Fireweed

by Jill Paton Walsh

  I went back to Julie. Distant thumps and bangs, the usual noises of a raid, reached us from outside, but after the near one we were more nervous about it than usual.

  ‘Time we got some sleep,’ I said.

  Our blankets were wrapped around Dickie, still sleeping peacefully on the hearth. We had to bank the fire down with a thick layer of coal dust if it was to keep in all night; burning brightly it would burn out in a few hours. Banked down it gave much less warmth, and our chairs were further away from it than usual, with Dickie in the way. And he had our blankets. Gloomily we settled down, she under her mac, in one chair, me under my jacket in the other.

  We couldn’t sleep at all. It was too cold.

  My feet were like blocks of ice. I tried curling them up underneath me somehow, but I couldn’t. After a bit I got up, and made some cocoa with horrid dried milk. Julie, wide awake, and shivering, drank some too. Then we tried again. Dickie seemed so soundly asleep that we turned out the lamp, and lay shivering in the dark. Sounds of the raid jolted us every few minutes.

  In a silent interval I could hear Julie a few feet away, her teeth rattling in her head.

  ‘Ju?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Oh, Bill, I’m so cold it hurts!

  ‘I can’t get to sleep either.’

  ‘I’ve tried thinking about warm things, and it doesn’t work at all; I wonder what people do in the Arctic?’

  ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘Good idea. They get in each other’s sleeping bags. Come on, let’s push the chairs together.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ she said. Her voice was shaken by shivering.

  ‘That’s what they do. Honest, I read it somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  ‘Come on, Ju,’ I said. No reply. ‘It’ll be all right, I promise. I can’t bear to see you so cold.’ I lit the lamp again. She had got up, and was standing by the table, hugging herself from cold, looking very miserable. I pushed the chairs together, and they made a sort of bed, and I got the jacket and the mac. She didn’t come, so I lay down there myself, and put the light out. After a bit, when the noises outside got louder again, she came too.

  She was much colder than me; ice to touch. She seemed to be trembling all over. I sat up, and put my jacket on, and then lay close to her, and buttoned it round her too. Then I pulled the mac over us both, and put my arms round her. She shifted, looked for somewhere to put her own arms, and round me was the only place. Then I shivered a bit myself, I suddenly wanted to crush her, to hold her so hard it hurt us both, but I knew it would frighten her, so I lay still. And slowly warmth grew under the mac, and thawed the cold of her hands and feet. Her hair spread out on the cushion near my face, and it smelled faintly of the coal-tar soap from the bath van. Soon it seemed to me that not only the aching coldness of my limbs, but the entire weight of my body, and every painful or harsh feeling I had ever known, had melted away in a cocoon of warmth, in which we floated into sleep.

  Dickie woke us. As soon as we surfaced from sleep we could hear that all hell was let loose a little way off somewhere, but it was Dickie who had woken us. He was staggering around stumbling in the dark, crying. I sat up abruptly, and Julie, who was still buttoned into my jacket was jerked awake with me. The faintest possible fingers of grey light slanted through the shutters, but I leaned over, and lit the lamp, with Julie’s sleepy head on my shoulder getting in the way. Then with some light to see by, we disentangled her.

  Dickie was still tottering around; then his legs folded up and he fell to the floor. Almost at once he doubled up, and made a small choking noise. When Julie lifted him he was being sick. He hadn’t eaten very much the day before, so his stomach was empty. Doubled-up and choking, he was bringing up only a clear ropey fluid like spittle.

  ‘He needs a doctor,’ said Julie, helplessly, holding him in her arms.

  ‘We can get him to one when the day gets started,’ I said, knowing that surgeries didn’t begin till nine. ‘But what can we do for him now? Surely there must be something we can do for him now.’

  ‘Perhaps some milk would settle his tummy,’ she said. I lit the stove for her to make some milk. We were using only dried milk, because fresh milk was rationed. We could hardly have asked the dairy to send a milkman round to us, anyway. Julie mixed and warmed the stuff, and sat Dickie on her knee, offering him the cup. A great bang and rumble, nearby again, shook the houses. For a moment our attention switched to the noise outside, and I said, ‘I hope to God my cart’s all right!’

  Dickie grabbed the cup, and drank greedily, stopping only to take breath, in fierce little gasps, and then drinking again. When he had taken it all, he leaned back against her, looking almost happy, but then a few seconds later he flung himself across the arm of the chair, and was sick again. Julie went for a cloth and a bucket.

  ‘That beastly powder hasn’t dissolved properly,’ she said, kneeling to wipe it up. ‘No wonder he couldn’t take it. But I think it was the right idea. We have to get him some fresh milk.’

  I said, ‘I’ll get some.’ An angry outburst of gunfire rattled overhead. She was kneeling in front of the fire, holding Dickie in her arms, her face upturned to me over his shoulder.

  ‘There hasn’t been an all-clear,’ she said.

  ‘Where do you keep the book, Ju?’ I remember my voice was strangely softened, my face felt smooth and calm and her face too looked shining and serene. It seemed to me we hadn’t come apart properly when we rose from sleep, but in some way we moved together still. I was ready to do anything, like a god, and she knew that I would, and her trust shone clearly in her eyes.

  ‘In the top drawer,’ she said. ‘Take care.’

  Then I left her, and climbed out into the open.

  I stood on the top step, in front of our absurd front door, and looked across the square. The square itself was hushed, full of that dim grainy light that precedes sunrise. Far away I could hear the unceasing guns; but nearer, behind the houses around me was another sound, the soft disturbance of silence, the rustlings and murmuring that suggest movement, people, things happening.

  I looked up, and saw across the sky the loops and lines, the crazy scribblings of vapour trails, touched with the first morning light, shining silver like frost, a murderous tinsel festooned over the grey city. It entered my head that I ought to go and see that the cart was all right, that I had to get to Covent Garden early, and ask to see Old Riley, but I pushed the thought aside. Milk for Dickie first. I thought I knew where the milk depot was, for I had seen empty milk vans returning in the afternoon, the patient horses plodding along, with empty nosebags hanging from their bits. I turned my collar up against the cold, and set off.

  I saw I wasn’t going to get there as soon as I turned into the street where I thought it was. The end of the street was blocked by a great wall of smoke, the windows on either side down there were squares of solid fire, people were running about shouting, fire engines were drawn up, fire hoses ran up and down along the street, dozens of them, great tangled snakes, tripping everyone as they ran. Overhead the trolley-bus wires ran towards the fire, and then dangled in a molten tangle from a sagging post. Down there by the smoke-wall firemen pointed hoses into the blaze, dark ropes of water, arching criss-cross over the street. I saw two men stagger a little under the backward thrust of the hose they were directing, and the water jet looped the loop in the air. I wasn’t going to get past. I turned away, and then there was a shout, and I turned round just in time to see the front of the building collapse. It leant forwards, all in one piece, like the front of a doll’s house being lifted away, and then it bent at the knees and came down in a roar. People ran in all directions away from it.

  Well, there must be another way round to the depot. I tried the next street. That was shattered. One could hardly see where it had been; it was just a shallow valley in a sea of rubble, under a cloud of choking dust. Grey figures walked over it, looking for places to dig. Above us the plane
s still droned. I tried the next street, but by then I knew the depot must have been hit, and I would have to try somewhere else. Where else? I could look for a milkman on his rounds, but if the nearby depot had been hit, I would have to go some way to do that. Then I thought of Marco. If I was going some distance, I might as well go there, and be sure of getting some. Marco would help. I started to walk, but after a little while a bus lumbered along the road, and I hailed it and got on. It was nearly empty, and it had four windows broken, but it was going the right way.

  ‘You got hit,’ I said to the conductor.

  ‘It’s hell back there,’ he said. ‘But we’re on time, know that, mate? We’re even on the bloody schedule!’ Then he leant out from the platform, and yelled like a maniac at the sky, ‘We ain’t even late, tell that to bloody ’ItIer!’ I sat and looked through a broken window. The streets were full of people. Bowler-hatted and black-umbrellaed, they were coming to work, stepping gingerly over fire hoses, and round craters, looking around at the damage as they went. Then it was my stop, and I got off.

  Marco’s was boarded-up and closed. The whole row of shops where Marco’s had been was gutted. I panicked. The thought of the time I had wasted made me feel sick with rage. I vaguely wondered what had happened to Marco, and his moon-shaped smile, but I had precious little time to waste wondering about him. I thought despairingly that I would have to go back without the milk, and just wait for the doctor’s surgery to open. But really I knew I couldn’t do that. I had turned my back for ever on not being able to do things when I let my father pass by. Now I was on my own, and I had to do whatever had to be done. Julie said we had to manage as well as grown-ups, or else stop trying at all; she thought I could do it. It had to be done.

  I made for the Underground. The trains were running, but they were maddeningly slow. At every station people getting off and people getting on tangled with sleepers, with camp breakfasts, or had to walk narrow gangways between bunks. It seemed ages to me before I got back.

  Above ground again, I started to walk. I told myself that if I saw a bottle of milk on a doorstep, I would steal it, and solve the problem that way. I did not see one. A thick blanket of low cloud had followed the dawn across London, but behind it the planes droned on, and I could hear explosions, feel the jolt in the air. I think a blast wave knocked me down at one point; I don’t exactly remember it, but I remember clambering up again, and walking on. I walked. I stopped people, and asked them where I could find milk. They didn’t seem to know. The air seemed dense, smoky, foul. It was like fog, where I was walking; you couldn’t see very far, and people lurched at me through the gloom, and gave crazy answers to my desperate questions. Perhaps being knocked down by a blast wave had made me a bit duffy for a while, for I don’t remember it very clearly. I remember stopping people who were staggering along, filthy, with scratched faces, and hardly any clothes on. Blast tore people’s clothes off, and they must all have been reeling with shock, and there was I, half demented, asking them where to find milk.

  I walked on, towards the place all these people were coming away from. I was going along a street with lots of narrow low terrace houses, with doors straight onto the pavements. There was a lot of mess on the street, and no windows left anywhere. The houses had no roofs on. The street was still, deserted. And then I passed by the window of a room with someone in it. I stopped and looked in. The room was a kitchen, with a woman in it, sitting at the table. She was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking very gently. She was wearing one of those cross-over flowered aprons, and a headscarf round her head, with the knot tied on top. The table had things laid on it, and a fine dust was raining in the room. Plaster was filtering through the rafters from upstairs. But what my eyes fixed on was a glass jug, standing on the table, full of milk.

  I went in. It was quite easy, her front door wasn’t there any more. I went in, and said to her, ‘Please, missus, could you let me have a little of your milk?’

  She didn’t answer. She looked at the window, with eyes full of dust. She was stone dead, with the milk unspilled in the jug in front of her. I looked at it. A thick scum of dust floated on it. I opened the drawer in the table and there were all her spoons and knives, laid out in rows, as she had left them. I took a spoon, and skimmed the milk with it, scooping away the dust and the cream. And while I did it, I talked to her, very gently.

  ‘It’s for Dickie,’ I told her. ‘He can’t take the dried stuff, he’s not well. You don’t mind very much do you? It’s for a sick child. I wouldn’t take it for myself.’ I picked up the jug, and held it under my jacket. I said to her, ‘I’m sorry about it. I’m sorry about you. But you have a nice sort of face. Even all dusty. I don’t think you would have minded, anyway.’ A gust of wind came through the gaping window, and gently rocked her in her chair. Clutching the milk, I went.

  I had quite a walk back. Dimly, I was aware of things happening round me, ambulances, fire-engines, bangs, hoses, but I walked in a dream, sheltering the jug of milk in my jacket, concentrating on not spilling it. Once a warden ran up to me, as I walked steadily through a cloud of smoke, and said, ‘Are you all right, son?’ in an urgent tone of voice.

  ‘Perfectly,’ I said.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said.

  ‘Home.’ He left me. He had worse cases to bother with. On I went.

  I suppose I noticed as soon as I entered the square that it looked different. But I went: on for several minutes, doggedly plodding towards it, before I really saw. Then I noticed, in the far distance, my cart, perched upon the rubble, and I was glad it was all right. And then I dazedly wondered how I could see it, when it was behind the row of houses; then I finally came to my senses, and saw what I saw.

  It had all gone – the whole row of damaged houses had collapsed. There was no front door, no steps, no shutters visible above the rubble. There was only a great mound of broken brick, dust, and splintered timber. The whole of our hideout was deeply buried.

  The glass jug shattered at my feet, and the milk splashed me, and ran in rivulets across the dirty paving stones. I looked at it in faint surprise; I had not remembered letting it fall. Overhead there suddenly sounded the steady, cheerful note of the all-clear.

  8

  I ran. I ran round the square towards the warden’s post, ran and stumbled, my knees feeling like water, and my feet like lead. I was running straight towards all my enemies, the wardens, the welfare, the teachers, the police, anyone, anyone who could help.

  Just round the corner was a little hut on the pavement heavily covered with sandbags. Over it rose a scaffolding, with the siren mounted on it. I burst into it, not bothering to knock. A man was sitting there, in a cramped little room lined with shelves. Ropes, lamps, boots, all sorts of things were neatly lined up on the shelves. A street map hung facing him, and he sat at a rickety table with a telephone on it, pads of paper, and a big book lying open. There were other men there too, tin-hatted and blue-canvas-suited, with canvas bags strapped on their chests, but it was to the man at the table that I spoke.

  The talk had stopped as I rushed in. ‘There’s been a bomb!’ I said, jerkily, short of breath. ‘The houses on the north of the square have all fallen down!’

  The man looked at his book. ‘Thank you for reporting it, son,’ he said. ‘But there’s been no bomb there. Off with you now, we’ve got work to do.’

  My head spun. ‘Come and look, quickly, and you’ll see,’ I said.

  Wearily he said, ‘Look, son, there’s been no bomb there. Those houses were shaken to bits last month; they were barely still standing. All that’s happened is that the blast’s shaken a bit more of them down. Nothing to worry about. Now if you don’t mind …’

  ‘But …’ I said, ‘but you’ve got to come. Someone’s got to dig her out!’

  ‘All right, son, calm down,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t anyone in them. They weren’t safe.’

  It was like the worst nightmare of my life. ‘There was!’ I cried. ‘We were there, and I just wen
t out for some milk for Dickie, and when I got back they were under it all …’

  ‘Whose sector is it?’ said the man in charge. His voice had lost that weary note. He spoke sharply.

  ‘Jack’s,’ someone said.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Just coming now,’ they said, pushing a newcomer to the front.

  ‘Those houses north of the square have folded, and this kid says there were people in one of them. Were there?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Not a soul. I cleared them all out the day after the bomb made them shaky.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ I cried. ‘Come and dig her out!’

  ‘Shut up, you!’ he said to me, fiercely. ‘Keep a hold on yourself. Now, exactly where did you say you were living?’

  ‘In the basement of number twenty.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report to the warden, in the proper manner?’

  ‘I didn’t know we had to,’ I said, and that was true enough.

  ‘Jack, could this kid have kipped down there, without your noticing him?’

  ‘It’s possible … I suppose …’ Jack looked very uneasy. ‘I did think I saw smoke there, one day. Couldn’t find where it was coming from. Only other thing I noticed was a funny sort of handcart that appeared at: the back of the houses the other day. I didn’t think it warranted a report.’

  ‘You’ll hear from me later!’ said the chief, picking up his phone.

  They weren’t going to believe me. I turned tail, and ran out of the hut, ran back towards the house. The black horror of it made me shake all over, but I got back to the house. I clambered up the mound of ruin to the top, and crying to myself, began to scrabble in it with my bare hands. Foul pinkish dust rose in a cloud around me, to join that already hanging in the air. My nails broke off, painfully, below the quicks. I still thrust my bleeding fingers frantically down into the mess, pulling at fragments of brick and tile, succeeding only in making a hole as big as a kitchen bucket.