by James Runcie
‘She’ll be all right. The police are out. And the fire brigade. Loads of people to help, don’t you worry.’
‘I have to find her.’
‘You can’t go back there. Come into the school.’
‘Someone has to help her.’
Then the man said, ‘You’re Lenny Turner’s boy. He can’t be out in this. Where is he?’
‘He went dancing.’
‘And left you alone? Couldn’t he tell?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Come with us,’ said the man’s wife. ‘We’ll look after you.’
A woman was pulling a drowned pig down the street. I wondered if she was going to roast it.
The shelter didn’t look anything like school. The playground was filled with washed-up furniture. Survivors were brought on inflated rubber rafts, tin baths, skiffs and prams. A coil of rope led from the edges of the flood to the doorway. I looked at the faces of the people coming in. They were old and afraid.
I thought of my mother and prayed that she was inside. I tried to imagine her smile and the sound of her voice: There you are, Martin. Come here. It’s all right. It’s over now.
Perhaps we would be together again after all and my father would return from the dance, his hair slicked and his shoes polished. He would take us back to a home that would be exactly as it was when he had left it, a home where no flood had ever come, and my mother would kiss me again and for ever.
The step into the school had been covered with newspaper to stop people slipping. One man sat in a corner looking through a damp photograph album with his son. It was a boy from school, Ade. We played football together. He looked up but neither of us knew what to say. I don’t think anybody did. Everyone was doing things so they didn’t have to talk. Another man was carrying a kettle and two mugs, uncertain where, even in the middle of the flooding, he could find clean water. The others stood drinking tea: half-ghosts, staring out into the darkness.
Then a woman with a kind voice came and told me to get out of my wet pyjamas. ‘You’ll catch your death,’ she said and handed me a towel that made me feel as if I’d just come out of the swimming pool. Then she gave me an army blanket and a pair of plimsolls and told me to get warm by the fire while she tried to find clothes in my size.
I could see a woman leaning forward on a chair. ‘My home, my home, everything I love. All that I have is there. Take me back. Please, someone, take me back.’ The straps on her shoes were broken and they left raw marks where they had been buckled.
I went over to the fire but I couldn’t see anyone I knew. There was no one apart from a thin girl sitting with her knees together and her feet apart. It was Linda from the sweet shop, Ivy’s daughter, but we had never spoken and I didn’t want to go up to her. She had a red dress and a white band in her hair. Someone had given her colouring crayons and she was drawing. When she looked up, she put her arm round the work as if she thought I was copying.
Then there was another woman standing at the far side of the room. The light was behind her and I couldn’t see her face but I recognised the dark-red ball-gown and the gloves up to the elbows.
‘Martin?’ she asked.
It was Auntie Vi.
Violet
We were singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’ on the way home but the bus broke down and we all stopped. I think that’s when people began to worry because it was a filthy night and we couldn’t get any further than the bridge. The driver was swearing and telling us that it was our fault for taking so long to get away from the dance. Len set off home straight away because he was worried about Lily and the boy but George and I stayed by the shelter.
‘No point going any further than this,’ said a policeman and I agreed. I didn’t want my dress getting splattered: taffeta, it was, and strapless. You don’t get that in Canvey. And we were all so cold. I knew I should have worn thicker stockings, it was stupid of me not to, but I’d planned to be indoors and I never liked dancing with hot legs.
At the shelter I saw Martin. He had a towel round his waist and was shivering in a blanket. ‘Where’s your mother?’ I said. ‘And your father? He was searching for you both. Didn’t he find you?’
The boy looked at me as if I was the one who was supposed to know. ‘No,’ he said.
A woman came and gave him some P.E. kit and an old school coat. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘try these.’
At the far side of the room, George was already on the shakes, rocking away, shivering and stammering, muttering the names of men he had fought with. ‘Oh, so cold,’ he kept saying, ‘can’t go down there, no, no, can’t go down there.’
He had been a handsome man had my husband, everyone said so, kissed the girls and made them cry, but he had lost all his confidence in the war. His cheeks had sunk and his eyes had begun to scare people. Now he looked a bit like some great daft bird, his head turning in quick movements without ever taking anything in, and he kept muttering things that I couldn’t always understand: tracer, incendiary, tracer, armour piercing.
It was five in the morning.
‘Oh, where have they gone?’ I said.
‘Mum,’ said Martin, ‘she was stuck.’
‘Where?’
‘Near the house. Has Dad gone to fetch her?’
‘Of course he has.’
‘But why is he taking so long?’
‘I’m sure they’ll be here soon. You get changed now.’
I gave Martin a rub with the blanket and then handed him the shirt and shorts. He could have done with a vest but there were so many people in need around us and beggars can’t be choosers.
‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘What happened to you?’
‘It was dark,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see. Will Mum be all right?’
I ruffled his hair to try and cheer him up. ‘Of course she will. Let’s have a cup of tea. There’s a woman with an urn. I saw her when I came in.’
‘I don’t like tea.’
‘Well, you can fetch me one,’ I said, ‘there’s a good boy.’
George asked me what was going on and said he wanted to go for a walk. God knows why, but I could hardly stop him.
All that waiting was getting on my nerves. Where were they all?
George
Dirty night. Had to send out an SXX. Water rising, ship listing, gangway blown to hell. No tin hat for me. I was sick with the rolling and shivering like blazes. Had to get a brew on to calm us down. Ask men to find blankets for the survivors. Requested assistance to get them off the bridge floor. Hoped for a mine-sweeper.
Hid in the wheelhouse for a bit until things got quieter. Kept away from the trouble. So cold, I started to rattle. Thought I’d better have a walk about. Assess the situation. See what was required and if I could be of assistance. Get the ship on an even keel and head for home.
But then I saw these kids. What the hell were they doing on the ship? A woman was trying to cheer them up and they were singing:
Oh, what a glorious thing to be
A healthy grown-up busy, busy bee
Whiling away the passing hours
Pinching all the pollen from the cauliflow’rs.
The children looked too tired for playtime. I told them they should get out. This was no place for a bunch of kiddies. But people said I should leave them alone. They didn’t know where their parents were. Perhaps we were taking them somewhere. Evacuees. That must have been it. But what a night. Two enemies. Gerry and the weather. Could do with some whale oil. Makes you smell of fish but keeps the cold out.
Soon be home, though. Have a bit of a dance with Vi and that nice sister of hers: Lily, the shy one. I always liked her. I wondered where she’d gone.
Martin
I found their names on the blackboard. Missing. Len Turner. Lily Turner.
Women came looking for their husbands, children for their parents, but none of them were Mum or Dad. I stood by the door, checking the f
ace of every person that came in.
A man with sweat and water on his stubble said he’d rescued a couple from the roof of their house. They had been holding on to the chimney with a sheet tied round it. The storm had dashed the husband’s foot against the metal gutter until there was nothing left but bone; but still he held on to his wife.
Auntie Vi started talking to a man in an old raincoat, a dock porter who had tried to bail out his house with a two-gallon pail. He was drying out a pound note on the radiator.
‘It’s all I’ve got left, love.’
He had thick oatmeal socks but no shoes. He padded away to the nearest chair and sat down. Then he rolled a cigarette.
The woman by the urn was telling the schoolteacher: ‘Hitler didn’t get me in the war and Father Thames won’t get me this time. I may have been bombed out but I’ll never be washed out.’
Some of the other children were playing Clap Hands but I didn’t want to join in.
Then I heard a voice calling to my aunt.
He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just his shirt and braces, and he’d pushed up his sleeves so you could see the tattoos on his arms: the boat and the anchor, the mermaid’s tail with the word ‘Lily’.
His trousers were wet from the knee down. He had rolled them up to get out of the water and I could see the cuts to his white shins above the ripped socks. There was even a bruise that had begun to yellow. He looked smaller, his hair was flat and thin, and his skin was paler than I had ever seen it.
For the first time I wished he wasn’t my father.
Len
At first, I didn’t know what everyone was asking. There were people shuffling all around us and I couldn’t understand how none of them had been told. I thought everyone would have known. Vi said things like ‘Where have you been?’ and ‘What has happened?’ Martin asked, ‘Have you seen Mum?’
‘Where’s George?’ I said. ‘Is George all right?’
‘Never mind about George,’ said Vi.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘He went for a walk.’
‘A walk?’ I said. ‘In this?’
‘What happened, Dad?’
‘Where’s Lily?’ Vi asked but she said it so quickly I hardly had time to think of an answer. They weren’t listening to me that well.
‘I found her.’
‘Thank God.’
Perhaps if I said nothing I could undo it all, I could go back to when we were getting ready to go dancing, when we were a family and were happy. If I said it aloud then it would have to be true.
Vi gave me a cup of tea but I didn’t know what to do with it. I only knew that I had come to the place where I had to tell my story and I didn’t want to tell it.
‘I think she was breathing,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t be sure even though they felt for a pulse. I thought I heard Lily say something but it must have been the wind. The waters had gone down, and she had either fallen or she had been too tired to go further. Either way, I could see the strength had left her.
‘Her clothes were torn, and she was wearing her nightdress, the one with the rose petals round the neck – you gave it to her, Vi – and there was blood on her forehead and elbow but it didn’t look like blood. It was dark in the centre and yet the ridges to the wounds were almost pink and her lips were a blue I’d never seen before. And her skin was so white. You could almost see through it.
‘She was so cold but the doctor who was with me swore that she might still be alive. He said, “No one is dead until warm and dead.”
‘So we lifted her into the ambulance and covered her with blankets. I started rubbing her arms and her legs, and then I began to pump at her heart to get it going again. The ambulance man told me to stop and give her the kiss of life. I didn’t understand what to do so he showed me. I hated him touching her, his breathing into her mouth.
‘She was beautiful, Vi; she was so beautiful.
‘Then he let me try and I found that I was blowing into Lily’s mouth, but her lips were thin and hard and cold, and it didn’t feel right, I was embarrassed, people shouldn’t have been looking. I wanted everyone to go away and leave me so I could help her properly. I didn’t like being watched, blowing into the mouth and pressing on the chest of a woman I couldn’t believe was my wife any more.
‘Then the man told me to stop. “Enough,” I think he said, but he was so quiet, “that’s enough, Mr Turner.”
‘He had been feeling for her pulse. Now he leant against her chest. When he did so I took her hand. It felt a bit warmer, and I thought she must have been coming back to life, and that there was hope. But the man said, “I’m sorry, Mr Turner.” That was all. He didn’t say dead or anything.
‘Then he said he wasn’t sure if we had done the right thing in moving her. Perhaps we had made her warm too quickly. Perhaps we had tried too hard and taken it all too fast. How can you try your best and make a mistake by doing it like that? I did what he said. I did everything he said. All I wanted was for my wife to live, for us to be together. I took off my jacket and put it over her. How can I have done too much or tried too hard?
‘The man from the ambulance kept on talking like it was his wife that had died, not mine. He kept babbling on, talking so much that I wanted to punch him. He said that if we had made her warm where she was instead of moving her then we might have had a better chance. But the road was cold and wet. There were other people and there were the cars. What were we supposed to do?’
Vi began to cry, her whole body shaking, except it wasn’t so much crying as something I had never heard before. She was weeping with everything: her shoulders, her chest and her legs, her whole body twitching.
But Martin didn’t move. ‘Go on, Dad,’ he said.
I stared forward, speaking into the space ahead of me because I didn’t want to see either of them listening.
‘Then other men came,’ I said. ‘And some women. They asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. It would help, they thought. “Well,” I said, “a cup of tea isn’t going to make much difference.”
‘“Can’t do any harm.”
‘“Haven’t you done enough?” I said.
‘And then I felt ashamed I’d said that. It wasn’t their fault, but I wanted to be on my own with Lily, say sorry to the girl, you understand. I didn’t want posh women with cups of tea telling me I’d be all right soon enough.’
Martin
Dad put his hand on my knee. ‘You’re just a boy.’
‘Where is she?’ Auntie Vi asked.
Dad didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at her. Then he took out a cigarette. He felt for his matches but stopped. Everything he had was wet.
‘I’m sorry, son. There was nothing I could do. Nothing. It was too late; too terrible. Life is such a mess. It’s one bloody bastard of a mess.’
‘I want to see her,’ I said.
Dad held his cigarette as if there was something wrong with it. He couldn’t understand how it would not dry out or why he could not light it.
‘I’m not sure if that’s right,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to be here.’
Then Auntie Vi said, ‘Let him come.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Dad. ‘I don’t know anything.’
We walked down towards the first-aid centre. A man was putting slates and chimney pots into a wheelbarrow. Across the fields, I could see corn and haystacks shattered. A cowman was crying. He was crouching down with dead cows all around him. For a moment, I thought the pools of water were all the tears he had shed.
A police klaxon sounded and I could see its headlamps through the fog. When we got to Jones’s stores in Long Road I saw they’d put a placard on the stuffed animal outside: ‘Bear up. Canvey will rise again.’
The first-aid-centre men were smoking, stamping their feet in the cold, trying not to look at us. There was a sign beside them lying in the road. Straight On for the Sea.
‘Don’t ask us,’ their eyes said. ‘Don’t make us tell you what’s happened. I
t’s nothing to do with us.’
Auntie Vi wiped her feet on the doormat but it was covered in so much mud that it stuck to her shoes and we had to wait while she scraped both in turn on the step. I hoped she would take longer because if she did then we wouldn’t have to go in. There was still time. Something might happen that would change everything. Perhaps they’d identified the wrong body. Perhaps it had been a mistake.
I could see a trolley in the centre of the room with a sheet over it.
‘You ready?’ Dad asked.
Auntie Vi nodded.
There was a man dressed in a green coat and I realised he was the only dry person I had seen that night. He had a sad face with wrinkles. I wanted to look at him rather than the trolley. He pulled back the sheet.
‘Oh, Lily,’ said Auntie Vi.
Mum was a kind of creamy yellow I’d never seen before. At first I was almost relieved, thinking that the woman in front of me could not be her. There was a smell of stale perfume that reminded me of the time she had last been ill, the Sunday Dad had ruined the dinner. I remembered being frightened that she would never get better; that she would be ill in bed for ever, or that she might die and leave me alone and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.
‘It’s all right, son, it’s all right,’ my father was saying.
I don’t think I had ever seen Mum asleep. She was always up first, or it was dark, or she was propped up in bed with pillows. She didn’t look real or like my mother or anyone I had ever seen before. ‘Wake up, Mummy,’ I said.
Auntie Vi was staring. ‘There’s hardly a mark.’
I touched Mum’s hand. It felt cold, like metal. She was colder than the air, the coldest thing in the room.
Violet
The next day we were taken by bus to a Southend hotel that must have been glad of the business. I’d never normally have stayed in such a place but we didn’t have a choice. Martin shared a twin room with his father and George and I took the double next door. We had our meals early, at five o’clock to suit the landlady, until we persuaded her to put on separate sittings for the children. Then we could send Martin off with the other kids, eat later and have a few drinks on our own. It was nice to get a break from the boy. Most times, he looked at me as if he thought I was in some way responsible for Lily’s death. Perhaps he had wanted me to die instead of his mother; but then at other times he came over all soppy and I knew I had to take her place.
