by Lizzie Page
The Lowes served coffee with slabs of dark chocolate they’d managed to get from goodness knows where, and Olive produced yet another bottle of Italian red she’d smuggled home. Then we turned our thoughts to dear Christopher and how missed he was, and we talked about Edmund and I turned pink, because I could see, perhaps for the first time, how proud and pleased everyone (except Olive!) was for us to be marrying.
The parents wanted to know what plans we had, the marriage question, and I said, ‘We’ll wait until this war is over…’ and Edmund’s father gruffly said, ‘Damn war,’ and patted my hand paternally, and Edmund’s mother didn’t even pick him up on his language.
I said whatever was happening, I knew that Edmund would be making the best of it. Edmund did well whatever he did. He gave everything his all.
Olive raised her eyebrows at me cynically, but my father nodded. ‘He’s a sensible one, make no mistake.’
I smiled at Father, grateful for his support. Edmund’s mother wiped away a tear. ‘I always knew you were a loyal girl.’
* * *
Before I left, Edmund’s mother gave me a bracelet – it was a chunky gold bangle with a horseshoe design on one side. She explained it was one of hers, given to her by her own grandmother. She wanted to pass it on to me.
‘And we’ll plan the wedding. Soon?’
‘Very soon,’ I promised. For the first time ever, I felt as though Mrs Lowe were talking to me as an equal, a family member, and it was mesmerising. I felt confident then that the thing with Sam was just a silly dream, a fantasy, for who really would fall for a man who had fallen from the clouds? My destiny was, as had always been written in the cards, with the Lowes.
Richard knew it, Aunt Cecily knew it, Father knew it and now Edmund’s mother and father knew it. The only one who didn’t seem to know it was Olive and she was probably jealous or something.
I had trained my mind to think of Edmund when it slipped to dream of Sam. I thought of Edmund hugging me outside the hospital; the first – and last – kiss we shared in the garden under the watchful eye of the tortoise. If my imagination ran towards his doubts and reticence, or the picture he kept in his pocket, or his startled ‘Good Lord, Vivienne, you are the last person I expected to see here,’ I quickly tuned them out. It was like playing the piano: just avoid the wrong keys. Nothing to it.
It was about eleven o’clock and we were in the taxi on the way home and I was still overawed by Edmund’s mother. Had she really said, ‘We’ll plan the wedding soon’ about our wedding? I touched the bracelet she had given me. Admittedly, it wasn’t to my taste – a horseshoe? On a bangle? – but it was a Lowe family heirloom. I couldn’t think of anything sweeter. It couldn’t be denied: this was a welcome and a half to the Lowe family. It seemed I had won them over at last.
I leaned my head against the carriage side, smiling. I thought of the tortoise – Charles! – and the hare. Nothing wrong with endurance, I told myself. It’s a quality prized too little these days. I ignored my father passing around the mints, and that was when we first heard the noise: it sounded like a terrifically loud swarm of bees, a sort of buzzing and groaning from the sky. You knew straight away it was incoming: we all gazed at each other, horrified. The driver said, ‘Not again…’ and, stopped the cab. The whole street had stopped. Everyone stood still, frozen.
And then it came, a massive boom, the ground beneath us shunted, followed by another crashing, banging explosion. And then nothing. A terrible silence. It was very close, I knew that. Maybe one street away from where we’d parked, no more than that.
‘Oh God,’ Father mumbled. ‘How can this be happening here?’ Horror was etched on his pallid face.
‘Wait,’ I said, like he was a small child. ‘Don’t move, Father.’
I told him to stay in the carriage. I pushed some coins into the driver’s hands and then, without speaking, pulled Olive’s arm. We slipped out into the street. There was dust, dust everywhere, blinding, choking. I could hear emergency bells ringing.
We ran towards the chaos. We knew what to do.
There was a policeman already there. ‘Bombs!’ he shouted. ‘You can’t go that way.’
‘Where, where are we? Where did they hit?’
‘Warrington Crescent.’
Olive and I looked at each other.
And for a moment, in a shameful thought that I would never confide to anyone, I thought, Phew, isn’t Olive’s painting of me at the Fords’? It would never survive the bomb – never be displayed in public, thank God. I would never have to betray Edmund’s mother or to explain how I came to be so cosy with a man who was not Edmund, a man who was a Jew.
But in the next moment, I registered the fire’s intensity, the rising smoke and the thunderous noise. My experience kicked in immediately.
‘Just how bad is it?’ I asked unnecessarily.
‘Get back, get back!’ the policeman shouted, not only to us, but the other people who were getting out of their carriages behind us and were standing, astonished spectators in the street
I said that we were nurses. I was so frantic, so desperate, I would have said anything, but I didn’t need to. He let us through.
* * *
Dusty air, grey vision, red eyes. Olive and I ran forward in the dark, stumbling over rubble where rubble shouldn’t be. Half the street was destroyed. I couldn’t work out where I was at first, and then I got my bearings. ‘Over here!’ I shouted to Olive and she galloped after me. It was hard to say for sure, but I thought about six houses must have been hit; the Fords’ would have been somewhere around the middle of them. I counted madly, using a surprisingly bold house number on the other side of the street to guide me.
‘Here, here, it’s this one!’ I should have known it sooner.
Where the Fords’ house had been was now mostly bricks, beams and rubble – but piled high, as high as a room itself. Olive went one way, I went another. Hard to believe this was where the parties were held, the piano played, the artwork displayed. Was it really this one? Gone in an instant? Gone without chance. I couldn’t believe this was London. I was experienced at the aftermath of an attack, but this was something entirely different. This was my home, my people. ‘Mrs Ford?’ I shouted, ‘Walter?’ and I could hear Olive shouting too.
I ran over the top of the rubble. The house had collapsed: inside was out, upside was down. The lovely paintings Mrs Ford was so proud of collecting, all wasted, all disappeared. Her good taste… and yet one side of the room was almost intact. How can that be? The randomness of it was shocking. Which side of the house were the people in? Direct hit or—
A noise. Human. Or animal? Not sure. I proceeded further. I had completely lost Olive by now, and was wondering if perhaps she had found something, and if maybe I should gather her up, go to Father and get everyone home. I was thinking that it was a good job the house was no longer a convalescent home. Then there was shouting, and then a whistle blew for quiet, there was a ‘Shhhhhhushh’ and everyone was quiet as night, and we listened as hard as anything, straining to hear, and then someone caught it, a groaning, a groaning, and they found her: Mrs Brown, Mrs Ford’s elderly mother, and she was pulled up. She emerged, and she was dusty yet whole. I heard her speak: ‘The others?’ and it was a miracle, and this gave me heart and courage. It wasn’t useless! We could get them out. They must have survived. If Mrs Brown, old and decrepit, could…
Then there was a sound of digging, excitement, and a man was leveraged out. I didn’t know his face – a visitor maybe? And then I saw Olive freeze and bend, and I too could see what she was looking at: Walter’s shoe and Walter’s leg. And she knelt there in the bricks.
I continued on my path. I had an intuition Walter and Mrs Ford wouldn’t be far from each other, and they weren’t.
I saw something, pinky-white, in the rubble. A lone hand. I followed it, and I found that she – I thought it was Mrs Ford – was pinned down, maybe in her bed. The fallen masonry, the bricks, were like blankets; it was like she wa
s a princess in an odd sort of fairytale. I threw off the poles that held her down and the plaster that obscured her face.
Yes, it was definitely Mrs Ford and I knew immediately, despite the light in her eyes and the fact that she was sitting up, that it wasn’t good.
‘Hang on, Mrs Ford. We’ll get you out.’
‘No…’
‘It’s just your legs,’ I lied. ‘We’ll have you free in a jiffy.’
Then I saw. Her head was covered in blood, misshapen, shattered. She looked stunned. ‘We’ve just got your mother free,’ I said breathlessly, trying to contain my horror. ‘She’s going to be fine.’
I found her hand and squeezed.
‘Get my Walter out,’ she whispered. I don’t think she recognised me. ‘Help my boy, please. Walter.’
I had known her for over four years as a glamorous host, an entertainer, an art collector, a songwriter, a freethinker and as a fiercely respected, beautiful woman. But now, for the first time, I saw Mrs Ford as a mother: her concern for her son was as fierce as any mother’s could ever be. That was all she cared about at that moment: the safety of her boy – he could have been three or twenty-three. What I saw then was pure biological, fundamental, maternal love and fear.
‘Make sure they save my boy,’ she insisted. ‘My son. His name is Walter. Walter Ford.’
I looked over my shoulder. I could see men carrying a figure and Olive following. I recognised the black trousers, the distinctive purple cloak. The kind of clothes no wallflower would wear.
‘They’re working now, they’ll get him out, you just need to hang on for me.’
‘Promise.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s alive? My Walter?’
I nodded.
Her voice changed. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’
I held on to Mrs Ford. I knew she was going then. I knew it. She asked me once again about Walter and again, I lied: ‘He’s safe,’ I said.
Her face finally relaxed. All her tension evaporated. ‘So long as he is.’ A holding, a crushing, a joining… and then a nothing. Her fingers eased their grip on mine. There was not one single moment when she was here and then not – it was a series of moments, a number of steps downwards that I hadn’t realised I was on until I hit the ground, and then there we were, and I could feel she was gone. My hand held hers but her hand no longer held mine.
It must have been only four minutes since we’d got there. Ten minutes since Father was offering mints around in the cab. Things can change on the turn of a coin.
To this day, I don’t know if I did the right thing or if I committed a terrible crime by lying to her, if it was immoral or unfair. She was a mother who died thinking her son was alive. Was that a gift or a curse?
Twenty seconds later, I scrambled out into the dark. Dust everywhere. People sneezing in torchlight.
Olive was shaking me, balancing on rubble: ‘What’s happened? Where is she? Where is Mrs Ford?’ When I told her Mrs Ford was gone, she let out a terrible animal cry.
The policeman shoved us out back into the road. ‘Out, out!’ he bellowed – we were doing no good, we were obstructing – so we stood there, bewildered, among the arriving cars and fire officers dashing. Then, when I next looked to where Olive had been next to me, she had gone.
* * *
The driver had decided to leave. He had told my father to get out of the carriage and had left him there, frail old man he was, abandoned in the street. I saw Father stood at the edge of the rubble, his hands up in fear and despair. I went over to him and wrapped my coat round him. He was shivering and bewildered.
‘Can’t we go home now?’ he begged.
‘I… wait… Olive will be… just give her a moment.’
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he kept saying. His nostrils flared, his eyebrows meeting in the middle. He looked ancient suddenly, a man from a different era.
‘I know.’
‘Oh, when will this lousy war end? Let’s go home and let the police deal with it.’
Finally, Olive rejoined us. Her hair was white with ash. I shepherded her and Father down the street. I was saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ to her, and ‘We’ll find another carriage, don’t worry’ to Father, over and over again.
And we did find a way home; it was our only bit of luck that evening. A horse and carriage pulled up. There were others in the back, huddled and frightened too, and the driver said he’d take us wherever we needed, free of charge, because what a terrible night, terrible. You wouldn’t think it would happen here, would you?
‘Did she ask after me?’ Once we were inside the cab, Olive asked me repeatedly. She was saying it so often: ‘Did she say my name? Did she call for me?’ that I grew exasperated with her. You wouldn’t have known she had been in the FANYs, or had been working in the mountains of Italy; she was like a timid little girl again. The other occupants of the cab were looking at her nervously. Father had buried his face in his hands. Finally, I snapped. ‘For God’s sake, Olive, stop asking! There wasn’t time. She didn’t even recognise me, she just wanted to know if Walter was all right.’
She paled. ‘Of course she did,’ she muttered. Her eyes looked dark and wild. She tilted her pointed chin upwards, which made her look suddenly haughty. I felt abruptly, absurdly frightened of her. She had always been unpredictable but never like this. She looked at me, whispered harshly, ‘So what did you tell her then? When she asked after Walter? What did you say?’
‘I told her he was fine,’ I choked. I felt like hell. My eyes were stinging. My throat was on fire. I deserved everything bad: What a terrible, terrible lie.
I shook my head and sobbed then and Olive began to sob too and from behind me, I could hear my poor, ancient father begging us: ‘Please, girls, let’s go home.’
* * *
I woke up to find my Aunt Cecily leaning over me. It was a shock. Her face was too close to mine; her breath smelled milky and it made me wince.
‘To think, you’ve been all round the world and you got bombed in London.’ Aunt Cecily was awfully upset. I supposed everything went back to Richard, a reminder of her greatest loss. I lay there for a moment, trying to understand what was going on. I felt weighed down by responsibilities, and wished I was in France, where at least every death was anonymous, we were untroubled by family or backstory, and you could sing songs, put your foot down on the accelerator and keep a defensive barrier around you.
‘Your poor father,’ she added. ‘What a thing for him to see! We came as soon as we heard. Poor Uncle Toby is famished.’
‘Is Olive all right?’
‘Still asleep,’ Aunt Cecily said.
I doubted that. I hastily pulled on my clothes and galloped downstairs. Father and Uncle Toby were in the drawing room. He had picked himself up and brushed himself off and was now regaling Uncle Toby with stories of our lucky escape. Last night he had been in the pits of despair, but now he seemed almost elated. I couldn’t tell if he was putting it on for Uncle Toby or if he was genuinely bursting with survivor’s euphoria. I had seen that enough times at Lamarck.
‘They say an Irish girl was calling “bejeezus… bejeezus”,’ Father was cheerfully recounting. ‘For a moment, we could have been in the ghettos of Dublin. They pulled her out. Thank bejeezus.’
Uncle Toby was joining in. ‘Bejeezus indeed. And I heard that there was a soldier in there who survived. And do you want to know how? They think the carpet saved his life!’
Father was saying, ‘Now that is interesting.’ I could only imagine what was going through his whirring brain. A new way of advertising the carpets? Lifesavers against bombs. Wrap yourself up in a Persian rug. Match your furniture and survive the Hun.
Chortle, chortle, ha ha ha. Bejeezus.
‘Good morning, Father, Uncle Toby,’ I said and they both pretended to be concerned.
‘Your uncle brought some pears.’ Father had the good grace to look embarrassed.
‘Least I could do,’ said my uncle gruffl
y. ‘Terrible news… I think Aunt Cecily is arranging some toast for us.’
The bomb had hit too late to get in that day’s newspaper, thank goodness. We’d have to wait a few hours before we could relive the deaths of our friends in print.
I read about U-boats and Father and Uncle talked about the racing.
Then I spotted Olive. Hovering like a ghost in the doorway, she was wearing a white nightgown and her short hair was stuck to her head like a helmet. When he finally noticed her, Uncle Toby did his best to look sympathetic; he whipped the jocular look off his face and walked over to her, palms outstretched.
‘Olive, good to see you up.’
She ignored him. ‘I’m going there now.’
‘What? Back again?’ Father was horrified.
Olive explained that she would walk all the way to Warrington Crescent, if necessary. Uncle Toby wearily caved in.
‘I’ll get my car, Olive, least I can do.’
As we walked out, he hissed at Aunt Cecily, ‘I didn’t even get my breakfast.’
* * *
Uncle Toby’s driver was not a smooth driver and the vehicle bumped and juddered all the way there. I wished we had made our own way – I didn’t know if I could deal with Uncle Toby and Olive. There was something dead-eyed and vacant about her this morning. I hoped she wouldn’t take out what had happened on Uncle Toby. That wouldn’t be fair. He might be annoying, but he wasn’t to blame.
My poor sister. I held her hand. I tried to imagine how I would feel if I had heard that Edmund had died, but I couldn’t think I would be as devastated as this. And yet, it had hardly seemed like she was fond of him…
‘You all right, Olive?’
She nodded.
I talked with the driver about the car. He said it was a Daimler and a pleasure.
I said that I drove a Ford Model T in France and Uncle Toby said: ‘You don’t really drive though, Vivi, do you?’
