What the Raven Brings

by John Owen Theobald

  ‘Throw your packs inside, girls,’ calls a voice. A rough man appears. ‘Go on. Toss them in and then find a place to hold on.’

  I almost laugh at the absurdity. But the girl in front of me throws her bag into the back and finds a handhold. The other girls are doing the same and I scramble to get a place. My bag rolls away but I don’t care. I grab a place on the side, the metal cold on my hands. Is he serious? We’re going to just hang off the side of the lorry? How far away is the base? I hope Nell will be there when we arrive.

  I am sorry, Timothy Squire.

  Without so much as a word of warning the engine rumbles to life. We are moving. My hands clench around the hold. The girl beside me is laughing. The wind pushes as we pick up speed, bouncing along the wet road. I can see little aside from the dark shapes of houses in the distance. The stars are out above the long fields.

  The other girl is laughing now. The wind gusts, a jolt of life, as we speed through the countryside. Dark shapes above, too. Aircraft, coming in to land? I cling hard to the side of the cold lorry, blasted by the night air.

  I am laughing, too.

  II

  THE GHOSTS WE CALLED

  ‘The ghosts I have called, I cannot get rid of them now...’

  Goethe, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  3

  Sunday, 10 January 1943

  In the frozen darkness, I slip out from my sheets on the sofa and force myself to dress. Pausing – did Lightwood just roll over? – I stamp my feet into my boots. Serves him right if he does wake up.

  Oh, how he smirked at the whole idea. It was worse than I thought – I knew the moment I said it that he would laugh, but I didn’t fancy him dining out on it quite so much.

  ‘Timothy Squire, the bird tamer,’ he’s started calling me. ‘Right, who tames more birds than you? The birds love you.’ He gave an awful wink. I can only imagine what he’d say if he knew I’m supposed to have the title Ravenmaster.

  The door squeals murderously as it swings open. Good. I slip out, blinking in the surrounding dark. Ships glow wetly in the moonlight.

  The moon is still up, and I’m wandering the city.

  I shiver through the dark streets, heading north to Tower Bridge. I can’t believe Anna’s gone. And like that. Pure madness that we’d have that argument again – she’s running off to join the WAAF, and we’re arguing about looting. I know why she’s so mad and unreasonable about it. Her mum died, and all her old stuff’s just sitting in the house. She doesn’t want to believe that someone might come along and take it.

  ‘I’m sorry, yeah,’ I said, calm as you like. ‘I haven’t nicked a thing – from anyone – in years. The Blitz is over, and God willing it will never come back. So there’s no need for you to go running off.’

  We walked back from the roost not touching or talking. And now she’s gone. Dead set on being a WAAF.

  The docklands are slow to recover from Hitler’s fireworks. I remember the swarms of rats, basically taking over these streets. Those warehouses are gone, burnt to rubble. Where’d those rats go? There must’ve been thousands of them. Stray cats couldn’t have got ’em all.

  Dawn is wet, heavy. You could cut the air with a knife. The dark stone of the Tower seems always shadowed, cold. Fingers crossed not to run into old dreary pants bloody Oakes. Mr Thorne, the Watchman, observes my approach from his post at the West Gate.

  ‘Morning, Mr Thorne, sir.’

  ‘Morning, Timothy Squire.’

  ‘All right if I come in?’

  ‘Your dad expecting you?’

  ‘No. No, I only have a few minutes before I’m due at the docks. Just need to feed the ravens, sir.’

  ‘Yeoman Stackhouse requested some help?’ He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Not exactly, sir.’

  Suddenly he smiles, and I go red. ‘Anna sent you along, did she? Well, better get a move on.’

  I walk as calmly as I can through the gate. Bloody Mr Thorne. Anna sent me? I am doing her a favour, becoming the bloody Ravenmaster. She’d better appreciate it. Once Lightwood’s done telling the story, half of the city will be laughing at me.

  You shouldn’t have tried to stop her leaving.

  I should have gone to Aberdeen, and finished my training. Instead I’m here, feeling like a drowned rat. I had my chance and I made a hash of it. The whole thing’s gone to buggery.

  I’m so early to reach the Stone Kitchen that even the milk’s not here yet. If there’s any milk left to come. Chilled to the bone, I prepare the ravens’ food in the cold empty kitchen. The stained glass was set in the windows to catch the sunrise, but I’m an hour too soon at least. Seems like Yeoman Stackhouse has not left any supplies out. Why is he messing about? What is he feeding them, grass?

  Not a single piece of meat in the stores. I find the biscuits – about the only thing left in the counters – but without the meat there’s no blood. Soaked in blood is how they eat. Will they even eat them dry? I’ve got little choice but to try it now.

  What would Anna say if she saw this? No supplies for the birds; not so much as a mouse. She must have been too busy to notice the state of things. Rushing off to buy her fancy uniform. When Yeoman Stackhouse turns up I’ll have to chat to him. He’ll be more than a touch surprised to see me here.

  I hurry across the wet cobblestones and past Traitors’ Gate, climbing the slick steps to the battlements, and loop back towards the Green and the roost. I scan the grounds below, seeing only a few Wives crossing to the White Tower. Dad will already be working away inside the White Tower. Not that I’m afraid to run into him. I just don’t have the time.

  As I walk on to the Green, I can hear them. Dry, insistent croaking, like a saw across wood. Or bone. They know I’m here. I catch a glimpse of a curved beak in the darkness. I pull open the cages, one by one, thankful for the gloves against the cold wire.

  ‘Sorry, gents – ladies. Grub’s fallen off a bit, I’m afraid.’

  The birds do eat, which is a relief. But I feel their gaze – a questioning, an anger. It’s not my fault! I never let the stores run down when I was here, did I? You lot have the memory of goldfish.

  Back in Aberdeen, living in the barracks, there was always steak and kidney. We earned them, no doubt about it. The whole company of engineers drilled together, marched together – twenty miles every day, with the bloody piper keeping time. Run for ten minutes, march for five. At the end we’d stop at the rifle range, exhausted but ready to put in some rounds. And then some steak and kidney.

  I rush around depositing the dry biscuits into frowning beaks. ‘Anna will be back soon, all right? I’ll do my best in the meantime.’

  That one’s Stan, the youngest. I hope you’re not moulting again. He swoops his wings, almost flying already. I try Anna’s whistle, but he flaps away unconcerned, off to hide away his food again. Caching, Anna called it. Hardly enough here to save more for later.

  The wings on some are almost too long, which means Stackhouse is not clipping them. They’ll all fly away given the chance; now that’s a headline for the papers – Bird Tamer Loses Tower Ravens, Britain Falls. Oh, Lightwood would talk of nothing else.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Ah, Yeoman Stackhouse. Good morning.’

  He appears to disagree. In his uniform, hat in hand at his side, he gives the distinct impression he was on his way elsewhere. Breakfast, I’d wager.

  ‘I just thought I’d give you a hand with the morning feeding. I kind of missed doing it, that’s all. I used to do it – to help Anna do it – before you came here, sir.’

  ‘Don’t you have other duties now, Private? Why are you not in uniform?’

  ‘Straight after this I’m down at the docks. I’ll kit up then, sir.’

  He narrows his eyes. ‘I’m sure the country needs you more at the docks, don’t you think, Private?’

  ‘It’s Sapper, sir, and more to the point, Anna named me Ravenmaster while she’s away. And I’m a little concerned about the food for
the birds. They need four ounces of meat – the size of your palm – and the biscuits need to be soaked in blood. The butcher at Smithfields knows the order.’

  ‘No tourists coming this year, Ravenmaster. Not until the war’s done.’

  ‘We still have to feed the birds. Keep them alive and all that. You know the prime minister himself came to check on them last year. I can’t imagine what he’d say if he comes again and the birds are starving.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll manage.’

  ‘Sir, the ravens are well important. Legend has it that if they ever leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall. That is why Churchill is so interested in them. That is why we have to clip their wings, sir. If not, they will simply fly away. If the newspapers got word that the ravens of the Tower have flown away – well, I can only imagine what Churchill would say then.’

  We stare at each other.

  ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I will just finish up here.’

  I can’t quite make myself say the last bit, but I think he as good as hears it. And when I come back tomorrow morning, do me a favour and have the meat ready in the storeroom.

  Maybe the quartermaster is right, and I’m running from the action, scared I’m about to get clobbered. No, I know the real reason why I am here.

  And it’s far more foolish than that.

  Sunday, 10 January 1943

  It is almost midnight when we arrive. A guard at the gate waves us inside. A red-brick building looms ahead, huge and unfriendly. Runways shoot out from all angles, lit up by two lines of paraffin lamps – ‘goosenecks’, someone called them – like giant candles disappearing into the darkness beyond.

  I can’t help but think it. What would Timothy Squire make of this?

  We are led by torchlight into the giant building. Warmwell is not the central training facility for new recruits, and they still get five hundred girls a week. And they are girls. Men have to be seventeen and a half to join the RAF, but some of the girls here look as young as me. All the top-drawer girls, Nell said. The building is cold, even with all the bodies, and we are marched into a huge lecture hall. I don’t see Nell anywhere.

  ‘Hair off the collar in your uniform,’ a girl in an officer’s uniform says. ‘That means put your hair up, girls. No jewellery, no make-up. And if you’re signing up because you like the uniform, well – wait until you get the knickers. They don’t call them “passion crushers” for nothing. Now, on you go.’

  I have turned beet-red, but keep walking. The horrible woman, yelling about knickers in front of the crowd. She is an officer, and we all have to listen to everything she says. She leads us to our billets, endless rows of wooden huts, leading to the giant hangars beyond. We follow like ghosts, silent, barely there. Iron cots run along both sides of the hut, each cot separated by a locker for kitbags. Only a few feet between us and our neighbours.

  ‘Hi. I’m called Anna Cooper.’

  ‘Anna Cooper? I’m Samantha Nicholson. I was at school with Sergeant MacKay at North London Collegiate. How do you know her?’

  ‘She’s my sergeant,’ I say, somewhat lamely. I did not attend some posh school. ‘I haven’t met her yet.’

  There is a pause, when Samantha doesn’t seem to know quite where to look.

  Another girl rises from her bunk, tall and skinny with dark blonde hair. ‘Samantha Nicholson? I’m Isabella Pomeroy. My uncle told me to keep a lookout for you. He was at Fighter Command with your father.’

  Squeezed out of the conversation, I move back to my cot when Sergeant MacKay herself comes in, her eyes straight ahead. ‘Stand when your Commanding Officer enters a room,’ she barks.

  We hurry to find our feet, even her old school mates. I am about to get my first taste of drills.

  *

  Sergeant MacKay tells us to make up our ‘beds’ and then wait to be taken to the Mess. The billets are simple iron cots, a few feet apart. They don’t look comfortable. The hut itself is grim. Long, with low ceilings and cement floors. There must be twenty-five of us in here. I cast sideways glances, but the girls around are intent at their tasks.

  Sergeant beckons us to follow her to the Mess. It is much warmer here, though the food is mashed potato and minced beef, which is more water than beef. We are given our first kit items – our ‘irons’, a knife, fork, and spoon. In silence and nervous laughter we eat. There is something, I notice, in the faces of the girls here that I can’t quite place. A glimmer.

  Kitchen hands come out to serve tea, which is spooned from a giant bucket – tea from a bucket – and I watch in horror as the woman ladles tea into my enamel mug.

  ‘Welcome to the WAAF,’ mutters a dark-haired girl at my side, but she, too, is smiling.

  I lift the mug and try not to grimace. Whatever these girls are excited about, it isn’t the tea. But I am here.

  Tuesday, 12 January 1943

  Three weeks of training have begun. We are woken up at 6.30 a.m. and sent to bed at 10.30 p.m. In between, we are marched around in groups – to sports practice, RAF history lectures, gas drills, physical training, first aid, and, finally, meals. Of course everything is still rationed – meat, eggs, tea, cheese, butter, milk, fats. I chewed a last bite of Terry’s bitter chocolate this morning.

  Parade is horrid, especially after getting hardly a wink of sleep. The iron cots are not comfortable. The mattress is made of three separate sections – ‘biscuits’, the girls call them – which bunch up and slide apart when you twist or turn. I feel as stiff and sore as if I’d spent the night in a shelter. And I’ve not seen a glimpse of Nell.

  We are numbered and ranked, and already I have heard more than enough lectures about the ‘King’s Regulations’. Once I finally figured out how to put the uniform on, it somehow felt uncomfortable, as if it’s too shiny. It’s only that it’s new, I suppose. And clean enough to suit Flo’s mum.

  It is an effort to do anything – brushing my teeth or combing my hair feel like real challenges. Several of the girls cried softly in the night. I will not cry. Even if Warmwell is the most horrid place in the world.

  Most horrid of all is the parade ground, which is wide and featureless, leaving us exposed to the full brunt of the wind as we practise drilling.

  ‘We do what we do. Because any day now, the sky is going to be filled with parachutes.’ I must try to remember the sergeant’s words. Everyone calls her Queen Bee, and I understand why.

  I’m grousing as much as Timothy Squire.

  Today we are marched away from the screeching wind of the parade ground to a wooden hut for injections. More jabs – inoculations, they call them – what for, I can’t imagine. But a hard-faced nurse gives us them all at once. I’m sure at least one has left me feeling swiftly ill, but I say nothing.

  Act like a child and they’ll start asking questions.

  As I head back to our hut, the air is as cold as it ever was in the Tower.

  The night is cold, I know it is, but my body throbs with a strange heat. I am sweating. Those bloody inoculations. I can’t let the girls see me like this. What would Isabella Pomeroy make of the girl who got a fever from her shots? Oh, why does everything have to be so bloody difficult?

  I do a small walk around the huts. I can’t be sick in my uniform. What would Timothy Squire say? And I’m on probation.

  There, a tree, just wide enough to hide me if I’m lucky.

  I am, and the trunk covers me completely. Clutching the trunk, I fall to one knee and vomit heavily.

  Monday, 1 February 1943

  The three weeks of training come to a dull close. I am now an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class, which is about as glamorous as it sounds. Now we are to learn a specific trade. And Nell has finally arrived, having requested to help with my training.

  Perfect as always in her uniform, she is not quite as friendly as I’d hoped she’d be. I follow her clicking footsteps down the hall, trying to keep up.

  ‘Can you type?’ Nell asks over her shoulder. ‘WAAF needs fast shorthand typists. The pilots must be in
terviewed as soon as they come back, while their memories are still fresh.’

  ‘I’ve never learned.’

  I awoke feeling almost myself again. Whatever that shot was, it did not pass quickly. None of the girls saw a thing. My stomach is well enough now, but I still feel utterly lost. No one told me I would have to be able to type.

  ‘Cooper, wake up,’ she says, and my back stiffens. ‘Can you draw?’

  ‘Draw?’

  ‘Draw, paint, whatever. Are you actually still asleep?’

  I shake my head and force myself to match her pace. We seem to be heading towards the toilets. ‘I am awake.’

  ‘Well, if you can draw, there’s the model-making course. That’s what all the art-school girls are doing, building model cities to help Bomber Command.’

  My experience feeding ravens at the Tower of London has yet to come in handy. ‘I’m sorry – I... I can’t do any of those things.’

  A long moment passes with the sound of her heels the only sound in the world. But instead of some mean comment or just laughing in my face, Nell’s face relaxes. She offers a smile, and looks once again like the girl who took me to the cinema.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll find something, Cooper. Just stick with it as best you can. There’s a reason why so many new girls come here. Lots of them go home on Christmas leave and never come back. We pack up their stuff and ship it along. We’ll find you something once you’re done in here. Everyone hates this first job, but we all have to do it. Stick with it, OK?’

  It’s not long before I realize how difficult it might be. We were headed towards the toilets. Nell swings the door open with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Dustman’s daughter or Baron’s little girl...’ She shrugs before turning to leave. ‘The toilets aren’t going to clean themselves. Everything you need is under the sink.’

  The door thuds closed. Finding the bucket of supplies, I hoist it over to the stalls. Maybe my experience at the Tower has come in handy after all. I cannot bring myself to smile at the thought.