Secretly I could not see how Hitler’s demise was dependent on Chad going to the front or not, but I saw what he meant and said no more about it. Nevertheless it did make me sad. I felt the difference. Chad had a second passion in his life and it was very big, perhaps even bigger than his feelings for me.
I, on the other hand, only had him.
In any case, I think I remember that Emma was often sick that winter and into the spring. We were aware when she was sick, but we did not realise that her sick periods were becoming alarmingly frequent. One throat infection followed the next. No sooner had she recovered from a violent cold than she got bronchitis. The winter was very cold and tough, and no doubt she had thought she would get better when it warmed up again. But in May 1942, an unusually hot and dry May, she had a cough which seemed almost to suffocate her. After she had dragged herself wheezing and panting out of bed day after day to do her chores, she came down with such a high fever that Arvid, who normally took little or no care of his wife, finally called a doctor. The doctor diagnosed the start of pneumonia and ordered complete bed rest.
‘Really you should be in a hospital, Emma,’ the doctor said, ‘but I hardly dare to suggest that as I can already guess your answer.’
‘I’m not leaving home,’ Emma croaked promptly.
He turned towards me. I had let him in and led him upstairs, and was standing somewhat fearfully in the doorway. To answer my own question at the start of the chapter as to when we noticed Emma’s health had started to fail: I think that was the moment. Rather late, I’m ashamed to say.
‘You will have to look after Emma,’ the doctor told me. ‘You will cook lovely, strong, meaty broth for her, and make sure she eats it. She has to drink lots of water. And she’s to stay in bed, understand? I don’t want to hear that she’s dragged herself downstairs to make a meal for the family or to tidy up the house. She needs a complete rest.’
I promised to do everything he asked. I was afraid. I really wanted to care for Emma.
After the doctor had gone, she let me know whom she was most concerned about: Nobody, of course.
‘You have to take care of Brian while I’m sick,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Fiona, he has no one else. Arvid is none too fond of him, and Chad doesn’t even know he exists. The poor little boy …’ She had to cough and fought for air, her face contorting with pain.
I would have liked to say that both of those things applied to me. I could not stand Nobody either, and my answer to the problem was to treat him as if he were nothing. But I knew that I could not let Emma get excited right now. So I only said, ‘But I’m away at school half the day!’
‘I’ll have to make sure Arvid keeps an eye on him then,’ croaked Emma. ‘But in the afternoon you could …’
‘Why don’t we take him to a home? After all, he can’t stay here for ever,’ I said sullenly.
Emma closed her eyes, exhausted. ‘He’d be lost in a home,’ she murmured. ‘Please, Fiona …’
What choice did I have? The following afternoons Nobody clung to me like a burr. Arvid looked after him in the morning, cursing about it like a fishwife. He acted as if the farm business would go to wrack and ruin because he had the other child, as he still called him, clinging to him. As soon as I got back from school and he saw me, he would dump Nobody on me, before I had even put down my bag and washed my hands. Nobody beamed when he saw me coming and held onto me. I had him with me the whole time, and I had lots on my plate as it was. I had to do my homework, cook dinner, keep the house tidy, feed the chickens, collect the eggs, and tend the vegetable patch. I just could not shake off Nobody. When I had been plucking weeds and stood up I bumped into him, standing right behind me and devouring me with his eyes. When I fed the chickens, he ambled around in my way. And in the kitchen he would drive me crazy. I hated cooking in any case, and his strangely observant gaze, trying so hard to understand my overly uncertain movements, made me even more nervous than I was already.
Of course I was in a foul mood because I barely saw Chad now apart from at mealtimes. Even when I had finished my chores at the end of the afternoon, how was I to meet Chad in the bay as long as Nobody was following me like a shadow? Once I locked him in his room and went off, but I regretted it when I returned. Nobody had got himself into such a state that he had made a mess in his pants and thrown up. He and the whole room stank, and his face was swollen from crying. It was just lucky that Emma had not noticed. I had to get rid of the clothes without getting caught, put him in the bath and then mop the floor. Angrily I asked myself why Emma did not finally look for a suitable place for the boy. By now it was clear that he was mentally disabled and that nothing could change that, and he was turning into a real burden.
To pay him back for all the extra work he was giving me, I scrubbed him down with ice-cold water. He did not do me the favour of whining or bursting into tears. On the contrary, I almost had the impression that he was so thankful for this attention that he would also have let me pack him in ice or hold him underwater for minutes on end. Although he was shivering from the cold and his lips were turning blue, he looked at me with beaming eyes in which I could see his devotion and adoration.
‘Fiona,’ he stammered, smiling, ‘a-and Boby.’
‘Your name’s not Boby,’ I snarled. ‘You’re Nobody! Do you know what a Nobody is? Nothing! Nothing!’
He seemed not to have understood anything I had said, because he smiled broadly, as if I had given him a declaration of my love.
‘Boby,’ he repeated, and then again, ‘Fiona!’ He reached out his hand and tried to grasp my hair.
I quickly turned my head away. ‘Stop it! And now get out of the bath. I have to dry you.’
He climbed out obediently and stood there on the rug, shivering and his teeth chattering. I looked at his thin, freezing body and felt something like a prick of conscience. It was cruel and mean of me to stick him in ice-cold water for so long. After all, he had not dirtied himself on purpose, only out of despair because I had locked him in and left him alone for at least two hours. I suppose he had fears I had no idea about, but, bloody hell, I was almost thirteen, I was in love, I just wanted to enjoy my life a little. I was out of depth being asked to care for a mentally disabled nine- or ten-year-old boy.
Looking back now, and without wanting to belittle what I did, I have to say that my behaviour was probably pretty normal. If Brian had been a little brother who I had been made to look after, I would also have tried everything to get out of it, and I would probably have not treated him any more kindly. Most girls my age would have done the same. The problem was that, unlike a normally developed child, Brian could not defend himself. Other boys would have shouted so the whole farm heard if they were locked in. They would have hammered and kicked the door and been freed a few minutes later by an adult. And they would not have allowed me to pour icy water over them. Even if I had been older than them, they would have found ways and strategies to stand up to me.
Brian, though, was different. And I was too young to really understand his helplessness. I swayed between pity and intense irritability. The irritability won out easily. If he had not been so clingy, so fixated on me and yet at the same time so unable to take part in a sensible conversation, I might have had a more friendly tone for him. Instead I bounced off his shell and did not have the patience or peace of mind to make more of an effort with him.
Nevertheless I was shocked enough about my behaviour that day to try harder in the following weeks. The consequence of this was that Nobody clung to me even more closely and I could barely ever be alone with Chad. This did not exactly endear the little boy to me.
In June Emma was able to leave her bed. She had become frighteningly thin and looked a shadow of her former self. Although she often needed my support in the first weeks, she could look after Nobody again, and I managed to escape to the bay and be alone with Chad almost every day. May had been hot, as was June, followed by an even hotter July. Cloudless days with the scent of grass and flo
wers. A sapphire-blue sea at our feet. And long evenings when the setting sun lit the western horizon in a glorious blaze. The war was far away and I did not care about it. If Chad had not kept harping on about his wish to go to the front, I think I would almost have forgotten that somewhere there were massacres and bombs, misery and tears. I felt secure because Emma would not let Chad go. I had the most wonderful summer of my life. That is not just how I felt at the time. I still know that they were the best weeks of my life.
On 29th July, 1942 I was thirteen. The letter I received from my mother on that day put an end to all of that – to the easy-going summer days, to the joy of puppy love, to the endless freedom of the Beckett farm, which had now become my home, in the part of the world where I felt at ease.
Mum wrote that the air raids on London had diminished considerably and that there was no reason why I should be a burden on the Becketts’ pocket any longer – that is how she expressed it, although my stay in Yorkshire was paid for! She would come at the end of August and fetch me back to London. It was also high time, she said, for me to meet my stepfather.
My world collapsed. Although I have just written that the summer of 1942 was the most wonderful of my life, that was only true until that sunny Wednesday at the end of July. From then on I was trapped in the deepest despair.
The following August was the worst of my life.
8
I arrived back in London on 1st September. I had not said a word to my mother for the entire train journey, making her so angry that she had bitten her fingernails right down and would no longer look at me. It was a sunny late summer day, but to me London looked ugly, miserable and absolutely unbearable. Here you could see and feel the war which had been so far away in Yorkshire. Broken houses, piles of rubble and burnt-out streets. People hurried along the pavements. Many of them were poorly dressed and looked hungry. We had to walk from the train station to our flat – which in fact was Harold Kane’s flat, and which I had sworn to reject as a home for ever. Instead of the smell of salt and hay on the breeze, I was surrounded by the stench of petrol and dust. Mum carried my suitcase. I lugged along the bag in which Emma had packed bread, meat and cheese. It contained mountains of food. She said that things were getting harder to come by in London, and she was right, as I would soon find out. Mum had half-heartedly offered to take Nobody with us and hand him over to the relevant authorities, but as was to be expected, Emma refused, horrified at the idea. I had never felt such a burning envy for Nobody as I did that day. He was to stay in the paradise to which I had to say a painful goodbye. He had cried when Mum and I left for the train station, and I saw Emma popping sweets into his mouth to comfort him.
Chad had been tending the sheep and had not showed his face. That was what we had agreed the evening before, and I preferred it like that. I did not want to cry, but I would have if he had stood next to his mother and Nobody and waved me off. I could only get through the day by sinking into an icy rage. Seeing him would have broken down all my inner defences.
When I saw the half destroyed city I did say something to my mother. ‘There aren’t any more bombs? It looks like they’re falling every night!’
‘Well fancy that!’ said Mum. ‘So you can speak!’
I looked daggers at her.
‘That’s the damage from the air raids at the end of forty and start of forty-one,’ Mum explained. ‘At the moment not much is happening, No air raid sirens for weeks.’
‘Aha,’ I replied sullenly. It was not exactly mature of me, but in that moment I wished for dozens of German planes to dump tons of bombs on London that night. Then Mum would see her mistake and send me back to Yorkshire in a panic.
My mother stopped, wiped the sweat off her face. My suitcase was heavy. The late afternoon was very warm. ‘Fiona. We’re a family. You, Harold and I. It’s not good for us to become strangers.’
‘I can hardly become a stranger to Harold. He’s never seen me.’
‘The more’s the pity. For a year now he’s been your father—’
‘My stepfather.’
‘Right, your stepfather. It’s important for you to get to know each other, for the three of us to find a good way to live together.’
‘And what if we don’t?’
‘We’ll find one. Fiona, be happy you still have a family! Some children have lost everything in this war! Think about poor Brian Somerville who has no one in this world!’
‘I’d rather not,’ I replied angrily. ‘Else I’ll burst with envy. He could stay, I couldn’t.’
Now Mum looked really hurt, but she had brought it on herself, I thought. We did not say another word for the rest of the walk. Conversation just could not happen between the two of us that day.
Harold Kane’s flat was in Stepney, in one of the ugliest houses that I had ever seen. A miserable grey building set back from the street and hidden behind two other buildings which were considerably higher and so stopped sunlight from reaching this hidden-away house. Only one house in this street had been completely destroyed by a bomb but the blast had obviously blown in the windows of a number of other houses. I could see hideous and crazy makeshift repairs of tarpaulin and boards. The street was very narrow and dark, even on this sunny day. In the winter it must have been as bleak as anything. By now I was used to the wide freedom of Yorkshire’s countryside. I could have bawled my eyes out.
Harold Kane was already home. I had hoped that he would still be at work, and so I would have a little breathing space to get used to the new flat. Instead, he opened the fourth floor door after we had panted up the steep dark stairs with my suitcase and bag. He was big and heavy-set and had an unhealthy red colour in his face. At the time I did not know this marked him out as a drinker. I thought he was ugly and unpleasant. I hated him at first sight.
‘So you’re Fiona,’ he said and held out his hand. ‘Welcome to London, Fiona!’
He tried to be friendly, but I didn’t trust him. My feeling said that the idea of fetching me back was not his but my mother’s. How was he to deal with this thirteen-year-old girl suddenly landing in their comfy coupledom? Mum and he had settled into their new life a year ago. To him I could only mean trouble.
The flat was very small and rather sparsely decorated. Even without ever having had much money, we had lived better than this. There were two rooms and a small additional chamber. They all faced out the back onto another house, which was so close that you could stretch your arm out the window and touch its walls. Although the late afternoon sun was still shining outside, there was no sign of it here. It could just as well have been an overcast November day instead of the sunny first day of September.
The first room was used as a living room and kitchen. The second room was Mum and Harold’s bedroom. The little chamber – as I had guessed – was to be my room. A bed and a narrow wardrobe fitted inside, and that was all. I could barely turn around in there.
‘And where am I to do my homework?’ I asked angrily.
‘At the kitchen table,’ my mother replied, trying to present an aura of carefree cheer, which came across as completely fake. ‘You’ve got room, and no one will bother you!’
I really had to compose myself, else I would have burst into tears. Everything was so much worse than I had imagined. Not that I was spoilt. On the Beckett farm the bedrooms were small and dark, the house was rundown, and my bedroom – if I am to be honest – was only marginally bigger than the small room here. But on beautiful days the sun flooded in through all the windows and you had a view out over an endless expanse of meadows until they blurred into the sky on the horizon. From one of the top rooms you could see the sea behind a gap in the hills. I had the feeling of an almost limitless freedom. Here, on the other hand, I felt I was being buried alive, walled into a prison.
‘I’m at the docks all day,’ said Harold, which I took to be an attempt to make me feel better. ‘And your mum isn’t home either, because unfortunately she still goes to clean for people, even though there’s no need for
her to. So the whole flat is yours.’
‘We can use the money I bring in,’ said Mum.
‘We’d get by without it too,’ replied Harold.
I had the feeling I was listening to a long-established argument. Obviously Mum’s cleaning was a hot potato.
Things would get tricky,’ she said.
I began to ask myself why she had married this Mr Kane. He was not good-looking, and he obviously did not have money. What, for God’s sake, was his attraction for my mother? I thought she was a pretty woman. She could have caught a better fish than this swollen fatty. My dead father might have been a drunkard, and completely unreliable, but he was a good-looking man. I remember that as a child I was often proud to walk around town with him and see the looks that women threw him. That would never happen with Harold.
Had Mum been that desperate?
Of course, now I can understand her better. By today’s standards, my mother, in her mid-thirties, was still a young woman. Back then she was over the hill. She was a widow, had a child and no money. She did not want to stay alone for the rest of her life, but men were not exactly running to her door, given her situation. In addition, most men her age were at the front and not exactly in a position to come courting. Mum had always been a very pragmatic person. She had seen Harold Kane as a real and possibly last chance for herself, and she had grasped it. Now she was determined to make the best of it. The only problem was that I was supposed to play along, but I was set against it.
For dinner we had potatoes and meat. The meat was so stringy that you had to keep plucking bits from between your teeth, while I found the potatoes tasteless. Mum noticed that I was not enjoying the meal.
‘I’m sure the food was better in the country,’ she said. For the first time since she had fetched me against my will from Staintondale she sounded a little apologetic. ‘Here in town the war has brought shortages.’
I did not reply. What could I have said? Not just the food – everything was better in the country. Evening came. Around this time I would normally have run down to the bay and met Chad. We would have hugged. I would have felt his heartbeat next to mine. We would have told each other about our day, and then I would have had to listen to one of his angry monologues about the call-up he longed for …
The Other Child Page 21