The Fall

by Simon Mawer

  “Just fucking lucky, darling,” said Bert, touching wood. “Let’s hope it lasts.”

  And then the all-clear sounded its long lament, and a chill dawn seeped into the littered streets of the city like lymph leaking into a wound. The heavy-rescue teams would be at work throughout the daylight hours, pulling the rubble aside with their hands, shifting beams, tunneling in toward the distant murmur or the muffled cry or the stifled appeal for help, for light, for life. The ambulance would make its way through the streets to drop its burden of wounded wherever it was convenient, or wherever there were beds, or just wherever they could actually reach — Barts or the Royal Free or the London Hospital on Mile End Road, anywhere — and then make its way back to the unit in silence.

  The day shift would be waiting for their return. Reports were to be written and handed over. There was a washroom in the ambulance station where you could rinse your face. And a gas ring for boiling a kettle. And home was the room at the back of the Warrens’ house, fifteen minutes on the Tube if it was running.

  Darling Porpoise,

  Today I heard from the appeal board, and the news seems a bit better. I have to appear before them next week…. I am sure you will think of me and wish me luck…

  On one occasion Mr. Warren was evidently not tied up when Diana knocked on the kitchen door. “Come in,” he called, and when she opened the door, he stood up and blocked her way. Mrs. Warren was nowhere to be seen.

  “Gone to the shops,” he explained with a grin. “They say there’s a shipment of fruit just in. Bananas.”'

  Diana attempted a smile. “May I pass, please? I need the bathroom.”

  But Mr. Warren didn’t move. “Wouldn’t you like a banana, dear?” he asked. “Long and thick and with a bit of a curve to it. Bit pointy at the end so it slips in your mouth easy. How does that sound?”

  “I want a bath more than anything,” she replied, not really understanding, not hearing either his words or even his tone. He was standing right in front of her, his head at the level of her chest, his weasel face peering up into hers. Before she could step back, before she could even flinch, he put his left hand up and grabbed her shoulder. He was smaller than she was, but far stronger. And quicker too, seeing that she had been on duty for the last twelve hours and was stunned with exhaustion. As he grabbed her with one hand, he slid the other inside her dressing gown.

  She froze. She was naked underneath. She shouldn’t have been, but she was. He sucked his breath in when he discovered the fact: surprise, perhaps. Maybe it was as much a shock to him as it was to her. Perhaps he had expected to find that she was wearing a petticoat or something beneath the dressing gown. Maybe he hadn’t intended the violation to be so brutal. Perhaps he expected her to wriggle and giggle and say how awful he was; perhaps he expected her to take it as a kind of game: not a very nice one, but a game nevertheless. Anyway, she was naked, and she froze, and his hand was motionless.

  “Nice bit of fur you’ve got there,” he said quietly. His tone was almost conversational. He swallowed and moistened his lips and smiled at her. “Off the ration, is it?”

  She would have screamed, but no scream came. She did actually open her mouth, but nothing at all came out. She just stood there immobile, with his hands on her and her mouth half open. Warren shifted his fingers gently. “Don’t scream, darling,” he whispered. “Just be quiet and you’ll be all right.”

  She could smell his breath. It had the sour, flat smell of town gas, the stench that often hung around the streets after a raid. She closed her eyes. Breathe in deeply. That’s what she told the injured to do. Take a deep breath, she would say, cradling their broken limbs, their broken bodies, trying to keep a grip on slippery, bloody pressure points. Breathe deeply. In — pause — out — pause; in — pause — out — pause. It’s what you do to try and reduce hyperventilation and meliorate the effects of shock. Shock is a big killer; people didn’t seem to realize that. One minute the victim might seem quite all right, talking to you, smiling, responding normally, and the next minute they were dead.

  “No harm intended, no harm done, eh?” Warren whispered. “Just a bit of fun, dear; just a bit of a giggle.”

  Finally, mercifully, she found her voice. Very quietly she said, “If you let me go immediately, I won’t say anything about this. Nothing at all. I promise you that.”

  Perhaps it was the calmness that surprised him, her matter-of-fact tone. It certainly surprised her. Slowly, reluctantly, he slid his hand out from inside her dressing gown and let her go. “Just a bit of fun, eh?” he repeated. He lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed his finger. “Nice,” he said.

  She pulled the dressing gown tight around her and pushed past to the bathroom. “I can get you things,” he called after her. “Chocolate and stuff. If you like. If you’re good to me.”

  She slammed the door behind her, locked it, and plugged up the keyhole with a piece of toilet paper. Then she opened the hot tap and sat down on the edge of the bath and wept.

  She tried to change her billet after that, but things were difficult and if you couldn’t find anywhere better, you had to put up with it. So she put up with it. The motto of the whole bloody country: Put up and shut up. They might as well have put it as a slogan on posters, along with Be Like Dad: Keep Mum. Every morning she returned to the house hoping to discover that the place had been hit by a stick of bombs and reduced to a heap of rubble — with Mr. Warren underneath it all. But every morning, the house was still there.

  “You should have kneed him in the balls, darling,” Meg said when Diana told her. “What an odious little creep. Do you want me to come and sort him out?”

  Meg seemed to enjoy the war. Austerity became her. She had blossomed. With her hair piled up and pinned, and her shoulders military broad, and her legs carefully balanced on high heels, and her lips bloodred, she drew men’s eyes the way a Dornier drew searchlights. The metaphor was hers. She was living and working somewhere near Croydon, and occasionally they met in Town. Usually they went to a Lyons Corner House, or sometimes a tea dance at one of the hotels. Meg had joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and was doing something with radio, something she couldn’t talk about, although Meg doing anything worth not talking about seemed ridiculous. She was full of talk about other matters, of course. She knew people; she heard things. Apparently clothes rationing was going to be introduced, but they weren’t going to ration makeup because Churchill liked to see girls with makeup. Apparently the American ambassador was a Nazi sympathizer and believed that the British would surrender within weeks. Apparently the factories were running out of rubber for condoms, and there was going to be the most frightful increase in the birthrate. Apparently.

  Diana could talk freely about her work, of course, but she didn’t much. “You should see what it’s like in the East End,” she said quietly “It’s terrible, Meg. They’ve got no shelters, no proper shelters at all. They’re using the Tube stations, and the authorities even tried to stop them doing that. And railway arches. There’s fifteen thousand using the Tilbury arches under the Commercial Road. Fifteen thousand, Meg. They’re living like animals half the time.”

  Meg sighed. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t give me the suffering working-class nonsense. It’s just as bad in the West End. We’ve even been hit in Croydon.”

  Diana shook her head. “Nothing like Stepney or Poplar or any of those areas. Really.” She felt sullen and depressed. What fact did she want to convey? She didn’t know herself.

  “My dear, we’ve all got our bomb stories. The whole bloody city has got its bomb stories. It’s becoming the great social bore. Guess who’s in Egypt?”

  “Who?”

  “Hilda, the lucky girl. I’d love to be posted to the exotic Orient. Anything rather than bloody London. Have you heard from any of the old gang? I got a letter from Eric.”

  “Eric?” Diana found it difficult to remember Eric. It was absurd, this forgetfulness, this detachment from the past. As though it didn’t e
xist.

  “Yes, Eric, you chump. Remember Eric? Eric the airman. God, you two were together for a couple of months.”

  They were in the ballroom of the Albion Hotel, the Royal Albion Hotel featuring Jerry Rollo and His Music. There were half-a-dozen couples already on the floor, dancing the cha-cha. Jerry Rollo was shouting Olé! from time to time just to make it clear what was expected.

  “Of course I remember Eric.”

  “Well, he’s training in Canada. Bombers, apparently. Says all it does is snow.”

  Outside, the sirens began to sound, that awful switchback wail, that swooping up and down that brought a fluttering of panic and beads of sweat on your forehead and under your arms. The warbler, that’s what some people called it. “Oh my God, what a bore,” said Meg in her world-weary voice.

  Jerry Rollo paused the music for a moment and turned to the hesitating dancers with a smile of pure Brylcreem. “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that we have visitors, and I don’t think they’re here to tango. If you care to avail yourselves of the hotel’s shelter facilities in the basement, you are most welcome. The band, however, will soldier on.”

  There was some laughter. People looked at one another nervously, as though to move would be to commit a solecism. One or two couples got up to leave, but maybe they’d have left anyway. Strangely enough it was easier when you were on duty, actually out there in the streets, rather than sitting like this at a table on the edge of the dance floor and pretending there was nothing wrong.

  The music struck up again and drowned the distant sound of the ack-ack guns. “It sounds as though it’s miles away, thank God,” said Meg. She lit a cigarette and blew a self-conscious stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Behind the music you could hear the crump of bombs faraway in the Docks. Someone else was getting it, not the hotels and clubs and cinemas in the West End, not this time. “What about you, darling? Heard from that Guy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  The cha-cha finished and some nigger minstrels came on and sang “If I Didn’t Care.” They swayed and warbled and rolled their eyes.

  “Still battling for peace and civilization, is he? Guy, I mean.”

  “The tribunal rejected his application. It’s gone to appeal.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. Isn’t he some kind of Communist? No wonder the board turned him down. Religious conviction can get you registered straightaway, so I believe. Look, there are a couple of fellows over there. They’re watching us. Come on, show your best profile.”

  “Meg, I’m pregnant.”

  “Hey, look, I think they’re coming over.” She hadn’t heard, hadn’t been listening, hadn’t heard.

  “Meg.”

  “Yes, darling?” They were coming over. One of them was in uniform, the other in civvies. They looked all right.

  “Would you lovely ladies care for a dance?” the uniformed one asked.

  Meg turned to Diana, feigning indifference. “What about it, darling?”

  Diana shrugged. “All right by me.” They got up to dance. The floor was half empty or half full, depending on how you saw it. Meg would have seen it half full; Diana had no doubt that it was half empty. She shuffled around a bit, and when the number was over, she thanked her partner very much and said she was feeling slightly headachy and needed to sit the next one out if he didn’t mind, and of course he didn’t. He followed her back to the table and tried to engage her in conversation. He was something in the Ministry of Food. A reserved occupation, so he hadn’t been called up. He could get her things if she wanted.

  “Things?”

  He looked furtive, a bit like Mr. Warren. “You know, off the ration…”

  The singers broke into the “Java Jive.” They liked coffee, they liked tea, but these days, presumably, they couldn’t always get it unless they knew this louche young man with the plausible manner. A Mr. Warren in the making. Diana had a sudden vision of him in the next war, fifty years old and groping young girls billeted in his house. “You mean black market, do you?”

  “Shh! For Gawd’s sake, you’ll get me into trouble.”

  Meg was hanging on her partner’s arm as they came back to the table.

  “Meg?”

  “Yes, what is it? Look, darling, Dan here — ”

  “Don.”

  “Don, then.” She laughed at her mistake. It was easy for her. “Don thinks we ought to go on to a place he knows off Shaftesbury Avenue, a kind of club. When do you have to be back on duty, darling?”

  “Meg, I want to tell you something.”

  “Tell away, darling, tell away.”

  “In private.”

  Somewhere outside there was a louder explosion. The ground reverberated gently. Glasses and crockery trembled. They could hear the antiaircraft guns going off nearer now, in St. James’s Park probably. And perhaps there was even the sound of aero engines above the music of Mr. Jerry Rollo. Meg smiled and asked whether the boys minded just letting them be alone for a second. “Just a sec. Girl talk. We’ll be right with you.” She took out a cigarette, tapped it impatiently on the packet, and struck a match. “Well, what is it, darling? Tell.”

  “Meg, I’m pregnant.”

  Meg stopped. She looked almost comic sitting there across the table with her eyebrows up and her mouth half open. Bright-red lips, with the cigarette hanging limp between them. The match burned down, and she shook it out. “Pregnant? My God, darling, are you sure?”

  “Keep your voice down — ”

  “Pregnant? Oh my God, Di, this is awful! Who was it? How long have you known?”

  “I’ve missed my third period.”

  “God, that’s three months.” Somehow three months made it seem worse. “Di, you really are awfully silly not to have told me earlier. I mean, trying to keep a pregnancy secret is the most ridiculous thing, if you think about it. Who on earth was it?” It was plain from her expression that Meg was calculating, running twelve weeks back through her mind and ending up in North Wales, in the Ogwen Valley, on an August weekend. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, “not Mr. Conscientious himself?”

  Diana nodded.

  “God, darling, he’s about twice your age.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Well, he should have known better, that’s what. I mean, didn’t he use anything, darling? Apart from you, I mean.”

  Diana shrugged and stared away across the dance floor, seeing the dancers through a blur of tears. Meg struck another match and lit her cigarette. The band played and the minstrels sang. The two young men who had been dancing with them hovered by the bar, glancing over from time to time and wondering whether the whole thing was pointless and whether there were other fish to catch. Or fry. Meg spoke through exhaled smoke, a cloud of fashionable gray that emerged from mouth and nostrils and floated toward the ceiling like a chiffon scarf tossed up in the air. “So what are you going to do, Di? Have you told your parents?”

  “I’ve not told anyone but you.”

  “And what about him? I mean, if he’s got such a powerful conscience, he ought to do the decent thing and make an honest woman of you. How would you fancy being Mrs. Guy Matthewson?”

  “I wouldn’t fancy it at all.”

  “Well, neither would I at the moment. I mean, Guy’s a good-looking fellow, of course, but…”

  “I haven’t told him, anyway.”

  “He doesn’t even know?”

  “Meg,” Diana said quietly, “I want to get rid of it.”

  Dear Guy,

  Thank you for your last letter. I’m glad to hear that your position seems to be better. Here, things go on as usual, which you will know from reading the papers. London is a sad place, half empty, drab, and damaged, but not yet destroyed.

  I am sorry to write this letter, but it is to tell you that I wish to stop this correspondence. The world is changing sharply and so, surely, are we. I enjoyed meeting you and enjoyed our brief friendship, but now I think it is time to look to the futur
e. Although my experience here convinces me that you are misguided, my decision has nothing to do with your stand against participating in the war effort.

  Yours, with respect,

  Diana S.

  She wrote and rewrote the letter, not substantially but in the detail. She tried Yours affectionately rather than Yours, with respect. She originally wrote joining up rather than participating in the war effort. Things like that. She shifted it from the familiar and faintly regretful to the formal and indifferent. It surprised her to discover how she could manipulate words to achieve a subtlety of effect. It surprised her to discover how readily she could consign Guy Matthewson to her past. There was within her a hard kernel of rationality that she had never expected to be there. Emotion had always been something that she claimed as hers: in her personal ladder of beliefs the affective response counted high above the rational one. Now there was this cold center of logic and reason that she had uncovered at the very core of her personality.

  2

  MEG FOUND THE MAN, of course. Meg knew people, who would themselves know other people. “It’s not cheap, darling,” she warned.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Fifty pounds?”

  “Actually, darling, I think it’s guineas.”

  Diana felt sick. Was it real nausea, the sickness that she had been feeling so often these days, or the shock of the cost? “I haven’t got that kind of money,” she whispered. “I only earn six pounds a month, for God’s sake. Meg, what’ll I do?”

  “Look, we’ll go and see. We’ll go and talk about it. I’m told that the man is very good. A friend of a friend knew someone who had it done by him. Perhaps we can get him to reduce the fee. I can lend you some. We can work it out.”

  “Is he…?”

  “Is he what?”

  “You know. Is he a doctor?”

  Meg smiled reassuringly. She should have been the nurse, with that lovely, reassuring smile. “Of course he is, Di. That’s why it’s guineas. Don’t worry, I’m not going to put you in the hands of some dreadful backstreet abortionist. Actually, he’s much more than just a plain old doctor; he’s a gynecologist and a surgeon. A Mr. Mandeville. Harley Street no less.”