoes are almost new, Solly got them for him special, but he can’t help muckying them.
Inside he shuts his eyes. He never used much light in here – he learned how it could make men come – but he knows it all by touch. Nothing is missing but his smell is thin. It makes his throat clench even so. It never used to do that.
There is a cat smell, too. There was one that used to visit, with fine fierce eyes, like Mrs Malcolm’s. He’d let it sleep with him. It would press right up touching him. It used to let him stroke it. I could eat you, he used to tell it, but he never did.
He takes the things that matter from the best high shelf. There are two piles of newspaper, the ones that were for keeping warm and the ones he kept to wipe himself, and he wraps the things in a clean sheet, like a parcel of fish and chips.
It isn’t a small thing, to leave. He’d like to stay. He’d like to lie down for a while, but he knows he should go. He puts the parcel in his coat and climbs out of the pit. The sun is getting stronger, and he stands and looks around, so that he can remember it. He won’t come again.
‘It was our place,’ Pond says, and Moon speaks like a echo.
It was our place, but we don’t need it any more.
Pond thinks of Iris’s ghost, and Jem’s story of the Airman. Iris and Floss up in the March mist, two whispering girl-soft strangers. It’s funny, because there was an airman. It was a long time ago. The man came down in the night. He was on a parachute like a big white moth. He was still moving on the ground, but Pond didn’t go near him, and in the morning he wasn’t, and people came and took him away.
Now there are police in the southern ruins. Pond skirts around them and goes north. When he comes out of Long Debris again he’s up on the Hackney Road. Two big boys are smoking in the shelter of a telephone booth, and one of them looks his way, but they don’t really see him.
He heads southwest. By Diss Street another copper is standing by the fence. He has a friendly old face with a beard. Pond knows him, has thought about him ever since spring. His name is Dick Wise.
‘What have you got there, then?’ Wise asks, and he nods at the bundle in Pond’s coat. ‘Fish for breakfast, is it?’
‘No,’ Pond says. He wraps his arms around his bundle. ‘My things,’ he says, ‘the ones that matter,’ and Dick Wise laughs an easy laugh.
‘Well, they’re the ones to hold onto. You keep them safe, son,’ he says, and looks away as if Pond has already gone.
He hasn’t, though. He studies Wise. ‘You used to live here,’ he says, and Wise glances at him again.
‘How’s that?’
‘You used to live here, before the bombs. In Quilter Street, with your sweetheart. Her name was Susan, but you called her Sukie. Only she died, in the war.’
Sergeant Wise stares at him. He starts to say something, and stops. His cheeks blush above his beard. ‘Do I know you?’
‘You used to,’ Pond says. ‘You did when I was small. You knew my name, most probably. Don’t you remember it?’
Dick Wise says nothing. He goes on staring at the boy with the narrow green eyes. ‘It’s alright,’ Pond says. ‘I don’t either.’
‘Lost it, have you? Your name?’
‘Yes,’ Pond says. ‘I’ve looked for it all over. My friend, he told me you might know it. My mum, my old mum, she told me that if you’re lost you should ask a policeman. He’ll help you find your way. Will you?’
Wise frowns. His face still looks friendly, but it’s only because he’s old and his skin has grown into that shape, like the clay in the hole, which keeps your form after you’re gone. His eyes aren’t smiling any more.
‘Go on,’ he says. ‘I’ve work to do. I don’t have time for your games, sonny. Away with you, now, I don’t want to see you again.’
Pond goes. It’s not far home. When he comes to the Columbia Buildings he goes through to the depot yard. One half is taken up with stacks of sacks and stacks of timber with a barbed wire fence around them, so you can’t steal anything before the council makes its houses. In the other half are parked one car and one van. The van is the spindlemaker’s and the car belongs to Iris and Floss; they’re the only motors owned by all the people in the Buildings.
Long ago a rich lady built the Buildings. Dickin was a famous man and he put her up to it. She did it for the Shoreditch poor. She meant the depot yard for their market, but the Shoreditch poor didn’t like it, they liked the streets the best, so that was where the market stayed. Thank you very much, they said, but we know what’s best for us.
Pond’s old father told him that. Pond remembers the words, but not the voice of the man who said them.
He takes the stairs up the north block. Not the eastern one, which is where his new home is. It’s best not to take his things there. He’s always tried to keep the things that matter good as new, but Dora won’t like them all the same. Pond has found somewhere else for them.
The stairwell is always dark. There’s an echo in it, but Pond goes quietly. At the top there used to be a laundry, but no one comes any more.
There are good hiding places here.
Above the stairwell is a hatch. There’s no ladder, but the arch is almost like steps, so long as you never look down.
The attics are dusty and dim. Here and there the sun comes through. There are things forgotten under tarps and little broken windows and places where the tiles are gone. Pigeons are crooing in the eaves. Pond wipes his shoes. He crawls inwards. It’s mostly dry up here, and sometimes the light is warm when the morning ends and the afternoon begins.
He sits up against a beam and takes the parcel from his coat. The hiding place is under the boards. He unwraps the newspaper and looks at the things that matter. There are only four: a map of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green from The Illustrated London News, the remains of his siren suit, his kangaroo cloak – with pockets, for when the bombs come and you have to get up quick-smart – and his knife.
When he’s finished looking he wraps them up again. He puts the parcel under a tarp. ‘Safe as houses,’ he says. His things will be waiting for him here whenever he needs them again. He should go home to Dora, now, but for a while he lies and drowses, with dust and sunbeams in his hair, listening to the world outside, the men and horses and motor cars, and the dogs, the women and the children. Just listening.
4. Winter
Five days and nights of smog.
The air tastes of old batteries. Columbia Road is a cloud forest. The great water fountain looms like a cenotaph. In the Lane the costers do their best, but the crowds don’t linger and they spend only if they must. A woman buys a twopenny bloater. A man buys a winter coat and walks away in it.
With December the weather breaks. The sun drinks up the mist. All week the days are bright and blue, but the nights are cold with a vengeance.
On Saturday, first thing, Mary goes shopping with the girls.
The queues first. Get them done with. Mince and liver, lard and sugar, vests and knickers. Cold hands on the ration books (do nothing with this page until told what to do). The butcher’s line is four shops long and mealy-mouthed with Chinese Whispers (hock, chops, giblets, brisket). Floss bites a hole in her glove (‘What did you do that for, silly girl?’ ‘Because it had a lump in it!’). Then the markets. Four grey heads of cauliflower, ten grey pounds of potatoes. Leeks for soup. Chestnuts for stewing. Skate for frying. Seven dabs – old and grey as the rest – and a decent bit of red-spot plaice for Michael. The women pressing up around them, reaching in to pinch the fish, searching their flesh for tenderness.
Oats and milk. Dried milk. Dried eggs. Tinned fruit. Tinned music drifting down from Bessie Pretty, the Long Play Lady. The girls are carrying. Iris has her face squinched up. Her arms are thin as strings.
A woman goes pa
st with a pram heaped up with parsnips and sprouts, and a baby wrapped up in the middle, jolly as a Christmas chicken.
They stop inside a telephone booth. Mary checks her list.
‘Done?’ Floss asks, and Mary nods. ‘Can we have a treat, then?’
‘Well, you’ve been good. What is it this time?’
‘Mr Izzard,’ Iris says, dreamy. ‘Mr Izzard and his Three Wise Birds.’
It’s the wrong way, and her feet are numb, but Mary lets herself be led. The girls are merry to be in charge. The peddler is by the Underground, and he has a dustbin brazier. Mary warms her face and hands – the pleasure is unspeakable – while her girls fuss around the cage.
The Three Wise Birds are canaries, dyed pink, blue and green. Inside their cage, one wall is lined with rows of wooden pigeonholes. The pigeonholes have varnished doors with doorknobs made of matchstick ends.
Both girls want the Pink Wise Bird.
‘Not a problem, ladies! Not an issue. He’s wise enough for the both of you,’ Mr Izzard says, and he leers at Mary as she pays.
Mr Izzard leans over the cage. His face is sunken as smoked meat. He murmurs to the pink canary; he clicks his tongue at it. It looks as cold as Mary is, but it cocks its head at its master’s mouth. It hops to the pigeonholes and takes a paper from one, rolled tight as a dog-end.
‘This one’s got your name on it,’ Izzard says to Iris. ‘A little bird told me,’ he says, and he drops the scroll into her hands, then does it all again for Floss.
‘You too, Mum,’ Iris says, but Mary says no. It’s money down the drain and it’s past time they were home.
Get ready! Iris’s fortune says. Good luck comes in great big bunches!
‘Look!’ she cries, ‘great big bunches! What’s yours, Floss?’
