The Report

by Jessica Francis Kane

  “I assume they’ve been there since the beginning of the war.”

  “Do you know how many staircases in London have a center rail?” She waited, but he didn’t have an answer. “All of them that are that wide. Except Bethnal Green.”

  He looked at her. “What are you up to? Examining the staircases of London?”

  She took his hand and smiled. “I can’t help it. I need to know what happened.”

  He nodded, and they walked in silence for a while.

  “I read in the Evening News that mothers were found crouched over their babies.”

  He shook his head. “It took them three hours to remove the bodies, Armorel. The positions were countless, I’m sure.”

  “No. You look into it. You’ll find those were the babies who were safe.”

  At home a messenger was waiting for him with a note from Morrison: Received a resignation yesterday from James Low. Seems he’s responsible for no light on the stairs. Says this caused the crush. The letter is dated March 4, but I’ve only just seen it. I’ll await word from you before releasing the news and taking the appropriate steps.

  For several hours Laurie sat in his study and read through his notes. The accident was a mystery. He’d thought at first that the stories wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, but the coroner confirmed almost everything: some people on the bottom survived, while people on top did not. The coroner recorded changes in the victims’ blood caused by suffocation, and stomachs and intestines distended to a gross degree. In the injured the pathologist noted shock, concussion, and severe bruising in the muscle tissues, contusions of a kind usually associated with pinning by collapsed houses or other heavy debris. And yet there was only one fracture, a fibula, and this in a five-year-old girl on the very bottom—almost the last to be rescued—who got up and limped away by herself.

  Mrs. Barber’s testimony was odd but hardly noteworthy. In his experience women like her often pointlessly distrusted authority. He hadn’t been able to locate any record of a Mrs. Wigdorowicz in the area and so couldn’t confirm if she was the first woman to fall. Constable Henderson undoubtedly should have reached the shelter entrance sooner and, in doing so, might have done some good. But would he have prevented the crush? Probably not. If Warden Low knew his constituency as well as he said, then perhaps he should not have increased the wattage of the stairway bulb. Was this the cause of the accident? Hardly. What about the shelterers who smashed it? Should he track them down and punish them? Magistrates all over the city had been doing that since the war began, with no appreciable change. The manager of the Museum Cinema seemed to have insisted after the alert that the people leave. Should this man be responsible for contributing to the crush conditions that night? Should the city now have a law that required cinema managers to keep their patrons in when there was a raid? Ridiculous.

  Laurie had spoken to members of the local Home Guard and learned there was an experimental weapon in the battery in Victoria Park. It was one of the new rocket guns to be used soon in defense of the city. Could there have been a test that night? he’d asked. The Home Guard adamantly denied it. They had been told there would be a special warning before the first test. There had been no warning, therefore no test.

  Frustrated, Laurie put off replying to Morrison’s latest correspondence and settled down with his Taverner. Just before dinner, he came across this: No one knows why a salmon takes a fly. We cannot tell whether the fish takes it because he recognizes something which he fed on in the sea; or because he is annoyed by something darting before him.

  The consequences of annoyance—this intrigued him. After all, who has felt the fullness of true rage? Not many, he thought. Mostly people move through life doing their best to calm the minor urges. It was worth remembering. Then, while he was eating leftover Woolton pie with Armorel, she spoke about the trouble she was having finding needles with which to work on the landscape and how frustrated she’d become with a shopkeeper who had sold out of the sudden small shipment he’d received by the time she got there.

  “I actually slapped the counter,” she confessed. “I can’t believe it. And if a counter had not stood between us, I think I might have slapped him. It’s just too troubling that the best needles are German.

  “The least emotion,” she said.

  “What is?” he asked, surprised her thoughts aligned so well with his.

  “Annoyance.”

  When Morrison had not heard from Laurie by the next morning, he rang. The two exchanged pleasantries, though Morrison called Armorel “Armora.” Laurie reminded himself that Morrison was a man who would be, in all likelihood, principally remembered for giving his name to a steel coffee table, the Morrison shelter. Laurie put his foot on it while he spoke.

  “The matter at Bethnal Green is not about a lightbulb,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No. Did the night begin without a light? Or was it smashed by shelterers worried it was too bright? Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

  Morrison had a habit of ticking his tongue when he was thinking, putting Laurie in mind of a field in summer.

  “But I have a resignation.”

  “Low’s popular. No one wants this.”

  “A resignation is only useful if it’s been demanded?”

  “In my experience.”

  “But if it’s his fault?”

  “It’s not. His only crime might be expecting other people to do their best.”

  More ticking, then Laurie heard him send someone out of the room. Laurie thought about mentioning the woman who’d fallen but held back. “I’d like to know more about the new rocket guns,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I think the people heard something different on the third. Many have spoken about a strange sound, not the antiaircraft fire they’re used to.”

  More ticking, then silence. “The Home Guard were not called out on March third,” Morrison said. “There was no antiaircraft response that night because there were no planes.”

  “But the people heard—”

  “The people panicked,” Morrison interrupted.

  “Why? What scared them? They’ve never panicked before. Something must have set the crowd off.”

  Morrison was quiet. Then he asked Laurie to ring him if he needed anything. “We’re looking forward to the results of your inquiry.”

  But Laurie couldn’t stop. “Almost everyone I know deplores it when the poor are mistreated or ignored, but it continues to happen. Why is that?”

  Morrison sounded angry. “We knew all along these stations weren’t ideal or even appropriate for shelters. The official policy is dispersal, as you well know. And yet the people wanted large shelters. Now that the unthinkable has happened—”

  “But it wasn’t unthinkable! One entrance to a shelter for ten thousand? They tried to get improvements to the entrance and were turned down, apparently.”

  “Mr. Dunne.”

  Laurie asked to be remembered to all the members of Morrison’s family, every one of whom he named correctly, then put the phone down. He knew now for certain that he was being asked to investigate one thing while leaving something else entirely in the dark. He looked over at the Taverner, on his chair, and it occurred to him for the first time that he might not be able to complete a record of the Bethnal Green disaster that approached its depth and accuracy, an encyclopedia of fish.

  Twenty-nine

  When the baby came home with Ada, he was four months old, as near as anyone could tell. He was very good and quiet, quieter than either of Ada’s girls had been at the same age. He had round, dark eyes, a beautiful mouth, and a wide-open belly button, a little crater, not the tight swirls of her daughters. Ada asked her midwife about it, and the midwife said it meant he wouldn’t keep secrets.

  “He won’t have them, or he won’t be able to?” Ada asked.

  “He won’t want to,” the midwife replied.

  But Ada worried that it somehow meant the twist and clamp of the cord had not completely
severed the connection to his mother.

  They made a bed for him in the drawer they’d used for the girls and kept him on the floor by the window. Every morning Ada washed him in a tub filled with warm water from several kettles. She’d forgotten just how busy life was with a baby, but Tilly was helping again, and Robby was managing the shop. Friends often stopped by with food. Mr. Levin from across the hall brought a loaf of bread and a small outfit wrapped in muslin that had been his as a child. He said he’d been away the night of the accident but had followed the aftermath closely. She was astonished. She had very few baby clothes and nothing for a boy, but why had he saved these precious things? Why weren’t the little shirt and trousers with his mother? The questions felt too late for someone she’d been living across the hall from for years. And so they stood together, looking down at the sleeping baby in silence.

  As word spread, other neighbors came by.

  “He’s sweet.”

  “You’re kind.”

  “I wish I could help, but with my three still at home …”

  Then one morning she went to the door, and the man who’d been at the bottom of the shelter stairs was there, the one who had helped her on the landing. He introduced himself. “Bill Steadman,” he said softly, red in the face and out of breath. He held out a white baby blanket tied in a blue ribbon. She took it, thanked him, and closed the door. Everyone who had brought the baby something was either a friend or a neighbor, and she hadn’t invited any of them in. Why should she treat him differently? Still, she froze, unable to walk away from the door, unwilling to let him know she was still there. She could hear him breathing, waiting. He cleared his throat.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to worry. I will never say anything.”

  Ada held her breath. She stayed balanced forward on her toes so that the floorboard beneath her wouldn’t squeak. When she heard his soles retreating in the gritty passage, she sank to her knees, her head against the door. Tilly found her there.

  “Mum?”

  Ada smiled and scrambled up. “Look what someone just brought!” she said.

  “Who?”

  Ada turned the blanket over, pretending to look for a card. “Oh, well. Just put it with the other things.”

  No one knew the baby’s name. The other orphans were identified by relatives in the area who came forward with church records even if they couldn’t adopt them. Mrs. Barton-Malow checked the register of births but couldn’t find anything conclusive about this baby. His mother, she thought, must have given birth alone.

  “You’ll have to name him,” Mrs. Barton-Malow said to Ada before she left the orphanage.

  Ada shook her head. So much had been taken from this baby; she didn’t want to take his name, too! She remembered Raisa as she’d looked the spring before, when she first started coming into Ada’s shop. She wore long, shapeless dresses and must have already been pregnant. Once, maybe because it was spring, maybe because the pregnancy sickness had passed and she was feeling better—who would ever know?—she had smiled at Ada and patted her stomach.

  “Raisa,” Mrs. W. said suddenly, moving her hand up to pat her chest.

  “Ada.”

  Mrs. W. smiled. But what she said next, Ada didn’t understand, and the woman’s face turned anxious.

  “Growing?” Mrs. W. said. “Growing. Garden?”

  “No,” Ada said, shaking her head.

  Mrs. W. left quickly. Had she wanted Ada to know her name meant “rose”? Or was she telling her she was growing a baby? When Ada told Robby about it later, he said maybe Mrs. W. knew the English liked to garden.

  After that, whenever she came into the shop, Ada tried to catch her eye, say hello, but Raisa had gone back to being quiet, almost furtive. Ada thought there might be something wrong with her. There was something hard about her eyes, something cold and faraway. Perhaps this made sense, given what she’d been through. But it had seemed to Ada that she would have tried harder.

  Mrs. Barton-Malow was touching the baby’s cheek. “What about Justin?” she said, and Ada was very surprised to see that she was crying.

  “Did you know a Justin?”

  Mrs. Barton-Malow nodded. “It’s such a nice name.”

  When Ada got the baby home—after paying a series of fees to Mrs. Barton-Malow, all of which sounded official, most of which she didn’t understand, and none of which she could have afforded without the money Tilly got from the reporter—she tried whispering names in his ear, sure that if she hit on the right one, or something close, she would see some kind of recognition. She went through all the Jewish names she could think of, then opened the Bible and started at the beginning. Nothing. Mostly he slept. She could rouse him by tickling his feet, but then he would just spit up and frown.

  After three days Ada called Rev. McNeely. He agreed to come but seemed uncomfortable and didn’t want to name the baby.

  “Why not?” Ada asked.

  “Mum,” Tilly warned, sitting on the floor, rocking the baby to sleep.

  “Perhaps there’s a male relative—,” he tried.

  Ada shook her head.

  “Mum,” Tilly said, hoping to help Rev. McNeely. “Didn’t you have any boy’s names picked out?”

  “We would have named a boy for your father.”

  All three stared at the baby, who was nearly asleep.

  “There is the story of Paul,” McNeely offered.

  Ada and Tilly waited.

  “The apostle. He was Saul, a Jew, but when he became a Christian, he changed his name to Paul. After he fell off the horse.”

  He shook his head and blushed. It was an extremely inadequate retelling, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He couldn’t very well ask Ada not to baptize the boy, and yet he was astonished at how ambivalent he felt. But she was a grieving mother; he felt battered and wordless in her presence. The best thing to do, he thought, was give the boy a name from a story that reflected his heritage.

  When Robby came home that evening, Ada had dinner almost ready. She’d managed to buy a piece of fish, and not whale meat but cod. She paused in her cooking and looked through to the lounge. Tilly was reading. Paul was asleep in the basket. “Go and see your son,” she said, and felt a subtle shift. Your son. Robby was confused by the turn their lives had taken—she knew that—but he didn’t have the will to resist.

  Thirty

  “So, a copy of the plan the Bethnal Green local council sent to the Regional Commissioners for approval has turned up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just this morning. Quite remarkable. You are a member of this local council?”

  “That is right.”

  “Well, the plan is here, which solves one mystery. But now we have another one. This plan does not actually address the problem of the entrance stairs.”

  “Sir—”

  “A steep, often dark set of stairs. Did it not occur to the council that a rush of people might have trouble navigating them?”

  “Of course. That was obvious, so—”

  “So the plan was to strengthen the gate, a gate that could not have been closed against a large crowd. Is it not a matter of critical importance to consider the possibility of a rush by a crowd?”

  “Yes, sir. I would agree. We were just following the advice of the borough engineer.”

  “You are the borough engineer to the Bethnal Green Council?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you held that position?”

  “About four years, sir.”

  “Could you tell me about the work you did for the local council?”

  “Yes. It was on the minds of the local council and their staff that there might be trouble at the shelter entrance.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “That crowds might come along and endeavor to gain access, and that when the gates were closed, the hoarding would not hold.”

  “And region turned down the scheme you proposed?”

  “Yes.”
>
  “And that plan—correct me if I’m mistaken—proposed strengthening the existing gates?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The idea, then, generally, was to close those gates in the event of a rush?”

  “Well, I think the idea was to close one gate at a time.”

  “Tell me, which way do the gates open?”

  “Inward, sir.”

  “Yes, inward. So you thought, If a crowd comes along, we’ll just close the gates until they calm down a bit?”

  “With hindsight, sir, I see that with a very big crowd, you cannot close gates of that nature in a rush.”

  “But is that not exactly what you were asked to consider?”

  “How long have you been a Regional Commissioner, Mr. Gowers?”

  “Since the beginning of the war. May I just say before we really get started that I think undoubtedly the entrance to the Bethnal Green shelter should have been improved upon? But whether you can blame those who dealt with it—that is to say, the local authority or the Regional Commissioners—in the atmosphere of the time is difficult to say.”

  “I am not really concerned with blame.”

  “I understand. I used the wrong word.”

  “I am concerned with responsibility. If I say I’m going to give you a piece of fruit but hand you a vegetable, wouldn’t you correct me? Or would you just hand it back and say, ‘This is not a fruit’?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “The local council proposed the wrong solution for the right problem, but all you did was refuse the plan. Why didn’t you make a counterproposal? Why didn’t you tour the site with a member of the local council and see what they were talking about?”

  “You mean hand them an apple when they’re holding a potato?”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “With hindsight, I wish we had.”

  Thirty-one

  There was nowhere to go, no holiday to take, unless perhaps you walked to the old Weavers Fields, or went to the movies, or picked your way to the shipping docks along the Thames. Rain and steady funerals kept spirits low. A shop would be open one day, closed the next; no one knew why or when it would reopen. The problem was this: the people had girded themselves against the war, but they had trusted the shelters. After the disaster their confidence in everything was chilled.