As we walked through the streets that had been my world, along the pavements that I had played on every day before I had taken the train to the countryside, I became aware of a strange, heavy silence. The women had gone from their front steps. No-one gossiped to neighbours. We walked on a carpet of leaves as if it were October, but the carpet wasn’t the colour of autumn, it was green and slippery underfoot. When we turned the corner of my street, it changed again, giving way to bricks and shattered glass.
I gasped when I saw it, stripped back to its bones. If the street before had been autumn, this was midwinter. The trees were bare, flayed of their leaves and bark. Sap dribbled down their trunks like blood, its fresh scent mingling with the choking smell of brick dust. A nightdress flapped in the branches of one of them as if the tree were trying to cover its nakedness, knowing it was out of place. The houses were exposed as well, scalped of their roofs, their fronts ripped away, leaving flights of stairs like vertebrae, just managing to hold up what was left. The only living things on the street were the cats, picking their way through the broken glass and howling with hunger. Their whines echoed around the shells of the houses like something supernatural, as if the ghosts of the people who had died were present and restless.
Like all the others, our house was open to anyone who cared to look. I made my way over to it, tripping up over the rubble. When I saw what was left of the kitchen I understood where the smell of wet and burning wood was coming from. The walls were black with soot and pools of water lapped at the broken furniture. The fire brigade had tried to put out the fire, I supposed. I wondered what they had seen when they had arrived. I imagined Ma when the bomb came, sitting at the kitchen table with only the woodlice for company, or lying alone and afraid in our bed, praying to the Virgin Mary to be spared. Perhaps that was what she had done every night since I had left her, I thought, five long years of being frightened while I was running in the fields and swimming in the lake and forgetting all about her.
I sat down on a pile of bricks and put my head in my hands. I had mourned Ma before, first when I was sent away from her and then after the terrible day of her visit. I had wept both times but now that she was truly gone, all I could do was to try and hold myself together, exhausted at the prospect of starting again in this strange, battered city. It had changed since I had left and so had I. London and I would have to get used to one another again.
‘Are you all right?’ Grace said.
I nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to do, that’s all.’
She sat down beside me. ‘Where will we go?’
I didn’t have an answer. I had thought there would be enough left of the house to shelter in but I could see now that there was no chance of that. ‘I don’t know. It’s all so different. I hadn’t expected it to be quite so bad.’
‘Couldn’t we tell someone that you were evacuated but you’ve come back to London and found that your mother’s dead? It’s true, after all. They’d have to find you somewhere to live, wouldn’t they?’
I didn’t think it would be so simple. ‘I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘They’re telling people not to come back at the moment. It would look suspicious. Besides, I’m seventeen. I’m not a child. No-one has to look after me.’ I sighed. ‘And Grace, we’ve run away. They’ll have reported us missing. If we tell anyone who we are we’ll be found out. And I’m not going back to the village. I’m staying here.’
But for all my defiance, I knew that she was right. We needed to find a place to shelter. I tried to think. Grace had followed me to London and it was my duty to look after her, to lead her through the city, just as she had been my guide to the strange world of the rectory.
‘Let’s walk into town,’ I said, trying to sound confident. ‘There’ll be boarding houses for girls there, I’m sure. We’re bound to find somewhere to stay’
And so we turned away from what little was left of my street. I decided that I would keep my feelings for a time when I was alone. For the moment I would keep them locked away with my memories of Ma.
We walked for hours through street after deserted street, over mountains of rubble and broken glass. Buildings loomed above us, held up with giant timbers that looked like upside down Victory Vs, as if any thought of victory had been turned on its head. The streets were quiet and the only sound was our footsteps as we stumbled along. It was hard going and by late afternoon we were weary. As we picked our way across Islington, down through Bloomsbury and into Fitzrovia, a fine drizzle began to fall, half-heartedly at first but then harder, until the pavements became slick and wet.
My stomach began to rumble as we trudged on and Grace said that she was hungry too. We came to a café on a corner and peered in through the steamed-up windows. The customers looked tired and ordinary, dressed in drab clothes. I looked down at myself and then at Grace. Our old mackintoshes were beginning to let in the rain and my sandals were already sodden. We didn’t look so different to the people in the café. No-one would notice us. I nudged Grace.
‘Let’s go in,’ I said.
She looked doubtful. ‘It doesn’t look very nice.’
‘But we’re both hungry. We haven’t eaten since yesterday. And I can’t think of anywhere else to go.’
A taxi rumbled past, spattering the back of our legs with dirty water. Grace gave a quick nod and I pushed open the door.
Nobody paid any attention to us as we made our way to a booth and sat down. I had never been in a café and I was nervous. Grace said that she had been to a teashop once when her mother came to take her out from school.
‘It was lovely,’ she said. ‘We had great piles of sandwiches and scones with jam and cream. There was seed cake too. I was bursting by the end of it.’ She looked wistful at the memory. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll have that here.’
She looked about, as if she might guess what would be on the menu from our surroundings. At first I was too timid to take my eyes off the table but after a while I grew bolder and began to look around for myself. Our booth was towards the back of the room and from where we were sitting I could see the other diners, couples leaning close together, servicemen in twos and threes and groups of girls, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes like they had in the station buffet. They weren’t much older than us and I envied them their factory overalls and easy attitude. I wanted to be able to laugh like them, without a trace of self-consciousness, not caring who might hear or see. I suddenly realized that I was still wearing my wet mackintosh and shrugged it off, using it to cover up the pillowcase.
Grace ordered fish and potatoes for both of us from a waitress. When our tea arrived, I began to feel better, as if the small green cup gave me the right to be there. I sipped it gratefully, the hot liquid warming my mouth and getting rid of the chilly damp that had seeped through my clothes.
When the food came we ate quickly, tearing at it with the blunt knives and shovelling it into our mouths. It wasn’t anything like the teashop feast that Grace had talked about. The fish tasted mostly of the salt that had been used to preserve it and the potatoes hadn’t been boiled for nearly long enough. But it didn’t matter. The first bite was enough to make me feel better. It seemed to have the same effect on Grace and we grinned at each other across the table.
The next minute she had put down her knife and fork.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said, feeling anxious again.
‘We forgot to say grace! That’s bad, isn’t it?’ But she was smirking as she said it and I smirked back at her. I didn’t care about not saying grace. We didn’t need things like that in this new world. God hadn’t come up with much yet, I thought. I didn’t feel inclined to thank him for anything.
Just then a hush fell over the room. The only sound to be heard was the car horns in the street, which all blew together as if they were giving out a warning. The other people in the café seemed to be listening for something, craning their heads towards the windows, frowning with concentration. A distant, humming noise was growing l
ouder, like a giant insect coming close. As I listened, the humming turned into a rattle, like a stick being dragged along a fence, louder and louder until it hurt to hear it. Everyone was still, gripping their knives and forks like good luck charms. I saw mouths moving, noiselessly repeating the same three words.
Please keep going. Please keep going. Please keep going.
The rattle went on and on, seeming as if it would never come to an end, until suddenly, just as quickly as it had begun, it stopped and there was silence. A second passed, we held our breath, and then came a dreadful crunching bang that echoed off the walls. As soon as it had happened, all the tension in the room was gone. People took up their conversations again, drank tea, lit cigarettes, drew on them deeply and exhaled as if they had been holding their breath forever. Grace put down her cutlery and turned over her hands. A row of little red weals marked where she had dug her nails into her palms. I looked down at my own hands, which were trembling. I wanted to fold them around hers and hold on for dear life.
It took me a while to notice the man who was standing next to our table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw five fingers with little tufts of black hair sprouting below the knuckles. I saw a white cuff, then a sleeve, made of heavy grey material. I was immediately on my guard, but when I eventually dared to raise my head and look at him, the man was smiling. He didn’t look as if he had been sent from Kent to take us back to the rectory. He belonged to the city. He was aged about forty, I thought, and dressed more smartly than the other customers, in a suit. His dark hair was smoothed flat to his head with something that made it shine. He was heavily built and when he spoke his voice matched the way he looked, as if he were used to people listening to what he said.
‘Everything all right, girls?’
I looked at a poster on the wall behind him, a pen and ink drawing of two women talking on the top floor of a bus. A pair of German soldiers sat behind them, eavesdropping on their conversation.
Careless Talk Costs Lives, said the caption.
‘We’re quite well, thank you,’ I said in a prim voice.
‘Did the doodlebug scare you?’
I shook my head, but I hadn’t bargained on Grace.
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘It gave me a terrible fright. We’ve seen them before, of course, but it’s different when you’re in a city with all these big buildings. You feel trapped.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So you’re from the countryside.’
‘Well, Nora’s from London but she was an evacuee. She came to our village at the start of the war.’
I kicked her under the table but it was too late. The man looked pleased with himself.
‘I thought you were from the country,’ he said. ‘You look far too healthy to have been here for very long. There’s a glow about you. Just look at the rest of us. See what I mean?’
He was right. Everyone else in the café had a grey pallor, as if they had powdered their faces with the dust from the broken buildings. Even after a night of sleeping in the station and a day spent walking the streets, Grace had pink in her cheeks and her skin was clear. I supposed that I looked the same. But I didn’t like him being right. I found it unnerving. If he could spot that we had just arrived, other people would too.
‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘We’ve got an appointment to keep.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Before you’ve finished your food? That won’t make you very popular. There’s a war on, you know! I’ll leave you to it.’ He smiled again, turned on his heel and went back to his seat.
Grace leaned across the table. ‘Nora!’ she hissed. ‘That wasn’t very polite.’
‘He shouldn’t have been so familiar,’ I said crossly. ‘We’re in London. We have to look out for ourselves. Don’t you understand? We can’t just go about talking to people we don’t know. It’s not safe.’
She said nothing, but picked up her knife and fork and bent over her plate to eat. The food had gone cold and was even less appetising than before but I didn’t know when we would eat again so I forced myself to finish it. The waitress came to take our plates.
‘No need to pay,’ she said. ‘The gentleman over there’s taken care of it. Lucky girls.’
There was nothing for it but to gather up our things and leave. Grace stopped at his table to thank the man but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I nodded in his direction and hurried out of the door.
It was almost seven o’clock and, although it was still perfectly light, there was an eerie, nocturnal feeling in the air. The drizzle had stopped but the sky was dark with the threat of more rain. We stood outside the café, looking up and down the street. I had no idea of where we should go next.
‘You see, he was just being nice to us,’ said Grace. ‘It was very kind of him.’
I didn’t want to discuss it. ‘Shall we go this way?’ I said. ‘I think it leads towards the river. We’re bound to find somewhere to stay around there. We only need to find a bed for tonight, then we can look again in the morning.’
Grace hesitated and I immediately knew why. She believed in the man more than she did in me. She would have gone anywhere that he suggested. A sudden fury came over me and I bolted, running down the street as fast as I could.
‘Nora!’ she called out in panic. ‘Nora, don’t leave me. Come back. Please.’
I ignored her cries. I wanted to get as far away as I could from the café, the man and from her. I had meant to come to the city alone and that was how I wanted to be, looking after only myself and keeping things simple. I ran faster, turning into a narrow passage, racing along it and then through the back streets until I couldn’t run any further.
I stopped for a moment, panting, trying to get my breath back. I could smell the smoke and grease from the café on my skin and in my hair and feel the potatoes sitting heavy in my stomach. I set off again, taking in great lungfuls of the damp air, marching along, indifferent to danger, passing through stinking alleyways and crossing the ruins of burnt out buildings. But after I had been walking for a while, I realized I was lost. I had walked blindly, without thinking, and I had no chance of retracing my steps. I set off, turning this way and that, knowing that I was making things worse but not wanting to stop moving. The alleyways and ruins that I had passed through without a thought were sinister now and I stumbled on stray bricks and pieces of wood. After I had tripped up for the third time in a minute, I sat down on a doorstep to think, feeling horribly alone.
I was still sitting there, wondering what to do, when I heard a nervous call, as if whoever made it was not sure that they wanted to be heard. Footsteps followed, then a cough. Too tired to hide, I turned my head to look. Around the corner came Grace, peering anxiously and taking great care of where she stepped. I felt a warm rush of relief.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for leaving you like that.’
She smiled at me weakly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We’re here now. We’re together again. That’s what’s important.’
Seventeen
FIGHTER PLANES ROARED ABOVE US, TWISTING AND DIVING, spitting out gunfire. Grace and I were pinned to the ground, chilled by the shadows that they cast. My head was filled with a screaming noise that grew louder with each breath that I took. My heart was lodged in my throat.
I woke with the sound of it still ringing in my ears. Dark shapes swooped in front of me and I blinked, unsure of where I was, until they began to sharpen and I understood that they were only birds, building a nest in the tree outside the window. I closed my eyes again, relieved, recovering from the nightmare.
Before long, I realized there were other people in the room. I could smell the powdery scent of the baby as well as Rose’s sandalwood soap, and something else, something almost familiar that reminded me of another time and place. When I opened my eyes I saw a young man sitting in the chair next to the bed. Rose was standing behind him. She stepped forward and took my hand.
‘Nora, this is David,’ she said. ‘He’s a nurse. Dr Armstron
g sent him.’
He was aged around thirty, I guessed, with tousled sandy hair and grey eyes that met my gaze easily. He was smiling, inviting me to like him. There was nothing about him to dislike but I felt strangely out of sorts. Everything was topsy-turvy, women as doctors and men playing nurse, as if they were deliberately trying to confuse me.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to help Rose look after you.’
I slumped back against the pillows and stared out of the window at a sparrow perched on a thin branch, singing to itself. As I watched, another sparrow came to join it. The branch swayed gently under their weight and they twittered happily to each other, their heads cocked to one side, until a large crow swooped down and landed next to them. The branch bent and shook as if it were about to snap. The sparrows scattered.
I knew I was too much for Rose. I had agreed to the doctor’s suggestion. And the nurse looked perfectly pleasant. But we had been happy together, Rose and Grace and me. We hadn’t needed anyone else. I wanted to hold onto the world that we’d made for ourselves. I wanted to talk to Rose alone, to make her understand. But I knew it was too late. His arrival made my illness official. I was in no position to argue. I’d given myself up.
‘I’ve cleaned the room next door,’ Rose said. ‘David’s going to sleep there so he can hear you if you need him in the night.’
I began to tremble. I’d been so meticulous, taken such care to hide the evidence before she came to the house. I’d forced myself to open the drawer that had been kept locked for so long, picked it up and carried it, still wrapped in an old petticoat, to the room next to mine. I’d slipped it into the pocket of a winter coat, bulky enough to conceal it. I’d washed my hands afterwards, scrubbing away the evidence. I hadn’t expected other visitors.
Days of Grace Page 17