Blitz

by Claire Rayner

  The woman had gone glassy-eyed with affront at being called stupid and simply shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nothing else I can do,’ she’d said frostily and bent her head to her work with some ostentation, leaving Poppy to turn away, sick with frustration and fear.

  At least she’d been able to find out the trains that had left at the same time from Liverpool Street that evening. They’d taken him to the office directly from the centre, barely half an hour after they’d received him from St Mary’s Hospital, she had been told, but no one could remember which of the trains he’d been put on. Yesterday she’d gone to Colchester and scoured the area with the help of a reasonably sensible billeting officer, but there had been no joy there. This morning it had been Sudbury where the billeting officer had been less helpful, but the local vicar was very concerned. She was sure he wasn’t there. Now, it had to be Bury St Edmunds, and after that – but after that there was only a blank. He had to be here, somewhere.

  The train shuddered, jerked forwards a few yards and stopped again, but at least it had moved, and she closed her eyes and began to beg it to move, staring into the pinkly tinged darkness behind her lids and knowing she was behaving like a frightened child. As if her desires could have any effect on inanimate objects –

  But they did, for the train started to move, sluggishly, but at least it was going forwards and she opened her eyes and stared out at the telegraph poles with their wires swooping oh so slowly down to be caught again by the next telegraph pole, and felt a sudden surge of hope. He had to be here. It was logical he should be. She’d find him, somehow –

  The town was cold and wet, with a little snow lurking in the gutters of the narrow streets and across the broad expanse of Angel Square, and she walked over to the hotel, knowing that there at least would be a place where people would have information. They’d know the identity of the local billeting officer for evacuees if anyone did. And full of hope and tension, she took herself into the slightly dusty wood-smoke-scented interior and across to the reception desk.

  The very young girl sitting there looked up blankly when she asked to be directed to the billeting officer responsible for the town’s evacuees, and then scuttled off to bring someone else, and the tall man who came towards her with polite enquiry on his face looked as old as the girl had been young. No ordinary middling people left anywhere, she thought then. All the vigorous ones gone to fight and the country run by the children and the decrepit.

  But he was far from decrepit when he spoke and her spirits began to lift.

  ‘You want our billeting officer? A problem with your foster children, madam? Or perhaps you feel able to take some more? We have a great many in Bury who – ’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not – I don’t live here,’ she said hastily. ‘I’ve come up from London. It’s – my little boy –’ And suddenly she couldn’t go on. The fatigue of the past few weeks, from the night that Jessie’s had been bombed until now, overwhelmed her. She had hardly slept for days, had travelled hundreds of miles, first to settle Jessie in her country hospital and then to Liverpool to fetch David – and those two journeys had been quite horrendous – and for the past two days she had been criss-crossing Essex and Suffolk like a thing demented, sleeping in hotels where she could find one and all the time praying and worrying about Joshy. She had managed to phone home only once, and knew that at least David was all right, but now she could do no more. She just stood there with her face white and her eyes blank, and the thin old man behind the reception desk said, ‘Tsk, tsk – poor lady, I think you need a nice cup of tea.’

  At which point Poppy couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. A cup of tea. That cure for all ills, a cup of tea – and the laughter built and increased and then ran over into tears and she was sobbing miserably on the old man’s shoulder as he half dragged her, half led her to a sofa in the adjoining lounge, the little girl from reception staring round-eyed all the time.

  ‘Tea, Ellie,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Hot and strong, and bring two cups. I wouldn’t mind one myself.’

  He settled Poppy on a sofa in front of the fire and then bent to throw a log on it, and the flames leapt cheerfully and she thought – they looked like that on Jessie’s roof – and took another deep breath to try to control her tears.

  She managed it eventually, and when the tea came took it gratefully and sipped its over-sweetened strongness without complaint. It wasn’t the delicate China tea she much preferred but it was warming and sustaining and she needed it.

  ‘Well now,’ he said comfortably. ‘I think perhaps you’d better tell me all about it.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t bother you!’ she said, filled with embarrassment. ‘I’ve used up enough of your time already, and been a fearful nuisance – ’

  ‘But you said you wanted to see the billeting officer,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Well, so I do. If you could just direct me.’

  His smile widened and she thought – he’s not so very old after all. Or if he is, he doesn’t let it stop him at all. And again she thought of Jessie and had to take a deep breath to push her distress down where it belonged, under control.

  ‘I don’t need to. I’m Jeremy Markham. I’m the senior billeting officer. I have two or three assistants, you know, but I am the one who does all the paperwork. So if – ’

  She almost dropped her cup in her excitement, and set it down on the table beside the sofa with a little clatter and leaned towards him with her eyes wide and hopeful.

  ‘It’s never occurred to me I’d find you here – I – ’

  He smiled. ‘We aren’t full-time billeting officers, you know! It’s our bit of war work and we do it in our own time. Otherwise we’re busy earning a living, you see. I’m the book-keeper here at the hotel and so it’s convenient for me to be in charge. They all come in and out of town and I’m nice and central. And of course I have a phone here. Not everyone does, in the country – ’

  ‘Yes – yes,’ she said. ‘Well now, let me tell you what happened –’ And she told him as succinctly and as quickly as she could, watching his face all the time.

  He listened courteously and then very slowly smiled.

  ‘He sounds a resourceful child,’ he said. ‘Full of devilment – ’

  ‘Oh, yes. He is. He’s – well, I think he’s a delight, but he isn’t easy, I know that – ’

  ‘So we’ve found,’ he said drily and then held up both hands as Poppy shrieked and almost threw herself at him.

  ‘He is here, then? Oh, thank God, I knew he’d have to be – Where is he? Where can I find him? Shall I – ’

  ‘He’s in the hospital,’ Jeremy Markham said. ‘But don’t jump to conclusions! He’s very fit. It was simply that he kept trying to run off and it was impossible to ask any ordinary home to deal with him. So, I had him admitted to the children’s ward at the cottage hospital because there’re lots of other children to play with, and plenty of control over him. There’s no way he’ll be able to run away from Matron there.’ And he chuckled. ‘I thought he’d give in and tell us who he was eventually, once he knew he couldn’t get away on his own. But he’s been holding out for three days so far, and refusing to speak to anyone, which is quite remarkable. Never mind. I shall take you along there at once and see if he’s yours. But from all you say I rather suspect he is.’

  It had to be Joshy, it had to be, and she almost ran out of the hotel dragging a rather puffing Jeremy Markham behind her, to go to the hospital to get him. They had to walk all the way. ‘No car available, I’m afraid, or rather no petrol at present!’ the old man said cheerfully, but at least she was on her way to him. She repeated that over and over in her head. I am going to Joshy, I am, I am. It has to be him. Doesn’t it? It has to be him –

  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was, once she got there. The small and crowded children’s ward, where some children were sitting round a long table having tea, was rent with the loudest of joyous shouts that had ever been allowed to shake its hall
owed walls, as Joshy, seeing her, hurled his dressing-gowned self down the ward and into her arms.

  30

  It was tea-time in Laburnum Ward, and beyond the windows the thin sunshine gilded the dregs of the laurel bushes that straggled across the flowerbeds that flanked the gravel paths, or rather what had once been the flowerbeds; now they showed long rows of sprouting young carrots and onions and beets. The hospital took the injunction to ‘Dig for Victory’ very seriously.

  ‘So, listen, what have we got?’ Jessie demanded. ‘This you can’t call cake. It’s a nasty thin bit of cardboard, that’s what that is. This place is great on bedpans and sore bottoms and such like, but when it comes to food – pfui’ And she made the familiar old dismissive noise that had always made Poppy laugh.

  ‘I managed to save up our egg rations for two weeks – didn’t dare hold them longer in case they went bad – and we’ve made some pretty nice egg sandwiches, with some watercress I managed to get from the market. And then there’s a pile of Goosey’s best malt bread – she got her nephew to send some things down for it, and I didn’t ask any questions – and I managed to find some strawberries. See?’ And she showed her the precious punnet.

  ‘Hmm,’ Jessie said. ‘One each if we’re lucky.’

  ‘And we are,’ Poppy said serenely. ‘So stop nagging. And remember the hospital are doing their best, you know. They’ve laid on toast and jam – ’

  ‘Plum and apple,’ said Jessie with terrible scorn.

  ‘ – and some rock cakes – ’

  ‘Rocks is about right.’

  ‘ – and a bowl of ice cream.’

  ‘Ice cream!’ This time Jessie was impressed. ‘How did they manage that?’

  ‘I gather from Sister that they’ve put themselves out because they’re seeing you off.’ She grinned wickedly. ‘Can’t wait to get rid of you.’

  ‘Me? I’ve been no trouble to no one,’ Jessie said complacently. ‘Ain’t I worked harder than anyone to get up on my feet?’

  ‘Haven’t you just,’ Poppy said and hugged her. ‘You’re amazing. They all say so.’

  ‘Well, they helped a bit,’ Jessie said. ‘I mean, it was good, the operations they did. Didn’t like them at the time, but they worked and that’s what matters, ain’t it?’

  ‘That’s what matters,’ Poppy said. ‘And so does your own hard work. Show me again. I can’t get over it!’

  Jessie grinned and reached for her crutches. She was sitting very upright in a high-backed chair, beside her bed, and the crutches were propped beside her, well within reach. Now, moving extremely slowly, she took hold of them and as Poppy, sitting on her hands, literally, to prevent herself getting up to help her, watched together with the other five women in the ward, she just as slowly straightened up. Her legs were encased in very widely cut crimson slacks, which looked a little incongruous because beneath them appeared large boots, out of the sides of which thick metal callipers disappeared into the legs, but that didn’t matter; the frilly purple blouse she had on over them distracted attention from anything but itself.

  She looked a lot thinner when she was standing. The old bulky Jessie, so blooming in her roundness, had given way to a wiry figure with a stretched neck and sagging little jowls beneath her chin, but they disappeared when she laughed, and she was laughing now, so pleased with herself was she. They’d cut her hair too, into a neat crown of curls, and somehow she’d managed to persuade one of the nurses to colour it for her, having found her natural greyness much too depressing, and the curls bounced in their henna’d excitement as she set one crutch in front and swung her hips to make her left leg to forwards. She stopped to catch her breath, still grinning from ear to ear, and then swung her crutch forward again, and her hips the other way and her right leg swung out heavily and awkwardly to land a foot or so in front of the other. And still she grinned.

  It took enormous effort to do it, and almost ten minutes, but using the same swinging motion she crossed the fifteen feet of floor space that lay between her and the facing bed and then, as slowly as an ocean liner being pulled into a dock by tugs, turned around and came back, a little more quickly this time. And when she finally collapsed into her straight-backed chair the whole ward applauded.

  And so did the people in the doorway and Jessie turned her head eagerly and then squealed with excitement.

  ‘Joshy, Lee – come here, you two lobbusses – oh, come here, will you?’ And the two children came a little shyly into the ward, watched benevolently by the other patients, and came to be hugged.

  ‘The train was on time, believe it or not,’ David said in Poppy’s ear. He had hobbled in behind the children and was now looking at them with enormous satisfaction. ‘Did you see how nicely they behaved? I gave them socks on the bus, telling ’em we’d both scrag them alive if they didn’t show the world what marvellous parents we are. I think it worked.’

  ‘It worked,’ Robin said from behind him and bent to kiss her mother. ‘I’ve brought Chick too – is that all right?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Poppy said and kissed them both.

  ‘And – er – we hoped you wouldn’t mind if I joined in.’

  Poppy turned her head and laughed.

  ‘How on earth is the hospital managing with all of you here? Hello, Sam! How good of you to make the effort.’

  Sam shook her hand warmly as Robin and Chick went to fuss over Jessie. ‘Never forget that Jessie’s restaurant was my second home! I miss it – and her – dreadfully. So when Robin told me she was coming I sort of tagged on.’ He made a little grimace. ‘I usually do when I can. Tag on to Robin, I mean.’

  She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘She’s all right, then? Not missing Hamish too much?’

  ‘How can I know? She doesn’t say. But I’m on the premises as it were – to keep an eye on her and – er – be with her – and not in Wales. So –’ He left the rest unsaid, but they understood each other well enough, and Poppy smiled at him, and said quietly, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘While we’re on the subject,’ he said then. ‘As we are, in a way. I’m – er – keeping an eye out for Chick too. Seeing she’s Robin’s friend.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘I’m a bit concerned about that chap Daniel. I know he’s a cousin of yours, but there’s something about him I’m not sure about.’

  Poppy looked relieved. ‘Is that all? Bless you, no need to worry over Chick. She’s told Robin he’s a pest as far as she’s concerned. It’s Harry she’s involved with. Well, as much as anyone can be involved with someone as taciturn as Harry! She’ll be fine.’

  He looked amused. ‘Is there anything you don’t know about Robin and her friends?’

  ‘Well, we do talk quite a lot. Especially since we – well, we had rather a fight, but we made it up when Joshy had his adventure, and since then we’ve been even closer.’ She looked fondly across the ward at her daughter, who was talking animatedly to Jessie. ‘Not that I ever quiz her about her love life, of course. I’ve got more sense than that, I hope.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s usually better to say as little as possible.’

  ‘I take your warning. Not a word, ever –’ And she turned away and caught David’s arm.

  ‘David, did they like the cottage well enough?’

  ‘Well enough?’ he said, turning back from Jessie’s side. ‘They’re crazy about it. And when they worked out how much nearer to London it is than Norwich there was no holding them. And they like Mrs Freeman and what’s more to the point, Goosey likes her. I think it’s going to work.’

  ‘I wish we could have persuaded Mama to come here – and to the cottage,’ she said, watching the children who were now enthralled with showing the various pieces of drawings and toys they had brought with them, ostensibly for her pleasure, though what she would do with a child’s sewing kit and a balsa-wood model aeroplane was anyone’s guess. ‘She has to be the most stubborn woman I know.’

  ‘After you,’ David murmured
and tightened his hand on her shoulder. ‘And I wouldn’t have you any other way.’ He shifted his weight on his heels then and she said anxiously, ‘Are you all right?’ and he grimaced.

  ‘We made a deal, right? You’d stop asking me if I hurt and I’d stop telling you if I did. So shut up.’

  ‘Yes. But take some of the painkiller. He said you could –’ And he made another face and reached into his pocket.

  Well, even if David’s still having pain from his injury, Jessie seems all right, Poppy thought, looking at her aunt, and then realized that she was deluding herself. There was a tightness about her mouth and shadowing under her eyes that showed she was less than comfortable, but it was overcome by the grin she was spreading across her sagging cheeks as Joshy, demonstrating some complicated manoeuvre with his aeroplane and chattering like a cage full of monkeys, stood beside her, and that had to be admired. Dear old Jessie, she thought. They said she’d always be flat on her back and now look at her. Tough old darling. And impulsively she got to her feet and went over and hugged her.

  ‘Tea-time,’ she said. ‘And don’t interfere, I’ve got it all organized.’ And Jessie looked at her and nodded contentedly and returned her attention on the children.

  It all went very well, just as Poppy had planned it. The Sister and her nurses came in, and the physiotherapists and the young houseman Jessie had driven nearly mad with her demands for all sorts of things and some of the patients from other wards, and they all had tea together, getting through every scrap of food that was there, even the much despised cake and sandwiches provided by the hospital, which weren’t all that bad, after all. And when they’d finished, David, behaving a little like a conjurer, pulled out of the overcoat inside which he’d smuggled it in, the largest box of chocolates any of them had seen since before the war.

  ‘Never mind how I got it,’ he said airily as the nurses opened their eyes wide, gasping and excited at the sight of it. ‘Just say I had a favour to call in. Listen, I’m going to make a speech.’