A New Tweed Coat
“She’s a scrappy little thing, isn’t she?” said Mrs. Parvis. “Takes after her father, does she?”
She was discussing Dot.
Gloria shrugged. Dot fingered her victory badge and tried not to listen in case it seemed like prying.
“If you want my advice, lovie, you’ll pop her down to the Town Hall and find her a decent coat to wear. When you go to fetch her rations.”
Gloria and Dot went down to the Town Hall once a fortnight to collect Dot’s vitamin ration. Two bottles of orange juice, opaque and brilliantly colored, one of cod-liver oil, translucent and greenish-gold. Before the tin victory brooch, these bottles of liquid strength were the only goods that Dot knew were hers alone, belonging to no grown-up. Gloria poured her a spoonful from each bottle every day and said that’s why she was tough as old boots, because she always swallowed it down like a good girl. A previous landlady had tried to help herself to the orange juice to put in her gin. When Gloria complained, there’d been a tiff and they’d had to leave.
“You know I can’t go buying her nothing!” Gloria said now about the coat.
“They won’t ask for no clothing coupons down there,” said Mrs. Parvis.
“It’s not coupons I’m short of. They gave me all them extra ones for Baby’s nappies what I never used.”
“Didn’t you even get him a proper layette, the poor wee mite?”
“I’m not made of money, Mrs. Parvis. I told you I got coupons coming out of my ears. It’s cash we’re stuck on.”
“At the Clothes Exchange, dear, you don’t need no money down there. Nor coupons. It’s meant for people like you what haven’t got nothing left.”
Dot didn’t like it when Mrs. Parvis spoke in this way, as though they were dusty victims from under the rubble. Maybe they hadn’t got any clothes, and they couldn’t afford one of the nice rooms, and they didn’t belong anywhere, but they had each other and they had Baby to visit each day.
“Women’s Voluntary’s running it.”
“I know all about them,” said Gloria. “Busybodies, the lot of them. Worse than air-raid wardens.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. Anyway, you never know, you might find something there. You want her to look as though you care, don’t you? Besides, she’ll catch her death with just that little woolly cardigan.”
“If you say so, Mrs. Parvis. Try any dodge once,” said Gloria.
“By the by, you giving her her vitamins? Don’t want her to go the way of Baby, do you now?”
“Interfering old bag,” muttered Gloria so that Mrs. Parvis probably heard. But they set out for the Town Hall nonetheless.
“Matter of fact, Dot, what I really fancy you in is one of them nice Scottish tartan kilts like the princesses had when they was little. Remember them on their summer holiday? Matching check kilts, playing in the purple heather. With a nice fluffy jumper. Fair Isle, that’s what they called it.”
The clerk behind the hatch asked for their empties before she’d hand over the new bottles, but they hadn’t got them. They were still half full back at their room.
“Try and remember next time,” the clerk snapped. “We can’t go wasting glass. Remember, we’ve all got to fight for the future now.”
“You don’t say!”
Sometimes Dot wished Gloria wouldn’t answer back to people in authority because then they noticed them more.
The hall where the Children’s Clothes Exchange was taking place was organized by another bossy lady in green uniform, sitting importantly behind a desk in the doorway.
“This is an exchange, not a rummage sale,” she said when she saw that Gloria had brought along no clothes to swap.
“Well, I haven’t got nothing to hand in, have I? And if I had, she’d be wearing it. Then I wouldn’t need to bring her up here, would I?”
The lady in green pursed her lips. “Oh, all right, in you go, but don’t go taking too much. I know what some of you lot are up to.”
“Ta ever so,” said Gloria. “She’s got to look nice for when we go up to the hospital to see my little boy.”
In a huge bare hall, trestle tables were heaped with children’s garments and there was a thick, stifling smell in the air. Women in head scarves were sifting through the untidy muddle like rescue workers scrabbling in rubble for survivors, while children stood by, waiting for the emergence of something to look at. Sometimes children grizzled, sometimes they wailed.
Dot didn’t like the smell of old clothes or of brick dust and escaping gas, but she rarely wailed.
“Are they clean?” one woman asked, picking out a little colored dress to measure up against her own child.
“I should think so, too!” snapped the lady keeping order behind the table. “They’ve all been fumigated quite properly under Ministry supervision.” But Dot could see how the lady herself wore white cotton gloves to handle the clothing, so as not to touch it directly.
Dot waited quietly till Gloria emerged from the jostling crowd holding up a fawn coat, triumphant like the A.R.P. men when they’d retrieved a live person, or even a dead one. Once Dot had seen a canary in a bent cage pulled out, black like a little sparrow from the ashes and soot, yet still singing even though its owner was gone.
“Real tweed. And look at that label!” said Gloria. “Daniel Neal. That means it’s quality. The princesses used to have their clothes from there. ‘By Appointment to Her Majesty,’ it says.”
The coat smelled musty, and the cuffs felt greasy. Dot didn’t think the princesses had ever had greasy cuffs.
“I’d have preferred it pink, that’s more feminine-like, but them dull colors, that’s just like the princesses used to wear.” It was double-breasted with two rows of pearl buttons up the front. Gloria buttoned Dot up.
“Well, aren’t you the one! All dressed up like the cat’s dinner.”
Gloria seemed so pleased that Dot didn’t like to say how constricting the coat felt round the neck.
“Here, I got you these, too.” Gloria had two white woollen socks. “Don’t quite match, but near as makes no difference.” One was longer than the other and a different, more yellowy, shade of white. “You’re going to look a proper little madam. Nice white socks and a proper little coat. See, it’s got velvet on it just like the princesses used to have when they was little. You’re going to look too posh to go walking with me. People’ll think I’m your nanny.”
Dot felt in the pockets. They had velvet flaps over them like letter boxes. She found a used tram ticket to Holborn in one, and a little hanky scrumpled up in the bottom of the other. She smoothed it over with her hand. It was trimmed with a border of lace and printed with a pattern of flowers.
“Ooh, violets! Isn’t that lucky! A hanky for you too. That’s fine Swiss cotton, that is. When we get back, I’ll rinse it through. Then you can keep it in there so you’ve always got it.”
Gloria was always telling Dot she should try to hold on to things so she’d have them as keepsakes forever. Yet Gloria herself never seemed to hold on to more than the bare essentials that they had in their two paper carriers. The only keepsakes Gloria had were her best peep-toe shoes and her little black hat with the veil.
“Funny, isn’t it, how things just slip away without you noticing? Someone once gave me ever such a lovely little china cup when you was born, with pictures on it. Flowers and that. That was gone before you’d even learned to sit up by yourself.”
The violet-patterned handkerchief had some writing in the corner.
Dot asked, “What’s that say?”
“‘Henrietta,’” Gloria read it out for Dot. “‘Forbes-Read.’”
“What’s it mean?”
“That’s a name tape. Though you’d have thought they’d have taken it off before bringing in their things. It’s not very nice, leaving it on there, is it? Never mind, I’ll unpick it when I wash it through for you.”
“No, leave it, please,” said Dot. “I like it.”
She wo
ndered what the coat’s first owner was wearing now. Or perhaps it belonged to a child who was under rubble.
“Sent away to America more like,” said Gloria. “Still, maybe she’s left some of her luck behind in her pockets.”
When Dot went to bed that night, Gloria laid the fawn coat over the top of the blanket. It felt heavy.
“So as some of the luck’ll spill out on you when you’re asleep,” she said.
“Really?” said Dot.
“Course not, silly billy! Just having you on. It’s to keep the cold out of your bones.”
As she waited for sleep, Dot thought she saw the face of the coat owner gazing out of the dark with a complexion as pale and refined as tissue paper.
4
The Day That Baby Went
Visiting Ward 3-South was built into Dot’s life. Gloria disappearing between the double swing doors with the round porthole windows too high to see through, and Dot in the dark brown corridor, standing, standing, waiting, for however long it took.
Apart from that one time when Gloria went off instead to cheer the king, Dot couldn’t remember a day when they hadn’t been to visit whatever hospital he was in.
But today Gloria blundered out through the swing doors when she’d hardly been in there any time at all, and looked like she was groping along in her sleep. Dot had seen people like that before, long ago. They hadn’t been hurt, not so much as a graze on them, yet when the all clear sounded, they came out of their buildings and stood on their street with blank eyes that seemed to stare inward.
“That’s him, then, all gone,” Gloria said, before a nurse came scurrying out through the doors, took her by the arm, and led her back into the ward.
The long corridor was empty. Dot took a chance peek in through the crack between where the two doors met. It looked nice and peaceful in there. The floor was dark green and shiny like a sheet of still water, and everything else was white. The metal bedsteads were white, the cotton covers on them white, and the children lying straight and still wore white gowns. Every child had a bed or a cot to themselves. No sharing and rolling down into the dip in the middle.
Another nurse, older-looking and in blue, marched along the corridor. She snapped at Dot, “What are you doing, hanging around here?”
“Waiting for my Mum,” said Dot. “In there.”
“Are you indeed,” said the navy-blue nurse. Then, “Ah, I see,” as though she knew something special. She hurried away through the swing doors, then out again to tell Dot, more kindly, that her brother had gone on a journey. “A long journey. He won’t be coming back.”
Dot thought that he must have been moved to a different hospital. She said, “How far?” She wondered what number bus they’d have to get. If it was too far, they’d have to move lodgings again. Dot didn’t want that.
“Why can’t he stay in this hospital? He likes it here.”
The nurse said, “Never mind, hen.” Then Dot understood what she’d meant. And Dot had a sinking feeling because she realized she’d known all along even though she hadn’t wanted to.
That’s what always happened to people you knew. Away they went and never came back. But Dot had thought it wouldn’t ever happen to their baby. She’d hoped he was too young.
They left the hospital and went to wait for the bus. Gloria didn’t pause to say anything to the cheery porter at the gates, nor did he call out to them. He was looking the other way, sorting mail.
Dot knew that Gloria was sad. She wasn’t chatting to other people in the queue. Her red lipstick was smudged, and she hadn’t bothered to pin up her hair properly at the sides.
Dot wanted to make Gloria feel happy. She tugged at her hand. “Shall we play princesses?” she whispered.
They would be young girls growing up at the palace, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.
Gloria took the part of the elder princess. “Main thing is,” she used to explain, “we have to act natural, because that’s what they done, none of your fancy airs and graces. Just natural and nice, and ever so ladylike.”
Dot liked it when Gloria wanted to play. It felt like seeing a film happening round you. All Dot had to do was smile pleasantly and stand a little behind, because, as Gloria pointed out, Princess Margaret wasn’t nearly as important as Princess Elizabeth and would never become a queen.
“And you watch out for the royal governess!” Gloria used to warn. “Or you’ll catch the sharp end of her tongue! She taught ’em how to behave, made ’em do their lessons at high desks. That’s so they’d get used to the standing. Specially Princess Elizabeth. She has to do a lot of standing.”
“I wouldn’t ever want to be a princess,” Dot sometimes said, because she wanted so much to be one.
“Well, that’s all right, then, ain’t it?” Gloria sometimes replied. “Because you ain’t never gonna have to be.”
But now she said, “No, not just now, ducks.”
“D’you wanna play stars, then?” Dot asked.
That was the other game Gloria liked. She chose the film and the parts they were to play. Sometimes she said she was Gloria Swanson. Sometimes Loretta Young. Or Ginger Rogers. Or Barbara Stanwyck. They had lovely exotic names. Gloria knew them all. But the films had strange names that didn’t seem to Dot to mean anything. And Now Tomorrow, Forever Young, Till Midnight Comes. What sense was there in that?
Gloria had taken Dot to the cinema a few times. It was very dark. And when the stars’ faces filled the whole screen so that you saw their huge lips close up like big pillows moving and their great teeth and their smooth matte skin filling the whole screen, it was frightening. The films Gloria liked were about love and people singing to each other. Sometimes, though, there was just talking. Then Dot couldn’t understand what was going on. Sometimes Gloria explained.
“See, she’s lost her memory in a terrible storm. He’s a stranger from out of town.”
“Who’s that other lady?”
“She’s pretending to love him. Really she’s after him for his money.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Shh, I don’t know. That’s why we’re here. To find out.”
“When will it be over?”
“I said shh.”
The bus was a long time coming, and Gloria wouldn’t play anything, just stood there staring at nothing until finally she said, “Now I ain’t got him no more.”
“You got me,” said Dot.
Gloria blinked. “That coat didn’t have no luck left in it after all, did it?” Dot gave her the violet-patterned hanky that used to belong to Henrietta Forbes-Read to wipe her eyes.
“What are we going to do?” said Dot. If they stopped visiting the hospital every day, there wouldn’t be anything left in life except a gaping crater of nothingness and broken bricks. Dot wanted to be back in their room at Mrs. Parvis’s. That was where they both felt safe. Gloria had always said so. “You’re always safe in a basement. They can’t get you down there. Not unless it’s a direct hit, then you’ve had it anyway. So long as someone knows you’re down there and comes to dig you out, then a basement’s always best, even if the rest goes down like a pack of cards.”
They didn’t wait any longer for the bus. They walked all the way. Dot’s legs ached. She wanted to sit down. Her shoelace came undone. She wanted to be carried.
“You’re too old for all that now,” Gloria snapped. “Don’t push your luck.”
Being back in the basement didn’t turn out to be any good after all. No sooner were they there than Gloria announced, “We can’t stay down here anymore. It’s got bad feelings for me, this room. And just when I thought everything was changing for the better. We’ll tell her we’re going away for a breather.”
“Why have we got to go?” Dot didn’t want to have to go away somewhere. “We’re always having to move.”
“On a trip. There’s this place I know,” said Gloria. “She always said I could keep in touch.”
Dot wondered what sort of a trip, what sort of a place
.
“Where? Why? What? Just don’t ask me no more questions, Dot. Can’t you see, I’ve got to have time to get myself straight inside.”
Dot heard Gloria tell Mrs. Parvis about what had happened. “He was took quite sudden.”
“Pneumonia, I daresay,” said Mrs. Parvis. “Usually is. Don’t suppose he had the strength left in that little body to fight back no more, though you’d have thought they could’ve saved him with these new pills they got. My sister’s boy was saved with them. Did him a power of good. He had middle ear. His drum was pierced.”
“They said it was for the best,” said Gloria.
“And I daresay it was, too,” said Mrs. Parvis. “From what you told me. Didn’t stand a chance from the start. They don’t, kids like that.”
“They gave him the oxygen, to help him breathe. But then they took it away, said it was blinding him. I wouldn’t have minded him blind. Better than not at all.”
Mrs. Parvis gave Gloria a pat on the shoulder and for once seemed almost friendly. “You go off now and forget all about it. Don’t bother about the rent if you haven’t got it now, just so long as you pay me as soon as you get back.”
Dot didn’t want to forget all about it. She wondered if it was all right for her to go on thinking about Baby. She wondered what the hospital would do with him. Where did dead babies go? But she knew she couldn’t ask while Gloria was still getting herself straight inside.
Gloria put on her stockings, one coupon each, two for the pair and always kept for best, straightened the seams up the back, Vaselined her eyebrows, and put on her suede peep-toe shoes and her little black hat with the veil, which usually lived in one of the paper carrier bags on the top of the shelf. She’d been married in that hat.
“Cost me my last five bob. Because I said to myself, even if you can’t afford no frock, can’t afford no party, can’t afford no bouquet, at least you can have a new hat.”
By the time they reached the railway station, Dot realized she must have had time to get herself straight inside, for she seemed almost cheery again. But Dot was frightened of the station. It was too big, a great covered space where people strode back and forth in a hurry. The space rattled with loud, disconnected sounds that echoed about so you couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from.
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