‘But they’re all bricked up, Mum,’ I said. ‘Mrs Tarn was just showing me her things.’
Mum gave a sort of twitch, as if she’d heard the air-raid alert. But it hadn’t sounded. The city was very, very quiet. Just, sometimes, the noise of a bit of stone or plaster falling. And the drip of rain. Not a car, not a bus. Tomkin curled up asleep in his basket. I thought of the earth on the bombsite, soft and wet and deep, going down goodness knows how far …
‘Let’s go to the pictures!’ I urged Mum.
But she was too tired, she said.
That night I dreamed about the earth heaving and lifting up on the bombed site, as if there were mice, or worms, or moles, burrowing and churning and jostling just under the surface, with sometimes a claw showing, or an eye glittering among the dust.
I woke up with a yell, thankful to find old Tomkin sharing the bed with me, and to grab hold of his furry, solid shape for comfort.
Next morning Mum had one of her dreadful bad headaches. She used to get them before, but never as bad as this. There was nothing that could be done for her, only leave the curtains pulled and let her sleep it off. The whole day it took, sometimes.
‘Could you – go and – tell Mr Schaefer I can’t come?’ she whispered faintly.
‘Of course, Mum! Don’t you worry. I’ll tell him. Maybe he’d have me do the work instead. If I don’t come back right away, that’s where I’ll be.’
I kissed her goodbye – I could tell she hardly understood what I’d said – left her with a cup of tea which she probably wouldn’t drink, and let myself out, quiet as a mouse, tiptoeing down the stairs so Mrs Tarn wouldn’t hear me and come nosying. Most days, Mrs Tarn went out, and didn’t come back till nightfall. Hunting about the ruins and bomb crates, Mum told me, looking for what she could pick up. I supposed that was how she’d come by her silver things.
Old Mr Schaefer lived in one of the houses in Ebernoe Square, east of Well Street. Mum had been housekeeping for him since before the war. He wrote poetry books. And these days he was something high up in a government office, analysing foreign news broadcasts.
Inside, his house was lovely. And – what I liked best – in front, on either side of the brick steps, were two stone lions. When I was small, sometimes Mum would take me with her when she went to work there. And I’d spend most of the day outside, with the lions, talking to them. Or, across the road, in the square, there was a big round garden. I was allowed to go and play in there. At that time it was railed off, locked up, private, but now those railings were gone. In the middle was a statue of a man in a top hat. Lord Palmerston, it said underneath.
I was very glad to see that the lions were still there. Made of black stone, they were, about as big as a sheep. The lion was looking sharp to his right, as if he was ready to pounce. The lioness looked straight ahead of her with big, round eyes. I didn’t know which of them I loved best.
I gave each of them a pat, for old times’ sake, before I rang the bell.
‘Why – if it isn’t young Gwenno,’ said old Mr Schaefer, opening the door. ‘How are you, my dear? Bless me, how you’ve grown! The air of Wales must have been good for you. But I’m sure your mother was very happy to have you back. She’s been talking of nothing else for weeks.’
I told him she was not well. Had one of her headaches. He shook his own head.
‘To tell the truth, my dear, I’ve been worried about her. A good rest is what she needs. I’m glad you’re back with her, Gwenno.’
‘Can I do the shopping and cleaning for you today, Mr Schaefer?’
‘Glad to have you, my dear. But you must run home at lunch time to take care of your mother.’
So I dusted and polished his house – it was very neat and bare; he explained he’d had all his best things, silver and china, sent away to the country for safety – and I did his shopping.
On the way back from the greengrocer I noticed a little hunched-up man, over the road, following and watching me. Then he crossed the street, mincing and skipping, came up to me and said, ‘I know who you are! Gwenno Everly – isn’t it?’
I wasn’t at all keen on this little creep making free with my name in the street. He was grubby, had a spiteful look, with his head tilted all on one side. His grin showed a lot of slanting yellow teeth. He came up only as far as my elbow. He wore dusty, drab, wrinkled clothes and a black beret. His face was all creased and dirty too.
‘I’m Albert,’ he said. ‘Elsie’s brother, Albert Neff. Elsie has told me all about you. And I daresay she’s told you about me?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no, she hasn’t,’ hurrying along the pavement towards number three, Ebernoe Square.
‘No?’ He grinned even more. ‘Well, I’m Elsie’s loving brother. I know your mum. I’ll be seeing you, at your place, one of these evenings.’
Not if I can help it, I thought, running up the brick steps and pulling out the key Mr Schaefer had given me. I don’t care if I never see you again.
Albert gave the lions a glance full of dislike – in fact I thought I saw him aim a kick at one of them – then he turned back towards Well Street.
Just then Mr Schaefer himself came out of the house, in his bowler and carrying a briefcase.
‘I’m off to Bush House,’ he told me.
Right away, Albert began bobbing and bowing, up and down, up and down, like frantic puppet on the end of a string.
‘Good to see you, lovely to see you, Mr Schaefer, sir!’ he squeaked. ‘I hope I find you well? Now, sir, can I clean your chimneys, can I come and do that? I’m sure they must be all choke-full of soot by now! They must need doing badly!’
‘No they do not!’ snapped Mr Schaefer. Very cold and brisk, he was. ‘I haven’t lit a fire since last January. No, thank you, I don’t want them done. I told you, no!’ And as the little man went on bobbing and pulling faces, he rapped out, ‘Be off with you, man! Make yourself scarce, if you please. Go back where you belong!’
Albert scurried nervously away, kitty-cornerways, across the square, and Mr Schaefer said to me, ‘Tiresome little wretch! He has taken to sleeping in the square, sometimes, on fine nights. The air-raid wardens don’t like it at all. “The Fairy King”, they call him. Let me know if he annoys you – or your mother – in any way. I’ll tell the police. I’ve an idea they are keeping an eye on him.’
Mr Schaefer walked away towards the Underground station.
That night I woke with a start, all of a sudden, to hear the noise of a V1 bomber, or buzzbomb – which by now I’d got to recognize and distinguish from a proper plane – throbbing and throbbing over my head. A thick, bumpy noise, it was, like water slowly glugging down a half-blocked drain. Zizz zizz zizz zizz. Then – nothing. Complete silence. Tomkin whipped out from beside me and went under the bed. Then there was the most almighty crash. WHOOM! All our windows rattled and the house shook. A pane of glass clanked down in the passage and some plaster thumped on the floor.
‘Gwenno!’ came Mum’s terrified voice. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mum!’
I jumped out of bed and went to hers and gave her a hug. ‘Here I am, quite OK. How’s your head?’
Last night it had still been dreadful.
‘It’s a bit better, thank you, love. That was a really close one!’
‘Where do you think it fell?’
Fire engines were scudding past and slowing at the corner.
‘Round in Ebernoe Square, perhaps.’
‘Oh, I hope Mr Schaefer’s all right.’
Mum said faintly, ‘Oh, I’d just love a cup of tea!’
The gas was cut off, but Mum had a little spirit stove which we used when that happened. I was surprised that Mrs Tarn didn’t come to share our tea and gossip. But glad of her absence.
I didn’t tell Mum that I’d met Elsie’s brother Albert.
We drank our tea and, shivering, went back to bed.
Next morning, when I shuffled, bleary-eyed, in dressing gown and slippers, to try the kitche
n cooker, see if the gas was reconnected – there was a big grey rat, squatting behind the kettle on the stove top.
I let out a yell. ‘Mum! Come quick! And bring Tomkin!’
Of course I’d seen plenty of rats on the farm, but none so big or so bold as this monster. It bared its teeth and squealed at me defiantly. Tomkin took one look and slunk away, back to our bedroom. Mice were his business, his ears and tail suggested, not a beast on this scale.
‘Your cat’s a coward,’ said Mrs Tarn, slip-slopping along in her downtrodden feather mules and grubby candlewick negligee. ‘Get out of here, you big brute!’ And she shook the rolling pin at the rat, which, angrily squealing again, sprang off the stove, scurried across the lino and out on to the kitchen balcony. The door to it was open, unlatched when the bomb fell.
This balcony was never meant for sitting out on. It was for practical use: the dustbin stood there and, once a week, Fred the caretaker would lower the bin on a goods-hoist by a pulley and empty it out. (When I was smaller, boys in the flats sometimes used to go down on the garbage lift for a dare; but I never did. It was too grimy and nasty.)
Now the rat slipped easily over the edge of the balcony and ran down the iron support to the floor below.
‘We’d better put out some poison,’ said Mum, white as wax. I was sorry I’d called her.
‘Oh – what’s the use?’ Mrs Tarn shrugged. ‘There’s hundreds more, you bet, down on the bombsite.’
She slapped the rolling pin back on the shelf, lit a fag and slip-slopped away.
‘I think I’ll have to go back to bed, dearie,’ said Mum, who was swaying and looked sick.
I helped her lie down again and, when I’d eaten a bit of bread and marge, went up the street and round the corner to see where the bomb had fallen.
The middle of Ebernoe Square was all cordoned off and full of wreckage. Very luckily, it seemed, the doodlebug had landed right in the middle, among the flower beds and shrubs. No one was hurt, only the fronts of houses round the square had their plaster knocked off by the blast and windows broken; and the trees were shattered and had their leaves blown clean off.
But when I got to number three I had a sad shock: the front door was smashed in and the two lions I loved so much were just rubble and dust. Lumps of the statue of Lord Palmerston that had stood in the middle of the square were lying about. It was plain what must have happened: the blast from the buzzbomb had blown Lord Palmerston in his top hat right against Mr Schaefer’s front door.
I stepped in through the open doorway and called. ‘Mr Schaefer! Mr Schaefer!’
No answer.
‘Step along there, move along now, none of your business,’ said a warden, putting his head in.
‘I’ve come to clean Mr Schaefer’s house,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, well, that’s different. He’s in hospital. The Royal Free, Gray’s Inn Road.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Heart attack. He wasn’t hurt. He’ll be all right.’
When I’d tidied the house – it was a right mess, with dust and grit blown in – and seen that men were at work boarding up the broken windows and putting on a temporary door, I went home to make Mum some soup. She was a bit better. When I told her what happened to Mr Schaefer, she said I’d better go and see him.
‘I’ll take another nap,’ she said. ‘Don’t let Elsie in – even if she asks – I don’t feel up to talking.’
Just as I was wheeling my bike out the door there was a pit-pat up the stairs and – of all the bad luck – there came the grimy little man, Elsie’s brother. He gave me his big, yellow, spiteful grin.
‘Now, aren’t I lucky? I’ll just pop down the passage; see if Elsie’s there.’
No indeed you won’t, I thought. I’m not leaving you alone in the place unless Elsie’s about.
But just then Elsie herself came out of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of wet washing.
She didn’t seem a bit pleased to see her brother. ‘I’ve told you not to come turning up here at all hours!’ she hissed at him. ‘Buzz off! Get away! I’ve enough to do – clearing up – after last night—’
He grinned at her some more, showing all his teeth. ‘All right! All right!’ he squeaked. ‘Temper! Temper! Don’t get nasty now. I just thought … But I’ll be seeing you later, then – usual place.’
And he slipped away, pit-pat, down the stairs, much quicker than I could manage with my bike. By the time I got to the street he was out of sight. And good riddance, too, I thought.
Mr Schaefer, in the high metal bed, under a neat white cover, looked grey and shrunk and old. But he seemed pleased to see me and to hear that there was not too much wrong with his house.
‘I’ll be back in a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Old age is all that’s wrong with me – like the house. They can patch me up here and there with a bit of tar paper and a sheet of corrugated iron. And I reckon I’ll last a while longer.’
‘But, oh, Mr Schaefer – the lions! Your lions! It’s so dreadful. They’re just gone!’
‘Well, Gwenno,’ he said, ‘maybe it was their time. Sometimes things come to their appointed end. We can’t tell. Perhaps it was those lions that stopped Lord Palmerston from slamming right through my front door and pounding me to paste in my own front hall. In which case I’m certainly obliged to them. For I hope I still have my uses. And maybe the lions are glad to be free at last from those hard stone bodies. Who can tell?’
I was relieved to find him so cheerful, and gave him a little pot of bramble jelly that Aunt Myfanwy had sent with me from Wales.
‘Look after your mother,’ he said. ‘Keep her away from those neighbours. They’re not a good influence.’
When I got home I found Mum sitting in the old wooden fireside chair. Dusty yellow light came in the window. Mum looked as if she’d have been better off in bed, as she drooped against the worn dark-blue hessian cushions. All the bones showed under her skin, and that was pale as raw rice.
‘Gwenno,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking. I didn’t ought to have let you come back from Wales. It’s not safe for you here. You better go back to Aunt Myfanwy.’
‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ I said. ‘It’s safe enough. The flybombs are getting fewer. Anyway, we’re not likely to have another as close as last night’s.’
And, I thought, you need me here.
‘Maybe not,’ she said, fairly crying now, tears trickling down, ‘but there’s other dangers. For one thing they say – it’s said – that Hitler’s going to send something worse, soon – much worse – another kind of flying bomb. Bigger. And that’s not all—’
‘Who says this?’
‘Well – Elsie for one. And—’
‘Mum,’ I began, ‘I don’t much like Elsie. I wish you didn’t see such a lot of her. I don’t think—’
‘Oh, that’s it, that’s a worse worry,’ Mum gabbled on, in a soft, breathless voice, as if she were badly afraid of being overheard. Her eyes were fixed burningly, insistently, on mine. ‘That’s another thing, Gwenno. Elsie and her brother. It would be better – much better – if you didn’t—’
‘Hush!’ I said.
We could hear voices outside, and footsteps. Elsie’s high, breathy laugh and a man’s voice that muttered something, quietly. I recognized it.
That nasty little viper again.
‘Gwenno!’ whispered Mum hastily. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let—’
There was a tap on the door.
‘Annie, dear? Are you better?’ came Elsie’s voice, dulcet and fluting. ‘Can we peek in? Just for a quick look-see? Just to find if you’re on the mend? Albert’s brought—’
‘Don’t let him make you—’ gasped Mum, and then the door opened wide and they came in.
Elsie was carrying a basket. ‘Look!’ she said proudly. ‘Look, I found ever such a lovely teapot. In Chelsea, where they had two of them.’
‘Two teapots?’ I said.
‘No, silly! Two flybombs. There’s street
s and streets of ruins. The wardens can’t be everywhere.’
‘And look what I’ve got,’ said Albert the dwarf. He had sidled in after his sister, grinning like an alligator. ‘Something for Gwenno. Just her size. She’ll love it – won’t she, Elsie? It’ll make her look smart – and Frenchified!’
He displayed a crumpled bit of felt, a beret.
The front-door bell rang loudly. And Mum fainted dead away.
Outside the front door were police. Loud, official voices.
‘Mr Albert Neff – we need to speak to him. We have reason to believe he’s here.’ I heard Albert’s snarling whine. ‘Why me? I’ve done nothing?’
‘We’d like you to come round to the station for questioning.’
I didn’t pay them much heed. I was rubbing Mum’s forehead with vinegar, giving her sips of water.
I heard the bang of the door and the voices died away. Where Elsie was, I didn’t enquire. Maybe she had gone along too.
Presently Mum opened her eyes. ‘Where is it?’ she whispered. ‘Where is what, Mum?’
‘The cap. The cap that he brought. Don’t touch it, Gwenno. Don’t put it on!’
I’d forgotten all about it. But there it was, lying on the boards; a dusty, crumpled bit of black felt.
As I looked, I thought it gave a twitch. I could have sworn it moved.
‘Don’t touch it!’ said Mum.
We had a pair of laundry tongs. I fetched them, picked up the dirty thing, wondered what to do with it.
I couldn’t burn it, we had no fireplace, only gas fires. So – in the end – I carried it down the passage, intending to drop it out of Elsie’s window on to the bombsite. But her door was locked. Maybe she was round at the police station, speaking in her brother’s defence. I wondered what he was wanted for. Receiving stolen goods, perhaps.
I saw there was a gap in the bottom of one of the boarded-up doors – a gap the size of a grapefruit that had been nibbled. So I poked the black cap out through the hole, and pushed the tongs after it.
Then I went back to Mum.
She had a half-bottle of whisky she was saving in case Dad got leave; but it was on the table beside her, and a good two-thirds of it was gone.
War Stories Page 17
