The Report

by Jessica Francis Kane

  “Where was Gowers’s inquiry?” Laurie asked.

  “Police station, sir.”

  Laurie walked to the windows and looked down. From here, the distance reduced the crowd, so animate and visceral when he’d arrived, to a nearly continuous layer of trembling black umbrella. Where there were gaps in the fabric, he saw a stoic, dripping face; pale, damp skin. He thought they had every right to be angrier than they seemed, and years later Laurie would say that the accident at Bethnal Green cried out for a more eloquent report than he thought he could write.

  “These chairs,” Laurie said, turning.

  “A protest, sir,” Ross said.

  “Protest.”

  “It is the hope of the clerk who brought them in that the borough residents might storm the doors.”

  “And then be pleased to find a place to sit?” he said, smiling at Ross.

  “Yes, sir. I believe there’s one chair for every victim.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bertram Lodge.”

  “Ah.” Laurie turned from the windows. “Well, they don’t seem to mind standing out there.” A few people had made signs.

  “Also, sir, I’m to give you this.” Ross held up a sealed envelope.

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s a letter from the Relatives’ Committee. As you know, they’re not being allowed to attend, so they wanted to submit to you a list of witnesses willing and able to testify on various points.”

  “Thoughtful.”

  Ross began stacking chairs. Laurie had written back to the home secretary, saying he wanted the authority to hold a public inquiry, and Morrison had responded favorably by morning post. By second post, however, after Laurie had already begun to make arrangements, Morrison insisted that the inquiry be private. The reason: secrets of home defense must not leak to the enemy. Laurie knew the real concern was morale. The War Office made nearly all decisions under its dull gray shadow. People like the antiaircraft guns? Gives them a feeling of fighting back? Then it doesn’t matter that the shrapnel fallout kills more Londoners than German pilots. Morale was the altar on which reason was daily sacrificed. The assumption of victory was one of the government’s cleverer tactics, most evident in the newspaper’s daily reminders about the need to plan for peace. The officials would not accurately report the number of dead in the Bethnal Green accident, and they remained absolutely opposed to a public inquiry.

  But Morrison wanted information. How do the people behave? What is the nature of their trauma? Surely many will leave the area. Note the patterns of retreat and return. Laurie had a letter in his briefcase outlining a dozen such queries. In their last conversation, Laurie had pointed out the irony of the shift. At first the accident hadn’t happened; now they wanted to study it? Morrison made no comment.

  “No,” Laurie said, stopping Ross. “Leave the chairs. It will give the papers something to write about. They won’t have much else.”

  Like a machine thrown into reverse, Ross immediately began unstacking the chairs, but something in his motion told Laurie he was pleased. Laurie needed an ally in the borough to call witnesses. Ross was tall and fit and looked well in his uniform; Laurie put a hand on his shoulder and assigned him the job. Then, clapping and rubbing his hands—partly for warmth, partly to test acoustics—Laurie walked to the front of the room.

  He ordered a small table to be brought in. “Not a desk, not a dining table,” he specified, and within the hour two constables found something appropriate in the mayor’s office.

  “Is the room sufficient?” the mayor asked, trailing behind her confiscated table.

  “Indeed,” Laurie replied.

  The mayor looked fondly at her side table. “I use it for tea,” she offered, and then, as if this were perhaps too selfish for the times, added, “—the clerks, too, borrow it now and then.”

  “Very good,” Laurie said.

  The mayor stood uncertainly. Morrison had not yet announced whether she would be permitted to attend the proceedings.

  “Do you want to submit a written statement?” Laurie asked. He held up the envelope from the Relatives’ Committee as precedent.

  The mayor looked shocked. “Oh, no! No,” she said, shaking her head. She would never be so much trouble. Then she appeared to reconsider. “Well, perhaps. Could I?”

  “The sooner the better,” Laurie said.

  The mayor smiled but did not leave.

  “Well,” Laurie said, “if we need anything else, we’ll know where to find you.”

  “Indeed,” said the mayor. “With tea in my lap!” Then, fearing she’d been misunderstood, “Because of the table, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Laurie.

  After the mayor had gone, Ross discovered that the table had a wobble. “Perhaps the mayor has had tea in her lap on other occasions,” he suggested.

  “Our mission,” Laurie said, “is to create an encouraging atmosphere. Everything different from what Gowers started. An inquiry at the police station. Imagine.” He looked around the room. “A wobbly table shows we’re making do, just as they are.” He put a hand out and pressed the table’s edge. One of the legs clunked obligingly against the floor. “We want to be official in tone, helpful in mood. It’s a powerful combination. We will sit here and here.” Laurie pulled two wooden chairs forward and placed them on one side of the small table, angled as if for a fireside chat. “The witnesses will sit here.” He pulled a soft armchair forward from the front row and set it facing the table, close enough that the witnesses could put their feet up if they wanted to.

  “But I won’t always sit across from them,” Laurie said. “I’m going to move around a bit, and so are you.” He pushed back some chairs in the front row of invisible demonstrators, gestured at the stage to indicate that it, too, was a seating option, and the arrangements were done. He wobbled the tea table again for good measure.

  “No food,” he said. “But let’s have tea.” Laurie turned to Ross.

  “Now?”

  “No. This afternoon, when we start.”

  “Right.”

  Laurie stared at Ross and waited a moment. He gave the impression of choosing a course from several available options. He had, as always, only one in mind. “Let’s go to the shelter,” he said.

  They left the town hall and walked down Cambridge Heath Road. A low fog skirted the trees and buildings and seemed to make the sounds of a still-stunned community ring louder. Laurie was surprised by the amount of antirefugee graffiti he saw: various statements about the manners and vices of “four-by-twos.” Crude opinions on “the Jewish problem.” It made him quiet, but Ross talked all the way there.

  “The shelter entrance is parallel to the line of the street, sir, but the stairs leading down lie at an angle.”

  Laurie would no doubt see that for himself. But the accident had occurred in a corner of Bethnal Green he didn’t know well, and so he was willing to listen. His life tended north, along the eastern end of Old Ford Road and toward Approach Road, which led into Victoria Park. Although their house was closer to St. John’s, he and Armorel had been attending St. James’s, off St. James’s Avenue, for years. Their butcher and greengrocer lay north. And when Laurie went for a walk, he was more likely to head north to Victoria Park than south to Museum Gardens or the Bethnal Green Gardens, even though both were closer to him. He simply preferred the winding lanes and large lake of Victoria Park to the simple circle paths and paddling ponds that filled the parks of Bethnal Green.

  “Hard to imagine such a thing happening next to the church, sir,” Ross was saying.

  They arrived at the shelter, and Ross showed him the steps, pointed out how the first one, because of its relation to the pavement, was not of uniform width. “Could have been a contributing cause.”

  Laurie looked at Ross with an expression calculated to impress upon him the value of circumspection. Then he glanced quickly at the wooden gates, the corrugated iron roof, relieved to find no graffiti. Still, the flimsine
ss of the structure depressed him. There were more of the hand-lettered signs about collecting the victims’ belongings, their black ink streaked with rain. In another hand, someone had written that tea and small sandwiches would be available.

  Laurie and Ross descended to the landing at the turn in the steps to the booking hall. This was where the crush had occurred, and although the concrete had been scrubbed, there hung about the place a disturbing odor of urine mixed with damp and the smell of the garden above. Laurie quickly paced out the space and found it to be roughly fifteen feet by eleven. As he moved about, the gritty shuffle of his soles on the concrete bothered him. He found he could not escape an image of the fallen, interlocked bodies. He was a religious man and an orderly one, and he believed in the necessity of war, but death like this at home? He knelt by the steps and pulled out his measuring tape.

  “Twelve inches, sir. Five and a half high.”

  Laurie swiveled and looked up at Ross.

  “I took the liberty of measuring the stairs this morning, sir.”

  Laurie swiveled back. Plain concrete steps with a wooden insertion at the edge, he noted. Fairly even, though the wood dipped slightly below the level of the concrete. Ross’s numbers were exact. “Well done,” he said, standing, and Ross, embarrassed, shrugged.

  Laurie pointed at the light socket above the steps.

  “Empty,” said Ross.

  “Obviously,” said Laurie.

  “I mean, it’s a bit of a controversy, sir. It was always dim. Some wanted it brighter, others wanted it dark until a more protected entrance could be built. I’m not sure, sir. I’d have to reserve judgment on that.”

  Laurie gave him a nod. “In general, a good idea.”

  In half an hour they made a cursory review of the rest of the shelter. Laurie was impressed by the library, built on cement slabs over the tracks. A small mullioned window gave it the appearance of an eighteenth-century shop, right there underground. Beyond it was a recreation hall, and at the other end of the platform, a nursery painted with bright murals. It was all quite extraordinary. He’d had no idea. Farther on, Ross showed him a canteen selling hot soup, cocoa, sandwiches, and cakes; two sick bays, one with a bathroom for delousing, the other with a rack of several dozen toothbrushes donated by the Junior Red Cross of America; and several nurses’ stations. The whitewashed tunnels were fresh and surprisingly bright, triple-tiered bunks lining the walls on both sides as far as the eye could see. Well-posted signs gave polite directions and instructions to shelterers of all ages: You are requested to be in your bunk by 11 p.m., as the floodgate closes at that time. Laurie found himself nodding in approval. The underground life was better than he’d imagined, though when he looked at Ross, he saw him scowling.

  “Very sad, sir,” Ross said, “if you remember why most people come here. Many have lost a home, and a family member or two with it.”

  They walked back to the town hall in silence, Laurie watching the people on the streets, wondering which of them had been in the crowd that night. He thought of how afraid they must have been, their passage to the shelter mysteriously impeded. But with that fear, there must have been annoyance, mounting to anger, fueled by exhaustion. He saw sleeplessness on every face.

  Ross cleared his throat. “I wondered if I could be secretary to the inquiry, sir? Instead of messenger?”

  Laurie pretended to consider a moment, then agreed.

  Sixteen

  Ada knew her grief was ugly, bloated. It bulged and spilled out of her. She could tell by the way visitors to the flat looked at her, looked and then looked away. All had been the future—tomorrow, after this raid, after the war. But now, sodden with sorrow, she was changing course. With every ounce of her body, she didn’t want to take each day as it came, but she didn’t seem to have any choice. All she wanted was a path back to the time when Tilly smiled and Emma napped on the pillow beneath the window.

  She’d watched friends go through this, thought she had some idea, but she did not. It was painful to talk. The words, even when they sounded right, were slow in her head. She could never have imagined the agony of physical contact, the torture of a hug, except from Tilly, especially from Tilly. Now she knew the best thing to do for someone mourning, the only thing, was to bring food and leave.

  At first she wanted to abandon Bethnal Green. Hadn’t the government been trying to get them to the country from the beginning? Well, now she would go. She would banish herself. She could picture standing on the platform at Paddington, Tilly’s hair neat and braided for the trip. She even got as far as pulling out the bag, but then she stalled. She started to cough and cry and ended up on her knees again, clutching Emma’s pillow.

  When she looked in the mirror, she saw that she was changing. She had a thin face now, eyes that didn’t settle on anything for long. Days and events still ahead—peacetime, other mothers and daughters—would change her even more. She suspected she’d never get the feeling of March 3 out of her bones. It was like being in a fog and feeling every stinging raindrop. It was not a memory but a physical, altered state. One day the fog might clear, but she knew she’d been marked. She’d been seared. Perhaps one day she wouldn’t even recognize herself.

  The shelter orphans stayed at Bethnal Green Hospital for five days after the accident. All were healthy, if just a bit undernourished. “Who isn’t?” Ada cried, shaking the newspaper. She clipped out all the stories she could find about the shelter orphans. The day the Observer announced that the babies were going to the orphanage in Shoreditch, Ada got out of bed, dressed, and filled her handbag. She was confused and disorganized with grief—everything took her a long time—but eventually she walked into the kitchen and found Tilly on her tiptoes, trying to tap down a box of salt from the top shelf with a butcher knife. Ada surprised her, and the girl whipped around.

  “You’re up,” Tilly said.

  “You need a stool,” said Ada.

  “This works well, usually.” Tilly put the knife back on the counter.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Checking the salt.”

  Ada walked to the shelf and pulled down the box. “It’s about half-full.”

  “It’s open, then. Dad said if it wasn’t we should sell it.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s out in the shop, and he said it doesn’t matter anymore what we eat.”

  “He’s wrong about that.”

  “All right.” Tilly didn’t believe her, but she wanted to try.

  “Do you want to come with me?” Ada asked. “I’m going to see the babies.”

  They waited for the city bus on the Roman Road, just east of St. John’s. The entrance of the shelter, which a constable now guarded, had a new roof and reinforced doors. They didn’t want to look there but couldn’t help it. Several workers were installing an iron handrail down the center of the stairway, and a group of people had gathered to watch.

  The bus arrived. A few passengers got off, and when the crowd waiting at the stop tried to step up, Ada and Tilly fell back. There wasn’t room for everyone. Suddenly furious with a woman who squeezed on ahead of them, Ada yelled something about four-by-twos. Frozen with fright, Tilly willed herself to forget the words almost the same moment she heard them. She couldn’t move until Ada held her and said “It’s all right.” But Ada, too, was shaking. Then the girl’s face crumpled. She pushed her sob into her mother’s side, and the bus pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” Ada said.

  “What does it mean?” If her mother said something, anything, else, Tilly would believe her.

  “Nothing. We’re going to walk.”

  “I like walking.”

  But Ada was not sure of the way. She had rarely been out of Bethnal Green. She knew from the papers that the Shoreditch orphanage was on the Bethnal Green Road, so if they stuck to it and kept west, she thought they’d be all right. She was glad the babies hadn’t been taken to Kensington, as some had originally said. She never could have walked that far.


  A layer of cloud still protected the city, but the noise of the street was too much for Ada, after her solitary days. She took Tilly’s hand. A few streets later, she saw two magpies. “There you go,” she said, giving Tilly a squeeze. “That’s good luck, a pair of magpies.” The birds were tussling over a shiny piece of tin in a garden.

  “Do they have to be together?” Tilly asked.

  Ada didn’t answer.

  “Is it still good luck if you see one and then a little while later you see another?”

  “I think so.”

  “How long in between?”

  “What?”

  “Is it bad luck if you see just one?”

  “I don’t know, Tilly. Let’s walk now.”

  “We are.”

  “Quietly, then. I need to think.”

  Twenty minutes later, mother and daughter stood before the orphanage. The proprietress—matron? Ada didn’t know what to call her—welcomed them. Tilly only nodded in response to the woman’s greeting. She wanted her mother to be able to think.

  Seventeen

  Paul arrived early wearing a jacket and dark tie, the most conservative he had. Dunne had been ambiguous on the phone about whether he intended to cooperate, but Paul thought he’d detected a developing curiosity and wanted to make a good impression. He could see Dunne through the front window, asleep in front of the television. He watched him for a time, surprised to feel sorry for the old magistrate. He looked vulnerable, head back, mouth open for air. When Dunne finally answered the door, sleepy but clearly pleased with the business of the day, Paul pretended he had not been waiting on the step for five minutes. He noted that, while he had made an effort to dress up for Dunne, Dunne seemed to have dressed down for him. He was wearing a cardigan and loose trousers over slippers. Once more, they proceeded slowly down the front hall, Paul simultaneously loosening his tie and working hard to avoid stepping on Dunne’s bare heels. When he slowed to the older man’s pace, he noticed that the walls were lined with certificates and awards as well as a heavily textured green and gray quilt.