Out of the Blackout

by Robert Barnard

  ‘That’s right. He was. Things might have been better if he had been at home. You’re right—we did call the boy Ted, to make the difference. I am surprised you didn’t know about him. After all the fuss you Spurlings made when he was on the way!’

  Simon chanced his arm.

  ‘Because he was illegitimate?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her eyes clouded over, and a bitter expression took possession of her normally good-humoured face. ‘You young people: you’ve no idea what it was like then! The shame we were supposed to feel . . . And the Spurlings being chapel people as well—that made it a real scandal, something only talked about at home, under their breaths. Teddy told me that as soon as they got whisper they were round at Farrow Street, demanding that I keep away from the district, and that I call myself Mrs. You’d have thought one or the other would have done, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘They were worse than your own family?’

  ‘Oh, Ma and Len were bad enough. The fuss! They offered me a weekly pittance to stay away, and when I said I’d come round to discuss it, Ma said, “Then you come after dark!” It was a real laugh, that meeting. I remember when they put it to me that I should take a married name—I’d been going to, anyway—I said: “All right. I’ll take a married name. I’ll take the name of the father. I’ll call myself Mrs Mandel.” Len blew his top! I really got a kick out of that. I felt I’d held my own.’

  A firework rose and bloomed into showers of sparkles in Simon’s brain. Ted Mandel. Edward Mandel. I know it. I remember it. It says something to me, as David Simmeter never did. I was Edward Mandel . . . I am not Edward Mandel, but I was him.

  Connie had not noticed his reaction. She had interrupted her reminiscences to attend to her drink, with an old person’s eagerness for the comforts of the present.

  ‘But why,’ Simon asked, curious, ‘should Len blow his top?’

  ‘The name: Mandel. I remember he shouted: “But that’s a Jewish name!” And I said: “Not so bloody surprising, since he’s a Jewish boy.” All hell broke loose. Len kept wailing: “You’re having a Jewish baby!” and I’d say: “Technically speaking, I’d say I have half shares in him.” Whenever Len or Ma said the word “Jewish”, they hissed it—in case the neighbours heard.’

  ‘Who was he, the father?’

  ‘He was the son of the family I worked for. Nice enough boy—a year younger than me. I left home, you see, round about 1932. Went to work in a shop first, and had a room nearby. I got in with this young left-wing crowd—very idealistic, you know. I suppose you’d call it a reaction against Len and Ma. Well, I always wanted to better myself—would have done, too, if the brat hadn’t come along—and one of this crowd got me this job doing secretarial work, which was a step up, though not much of one. It was an organization to aid refugees from Nazi Germany. Really it was rich Jews here helping to get Jews out of Germany, but they tried to make it more general, played down that side of it, because there were plenty of people in the Conservative Party at the time who were pretty much of Len’s way of thinking. So it suited them to employ a non-Jew. They were good people on the whole, but nobody’s fools.’

  ‘I begin to understand,’ said Simon. ‘I think I get it.’

  ‘So I was working at the Mandels’ all day. They ran a chain of jewellers’, but the committee I worked for operated from their home. The parents were mostly out during the day, and the boy—Isaiah was his name, would you believe it?—had just finished with school. He was eighteen or so. I suppose you could say that what happened was pretty much inevitable.’

  ‘And I imagine his family was less than pleased.’

  ‘You’re not wrong!’ Connie’s mouth twisted with contempt. ‘See them letting their bright boy marry out of the faith! They packed him off to Edinburgh University—further away than Oxford.’ Her face relaxed once more into its usual flaccid contentment. ‘Though if the truth were known, there was never much of what you’d call love between us. He was too fly to be easily caught, parents or no parents. Anyway, I was paid off. And I made them pay, and pay well! Otherwise I’d never have had the brat, or I’d have had it adopted. I thought it was my passport to the good life. Mind you, if I’d known the trouble a kid causes! . . . I was too green, that was my trouble.’

  ‘But you had two supplies of money coming in, though.’

  ‘That’s right. I never told Len and Ma about the money I was getting from the Mandels, or they’d have cut off their subsidy. Tainted lucre! I had a little flat in Peckham, had the baby January 28th, 1936, the day the old King was buried), and all in all I wasn’t too badly off. If it hadn’t been for the baby I’d have been fine.’

  ‘You didn’t care for him?’

  ‘I cared for him, in one sense; there was no one else to. I didn’t like him. I can’t imagine why women want babies. They ruin your life. I know Ted ruined mine.’

  ‘Why did you decide to go back to your family?’

  ‘I was afraid. It was as simple as that. It was early in the summer of ’39. Everyone was talking about the coming war. I used to see Teddy once a week, when he brought the money from the family. He was a brick, Teddy was—that’s why I named the boy after him. Well, with all this talk I got scared to death—invasion, air raids, occupation, that was all anyone thought about. And me alone in a tiny flat, with a kid to look after, and not a friend in the world. I put out feelers through Teddy, and got back the gracious message from Ma that it would be all right to move back if I called myself Mrs Mandel, and wore a wedding-ring. We’d all say my husband died. And that’s what we did. At least there was somebody there, near me. I wasn’t alone.’

  ‘I’d have thought it must have been a pretty unpleasant atmosphere to go back to.’

  Connie shrugged, and smiled her complacent smile.

  ‘Water off a duck’s back. I can ignore that sort of thing. I never liked fending for myself, you know. Slaving away to get meals, keep the little bugger clean and tidy—that wasn’t my line at all. And at home was Mary, just waiting to be the substitute mother. That suited me down to the ground. And I don’t mind telling you there was another reason: I thought that if Jerry did come over, it might be useful being Len’s sister. I make no bones about thinking of my own skin first.’

  ‘But it didn’t work out very well, I take it.’

  ‘Oh, not at all bad. From my point of view. It took most of the load off my shoulders. There was just the problem of Ted.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Simon, cautiously exploring an area of half-memory, ‘that it was mostly about Ted that Mary and Len argued—fought—in those years. You kept that from me before.’

  Connie chuckled in rich and careless reminiscence.

  ‘Was it ever! From the beginning Len could hardly bear the sight of him. A Jewish boy in his house! Playing with his David! He tried to banish him from his part of the house, but it didn’t work out. I wasn’t interested in him; I wasn’t going to have him clinging to my skirts all day. I’d moved back to see an end to that. So of course Mary had to look after him: she wasn’t one to see a child moping and neglected and do nothing about it. So back Ted would be in Len’s part of the house, as he called it. The looks he gave! If looks could kill! . . .’

  ‘He didn’t actually mistreat him?’

  ‘He would have. He would have liked to. But Mary always stood in the way.’

  ‘Physically?’

  ‘Eventually that. First she said she’d go to the police if there was any brutality. Then she threatened to take Davey and go and live with her family. Her dad was dead—stiff-necked old bugger—but she had a whole host of brothers and sisters, as you know. That got through to Len, because of course Mary would have got custody of the child if there’d been any sort of separation. Gradually, though, he realized that Mary would never leave Ted in the same house as him. Funny woman . . . I never understood her . . . What was Ted to her? But she washed and cleaned for him, darned his clothes, till he was as well-turned-out as her David. I suppose some women just love kids. But it
doesn’t seem natural.’

  ‘And when he couldn’t take it out on . . . on Ted, he started taking it out on Mary?’

  ‘That’s it. Typical Len. First the odd cuff around the head, then real blows. Always about Ted. “The Yid bastard”, as Len used to call him. Sometimes it happened when he was there. Once or twice I caught him at night, listening on the stairs. The expression on that child’s face! Well, I’m not sentimental, but it got through to me, I can tell you. He had nightmares about it. I know that because he slept in the next room to mine. Screamed out, moaned. I always let him have them out . . . They say it’s better.’

  A picture was forming: tiny sparks of memory were igniting, and illuminating dark corners of Simon’s mind. The boy on the stairs, listening to the thumps and cries of fighting adults. The boy in bed, having his nightmare out, waking up drenched not in urine but in sweat. The boy in the hostile house, keeping out of sight of most of the members of it, with one badgered, beaten protector. The picture was forming slowly in his mind, as on an old, worn-out television set. But the lazy, scattered picture was helping him to understand that later picture: the little boy arriving at Yeasdon Station, determined to find a new family, new protectors.

  ‘What about that night?’ he asked. ‘The night of Mary’s death.’

  Connie pursed up her mouth, as if at a distasteful memory.

  ‘Oh—that night. We told you about that. But it wasn’t just that night—it was all the nights leading up to it. Weeks. Months.’ She passed her hand across her forehead, and in remembering that time she displayed for the only time in Simon’s acquaintance with her some crack in the carapace of confidence that enveloped her. She was remembering fear, blank terror. ‘Raids, raids, raid. Sirens, trips to the shelter, to the Underground. People huddling on the stairs, the platforms, along the corridors. Explosions . . . fires. Every time you came out, you looked to see what was gone. It was like hell on earth, and it went on and on . . .’ Slowly her complacency returned. ‘I think it was a miracle I kept my head that night, I really do.’

  ‘Len, I suppose, lost his?’

  ‘Well and truly. He’d been cracking up for weeks. If they were coming, why didn’t they come? If Britain was going to be bombed into surrender, why didn’t we surrender? One of his best friends in the British Union had just been interned. Would he be next? In April he sent little David to Sussex. That was the beginning of the end between him and Mary. Now Ma was his only ally in the house, and she wasn’t exactly a comforting body. Then that night he seemed to go over the top.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘Funny thing is, I can’t remember. We’d been in the shelter, I remember that, and had come out after the all-clear, about half past ten. We saw that houses in the area had been bombed. Mary put Ted to bed, and came down again, and then it all blew up. She’d lost the battle over David, because she half thought Len was right, that he ought to be in the country. Now she gave whatever strength she had to defend Ted. To tell you the truth, I think it was about nothing. That’s often the way, isn’t it? It was something like Len using Ted’s ration card to buy extra sweets for Ma—some fiddling thing like that. Ma always liked her sweet things, and never got enough of them during the war. But however it started, it developed into a real slanging match—Len going on about Yids, Mary about greed and heartlessness. Davey not being there gave Mary courage, I think: he was out of the battle. I do remember her telling Ma to her face she was greedy, and that took nerve, I can tell you. She was quite able to defend herself, of course, but Len charged in, all synthetic outrage at the insult to his mother, and soon there were blows as usual . . . Then suddenly Mary was on the floor.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes. We didn’t find out for a few minutes. I remember saying: “You ought to be ashamed. Go and make her a cup of tea, Ma.” But when Ma had put the kettle on, she still hadn’t stirred. Len was looking at her, hopping from one foot to the other, his red, bleary little eyes all wide with fear. Then we found she was dead, and Ma decided what we had to do.’

  ‘I might have guessed she’d arranged it all.’

  ‘Oh yes—trust Ma. She wouldn’t lose her head in a crisis, not Ma. First she went and found this bombed house that the ARP and fire people hadn’t got to yet. Then she and I and Len took Mary there—’ Connie shivered, and drew a large old woollen cardigan round her shoulders—‘carrying her between us, like she was wounded, or drunk, through those pitch-dark streets. We just left her there, in the sitting-room, with the other dead. We told the police later that she’d been worried about some friends she’d made, who’d only recently moved there, and had gone to see them just before the raid. It was really quite convincing, thanks mostly to Ma. It was only much later, when I found out who they were, that I thought the Jews really did have a habit of catching up with Len. Anyway, all the time we were carrying her there, her arms around our shoulders, like she was walking with difficulty, all the way there I was thinking and thinking . . . And as I say, I’m proud I didn’t lose my head.’

  ‘Thinking? What do you mean? What about?’

  ‘Ted, of course.’ Connie smiled at Simon, a secret little smile, almost conspiratorial. We’re both men and women of the world, it seemed to say. ‘Doesn’t do any harm to tell now, it being so long ago. I was thinking of me being lumbered with Ted again, now Mary was gone. Just when I was thinking of doing some light war work, getting out a bit more. I did that later, you know: worked near an American air base in Norfolk. Had some times, I can tell you! And here was Mary dying on me, leaving me lumbered with the kid again . . . So I was thinking. And what I did was quite clever. Really very cunning, though I say it myself.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  She edged forward the whole heavy top of her body across the table, and there suffused her face a slow smile of the most complete and cloudless self-approbation.

  ‘As soon as we got back to Farrow Street, I said to Len: “You do realize, don’t you, that Ted was sitting at the top of the stairs. He must have heard everything.” ’

  ‘Had he been?’

  ‘Not that I know of. That was the beauty of it! The cunning! Though of course he had heard them often enough, and Len knew it. He went wild, practically off his head. “He’ll have to be got rid of,” he kept saying. Just like one of those old melodramas. I wanted to laugh. “You’re not planning on killing two people in one night, are you, Len?” I said. But he was quite mad—hissing it out, in case the neighbours were still up. Children were all the same, he said. If the police really leaned on them, they couldn’t keep things quiet. Ted had it in for him, Len said. “Did you think he ought to have a special place in his heart for you?” I asked. Len got wilder and wilder, just like I intended. Ted would blab what he knew just to spite him, Len said. Ma was getting pretty worried too—I liked that: Ma, the human whalebone, almost getting jittery! And when they were both in a proper old tizz-wozz, up I came with the solution: “We can get rid of him without killing him,” I said.’

  ‘How would you do that, then?’ asked Simon ingenuously.

  ‘Easy! I said to Len: “Look, there’s parties of evacuee kids going off to the country every day from Paddington. If we get at him tomorrow morning, put the fear of the devil into him, tell him he’s to tell no one who he is, or where he comes from, then we can attach him to one of those groups going off tomorrow, and we’ll have seen the last of him. Suits you, and it certainly suits me!” ’

  ‘How clever,’ said Simon, admiringly. ‘That was really smart.’ That was obviously Connie’s opinion too. She smiled at him triumphantly. ‘And is that what you did?’

  ‘That’s exactly what we did. It was a bit wicked, thinking back on it, but wasn’t it ingenious? Next morning we got him up early. Ma was cleaning up all traces of the fight. I let Len do most of the initial stuff, so if it all came out I could say I only went along with it to shield Len. That way I was covered. Len told him he was to go away. Something terrible had happened. He was to keep who he w
as an absolute secret, with some pretty graphic threats as to what would happen if he didn’t. He was not to tell anybody anything about himself. He was to lie, make up whatever he fancied, but if he told them who he was—well, you know the sort of thing you terrify kids with.’

  ‘But it was a hell of a risk, wasn’t it?’

  ‘But Len thought he would be more of a risk if he stayed. And I had a line of retreat open. It all came together so beautifully. I remember later on, sitting in his little room, and he and I were bundling some of his things—God knows what, I hardly knew what was going on—into a little case and a satchel. And he said: “What is it that’s happened? Is it Auntie Mary?” And I said: “No, she’s just gone away to visit Davey. It was to do with the war.” That seemed to satisfy him. I think he wanted to go, you know. Then we both took him to the Station, Len muttering threats the whole time. Len didn’t want to be seen with him, so he went to the office and clocked on for duty. I took him to the platform. Len knew there was one train with evacuees going to the Oxford area, and another going to the West. I looked at them both. One seemed to have a lot of teachers, some of them carrying cases. Not very promising. I chose the other—I don’t know which it was. There were two teachers, but they were obviously just loading the kids on to the train. When they both got on to check the carriages, I whispered: “Remember, not a word who you are. Think up a nice new name! Find yourself a nice family to live with!” Then I shoved him forward, and made myself scarce. I watched him go up to the group, and get on the train. I waited till it drew out. It seemed an age. Then I went back home—to all the business of declaring Mary missing. By lunchtime Len had been to the hospital and identified the body. By evening there was just the three of us in the house, and I was congratulating myself. Really it all went wonderfully smoothly!’

  Simon looked at her—fat, comfortable, amiable—‘a good sort’. And he saw beneath the surface amiability, the comfortable self-approval, a moral vacuum more frightening than any of Len’s casual brutalities or mean-spirited hatreds. Without sense of right or wrong, without love or sense of responsibility, there was in her mind only an abyss of complacency and self-love which made the blood run cold and numbed the heart. It was with this woman, rather than the Cutheridges, that he might have dragged out his childhood and youth. His heart sang out with gratitude at his deliverance. He said: