Blitz Next Door

by Cathy Forde

  “You listening? Yoo-hoo!” Beth was snapping her fingers. “I said even if I could watch a film at home I’d rather go to the Pictures.”

  “I do that too,” Pete said. He added, “with Dad,” instead of adding, “to the IMAX.” Explaining that would be waaay too complicated right now: 3D, surround sound, special specs…

  “We go every Saturday. D’you go? To the funnies?”

  “I wish. Just special occasions.”

  Beth was looking sorry for Pete. “I’m there twice a week,” she said. “Me and my friends.” Pete noticed her lip tremble. “I mean the ones who haven’t—”

  Pete interrupted, “You’re lucky. I’ve to swim every Saturday.” For a minute he could feel his own lip go. “Well, I used to…”

  “Funny,” Beth said, although neither of them looked like laughing. “You’ve just come and I’m leaving. Tomorrow.” She shook her head. “Up north till the air raids stop or someone kills Hitler.”

  “Is that why you keep crying?” asked Pete. He wanted to add that the war finishes in 1945 and Hitler kills himself, but he wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of either fact.

  “I hear you through the wall,” he said instead, and was about to add, but I don’t understand why cos Dad said your house was bombed, but Beth’s face was bright.

  “D’you hear my ‘Skye Boat Song’? Been learning it for the school concert next month.” She sat back on her heels, sighed all the way down to her toes. “Except I won’t be in it now. Mummy sent me down to find a trunk.”

  As Pete watched Beth howling into her hands yet again, he was glad he hadn’t told her what happened to her house. This time, when he went to pat her shoulder, she didn’t pull away, so he kept patting till she gave a deep, snottery and very ungirly snuffle.

  “You want to see my special things Mummy packed?” Beth wiped her nose on her sleeve and scrabbled backwards through the tunnel. Seconds later she returned pushing a shoebox across the floor towards Pete.

  “Open it, silly. Don’t worry; it’s not shoes,” Beth tutted, lifting the lid herself before Pete could do it.

  At the top of the box lay a red cotton napkin, edged with gold thread. Beth unfolded it to reveal a tiny elephant.

  “That better not be ivory.” Pete ran his finger over a delicate carved tusk.

  “Course it is, silly. It’s from Africa,” Beth snorted.

  “But you’re not allowed to kill elephants for their tusks. And it’s cruel. That’s from an endangered species.”

  “No, silly. It’s from an African elephant. I just told you that! I didn’t kill it either!”

  “Well, you could go to prison for having it.” Pete wrapped the little elephant away.

  “Report me then,” Beth sniped back. “Get me locked up. Keep me here, that would. Mummy could visit.” She rolled her eyes at Pete. “So since you don’t like my elephant, look at my postcards instead.”

  Beth shoved a bundle into Pete’s hands and untied the bow around it. “They’re from all over the world. From my Uncle Robert. He’s in intelligence,” she whispered as Pete flicked through the bundle. Most of the pictures on the front were black and white, though one or two – Central Park, New York, the Eiffel Tower – had been hand-touched with flashes of colour.

  Fair missing your honest sauncy face xxx … was written on all of them. Nothing else.

  “Sho ish shish Uncle Robert a shpy, Mish Moneypenny, like Bond, Jame-sh Bond? And ish shish meshage a code, perhapsh?” Pete closed one eye and squinted at Beth.

  “Huh?” Beth was cutting Pete one of those looks he used to get from girls at school whenever he asked them if they liked Elvis Presley. He felt himself blush, bent over the box and picked up an old sepia-coloured photo.

  “That’s Mummy and Daddy on their wedding day. She was a flapper.” Beth pointed at the woman who looked about his mum’s age – though a lot more glam, Pete had to admit – smiling out of the photo. In one hand she held the end of a long string of pearls and in the other a long cigarette holder. More ivory, Pete suspected, although he didn’t think it would be wise to challenge Beth about it a second time. The woman’s arm crooked round the sleeve of a tall thin man.

  “Why’s your dad got a stick?”

  “Left his foot in the Great War,” Beth said. “Got an iron one now.”

  “Your dad was in the First World War?” Pete knew the dates this time. “He must be ancient.”

  Beth nodded. “Forty-three. Ten years older than Mummy, but he was only nineteen when he was shot.”

  “Wow. I mean that’s terrible.” Pete didn’t know what else to say.

  “No; means he can’t be called up and sent off to fight.” Beth shrugged and smiled at Pete, as though she could tell he was uncomfortable and didn’t want him to be. “I hardly see him, though. Works in the Western Infirmary in Glasgow. Won’t drive home after the blackout.”

  Pete was puzzled now. “But if your mum and dad are still here, why are they sending you away?”

  “Because Mummy’s helping wounded people all hours,” Beth shrugged, “and she’s not happy leaving me on my own any more. Too many air strikes.” Beth was tucking the wedding photo back in the shoebox, laying the other items on top, replacing the lid.

  Any more, Pete was thinking. His mum had never left him alone in the house.

  “She’s right,” Pete said. “She can’t leave you alone. It’s a crime.”

  “I’m eleven, not a tumshy!” Beth scrunched up her face in disgust. “I can run into Aunty Mary next door if there’s a problem. Been doing that since I was…” Beth put out her hand to the height of the shoebox and looked at Pete, her eyes filling again. “But Mummy says the war makes things different and Aunty Mary’s got enough to worry her with wee Jamie. Right enough.” Beth scrubbed at her eyes. “He’s aye greeting.”

  You’re one to talk, Pete could have said. “D’you mean Jamie Milligan?” he asked instead. “If it is, he’s tall, big-shot Jamie, my dad’s boss. And old. I mean really old. Like seventy-something. Crazy hair.”

  Pete tried to straighten the top half of his torso up as best he could in the low tunnel, so he could thrust Beth a Mr Milligan-style handshake. “Don’t get up. I’m Jamie, and who might you be, young lady?” Pete boomed.

  Beth was giggling before he finished. “That’s not the mummy’s boy I know. Big, dirty nappy every time I saw him. And d’you know what?”

  Beth became so serious for a moment, she stopped Pete enjoying the picture in his head of Mr Milligan wearing one of Jenny’s Pampers.

  “He never helped me. Not once. And I asked him and asked him. Feartie.” Beth’s blue eyes were solemn and pleading. “Will you help me? Please?” Her eyes fixed on Pete as she crawled back through the door into her own cupboard, the shoebox clutched to her chest.

  “Help you with what? Wait!” Pete called, but the door at the end of the tunnel was already shut. “And was Jamie not just a baby? How could he have helped you? Beth?”

  Pete cocked his head to listen for movement. Nothing, although Pete could still make out his knuckles, white and alien-looking in the slip of light seeping through a crack at the bottom of the connecting door. And then the light went out.

  The tunnel door wouldn’t budge no matter how hard Pete shoved against it.

  “She’s gone,” he said, his voice hollow as it bounced back to him through the darkness.

  Chapter 16

  Pete was busy de-cobwebbing himself as he backed out the cupboard, checking in case there were any creepy-crawly visitors up the back of his jeans. That’s why he trod on Mr Milligan’s shiny brogues without realising.

  “Watch your feet there, son,” said Dad.

  “Sorry.”

  “No bother, sir.” Mr Milligan dismissed Pete’s apology with a flap of his hand. Dad didn’t though. He held Pete away from his boss at arm’s length.

  “What on earth you been up to in there? You’re filthy!”

  “Exploring.” Pete pointed into the dark space he’d
just left. “It leads through to next door. There’s a tunnel…”

  “Pete…” Although Dad wore a smile when he rolled his eyes at Mr Milligan, Pete could tell he was irritated. “First it’s crying through the wall, now it’s secret tunnels. Like Colditz. Be telling me there’s zombies next. Or ghosts.”

  Dad was gesturing for Mr Milligan to ignore Pete and walk ahead towards the front door. “I’ve shown him the bomb site so he knows there’s nothing on the other side of the wall any more.”

  “Ah, but there was a tunnel, Steve.”

  Instead of joining Dad, Mr Milligan turned back to Pete then strode into the cupboard. Stooping almost immediately, he beckoned Pete to join him. Dad too.

  “No idea why it was built like this,” he called back, “but I know there’s a link door between the houses.”

  When Mr Milligan dropped to his haunches, Pete heard his knees crack the same way Papa Smeaton’s did after too much weeding in his allotment.

  “Never actually been through it myself, but it’s bally there.” Mr Milligan’s voice filled the cupboard. When he shuffled forwards a few steps his coat swept the floor. “Too feart,” he called back. “And now I’m too old and too big. But your explorer’s right,” he called back to Dad. “There’s a way through into next door.”

  “Not any more, Jamie.” Pete could tell Dad was trying not to sound impatient. His phone was ringing. “Need to find this place a light bulb. And there’s my mother again. Three times she’s rung. Been meaning to call her back all day.”

  “Always call your mother back, she’s the only one you’ve got, Steve. On you go.” Mr Milligan had to lean on Pete’s shoulder so he could turn and face Dad without losing his balance in the narrow space of the cupboard. “Pete can see me out.”

  Mr Milligan waited till Dad disappeared into the kitchen with his phone.

  “Have you met her?” he whispered, with a nod towards the house that couldn’t be there any more. But before Pete could answer, Mr Milligan dropped his head to his chest. “Poor, poor Beth,” he sighed.

  Pete gasped. His skin was prickling.

  “She was killed in the house?” His own whisper echoed back to him.

  Instead of answering, Mr Milligan spread his arms until he could touch both walls and began to ease himself out into the hall.

  “Let’s walk and talk where it’s cheerier,” he said, his big voice back. Outside the cupboard he wiped his hands with yet another patterned silk handkerchief as he steered Pete through his own front door.

  “Beth wasn’t in the house when the bomb fell.” Mr Milligan joined his hands and raised them as if he was offering up a prayer of thanks. He must have read the relief on Pete’s face because he patted his shoulder.

  “Spent the night of the Blitz in the air-raid shelter with me, my mother, all the neighbours. I don’t remember myself, thank God. Just a bairn, like Princess Chookie. But my mother’s never forgotten, so neither have I. Never will.” Mr Milligan was pointing towards the crater. “How she and Beth staggered out the shelter at dawn, me in her arms, to utter…”

  Mr Milligan stared into space, shaking his head, lips pursed in a silent whistle. “My mother claims that’s why I ended up an architect. Raised hearing about so many homes coming down and lives destroyed round here I wanted to try and design buildings that would survive. Better, stronger, safer.”

  “But none of Beth’s family was hurt when the house came down, were they?” Pete double-checked.

  Mr Milligan started to say something, but checked himself. He walked to his car, shaking his head, his mouth a grim line. Pete was sure he spotted tears glinting in the old man’s eyes.

  “I didn’t help her.” Mr Milligan turned his gaze towards the ruin of the Winters’ old house.

  “She told me,” Pete said.

  “Too feart.” Mr Milligan shrugged.

  “She said that too.”

  “Well, I was only about five the first time I remember her calling…” Mr Milligan held his fingers up in front of his mouth as if he was playing a recorder. “That bally ‘Skye Boat Song’. Not long moved into that room you’re in now. Slept in the one next to my mother’s before that…”

  “Jenny’s room now.”

  “…though to be honest I spent most nights cooried in with my mother. Tumshy mammy’s boy, so I was,” Mr Milligan boomed in a very un-tumshy voice. “Still am. Aye…” Mr Milligan was gazing into space again, then he flapped his hand in front of his face, raked through his quiff with his fingers. “Anyway, ended up flitting back into the room next to my mother’s, because I was hearing Beth so much.”

  “What did your mum say?” Pete asked.

  “‘Poor wee Beth, she’s a lost sowl.’ Then she’d get upset.” Mr Milligan shrugged. “So I stopped telling her I was hearing anything. Stopped hanging about down in the shelter too. Beth was appearing in there sometimes, long after the war. I’d be down there having a…” Mr Milligan puffed on an imaginary cigarette. “Silly boy that I was.” He shook his head, then switched it in the best version Pete had seen yet of Beth’s plait flick. “And she’d brush past me with a right dirty look. And then,” Mr Milligan held his hands to his ears as though he wanted Pete to hear something, “all Beth’s visits and concerts and shuffling about stopped. By this time it was the fifties and I…”

  Mr Milligan curled his lip. He twisted the front of his hair into a lick and tugged it down his forehead. “I was far too busy to care about hearing anything but Elvis and Buddy and Little Richard.” Mr Milligan shook his head at Pete. “You probably don’t even know who I’m bally talking about.”

  “Elvis? Everyone knows Elvis. Well I do. He’s great.” Pete was nodding so hard at Mr Milligan his neck muscles hurt.

  “No, Pete.” Mr Milligan pursed at Pete. “He isn’t great. He is the greatest. Is. And always will be: The King.” Mr Milligan grinned. “When I was sixteen I’d two delivery jobs to pay for all the records I used to order from the States. Was I popular?”

  “You’ve still got them?” For a moment, Pete forgot all about Beth Winters.

  Mr Milligan quirked his eyebrows at Pete and puffed as if the question was pointless. “Maybe let you see them some time, but right now,” he was beeping open his car, “my mother’s visiting hour’s started and my life won’t be worth living if I’m late. She might be the height of nothing but she’s a holy terror.”

  “Wait!” Pete was running alongside Mr Milligan’s car as it pulled away. “What happened to Beth? And her mum and dad?”

  Pete didn’t think Mr Milligan had heard him. He was staring ahead, eyes on the road. Then his driver’s window zipped down halfway. “You need to talk to my mother. On one of her good days,” said Mr Milligan, purring off with a wave.

  Pete reverse jogged along the road in the middle of his cul-de-sac, something he’d never have been able to do where he lived in London. When he reached his house, he turned, and in the space where Mr Milligan’s sleek saloon had parked, there she stood.

  The old lady. Staring after the departing car, she didn’t even seem aware of Pete until he almost ran into her. For a second Pete wondered if this woman could be Mr Milligan’s mother. She was certainly old – her face lined, her body stooped – though maybe not old enough; Pete was rubbish at guessing grown-ups’ ages. However, one thing was sure: she looked bewildered enough to need taken care of.

  So Pete ran straight past her without stopping. “Wait there…” He took the three steps up to his porch in one leap. “I’m just going to get my…” he turned to call.

  But he was talking to himself.

  Chapter 17

  If Pete had gone back into the house he knew he would have told Mum or Dad about the old lady, and this time, he knew they would have called the police. He didn’t want that to happen. She’s harmless, he was thinking. This was as he skittered down one side, ran across, then sprinted up the far side of the bomb crater to reach the garden.

  He was hoping Dunny might be about when he heard a
voice singing even higher than Melody Matthews from his old school choir could. But even more out of tune: “In the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight… Fancy some FIFA, Nigel?”

  The boys wandered towards the shelter. A wind had got up, whistling through the long grasses and weeds, whipping them against the boys’ legs and faces.

  “Scotland’s colder than London.” Pete huddled into his sweatshirt.

  “Mince.” Dunny wheeched his T-shirt and jumper over his head and whirled them in the air. “It’s practically taps-aff weather,” he announced, strutting in front of Pete. But by the time he reached the shelter he was dressed again. “See, if we’re playing in there, you’ll need your torch,” he chittered.

  “It’s inside,” said Pete, trying to remember where he’d dropped it earlier. As the door creaked open, Pete was surprised how grey and gloomy it looked compared to earlier in the day. He had to keep blinking till his eyes adjusted to the poor light. Then he had to peer really hard to make sure they weren’t playing tricks on him: a figure sat hunched at the back of the shelter.

  The old lady, Pete thought first, until he realised he was meeting the unblinking stare of Beth Winters. She gave no sign that she recognised Pete, though, or seemed surprised to see him so soon after their last meeting in the cupboard under the stairs. In fact, as if Pete wasn’t there, she bent over the notebook on her lap.

  Pete darted backwards from the shelter.

  “She’s in there. Writing. Beth,” he whispered.

  “Ha, ha. Wind-up,” Dunny didn’t bother whispering back.

  “See for yourself.” Pete yanked Dunny’s arm towards the shelter doorway, but Dunny stalled, digging in his heels.

  “Not going in alone,” he hissed.

  “Not going to be alone. Need to get my torch anyway.” Still holding on to Dunny, Pete had his other hand on the door, primed to push.

  “Then we play FIFA back at mine?”