A Map of the Damage

by Sophia Tobin

  She observed Livy carefully. There was a certain wariness to the girl’s expression today: she looked out at the street as though a missile might fly from it at any moment.

  ‘Sweetheart?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll go and make some tea if the water’s back on,’ said Livy, pulling the sleeves of her grey jumper over her hands.

  Peggy glanced out at the men on the street. ‘Six cups should do it,’ she said.

  Livy nodded and went quickly, soft steps over the marble, her bobbing stride saturated with nervous energy.

  Peggy went back to her work. She was sweeping the last of the debris from the front steps when a young man appeared before her so suddenly that it made her gasp in a way the falling masonry had not.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he smiled. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ At first sight, he looked dreadfully tired, and rather dishevelled, but his smile was pure. He wore a long winter coat and had thick, tousled hair which he brushed away from his forehead with a closed hand.

  ‘Not at all, how I can help?’ Aware that she had adopted her formal tone, the one Bill called her telephone voice, Peggy paused to pat the scarf on her head.

  ‘I saw someone upstairs, at the window,’ he said. ‘Is there someone up there?’ Now she saw the strain on his face. As his smile died, the shadows beneath his eyes came to the fore.

  ‘Miss Baker was up there a minute ago,’ said Peggy.

  She saw him take a breath. ‘Olivia Baker?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at him with new interest.

  ‘Thank goodness. I thought I’d seen a ghost.’

  He was still standing, but she saw that something in him had buckled. An almost imperceptible movement. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  He shook his head. Peggy wondered about extracting information without prying or taking liberties. ‘You know Livy well?’

  Another breath. She saw the sharpness of his glance. ‘She’s known as Livy?’

  ‘Yes – that is, she asked us to call her that.’ Peggy thought carefully for a moment. She felt the heat rising in her face. ‘I should warn you – Mr—’

  ‘Taylor. Christian Taylor. Forgive me, I should have said. I’m with the LCC. Architect’s department.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m Mrs Holliday, the housekeeper here. I was saying – I should warn you that Miss Baker – Livy – well, she doesn’t remember anything.’ She coloured at the baldness of her tone. ‘There was a bomb, a couple of months ago, and she found her way here, but she remembers nothing from before.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘That’s what she says. I have no reason to doubt her. How do you know her?’

  *

  In the basement vaults, Livy filled the kettle, and worried about the man she had seen from the window.

  When she had gone upstairs, she could hardly bear to look at the rooms. The quality of the light ahead of her, falling from the Committee Room door, had been too bright, and she had sensed even before she stepped around the corner that the floor-to-ceiling windows of the room had been blown in. Sure enough, when she faced the room she saw the shafts of light falling over the dark mahogany furniture, and small pieces of glass stood upright, embedded in the leather upholstery of the committee table. On the far side of the room she could see the sparkle of glass, obscenely pretty, glistening in the cheek of Sir John Blake, a portrait painted in 1752.

  She had gone to the window, and looked out, trying to escape the devastation behind her. As with the building, she could not remember a single thing about the pre-war view from this room. Everything further back than the day her house had been bombed was still suspended somewhere inaccessible in her mind. She remembered her favourite film stars, her favourite colour, her favourite food. The wider parameters of her life were still in place. But when she tried to picture her own personal past it had a pale, watery quality, as though she were on the bottom of the sea and looking up, trying to work out what was beyond.

  No, not everything: almost everything. There was a small, rapidly dissolving island of memory. A job she once had. It must have been years ago. And she remembered that she was happy. She had a few fleeting scenes, a few faces. Her typing letters. A group of young men, laughing. Her, sitting at a typewriter, trying not to laugh too, because she had been listening.

  She had a vision of a man, his back to her, in a tweed jacket, sitting at a desk, writing, in the yellow circle of light cast by an anglepoise lamp.

  These scenes were fleeting, barely known, like something she had dreamt, which was beginning to dissolve, while the present was pin-sharp, vivid. A little too bright for her eyes, like the light from blown windows.

  As she stood staring down from the Committee Room window, the rescue party surveyed the rubble where the offices had been. One of them scratched the top of his helmet in puzzlement, as though it was his head. Then, a jolt. A familiar face. A young man, in a coat that had seen better days, hatless, his dark blonde hair thick and untidy. He was talking to another man, looking over the building, a notebook in his hand, taking in each detail of the exterior with care, as one would assess a person for injury. As she stared at him, his eyes met hers.

  One of the men in the architect’s office.

  She had stepped back immediately, and let the drape flutter down, screening the glassless window. When, after a few moments, she peered cautiously around the edge of the window frame, he had gone.

  The kettle began to whistle, and Livy piled pale green cups and saucers onto the tray. She made the tea, and rationed out milk into the cups. Then she carried the loaded tray up the basement stairs and across the Stair Hall. Ahead of her, the double doorway into that slice of darkness which was the Entrance Hall. She had wondered why it was so dark; thought that, perhaps, the Club’s architect had an eye for drama – dark panelling, and a doorway into the light and coloured marble of the Stair Hall, so that it sent the mind spinning like a top.

  She stopped in the doorway of the Entrance Hall and stared at them. Peggy and the man. They turned at the same moment, alerted by the sound of rattling china. She wanted to run away, but it really was not practical: a whole tray of teacups, after all, sat in her arms, barring her from anything but a messy escape.

  ‘Livy,’ he said.

  Peggy came up the small flight of steps and took the tray from her. ‘It’s all right, love. I explained that something happened, that you might not remember him.’

  ‘I don’t want to speak to him,’ Livy whispered. She focused on Peggy’s blue eyes; on not looking at the man who stood a few yards away.

  ‘Do you remember him?’

  ‘No. That is, not really. But. I just don’t want to.’

  Peggy put the tray down on the floor. ‘He’s a very nice young man. He says you worked together in the architect’s department at the LCC. Speak to him, love. It won’t do any harm. It might even help. I’ll go and see who wants tea out there.’

  As Peggy went past the man, with a smile and downcast eyes, Livy looked towards him. He stood there patiently, perfectly still. Livy folded her arms, and came down the few steps towards him.

  ‘Hello.’ Her voice sounded younger than she was, and uncertain.

  He smiled. ‘Hello. I saw you at the window. For a minute, you know, I didn’t quite believe it was you. And such a strange coincidence. I told you once how much I love this building.’

  She frowned, felt a pin-sharp pain in the centre of her brow. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t remember that. I’ve not been well.’

  ‘Mrs Holliday mentioned that. Do you remember me?’

  ‘Not really. You were in my office, that’s all. I’m ever so sorry.’

  ‘Please, don’t apologize.’ He seemed so calm, but she sensed his struggle in the way he looked at her, almost unblinking. ‘Pleased to meet you again. My name is Christian Taylor.’

  She nodded. ‘What’s your business here today?’

  He spoke slowly. ‘I am from the architect’s department of the LCC, Statutory Branch. The dep
artment maps the bombing. I don’t usually come out to sites. Reports come in from the ARP wardens, and from our damage recorders, and we take note of them on the damage maps. I heard this morning there was a hit on the Mirrormakers’ Club, and I wanted to see it: they phoned through that it would be a Category B.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘So badly damaged that demolition is necessary.’

  She felt a dull flash of alarm. ‘They’ve got it wrong then, haven’t they?’

  He smiled briefly. ‘Of course. Don’t worry at all, Miss Baker. It is, still, Miss Baker, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave a grim little laugh. ‘As far as I know.’

  He nodded, and swallowed hard. ‘I’ve spoken to my colleague outside. He has looked around this morning, and it’s clearly a Category C(a). Seriously damaged, capable of repair, still usable.’ He smiled. Then he glanced down at his notebook. ‘Not the official record,’ he said. ‘Just my personal notes.’

  He held his notebook half-tipped towards her. She nodded towards it. ‘What did you write in there?’

  He caught the flash of interest in her eyes, the merest chink of it, and it lit something in his own. He held the notebook out to her, without a moment’s hesitation. He even turned it around, so that she could read it without any difficulty.

  ‘You might not remember,’ he said. ‘You were the only person in the typing pool who could read my handwriting. And as this isn’t an official record, I can show you.’

  Windows out on the west side. Some signs of damage within.

  They said the building was destroyed, or as near as, but it is not. The walls still stand, and the roof.

  And, like a miracle, she is in it. Nothing she is in could be described as destroyed. Unless I have imagined her. Another ghost in a mind already crowded with them.

  She looked up at him. Whatever had lain between them was wiped from her memory, but his gaze was alive with it, and her fear of the unknown opened up beneath her, as though she stood on the edge of the Club’s roof again, looking down from a great height. She sensed too, instinctively, the sense of loss in him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  He saw the fear in her eyes. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We needn’t talk about any of it. I’m just glad to see you, that’s all, Livy.’

  He took the notebook back, brushed it off with the sleeve of his coat as though it had an imaginary covering of dust, closed it and put it into his inside coat pocket. As he did so, she noticed that he kept his left hand closed, and drawn within his sleeve. She looked at it, and his gaze followed hers.

  ‘I signed up, would you believe,’ he said, his expression hardening. ‘Army. I was in a reserved occupation, but I persuaded them. Second week of training, blew two of my fingers off. Daresay I could have gone back in afterwards but they didn’t want me. Thought I was a commie. Worried about socialists having guns these days.’

  She looked down, her arms wrapped around her waist.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Talking too much. I keep forgetting. That you don’t know me. Do you really not know me?’

  And he reached out to touch her arm.

  She stepped back several paces. Against the panelled wall of the Entrance Hall. The dark panelling, which smelt of old varnish and centuries of city smoke. And she turned her head to it, so that she did not have to look into his face. The oaky, old smell was strangely reassuring. She put one hand to the wood: felt its smooth, syrupy texture. Too many layers of varnish, she thought. ‘Please,’ she said, her face turned away. ‘Please make sure they don’t think it’s unfit to live in.’

  He stared at her, astonished. ‘I promise,’ he said.

  ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea, Mr Taylor?’ Peggy had come back in, her face glowing with curiosity. ‘Have you offered him a cup, Livy?’

  Christian turned to Peggy. It seemed to her as though a light had gone out in his eyes. ‘No, but thank you ever so much,’ he said. ‘I must be going.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d be very welcome to come back,’ piped up Peggy. ‘Wouldn’t he, Livy?’

  Livy said nothing, her face still turned to the panelling.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Christian said. ‘I firewatch at St Paul’s one night a week, so I’m often in the neighbourhood, and may look in one day if that’s agreeable. Well, goodbye – Mrs Holliday.’

  ‘Peggy.’

  ‘Peggy. And Miss Baker.’ He turned, gave a mock bow in Livy’s direction, his gaze no longer on her face, but on the grey York stone floor. ‘Goodbye. I hope you start to feel better soon.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And if, for any reason, we don’t meet again – life these days is unpredictable, after all,’ they both looked up at the same time, and their eyes met briefly, ‘have a good war.’

  *

  Christian Taylor walked down the front steps, and had a brief conversation with his colleague before bidding him goodbye. He walked smoothly, his back straight, his head up. It was only after he had turned the corner into the narrow side street on the north side of the building that his pace slowed until he stopped. He put one hand to the cool grey stone of the Club, and rested his forehead there. Then he drove his fist into the wall, so hard that when he looked down at his abraded knuckles, scraped and bleeding, he could see the pattern of the stone’s texture there.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1940

  REDLANDS

  ‘Must you go?’

  Jonathan Whitewood signalled to the head gardener to linger in the topiary, out of sight, like an actor in a farce.

  ‘I must.’ He tried to smile, but managed only a conciliatory grimace, like a man squinting into the sun.

  His wife proffered her powdered cheek, accepted his goodbye kiss, and forced a smile. A faint mist of exhaustion seemed to hang over her eyes.

  ‘You are a wonder, darling,’ he said, and he meant it. Her stance was always elegant, even in her wellington boots. Cool and limber; perfectly made-up, her short hair tightly curled. Still, Jonathan knew that this look was now a matter of decision and immense effort rather than a simple expression of who she was. Every day he thought about what a toll it must be on her, to see the house crawling with people, to hear the sound of wheels over potholes as cars and ambulances motored up and down the drive. It had always been such a quiet place, their estate, cut into a Hertfordshire hillside.

  ‘There’s no need to dig up the rose beds,’ he said. ‘We have the entire Redlands estate to grow vegetables for the war effort.’

  She gave a determined smile: an expression which translated as I insist.

  ‘You can go to Emma if things get too much here,’ he said. A cousin in Scotland.

  ‘They won’t,’ she said. ‘But don’t stay in London too long.’ It was a phrase of love, of longing, that she had used throughout their marriage when he left for business, and it now had the quality of a custom. To omit it would be to admit that something was terribly wrong.

  Things would get better, he thought, if they could just be left alone: him, her, a nurse for her bad days. But not here. He had handed the keys over to the government without rancour; it was his duty. He could not resent that, even with the trouble it had caused over the past year and a half, a timeless present, as his wife wilted like a rose out of water.

  ‘Darling,’ Stevie had said, when they knew war was inevitable. ‘Could you use your influence? Can you make sure we are a school?’

  He had been smoking a cigar when she said it; drinking whisky over ice. He wondered if, in that moment, a fragment of ice had taken the wrong route from his throat, and entered his heart. In the following months, as he witnessed her disappointment, he gained clarity, and he realized that it had always been this moment, every evening, that she chose to bring forwards her most risky thoughts, to woo him with the background music of her voice. Only now he saw it, tracing his wife’s influence with the precision of an archaeologist brushing mud away from fragments of the past.

  He felt like a fool. He
was an intelligent man, but he had always thought that Stevie’s every utterance proceeded naturally from the moment. He could not bear to think she had been calculating, even for the purposes of good. More than that, he could not tolerate the idea that his autonomy, something so precious to him, had been shaped by her thousand suggestions over the last twenty years. That he was, unwittingly, the product of her plans and wishes. Poor Stevie. For the first time in their long marriage, she had misjudged him, and drawn back the curtains on the subtle, well-tended mechanisms, so that he heard the click of the clockwork behind their relationship.

  Yes, he could have used his influence. He had friends and acquaintances from school and university dotted about the government. Yes, he could have made sure their house was converted into a school rather than being used for other purposes. But he couldn’t bear the thought of Redlands crawling with children; of how it would throw their own childlessness into relief. Can’t you leave it alone? he had wanted to say to her, despite never having been a man prone to melodrama. Can’t you understand that the children, even if they delight you for a day or two, will be a torment to us?

  Not that a single child of theirs had been born; even those formed only from hope, a day or two of delay, had never really had long enough to spark into even imaginary life. But he knew that a houseful of children would conjure the spirits of what-might-have-been out of the house’s hitherto protective air. He could exist with the vacancy but not with the embodiment, by proxy, of possibilities.

  So instead of a school, at the outbreak of war Redlands was adapted to become Number Eighteen General Hospital, London Region. Lines of beds occupied the ballroom, the suites of salons. His grandfather’s smoking room became an office, while, perversely, the doctors and nurses smoked in the breakfast room; and the billiard room doubled as a linen store.

  Jonathan and Stevie occupied a suite of rooms in the west wing. Their favourite things went into storage, chiefly the paintings, for they were closest to Jonathan’s heart: old masters and family portraits. Stevie arranged for her favourites to go too – the family collection of gold boxes and vertu. Extravagant Dutch still lifes, gauzy French landscapes and outraged, imperious ancestors now peered out of the darkness of some underground room, alongside locked metal cases of tissue-wrapped hardstone carvings and enamelled snuffboxes. But there was not enough time or space to send everything, so most of the furnishings stayed, shunted to the sides of rooms and passageways. He had stopped going into the dining room when he saw metal bedsteads pushed up against the seventeenth-century tapestries.