When I Was Otherwise

by Stephen Benatar

  “But you’ve certainly baked a scrumptious cake,” said Beryl.

  “And I’m sure that just being able to relax for once in a while must have done you the world of good,” said Marsha.

  “Who’s been relaxing? I’ve used up every scrap of energy I had in thinking what a dreadful waste of time it’s all been. A whole day preparing to go out and buy a birthday card! And if I’d been just a couple of minutes later I’d have missed even that.”

  “I hope it’s for somebody special,” said Marsha.

  “My sister. And you both know, of course, how she and I get on, even at the best of times! But I’d never have heard the last of it if she’d thought that I’d forgotten.”

  “Well anyway, thank God, I didn’t have the day off,” said Beryl. “At least I managed to rush over and see Uncle after I’d finished work.”

  “The brooch?” smiled Marsha.

  “What else?” asked Beryl.

  “So is it there or is it here at the moment?” enquired Joan. “Forgive me, but I lose track.”

  “Who doesn’t? I lose track. Uncle loses track. ‘Oh, is it with me this month?’ he says. ‘Well, I hope so,’ I tell him, ‘otherwise it’s damned well lost.’ And Raymond’s coming home on Sunday.”

  “Oh, for how long?”

  “Only two days.”

  “But is it the first thing that he always says? ‘Darling, where’s the brooch?’”

  “No, of course not. Yet I just couldn’t look him in the eye if it wasn’t there. I’d go all shifty and stammer. He’d think there was another man. The family heirloom! His great-great-grandmother’s diamond brooch! The pride of the Rochdales! With Uncle in Praed Street.”

  “Oh,” said Joan, “I bet he’s got some pretty shrewd idea.”

  “No, none at all. I swear not. The shock would kill him. We’d be in the divorce courts before lunch.”

  “Come and join the party!”

  “But if you have the brooch,” said Marsha, “how on earth are you going to give him that lunch?”

  “Yes, Uncle asked the same question. I think he was going to offer to lend me something!”

  “Well, you know, my love, you’ve only got to ask…”

  “Thank you—I do know. Yet simply as a last resort. I made myself that vow.”

  “Oh, now that’s silly. What are friends for?”

  Marsha undid the clasp of her handbag; Beryl jumped up, stepped across and fastened it.

  “But if you won’t let me lend you something how can I tell you I finally bought that dress today? The one in the window at

  Mary Morton’s, the one I’ve had my eye on for the whole of the past week.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did! At last I took the plunge.”

  “Well, go and put it on, then!”

  “Shall I?”

  “Yes!”

  “At once!”

  She went out, but with the lounge door left ajar and her bedroom one as well, she could still hear most of the conversation.

  “Malcolm, some more cake?” asked Joan.

  “Yes, please!”

  Beryl peered across at the small pile of books on the coffee table beside him. “What’s the homework?”

  “Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus opstat / Res augusta domi.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It means—I’ve got a crib—difficult indeed is it for those to emerge from obscurity whose noble qualities are cramped by narrow means at home.”

  “Who said that? Your mother?”

  “Well, yes. She usually mentions it at breakfast. But Juvenal got there first. He said, in addition…,” and this time Malcolm was reading from a textbook, not from his foolscap pad, “that your prayer must be to have a sound mind in a sound body. Pray for a bold spirit, free from all dread of death, which reckons the closing scene of life among Nature’s kindly boons.”

  “This man was obviously a laugh a minute,” declared Joan. “Every bit as jolly as The Sleeping Tiger.” Which was the name of the film she was working on at present. Not a comedy. It was being directed by Joseph Losey.

  “Death alone discloses how very small are the puny bodies of men.”

  “Please! The poor man’s Bob Hope. Well, personally I think it disgusting the taxpayer’s money should be spent on such frivolities.”

  When Marsha came back there were ten minutes of admiration, of feeling the material, exclaiming at the lining, trying out the effect of various scarves.

  Then she said, “I think that my little boy, with his grubby knees and all that hair which needs cutting, had better pack up now and go and have his bath. The water’s good and hot.” She added, after he had said his goodnights and was about to pull the door shut behind him, “And, darling, don’t forget your fingernails.”

  “Oh, Mummy! Must you?”

  “I’ll come in later on and turn your light out.”

  “’Oh, Mummy!’” Joan and Beryl chorused quietly, as they heard him walking off down the corridor.

  “Grubby knees,” observed Beryl, “and prayers for a bold spirit, free from all dread of death!”

  “The headmaster thinks he’s doing extremely well,” announced Marsha, proudly. She told them again of several of the encouraging comments he had made at a recent interview. “And nearly every night, what’s more, he does the washing up.”

  “The headmaster?”

  “No, you big stiff. Malcolm.”

  “But isn’t he a pet!” said Joan. “I could eat every inch of him.” She and Malcolm sometimes went to the pictures together. “On Saturday let’s all go and see The Robe. It’s at Swiss Cottage. How about it, you two? My treat, of course. And, Beryl, would Helen like to come as well?”

  In fact, it was just an average sort of evening, no different in essentials to a thousand others—indeed, it could possibly have been an amalgam. But for some reason this was the evening which Marsha remembered that Sunday night in Hendon, twenty-seven years later, as she lay sleepless in the dark; sleepless and wet-eyed.

  She remembered it as the evening when after Joan and Beryl had gone and she was tucking up Malcolm, much later than she should have, he had said to her: “They’re very pretty, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, darling. Very.”

  Joan, the most glamorous and sophisticated of the three, who took an hour each morning to apply her makeup and to do her hair and who left a trail of scent behind her on the dismal stairs.

  Beryl, often scruffy and slightly tomboyish, yet with a much more delicate type of beauty, stunning when she wore a particular black dress and took more than usual pains with her appearance. Beryl with her white skin and her sparkling eyes and her chignon.

  “I shouldn’t think there are many ordinary homes where you get three such pretty women who spend so much time together!”

  “Oh, darling. I shall tell them what you say.”

  “No—don’t.”

  But naturally she did.

  Yet where were they now?

  Beryl, still living in Wimbledon, with Raymond and their daughter? (No, Helen of course would be a woman of forty by this time. How absurd!) She had completely lost touch.

  And Joan—dead half a dozen years ago; of cancer.

  “I bought a birthday card this evening. It was a real expedition. It took me all day to work up to it!”

  25

  Dan was out. Marsha wanted a bath. A large spider sat beneath the taps. She gave a little scream and ran to fetch Daisy, who was in her bedroom, with her coat on, packing the day’s needs into her shopping basket.

  “And I can’t flush him down the plughole,” cried Marsha, with a shudder. “He’s so big. It would seem like murder.”

  “And he might come back to haunt you?”

  “Don’t!”

  “But you’re quite right, dear. What’s he ever done to you that you should do that to him?”

  “It’s not what he has done. It’s more what he might do!”

  “Exactly, dear.” Dais
y took from her basket yesterday’s copy of the Financial Times, purloined from the bank. She made a roll of it and waved it over her head. “Excalibur! Once more unto the breach, dear friends! Daisy the Fearless Spider-Catcher!”

  “Will it be best if I just wait for you here?”

  “No, it will not! You great scaredy-cat. You can’t push me right into the front line and then turn down a place in the rear!”

  They proceeded to the bathroom, Daisy fierily twirling her sword and chanting the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

  “Oh, what a beauty! What a monster! I believe he’s staring right back and thinking much the same about me! He says he doesn’t admire my hat a great deal. Oh, my word, but isn’t he leggy! And fat! And almost blacker than a bus conductor!”

  Daisy gazed at him with all the deference one experienced duellist might feel towards another. And then prodded him with Excalibur.

  He scurried over the enamel.

  “Oh, Daisy, I do appreciate this. I’ll make you a special supper as a reward.”

  “That will be nice. Not that I’ve quite earned it yet! And not that your suppers, dear, aren’t always very special.”

  Daisy unrolled the newspaper and flattened it against her coat.

  “Now the trick of it will be to try to get him onto this—Master Solomon Spindleshanks, otherwise known as Mr Diamondlegs Eleven—and then lift him up and carry him over to the window. He’ll think he’s on a flying carpet. He’ll dream of Turkish delight. As long as he doesn’t fall off in his excitement! Will you open the window, dear?”

  Marsha did so. She opened it as wide as it would possibly go.

  The paper was now spread carefully across the bottom of the bath. “She stoops to conquer!” said Daisy. “Pass me that backbrush, will you, dear? I’m going to tickle his behind again.” The spider was induced to go in the right direction. “Gen up on your investments,” Daisy advised him.

  “You’re very brave!” said Marsha.

  “Now stand back, Pearl White!”

  “I shall! I am!”

  With the spider at the centre of the double spread Daisy picked the paper up at either end.

  “Got it!” she said.

  But her balance wasn’t good. The paper buckled. The spider dropped to the floor and scuttled back to Marsha.

  Marsha screamed.

  “It’s all right, dear. He won’t hurt you. He’s heading for the skirting board.”

  “If he disappears I’ll never dare to come in here again!” Marsha was pressed up against the wall, ready at any moment to dash through the open door.

  But it wasn’t easy keeping track of him: the lino was made up of large black and white squares.

  “Now you see him—now you don’t!”

  “There he is, Daisy!”

  “Ah, yes. That’s a good chap. You’re having a well-earned rest.” Daisy went down on her knees, holding onto the washbasin with one hand and onto the side of the bath with the other. She retrieved the toothmug she had previously set on the floor. “Now you appreciate your forty winks, dear, while kind Aunt Daisy is coming to take you out. There, there. Nobody’s going to harm you. Even the hairs of your head must be numbered somewhere—yes, how could it be otherwise? Sing him a lullaby or something.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Oh, well, never mind. Now gently does it, old thing. Oh! There he goes again! But he’s coming this way. Stout fellow. Over here, dear, and park yourself inside our nice yellow garage. Good Lord, Marsha, what a creature of intelligence and charm! An officer and a gentleman. Even if he does like to tickle.” Daisy had clapped the flat of her hand across the top of the toothmug. “Ugh! No, I’m really not enjoying that. Stop it, please!”

  “Hold on, though, Daisy. Hold on for dear life!”

  “You’ll have to help me up.”

  “Don’t drop it!”

  “It’s a bomb! If I drop it we’re done for!”

  Marsha managed to haul her to her feet. She hadn’t known she’d have such strength. She had the will of a desperado.

  The bomb remained intact, its lid still shakily in place.

  “Careful now, Daisy. Don’t stumble.”

  “Rock-a-bye-baby on the tree top… Somebody’s got to sing to it, poor frightened mite. His wee little heart must be thudding fit to burst!”

  “So’s mine.”

  Daisy arrived at the window—Marsha beside her, with her hands beneath her elbows.

  “Here we are, then,” cried Daisy. “Don’t forget to pull the ripcord! There he goes, dear. And remember, now, you’ve got to fall properly. Don’t crack your head on the concrete. Happy landings!”

  Daisy leant out as far as she could, as though to make sure her friendly foe would follow her instructions. For one wild moment Marsha was tempted to grab Daisy’s heels and swing them up and possibly provide her with a better chance of monitoring the spider. In her mind’s eye she watched Daisy flying out and swooping down and felt a thoroughly naughty satisfaction. It wasn’t even personal. How could it be, when just now she’d been experiencing absolutely nothing but gratitude towards her stalwart but unsteady sister-in-law?

  “Oh, thank you, Daisy. What a relief! I think you’ve saved my life.”

  “I quite believe you, dear. You’re white as a sheet. What you need now is a small drop of something to bring back the colour to your cheeks.”

  “Oh, we could both do with a small drop of something! Even if it is only ten o’clock in the morning! Let’s see if there’s a little whisky in the cupboard.”

  “My word! A nip of whisky at ten o’clock in the morning! (Yes, there is, dear.) What decadence! What fun! I’m going to put the flags out. What a real little adventure we’ve both been having! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself.”

  They made their way downstairs. Daisy had collected her shopping basket and her walking stick and gloves. The Financial Times was back in place.

  “Yes, a real little adventure. Would you believe: I actually did put out the flags on one occasion? Nothing big. But they certainly stood for something.”

  26

  On a Friday night in the summer of 1942, when Marie lost the glass from both her bedroom and sitting-room windows, there was a direct hit on a block of flats some fifty yards away. The following afternoon Daisy came home from the ambulance station with a skinny, trembling six-year-old, whom she carried wrapped up in an eiderdown.

  “Like Cleopatra in her carpet! Except that this one’s called Jimmy and he’s suffering from shock. I said we’d take him in for a day or two till things got sorted out. In fact, I insisted upon it, scooped him up from under their wet noses while they were still just wiggling and waggling in the wind.”

  Marie didn’t stop to ask questions. She instantly took the child and fed him and bathed him and put him to bed. She sang to him while he was in his bath—“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!”—poking her finger in his navel on every ‘boom’. It was the only thing that elicited a smile from him.

  Afterwards Daisy told her what had happened.

  “His uncle was head porter at the flats. This poor mite was on a visit there with his mother and two sisters. The mother and sisters were killed outright, the uncle died in hospital. Jimmy escaped unhurt. But when they brought him into the station—it was the first thing that I saw of him—he was crying out how he wanted his mummy, where had they taken his mummy, why couldn’t he go to see her? He spent the night on a couch, alternately dozing and sobbing and wanting to get up and wander round the station. Wander out of it, more like.”

  She broke off. Suddenly she shook her fist at the boarded-up window.

  “Oh, blast and curse every last one of them!” she cried. “For ever and ever, amen!”

  “What’s going to become of him?” asked Marie.

  “Well, it seems there may be a father somewhere. No one’s managed to find him yet.” But now that the gleam had gone from her eyes she was left looking exhausted. “God, though, what a night! Edgware Road and Marble Ar
ch. Paddington, St John’s Wood. Gas mains, water mains. Blood everywhere. Fire. People having hysterics. Bedlam isn’t the word for it.”

  Then, surprisingly, she gave a chuckle.

  “But you should have seen me last night hacking my way through mountains of red tape!”

  She picked up her glass. It was whisky, which Marie, herself almost a tee-totaller and strongly opposed to the black market, had nevertheless paid an exorbitant price for. She savoured it lovingly.

  “You see, I had a girl in the ambulance,” she said at last. “She died on the way to hospital. And the hospital authorities wouldn’t take her in. They just wouldn’t. Can you believe that? Well, naturally I wasn’t going to stand any nonsense. I told them all four bunks would definitely be needed, that it was impossible to drive around with a corpse. ‘So if you can’t think of anything else,’ I said, ‘simply throw it in the gutter. Use some initiative. Try to be inventive.’ My dear, you should have seen their faces. I wish I’d had a camera.”

  “But, Daisy, won’t there be repercussions?”

  “Oh, let there be, I’ll be ready for them! All I know is, I was driving back to where I was wanted and those four bunks were almost never empty.”

  She sat for a long time cradling the whisky and gazing up at the Pissarro. In some ways she was quite enjoying this war. She knew it and she made no bones about it. She felt alive and useful and at her best. Even the red tape was fun to contend against. “Daisy,” people would say, “you just don’t care who you cock a snook at! You haven’t got an ounce of fear in your whole body.”

  Well, the first bit was true. The second most certainly wasn’t.

  She was afraid of the bombs: the heart-stoppingly loud and drawn-out screams they made, the chilling pause before the crashes. She was afraid of the anti-aircraft barrage when she wasn’t in the ambulance: many nights on her short walk home (she refused to run) she was convinced she was going to be hit by shrapnel. She was afraid that, buried beneath the rubble, there were live people who had somehow been missed by the rescue squads: she was constantly imagining she could hear a movement or a whimper or a plaintive miaow emanating from recently bombed sites; and on dozens of occasions, even when she knew it was probably just the results of her neurosis and the workings of her overstrained mind—God, how tired she was so much of the time, how tired they all were—she was up there scrabbling amongst the piles of debris, feverishly tearing at bricks and stones and timbers and exhorting passers-by to do the same. She sometimes dreamed, during the few snatches of sleep she did get, on average three or four hours per day, that she herself was being buried alive.