Crooked Heart

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Donny!’ called Vee.

  Mr Croxton continued looking at her, lips pursed, and then slowly lowered his gaze and disappeared again beneath the window lintel.

  ‘Donny!’ called Vee again, trying to sound bright and careless. ‘Time for work.’

  It wasn’t a nice flat, nor even a convenient one: a quarter of a mile from the nearest shop, draughty, dusty, overlooking the scrapyard, subject to deafening clangs all day and the rustle of mice all night. It wasn’t really a flat at all, for that matter, just a long, thin space above the workshop, roughly partitioned, one room opening out of another, the kitchen so-called only because it happened to have a sink in it. Even the staircase that led to ground-level was a botched afterthought, each stair of a different height, so that every descent was a series of jolts and surprises. The advantage – the sole advantage, apart from the view of the lane – was that it came rent-free.

  Vee had spotted the advertisement in the Herts Advertiser: Night watchman needed at St Albans place of business, duties include guarding premises and vermin control. Accommodation included, and she’d telephoned Mr Croxton to make enquiries. ‘He’s a good steady boy,’ she’d said to Mr Croxton, ‘doesn’t drink, hardly even smokes. He likes his crosswords.’

  It had come at a useful time, three weeks after Donald had handed in his notice at the shoe shop – the bending was giving him terrible palpitations – and only a couple of days after Woolworth’s in Harpenden had asked Vee to leave (on the word of one customer, just one), and Vee had been beginning to panic about the arrears on the cottage they’d been living in.

  Manna, she’d thought, when Mr Croxton had told her about the flat. Manna. And for the first few months that they’d lived there, the simple joy of not having to find a weekly ten shillings had been as good as a holiday (not that she’d ever had a holiday); anyhow, she’d felt almost carefree, like the lighter-than-air dancing girl in the Ballito hosiery advertisement.

  She’d even had a dream, one night, that she was on the swingboats with Donald’s father, eating a toffee apple, and that was unusual, since her dreams were nearly always about money: finding it, dropping it, winning it, spending it, losing it. Losing it, mainly.

  ‘You calling, Ma?’ asked Donald, coming into the kitchen, buttoning his shirt.

  ‘Mr Croxton,’ she said, apologetically.

  He nodded and sat down at the table, nudging the teapot with his cup. She’d have preferred him to hurry down to work, but he wasn’t the hurrying sort, nor the sort to get riled by Mr Croxton and his perpetual watch-tapping. He’d been a sleepy baby, a contented toddler, a placid schoolboy, and Vee had seen enough of other peoples’ troubles (not to mention bruises) to bless his even temper. He was never bitter, punchy or sharp. Or pushy, or nervy, or talkative. Nothing like her at all, in fact. It made it difficult to know, sometimes, what he was thinking.

  She poured him another cupful.

  ‘Can you do me a clean shirt for tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘Going out for the day?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Anywhere special?’

  He shook his head, smiling easily. Vee could feel the usual questions piling up behind her teeth. These day trips had started a few months ago, not long after the frightening medical. Donald never said where he was going, or where he’d been, or what he’d done, though Vee had come across train tickets to Birmingham and Cheadle and Brixton in his trouser pockets. Sometimes, the next day, he’d slip her some money, a couple of pounds or so; she wondered whether he might be going to the races. Maybe he had a system. She didn’t want to pry. Whatever he was doing, when he went out, he tended to arrive back a bit late for work.

  She hovered beside the table, one eye on the clock, unable to sit down for the tension of watching Donald drink his tea in tiny, appreciative sips, but then, at last, he was done. She gave him a kiss and handed over his snack and then watched out of the window as he emerged into the yard and took the keys from Mr Croxton. She couldn’t see the latter’s face but she could tell from the jut of his backside that he was furious. Last week he’d threatened to re-advertise the job. ‘You’re going to have to give me a bloody good reason why I shouldn’t,’ he’d said to Vee.

  She was still hoping that it wouldn’t come to that.

  She’d just started pushing half an onion and the heel of a loaf into the mincer, when the evacuees came back along the lane. Only two left now: a great lump of a girl who looked as if she’d eat you out of house and home, and the limping creature with the ears. Who on earth would want to look after a crippled evacuee, she wondered. You’d not only have to feed them, and deal with the lice and the London cheek, but you’d be forever at the doctor, going back and forth and—

  An idea rolled into her head, fully formed, like a marble. Vee paused for a second or two, to think about it, and then snatched off her apron and tied on a headscarf.

  ‘I’ve got to pop out, Mum,’ she said. ‘Won’t be long. Back soon.’

  It was a beautiful evening, balmy, the sky a washed-out pink like a faded eiderdown. It didn’t take long for her to catch them up.

  Noel stood by the side of the lane, next to Ada, and watched the billeting officer talk to the scrawny woman in the headscarf. He was so tired that his eyes kept closing and then jerking open again, so that the scene jumped forward like a damaged film.

  ‘. . . and you get ten and sixpence a week,’ he heard the billeting officer say. ‘More if he’s a bed-wetter.’

  ‘She looks nice,’ said Ada, hopefully. She had said this about every housewife they’d seen that day, and they’d probably seen a hundred. After a morning in the Masons’ Hall, during which the smaller and prettier children had been picked off, a crocodile of the plain and badly dressed had been marched from door to door in a widening spiral, gradually leaving the centre of the town behind.

  ‘This is Noel,’ said the billeting officer, beckoning him forwards. ‘And Noel, this is Mrs Sedge, who has very kindly, very kindly agreed to take you in. I shall drop by in a day or two, Mrs Sedge, to see how Noel’s getting on. Will you make sure he writes the postcard to his parents, giving his new address? It’s already franked.’

  ‘She looks nice,’ said Ada again.

  ‘And there isn’t just a chance you could also see your way to taking . . . ?’ The billeting officer nodded over at Ada.

  ‘No,’ said Vee, quickly.

  ‘I quite understand. Off you go now, Noel. He’s a quiet little chap, Mrs Sedge.’

  Noel picked up his suitcase.

  ‘I’ll carry that,’ said Vee, taking it from him. ‘Weighs a ton,’ she added. ‘What’ve you got in here? Bricks?’

  She walked fast, and Noel limped alongside her. Ada was wrong, he thought; she didn’t look particularly nice. She had sharp, worried features and she kept moving her head around, keeping a watch on everything, like a magpie hanging around a picnic.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said, stopping outside a shabby building that Noel had passed twice before. ‘Up the steps we go.’

  He stumbled three times on the stairs.

  ‘Oops-a-daisy,’ said Vee. ‘Not too good on your pins, are you?’ She sounded almost pleased. ‘In here,’ she said. ‘Mum, look who I’ve brought.’

  The older woman took off a pair of headphones, gave Noel a plaintive stare, then propped up a small slate, and chalked a question mark on it.

  ‘It’s an evacuee, Mum. Sit yourself down,’ she said to Noel. She untied her headscarf and fluffed her curly, dark hair. ‘You want some bread and marge?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Write your postcard, then,’ she said.

  He lowered himself on to a stool and sat there, rubbing his knees awkwardly. The room was cramped and comfortless, the bare floorboards patched with a couple of balding rugs. Vee’s mother was sitting in the only armchair, a crocheted shawl round her shoulders, small cushions tucked behind her back and under her elbows, her slippered feet resting on a folded blanket. There was a cup of tea on the
table in front of her, and a handkerchief, a slate and a piece of chalk, a copy of the Radio Times and a packet of Parma Violets. As he watched, Vee’s mother took one of the latter and popped it in her mouth. She didn’t look very much like her daughter; she was tiny, with sweet, rounded features, and fine brown hair pulled into a bun. A scar, like a delicate white thread, ran right across her forehead, just below the hairline.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Vee, holding out a plate to Noel. ‘Not written it yet?’ she added.

  ‘I don’t have a pen,’ he said.

  Posh, she thought. A posh voice. She brought him a pencil.

  ‘And where’s the card?’

  Reluctantly, he nodded at the suitcase. She knelt swiftly – she seemed to do everything at speed – and flipped the catches. The postcard lay on top.

  ‘My stars,’ she said, staring at the other contents. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘An ammonite.’

  ‘Your mum packed a rock for you? And what’s that?’

  ‘A coat.’

  She rubbed the fur between her fingers. ‘Beaver. Feel the weight of it.’ Without asking, she pushed the coat aside, stacked his bedroom slippers on top of it, glanced at the cover of The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen, opened the notebook and riffled through the pages, pounced on his ration book, and then raked quickly through the shorts, shirt and underwear that he’d stuffed at the bottom of the case. ‘That’s all your clothes?’ she asked.

  He nodded. He’d thrown all the others under the bed at Mafeking Road, to make room for Mattie’s coat.

  ‘And what’s in here?’ she asked, reaching for the brown paper bag he’d been given at Charing Cross. He watched her open it. For a second or two, her expression softened. ‘You eat up,’ she said, taking the bag over to the kitchen cupboard.

  Reverently, she placed the contents on the top shelf: corned beef; shortbread; two cans of milk; a quarter-pound of chocolate. She could give Donald a couple of squares in his snack-box every day this week, as a treat. It might make up for the fact that Noel would have to sleep in Donald’s room – in Donald’s bed, actually, since there wasn’t a spare. Though that could work out nicely, since Donald only slept there during the day. Less nicely, of course, if the boy was one of those bed-wetters.

  If that were the case, then she’d have to try and get a camp bed from somewhere. And then there’d be all those extra sheets to wash and dry. And of course, with one extra in the flat there’d be more cooking, more shopping, more ironing, more water to heat and carry, more clothes to mend, and shoes to buy, not to mention visits from prying parents . . .

  She had the familiar sensation of the ground crumbling beneath her, as if she were standing on a sandcastle. It always happened like this: a fresh idea, a few seconds – or even hours – of happy triumph, and then, whoosh, in would come the tide. Next thing she knew, she’d be neck-deep in consequences and drawbacks.

  The boy was sitting with the postcard in front of him, the pencil untouched.

  ‘It’s care of Sedge, Croxton’s Scrap Metal, Pollard Lane, St Albans,’ she said. He didn’t move and it occurred to her that he wasn’t writing it down because he didn’t know how to; his notebook had been full of scribbles and silly patterns.

  ‘Give it to me,’ she said, and eased it out of his hands. She wrote the address.

  ‘Any message?’ she asked. He shook his head. She added

  AM STAYING WITH A VERY NICE LADY AND HER KIND FAMILY. I WISH WE COULD GIVE THEM A PRESENT TO SAY THANK YOU, SUCH AS TINNED GOODS OR EVEN A POSTAL ORDER JUST TO TIDE HER OVER UNTIL THE GOVERNMENT ALLOWANCE COMES.

  ‘And where do you live?’ she asked, turning the card over.

  He said nothing.

  ‘With your mum and dad, is it?’

  He stayed silent. He was a plain child, his face not quite symmetrical, his ears just asking to be gripped between finger and thumb by a passing bully.

  ‘We have to send it,’ she said, ‘or I expect there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘Dr M. Simpkin, “Green Shutters”, Vale of Health, Hampstead, London,’ he said, quickly.

  ‘Who’s that then? Your dad? Your grandpa?’

  ‘Godmother.’

  ‘So where’s your mum and dad?’

  He closed his mouth firmly, like someone shutting a sash window. There was, she realized, a piece of string around his neck. She leaned forward and pulled on it and a brown label emerged from the neck of his shirt. He made a grab for it.

  ‘Noel Bostock,’ she read out loud, fending his hand away. She turned it over. ‘C/o Mr and Mrs G. Overs, 23B Mafeking Road, Kentish Town, London. Who are they, then?’

  He shrugged. Then, without warning, he pulled the label off so violently that he left a red mark round his neck.

  ‘That was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’ asked Vee. ‘Now sit there like a good boy. I’ve got things to do.’

  She made a pot of tea, and then put up the blackouts and got out the flowers that she had to finish for Vic Allerby for Tuesday: three hundred violets for the hat trade, or what remained of it. Green gauze leaves, purple crêpe petals, yellow felt centres, with a ribbon-wrapped wire for the stem. Each one took her a shade under ninety seconds to complete.

  Noel sat and watched her fingers stitching the leaves to the petals, pushing the wire through the centre, giving the end a twist, sticking on the yellow anthers with a dab of glue and then tacking the completed flower to a length of brown cloth. She kept her eyes on the work, but she seemed to be having a long, soundless conversation with somebody, her mouth moving, her expression changing with the rapidity of a flicker book. The only noise in the room was the squeak of Arthur Askey from the headphones, and the occasional sigh from Vee’s mother, as her pen looped across a sheet of writing paper. She wrote in a hand so regular that he could read it upside down. She appeared to be writing to the Prime Minister, though this was clearly impossible. After a while he laid his chin on his hands and went to sleep.

  Dear Mr Churchill,

  As I wrote to Mr Chamberlain in April, you never know just what’s round the corner. As I hope Mr Chamberlain told you I’ve been corresponding with him for many years, and his secretary wrote a very nice reply in 1935 to say that he’s always happy to know what the Ordinary Folk of England are saying. As a Mother and Grandmother, as well as a Christian who has laboured under a cruel affliction for many years, I feel its my duty to pass on the fruits of my contemplations.

  1. The bread is very bad. It has bits that keep being caught under my upper plate, I think there might be dirt in the flour. Also, you can’t slice it thinly it’s like sawing a log, everyone says this. Our minister (Methodist) kindly visited me at home this week and a piece of crust caught in his throat and he might have died if my daughter hadn’t hit him on the back with a shoe. On the wireless they talk about morale and I think soft white rolls would do more for morale than all the National Anthems of the Allies put together. They play them week in, week out on the wireless and the Dutch one sounds like a funeral.

  2. Never mind about the French, no one here is surprised. They’d have been surprised if the French had stayed and fought, that would’ve been a surprise all right.

  3. There are many people Making Hay in this war and downstairs from us they are selling stolen things I heard them talking about silver-plated spoons just yesterday. It’s the blackout makes thieving easy and I think you ought to know that the specials aren’t any good they’ll take anyone in the police nowadays. My friend from chapel’s husband is a special and he cant even bend one of his knees and he’s been deaf in one ear since Arras I should think thieves probably just laugh at him. About the spoons, I mention no names but it’s a scrap metal firm half a mile south-west of St Albans. Also there are Irish people in and out of there all the time.

  4. We had a pamphlet brought to us by the postman about what to do if a Parachutist Should Come to Our Door and of course I read it and the advice was mostly to stay put and be calm, quick and exact when I’d have though
t that dropping heavy things (like an iron) out of the window on their heads would be more useful, or boiling water. Also my cousin Harold suggested putting needles in bread rolls on the road to cause punctures and this would be another reason for having soft white rolls, you couldn’t push needles in the bread we have nowadays, they’d bend (a little joke).

  Well, if you don’t mind I’ll leave you with a poem that was in ‘People’s Friend’ in the spring.

  When all the world is sad and grey

  And all your hope seems far away

  Look up and see the sky so blue

  And know that joy is there for you.

  Yours faithfully

  Flora Sedge

  2

  Noel had occasionally been into a church, but never one made of tin. The outside was painted pale green and there were no pews inside, only rush-bottomed chairs. The sole decor ation (unless you counted the jar of ox-eye daisies on the altar) was an embroidered banner that read Fight the Good Fight of Faith.

  ‘The Iron Duke . . .’ said Mr Waring, his voice beginning to fray as he stretched it over the rows of juniors. ‘The Iron Duke was a nickname for which famous nineteenth-century military figure?’

  ‘Colonel Bogey!’ shouted Roy Pursey.

  ‘And are there any serious suggestions?’

  Someone blew a raspberry.

  ‘Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington,’ said Mr Waring, ‘one of the subjects of our lesson this morning. Does everyone have a slate?’

  There was no paper, there were no pencils. The slates had been found in the Sunday School cupboard, and three pieces of chalk had been cut into slivers using Mr Waring’s penknife.

  ‘Tomorrow, or the next day,’ said Mr Waring, ‘I am assured that we shall be found more suitable accommodation, but in the meantime I would like you to list twenty eminent Victorians, men or women who contributed to the public good during the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837 to 1901. Anyone who writes “Jack the Ripper” will be required to compose a three-page essay on the subject of “public good”. You have ten minutes to compile this list, and during these ten minutes I would like absolute silence.’