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The Report

Page 15

by Jessica Francis Kane


  James stared. “Why? Did you push? Just like the rest of them?”

  “James! Stop it!” Sarah stood up, her face pale. She flapped her hands in front of her. “Clare, will you help me clear? I’m sorry.”

  “Of course.”

  When the women were in the kitchen, Bertram spoke quietly. “I tried not to.”

  James looked horrified. “I’m sorry, Bert. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Sarah and Clare came back into the room, Sarah’s face stern. “You are both asking yourselves questions that needn’t be asked,” she said. She looked at James, then turned to Bertram. “There are horrors enough in this war without imagining more. You were in a crowd of hundreds.”

  Bertram nodded, then stood. “Let me show you,” he said.

  Clare put her head in her hands. “His list,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Bertram brought back the frayed and dirty notebook. He turned the pages, and at first everyone read silently; then Sarah pointed to a name she recognized and laughed at the thought of one particular woman with a packet of seeds in her pocket. “But she hated gardening!”

  James smiled. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

  The mood in the room eased a bit, and Sarah, enormously relieved, went to the kitchen to pour out some brandy.

  When Clare and Bertram had gone, Sarah settled James on the couch. She made him a cup of tea, but when he didn’t sip it, she said, “Would you like to go to the pub? You haven’t been in a while.”

  He looked at her as if from a distance, then shook his head.

  She picked up her mending. “Don’t think about it anymore. It’ll be all right. Clare and Bertram know you.”

  He nodded.

  Her hands dropped to her lap. “What about our plan?” She tried not to sound too eager. “Shall we go to the orphanage tomorrow?”

  It meant everything to her when he smiled. “Yes. That will help, won’t it?”

  She could not help grinning. “Oh, I think so. A baby is just what we need. You’ll see.”

  Thirty-four

  In the corner grocery Paul couldn’t find the orange juice. It was some time before he realized this was because he was standing in the freezer section. He moved down the aisle to the relatively colder area of open refrigeration, and there they were, the juices. So pleased was he with the progress of his day, his interview with Dunne, that he bought two bottles, in spite of the astonishing price. It seemed Mrs. Loudon was right. Nearly four quid. He also bought a box of tea and a Cadbury’s bar and asked the clerk at the counter to wrap all of it in a nice bag. He felt kind, magnanimous, happy to celebrate the fact that he seemed to be drawing Dunne out.

  “What? We haven’t got those.”

  “Bags?”

  “Not good ones.”

  “What about ribbon?” Paul asked.

  The clerk showed him a ball of twine.

  When he got back to the B and B, Paul used the piece of twine the clerk had grumpily handed over to tie a bow around the bag. He wrote Thank You on the side and left the whole package on the counter for Mrs. Loudon, who was out. He took his other groceries, some beers and a bag of crisps, and went upstairs to his room.

  The first thing to do was call Tilly. He didn’t want the Bethnal Green project to go much further without talking to her, but they were not particularly close. She hadn’t been very interested in him when they were growing up, though he’d always had the sense that she was looking out for him, protecting him, from—among other things—their unhappy parents.

  She answered, whispering.

  “The boys asleep?” Paul asked.

  “Just. Owen’s got an ear infection.”

  This was the way Tilly had once explained to Paul what had happened during the war: by sharing something that was in short supply, the truth, she’d gained something else in short supply, a sibling. It didn’t make any sense in peacetime, she’d said when he asked her to be more specific, but she was very glad to have a brother. She’d been married, briefly, to a city engineer and had two sons: five-year-old Owen and two-year-old Michael.

  She was quiet when Paul told her about the film. “Tilly?” he said. “You there?”

  “How long have you been working on this?”

  “I don’t know, a few years.”

  “Have you talked to Laurie Dunne?”

  “In fact, I’m calling from Stockbridge. He’s agreed to participate.” Paul waited for a response. “Hello, hello?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I wish you could do a film about something else.”

  “I’m pretty committed, Tilly. What do you remember about Dunne? He interviewed you, right?”

  “Oh, it was such a long time ago.”

  “But you must remember something.”

  “The room was hot and smelly. There were cobwebs in the windowsill. I think I sat up there; I have no idea why now.”

  “Was Mum there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was Mum there when he interviewed you? It would have been pretty scary for an eight-year-old alone.”

  “I’m always surprised by what other people assume is scary. No. I was on my own.”

  Paul nodded. That was the Tilly he knew, almost always on her own. He pictured her in Islington, quietly organized, dressed simply, probably in jeans. She wore her hair, against the fashion of the day, cut short, and her skin, ruined by poor nutrition during the war years, was always rough and red over her cheeks.

  When he told her that Dunne had given him a new piece of information, she said sharply, “What is it?”

  Warden Low’s suicide made her gasp.

  “Dunne covered it up,” he said. “It was reported as a stroke.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “Wait. Why?”

  She said suddenly, “You want to know our big secret, then? I’m the child who spoke to the newspaper reporter. I told him a woman fell. I broke the story.”

  “I didn’t know that.” He could hear her sniffing and wiping at tears.

  “The money was nice. Mum used it to pay the orphanage for you.”

  “You were bribed?” Paul asked.

  “I don’t remember how much. I have to go.”

  “Wait. You saw the first woman? Did you know she was a refugee?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what Dunne told me today. He covered that up, too.”

  “Has he told you anything else?”

  “Not yet,” Paul said.

  Tilly was crying. “Are you going to talk to him again?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Then I have a message for him.” He could hear her trying to catch her breath. “Tell him I say hello. Tell him I wish him well. Will you do that? Will you see if he remembers me? Tell him I have never discussed it and I don’t think he should, either.” Despite her efforts, she was sobbing.

  Paul sat on the edge of his bed, completely still. He’d rarely heard her cry. “Of course. All right. Tilly, please don’t cry. I’m sorry. What have you never discussed?”

  Thirty-five

  By the time Ross brought Tilly, the room was fast losing light. Outside, the sound of starlings echoed in the street like glass breaking and falling, a flock filling the trees along the lane.

  “Mrs. Barber,” Ross said. “You have to come with me now.”

  “Why?” Ada grabbed Tilly’s hand and raised her chin at Laurie. “He said I could stay.”

  The girl spoke before Laurie could. “It’s all right, Mum.”

  Ada searched the girl’s face, evidently relieved to hear her voice. “Really? It is?” She held her at arm’s length, then hugged her. When she held her at arm’s length again and the girl nodded, Ada wiped her tears and went out.

  Laurie smiled at Tilly. She had a sweet chin-length bob and dark brown eyes. “Well,” he started. “Your name is Tilly Barber?”

  She nodded.

  “
And you live at Three Jersey Street with your mother and father? I think it’s your mother I’ve just been speaking to.”

  “That’s right. Can I sit in the windowsill?”

  Laurie agreed, and after the girl had jumped up there, he turned his chair slightly toward her.

  “Right.” He abandoned his plans to begin with a question about school or her favorite films. Still, she was a child, and something in him needed to explain. “This is an inquiry, as you know, into the events of the Tube-shelter disaster on March third. Your mother has told us that she was on the stairs that night with you. Could you tell me in your words what happened?”

  Tilly blew on a small spiderweb, first gently, then harder, sending the spider hopping.

  “You and your mother were two of the last ones out of the stairwell,” Laurie said. “You must have been very brave.”

  Tilly looked up and frowned. “Did you know Mrs. W.?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Wigdorowicz?”

  The girl nodded, and Laurie took a chance. “A little.”

  “She was nice.”

  “Yes.”

  Tilly nodded and seemed to decide something. “She was in front of us.”

  “All right.”

  Then Tilly raised her hands to indicate just where Mrs. W. had stood. Directly in front of them. So close they could touch her. After a moment Tilly straightened her arms hard in a pantomime of what happened next. The movement was forceful and abrupt and pulled her off the windowsill. Confused and embarrassed, her eyes burning from not blinking, she waited and stared straight ahead.

  “Others have said it was too dark to see anything,” Laurie said.

  Tilly didn’t move.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “We could see. The stairs are dark, but there are always one or two people with torches.”

  Tilly turned back to the web, this time blowing so hard, it came unmoored. The spider scurried up the window to the ceiling.

  Laurie rubbed his face. Was it possible? Was this what had turned the crowd that night? He’d hoped to find something, but it never occurred to him it would be this. One woman pushing another, a Jew, on the stairs.

  “What happened next? What happened to Mrs. W.?”

  She shook her head. Laurie wasn’t sure if she didn’t know or didn’t want to speak anymore.

  “Tell me, Tilly, until just that moment, had you heard any loud noises or bangs? Anything unusual that you hadn’t heard before?”

  She shook her head. “That came after. I think. I’m not sure about that.”

  “All right. Thank you. We’ll look into this further.”

  The child nodded gravely, and after she’d gone, Laurie shared with Ross his opinion about the reliability of children as witnesses. Ross agreed.

  The final witness shook but didn’t cry.

  “I heard a man say ‘I can’t breathe.’ I don’t know where he was. I couldn’t talk by then. I could hear other voices, but they seemed far away. I had my little boy with me. I was holding his hand, and he was next to me on the stairs—he was only three—but when we started falling, I must have pulled him in front of me. I don’t know how. He was beneath me. I tried to give him room. I thought if he would just turn his head …

  “After the all clear sounded, we still couldn’t move for a long time. Then we were out of it. They were laying out the bodies in the station, and I found him there. He’d lost a shoe.”

  Thirty-six

  It was easier to abandon his reticence on the subject of Bethnal Green than he’d imagined. Indeed, Laurie noted with curiosity how much he wanted to discuss Ada and Tilly; the poor, lost clerk Bertram; Warden Low, too, though he couldn’t bear it for long. He could still picture the inquiry room, large and pleasant, but worried that when he saw it again in the film, he wouldn’t recognize it. It might be a community center by now, or a nursery school.

  Laurie and the mighty William had come for what was now billed as an “old-fashioned” lunch. Both men suspected these events were numbered, for a variety of reasons. He took a sip of claret and nodded at Smith, who limped into the grill room, his knee still bandaged from the tent disaster. Smith would have taken the nod as a sign of Laurie’s sympathy, but it pleased Laurie to see evidence that Smith was still required by more than the rules of the club to stay out of the river. When he turned back to William, he heard that the seven-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, big sister of new baby Will, was getting a pony for her birthday.

  Laurie sighed. It was not that he didn’t want to hear about his friend’s grandchildren; it was that every time they came up, Laurie searched William’s eyes for some sign that he understood the sad predicament of Laurie’s life. No children, no promise of grandchildren. He had one good report to his name, a handful of legal decisions. He had helped rebuild Coventry Cathedral after the war. These were his legacies. In Coventry, he and Armorel had worked alongside a number of young Germans. They didn’t say much to each other, but they didn’t have to. The fingerprints on the stones were enough. Maybe he’d visit the church again. Maybe Barber would want to film there.

  He and William ate in silence for a few moments, until William said, “You’d rather I didn’t talk about the children?”

  Laurie stared. He heard the next words in his head before he said them and was surprised. Had the times affected him more than he’d thought?

  “I just wonder, William, if you ever consider my feelings on the matter?”

  William swallowed. He apparently did not have the new vocabulary at his disposal, and Laurie dearly wished he had let the whole thing be.

  “Never mind,” he said quickly. “What kind of pony is Lucy getting?”

  William smiled, and just like that, the subject was history, as if nothing had ever been said. This, at least, men of their age could still manage. The sea of disappointment inside Laurie began to subside, the cold depths settling, smooth and glassy once again.

  When he next had a chance, during the main course, he told William about Barber, the interviews, the retrospective he was planning. He wanted to ask William what he thought of such exercises, though he thought he knew what his friend would say:

  The risk is the story being sensationalized for a modern audience.

  (Of course.)

  The reward will be proof that your work is still relevant.

  (Yes. Quite nice. Let’s have a drink to celebrate.)

  But before he could speak, William coughed and said, “A retrospective? Wasn’t that all done up a long time ago?”

  Laurie stared. “Done up?”

  “Well, I mean, wasn’t that your claim to fame, as they say? A bit dismal to relive our glory days. Wasn’t there a program before?”

  “No. This is the first.”

  William must have heard the annoyance in his voice. He wiped his mouth and sat straighter. “Good, then,” he offered. “Don’t suppose they could manage it without you. The report was groundbreaking for its time, wasn’t it?”

  Laurie ordered the cheesecake for dessert and moved off into the den for coffee.

  William found him some time later, dozing over a newspaper. He sat down and surprised Laurie with a question. “Look, Lucy’s parents want to know if you’ll be Will’s godfather.”

  “But they don’t know me.”

  “They know about you.”

  Laurie said his reputation as a magistrate hardly qualified him for such ecclesiastical duty.

  “Because you’re my friend,” William said, and then Laurie was embarrassed because it seemed the request was coming from him and he meant it.

  “This one is to be mine,” William explained. “In a sense. Named for me. I asked.”

  “I see.” Laurie drank some coffee and considered. “Well, then, no.”

  William was shocked.

  “I no longer offer moral guidance, you see. All done up a long time ago.”

  William stared. “You needn’t be like that.”

  Thank goodness for the documentary, Laur
ie thought. It felt like something new in his pocket, just when everything else in his life had turned old and dull.

  After William had gone, Laurie glanced around the den. He hoped Barber would need half a dozen interviews or more, William be damned. And with the boy tomorrow, he would speak more definitely. Hadn’t he earned the right to speak in pronouncements? It was an absolute surprise to him that the report had become his lasting achievement. He’d known it was important at the time, but that it would be the main work in a life lived over so many decades? He wished someone had warned him. He’d tried to bring to later problems the same mixture of empathy and insight he was supposed to have had in Bethnal Green, but it seemed he never again had the two in quite the same proportion. Sometimes he’d had insight but his empathy was off. Other times empathy flooded him but his reasoning grew confused. Like a mathematician in decline, he could only remember how it had felt to work at his best; the ability was gone.

  As he watched the waiters come and go with drinks and mints, he began to doze off in the chair. Maybe he’d find a copy of the report and reread it. He could edit it and annotate the margins, change what he wanted. Right or wrong, that should be a benefit of old age.

  Thirty-seven

  Laurie and Ross met at the town hall for a final review of the shelter. On the way there they talked of their families. Ross told Laurie his wife had evacuated to Hertfordshire with their young children. Laurie said his daughter was home, bedridden with pneumonia. He was about to mention his son when he realized he was too anxious about Andrew to do so.

  “You have a boy, too?” Ross asked after a moment.

  Laurie nodded.

  Wet cobblestones reflected white in the sun, and here and there wisteria was beginning to bloom, pale lavender cascades, graceful and delicate on the broken buildings. Laurie watched the passersby, their cheeks red and chapped, eyes watery and bright. They tied their scarves in bunches around their necks, but their bodies and overcoats were thin, leaving them strangely top-heavy. Queues everywhere were long. He thought of how in testimony, many of the people said the crowd the night of March 3 had shared a quiet sense of purpose. Of course others—the authorities, mainly—insisted the crowd was unruly, out of control. The discrepancy between these accounts bothered him.

 

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