I thanked Marco, and set off with the wind in my heels for the hospital I had first tried; I burst through the revolving door at about twenty miles an hour, and rushed up to the desk.
‘I want to see someone called Julie …’ I began.
‘Oh, it’s you again, is it?’ The receptionist was annoyed. ‘I thought I looked, and she wasn’t here.’
‘Her number,’ I said. ‘I’ve remembered her number. Please look again.’ I thought I was about to be let in, to run up those stairs, and be laughing with Julie again, and my voice bubbled with excitement.
‘Julia Vernon-Greene,’ she said. ‘That was the only one it could have been, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘ZKDN stroke seventy-four stroke eight.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘That’s her number.’
‘I want to see her,’ I said, joyfully.
‘Sorry. No visitors.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘No visitors. It’s against her name in the book. She’s too ill to see anybody.’
‘But you must let me see her …’ I was bewildered. ‘I’m the only person she knows, the only person she’s got. You’ve got to let me see her!’
‘Are you sure?’ the woman said. ‘Well, in that case, let me have your name, and then just wait here while I go and see. There’s a seat there.’
I sat there. The hospital corridor was painted dark green with a brown stripe, and then cream. The reception lobby was painted all chocolate brown. Where the two schemes met there was an extra dark green line.
Then, just down the corridor, I heard voices breaking the antiseptic hush. The reception nurse was talking to another nurse, an important-looking nurse, with a tall starched cap, and a starch-stiff face.
‘He says he’s the only person in London that she knows. In that case, could he see her?’
‘Nonsense!’ she said, sharply, loudly, making sure I could hear. ‘Julia Vernon-Greene’s family have been traced. Her mother is here now. She is far too ill to receive visitors other than her family, and there is no need for any outsider to be concerned.’
The receptionist was coming back. ‘Sorry, son,’ she said, ‘but no!’
By then, so much saying she was too ill, had made a worse fear overwhelm me; perhaps she was dying … perhaps the falling house had done awful things to her, broken her …
‘How ill is she, really?’ I asked, in a hoarse voice. My voice was thick with tears. I couldn’t help it, there I was, crying. In theory crying isn’t so bad – a way of expressing deep feelings. But when one is really doing it, it’s all the things that go with it that make one ashamed – having a wet nose, and a shake in one’s voice, and a smeary feeling on burning cheeks.
The receptionist’s face swam above me. ‘It’s shock. She badly needs a rest, and she doesn’t quite know where she is, just now, but it’s nothing serious, it will wear off in a day or two,’ she was saying.
I recovered my self-control. ‘Look when it does wear off, she’ll want to see me; I know she will.’
‘Well, now,’ she said, not unkindly, ‘Why don’t you come back at visiting time tonight? You leave your name, and as soon as she’s well enough, I’ll see that she’s asked if she wants to see you.’
‘I’ll wait,’ I said.
‘It’s a long time,’ she said. ‘It’s only half past three. But I suppose that’s all right, as long as you keep out of the way.’
So I waited. All that day. Nurses walked by me, and doctors in white coats. Once a patient was wheeled by on a trolley. Most of them glanced at me as they passed. I stared at them – a change from facing with vacant eyes the borders of the areas of paint. Sometime around five there was an air-raid warning outside. The receptionist reached up – took off her white cap, and put on a tin hat instead. ‘Time crawled on. About an hour after the air-raid warning an ambulance, ringing wildly, drew into the yards outside; nurses and doctors ran; their feet clattering grotesquely loudly down quiet corridors. A trolley loaded with bottles and kidney-shaped trays was wheeled past me at a run. One of its wheels squeaked. Then more time, more looking at paint.
Visitors began to arrive. After hours of looking at white-aproned, white-coated people moving in drab-painted places, the visitors struck me as very coloured. Their clothes seemed garish, like the middle pages of a comic. And the quiet of the place had not yet reached them, so they talked to each other, quite loudly. They brought grapes in cellophane wrappings, and bunches of flowers, and books. They were let in to see their friends. It occurred to me that anyone of them might be Julie’s family, being let in to see her. Hating them, I lowered my eyes and glowered at my boots as they passed me.
Considering what they had been through, my boots were in quite good shape. They hadn’t let in water yet; the Dubbin had been worth it. Dimly it occurred to me to wonder if Mrs Williams had been worried about me; not that she could have cared much. It couldn’t be anything like worrying about Julie was for me. Even so I felt a tenderness for any feeling like that, however pale a shadow of my own. When I had seen Julie, I would send Mrs Williams a postcard.
A bell rang; visiting time was over. People trooped out. The nurse said to me, ‘Go home now. You’ll have to go now. Try again tomorrow.’ I got up, stiff with sitting so long, and went out. It was dark outside, and cold. I went to find a shelter to sleep in.
I slept so little that night, was so cold and so lonely, that I came up again into the streets, very early, and walked about in the grey light, hoping that walking would thaw my cramped limbs. There had been more bombing in the night. I remember seeing the usual mess and chaos, but though I saw I hardly noticed. I climbed up Hungerford Bridge, and stood on the footbridge, looking down over the Embankment, seeing the grey road under a grey sky, seeing grey water through the branches of bare black trees. The cold dawn in the east was casting a cold light, and the tram-lines below me shone sleekly in the tarmac. I wondered what I would do. I wondered where she would be; where they would take her. I thought the paper said there would be no more boats to Canada, but unless she was going to stay in London, things could well be nearly as bad. I would have to go and get my cart, and do some work again, sometime … no, I hadn’t the heart for that; as soon as I thought about it, I knew I couldn’t do it without her to do it for. I’d have to find my aunt. Or perhaps Julie would think of something. Perhaps she’d run away again, and come and join me.
At nine I went back to my seat in the hospital corridor. Time crawled. A uniformed delivery boy came in with a huge bunch of flowers, and said, ‘Miss Vernon-Greene’. I watched them intently, out of the corner of my eye, pretending not to notice. After a while a porter came by, and the receptionist pointed to them, and said, ‘Room Nine’. He picked up the flowers and went off. She wasn’t looking at me. I got up, and slipped along the passage. I looked at the notices at the foot of the flights of stairs. ‘Wards one to five’ ‘Wards five to nine’. Up I went. Up three flights. Turn right, my heart in my mouth, in case someone stopped me … I opened the door. The ward was wrecked. The roof had been blown off, the beds were broken and twisted, debris was spread across the floor, and broken glass and furniture. A piece of roof tarpaulin over the hole in the ceiling flapped in the wind. There was no nobody there. I climbed slowly down the stairs. Hadn’t she said Ward Nine?
At about twelve o’clock I was feeling light in the head again, and so I went and found Marco, and shamefacedly let him feed me. I told him what had happened this time, and he flooded me with sympathy. He said I could help him with the sandwiches, and he would give me a little money when he could manage it. Then one day, when the war was over, we would have a little restaurant, and call it ‘Marco and Bill’s Cosmopolitan Snack Bar’. He raised a faint smile on my stiff face, but I shook my head. ‘I can’t even fry an egg, Marco. I’d be no use to you.’
Then back again to wait. This time I plucked up courage to ask at the desk how she was getting on, and if they had asked her about me yet. They said she was ge
tting on nicely. That’s all they would say.
Then, at long last, that evening, when the visitors had all been let in, a nurse came down, and said to the receptionist, ‘Miss Vernon-Greene is asking if someone called Bill has been asking for her.’ My heart leapt. I stood up, and she was pointing to me. ‘You may come up,’ the nurse said, and I followed her, barely able to keep myself from running ahead, and up we went, and I thought, I will be with her, any moment, any moment now …
It was Room Nine, not Ward Nine. The nurse opened the door, and I rushed in, so hastily that I bumped into the bottom of the bed, and stood there … She was sitting up in bed, smiling at me. They had cut off her hair, and bandaged her head. A few fronds of dark hair, roughly hacked off, showed under the bandage, round her face. She looked pale, and I could see, still visible, the faint mark of the bruise I had made on her lip when the blast wave caught us. But in the same moment I saw that we were not alone. There was a strange woman sitting beside her, wearing a brown hat, holding her hand. And behind me, as I looked round, a tall young man, so like her that I knew at once she had a brother, rose to his feet. He seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform, a blazer with a crest, and a striped tie. She hadn’t said she had a brother …
‘Hullo, Bill,’ she said. ‘Mother, this is Bill. Bill, this is my brother, Robin.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Then, after too long a pause, ‘Hullo.’ I looked at her. She looked at me, but then looked away. Her mother looked out of the window.
‘Did they tell you about Dickie?’ she asked, suddenly. I hadn’t given Dickie a thought from the moment they dug him out, ‘They’ve got him here, and he isn’t hurt, but they can’t find his mother, and …’ Her voice started to shake.
‘Come now, Julia, don’t upset yourself,’ said her mother. ‘What can’t be helped has to be put up with, dear.’
‘I’m glad he wasn’t hurt,’ I said.
‘They let him see me,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I said, stabbed with jealousy,
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Yes, thank you.’ I couldn’t think of anything to say to her. There was nothing to say that I wanted a woman in a brown hat, and a sleek young man to hear.
‘Is the cart doing well?’ she asked, in the thickening silence.
‘Don’t know. Haven’t tried.’ I was almost mumbling. My eye was caught by a glint of silver on her bedside table – my little Spitfire lay there, half concealed under a bunch of grapes in cellophane, and towered over by a vase of flowers.
Suddenly Robin spoke. ‘Oh, er, look here, er, Bill …’ he was saying. ‘Since my father isn’t here, you know, I think I ought to say … Well, look, my sister’s far too young to have well, friends outside the family, you know, but since in the circumstances … well, since you looked after her we can’t very well forbid you … we could make an exception, if … well, if you can give me your word that there isn’t anything in it.’
I knew what he was getting at. Anger flashed through me. I opened my mouth to say, ‘Go to hell!’ and ‘I’ll see her if I want to see her, without asking you!’ when Julie spoke, first.
‘Oh, Robin, don’t be silly!’ she said. ‘Of course there’s nothing in it, nothing at all.’
‘Oh, well, good. All right, then,’ he said.
Julie’s mother, looking at me with an odd sort of expression, said, ‘I think Robin only wants to thank you, Bill …’
But I was looking at Julie.
Then I turned abruptly, and went. I ran down the corridor, and ran, scrambling down the flights of stairs, and I felt as if I were falling, falling, down them. At the bottom a trolley was being wheeled along the corridor, and I couldn’t push past it, to get out of there. I rushed past the receptionist, as soon as the trolley let me by, and put out my hands for the turning door, when there was Julie’s mother, who had followed and overtaken me.
‘Bill,’ she said. ‘Don’t take any notice of Robin. He meant to thank you for looking after Julia so bravely. If you would like to come and see us at our house at Richmond, we should be delighted to receive you there.’ She had a lovely smooth even voice. She held out a small white card with an address printed on it. ‘Will you come?’
Dumbly I shook my head.
She looked at me again with that oddly sympathetic expression, and said, ‘You know, Bill, she’s only a child.’
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door, and it turned, like a roundabout, and threw me out into the night.
I could not walk, I could only run, driven by the angry grief within me as leaves are driven by the wind; poor draggled leaves, lashed by the driving wind. They wrapped round my ankles as I ran, overtook me, and dropped down in front of me. Through and through my head went her voice, saying of course there’s nothing in it, nothing at all. Soon I ran out of breath, and stood, gasping the raw cold air, watching the leaves go on without me on the wind. O western wind, when wilt thou blow. O western wind …
10
I thought being dead would be a good way out. I remembered the fire-watcher on Hungerford Bridge, dead, with reflected fire in his eyes. So I went to a fire station, and volunteered. They did ask me how old I was, but when I lied they seemed to believe me. They gave me a tin hat, and a lot of instructions, and sent me up on to the roof of a big office block in the Strand, to sit beside a field telephone and watch.
I discarded the tin hat at once, and I waited for death to rain down on me, eagerly, with longing. That was the night of November the twenty-third; the first night for fifty-seven nights that there were no raids on London at all. So there I was, all night long, quite safe, under the shining stars.
In the morning I tried another way; I went off to volunteer for the army. I only had to give myself a year or two extra to be taken on as a trainee cadet in the Engineers. Perhaps I would learn enough to be an engineer after all. There were a lot of other fellows there, smiling, and exchanging names, and one in particular I liked the look of, called Ronnie. He was standing next to me when we stripped down for the medical, and all across his back was a livid purple scar nearly an inch wide.
‘Whatever happened to your back, Ronnie?’ I asked him.
‘’That?’ he said, grinning. ‘That was a bit of me Dad’s greenhouse, with a bomb behind it. It’s my war-wound that is. How about you; you got a war-wound?’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘Nothing. Not a scratch.’
Years later, when the war was over and done with, it occurred to me that she might not have meant what she said. Perhaps she only said it as a sort of cover, to shut him up, and make sure we could go on seeing each other. I hope that’s what she meant, because I hate to think she was the sort who might just make use of someone, and then chuck them; I hope that’s what she meant for her sake, though it’s too late now to make any difference to me, either way. I wonder why I didn’t think of it at the time.
I think of it now, leaning on a broken wall, looking at St Paul’s. You can see it much better now that everything round it has been knocked down. All around me there are open acres, acres of ruined and desolate land, where the bombs fell. Over there the square tower of a gutted church survives as the only landmark, till the harmonious walls of the cathedral rise exposed in the background. It’s quiet here, and beautiful, for into this wilderness the wild things have returned. Grass grows here, covering, healing, and russet sorrel in tall spikes, and goldenrod, swaying beside broken walls, full of butterflies, and purple loose-strife, and one plant, willow herb, that some people call fireweed, grows wild in this stony place as plentifully as grass, though it used to be rare enough to be searched out, and collected. It is a strange plant; it has its own rugged sort of loveliness, and it grows only on the scars of ruin and flame.
I suppose they will build on this again, some day: but I like it best like this; grown over; healed.
My thanks are due to almost everyone I know who is old enough to remember 1940; to many other authors whose work I have consulted, and to Miss Elizabeth Almung
, who gave me invaluable assistance.
J.P.W.
About the Author
Jill Paton Walsh was born Gillian Bliss in London in 1937. Jill has won several awards, including the Whitbread Prize, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Universe Prize, and the Smarties Grand Prix. In 1970 FIREWEED won the Book World Festival Award, and her adult novel KNOWLEDGE OF ANGELS was nominated for the 1994 Booker Prize. After living for many years in Surrey, she is now settled in Cambridge. In 1996 she received the CBE for services to literature, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Visit Jill at her website: www.greenbay.co.uk/jpw.html
Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hot Key Books
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
First published by Macmillan & Co. Ltd in 1969
Copyright © Jill Paton Walsh 1969
Foreword copyright © Lucy Mangan 2013
Cover illustration copyright © Paul Blow 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4714-0173-2
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