The Night Raid

by Clare Harvey

  ‘Not exactly, no. Just precious. I need to be sure it will arrive.’

  ‘It’ll cost you extra for a signature.’

  The woman said the amount and Laura said that was fine. Just hurry up and get it done, she thought, taking out her coin purse and making sure she counted out the exact money, so there’d be no need to hang around waiting for change.

  ‘Oh, no, that won’t do, madam.’ The woman’s evident tiredness made her voice drawn out, like a drunk’s.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The address is incomplete.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve written the postcode, there, see?’ Laura jabbed a finger.

  ‘But you haven’t put the postal town. It’s Post Office rules.’

  ‘But if the postcode is there, then I hardly see why they need—’

  ‘I can’t send it without the postal town. It’s the rules.’

  Laura drew breath. ‘May I borrow your pen, then, dear?’

  The postmistress turned the parcel round and Laura wrote Nottingham in the space before the postcode. She paused, then, holding the pen and squinting down at the package: appraising it, as if she were checking a sketch of a seated nude for foreshortening of the thighs. She drew a line underneath Nottingham, put down the pen, and turned to go.

  Outside the post office she hailed a cab, trying not to think of the expense – she might just make it to the station in time. She saw a red post office van approaching from the opposite direction as the taxi pulled off into the London traffic. The parcel would get in the first post, then. She settled back against the plush seat and let out a breath as they sped away.

  She had drawn a line under Nottingham: it was done.

  ‘Oh don’t mind me, dear,’ Laura said, as the young girl with the cello case elbowed her again, apologised again, shoving her ticket back into her coat pocket. The door slammed shut and there was a disembodied whistling as the inspector wandered along the corridor to the next compartment.

  Laura looked out at the smudge on the glass where a hand had been. She thought then of Zelah’s face, pale at the window, the grey slick of the crowded platform behind her, that last time at Nottingham Railway Station. And then she found herself recalling the urchins she used to get to pose for her all those years ago: grubby-faced and hungry, willing to sit for as long as it took to earn a penny and a cup of hot cocoa. The feeling she’d had about those children was the same feeling she had about Zelah: a tug in the chest, a tenderness – how to describe it?

  Maternal?

  Good God, that was it. A mother’s anxiety and a mother’s pride – Zelah had made her feel like a mother. Laura shook her head. Lord. What a mess.

  She looked out beyond the mucky glass to the scene beyond. They were chugging through suburbia now. The train cut a swathe through urban backyards. She saw flapping washing, broken bicycles, chicken coops, and a bull terrier, chained to a gatepost, barking at the passing train, its tongue a snip of pink. Bindweed crawled over an abscess of smashed rubble.

  She thought again of Zelah’s face in the train window. She thought of how Harold’s face looked in the bathroom mirror as he shaved in the mornings: the soot-dark eyes and angular features. The train slowed and came to a standstill at the platform.

  The girl with the sharp elbows and the cello case got off, and a tall woman entered the compartment, flapping shut a large, black umbrella. Laura felt droplets spatter like spittle and reached up to wipe her cheek.

  ‘You don’t mind if I—?’ the woman said, neither finishing her sentence nor waiting for a response as she parked herself in the space where the girl had sat. Laura shifted closer to the window, away from the wet brolly. ‘I say,’ the woman said. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ Her voice was quite loud.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Laura said. She didn’t recognise the woman, but one could never be certain. Perhaps they’d clinked glasses at one of Barry’s after-show parties? ‘Are you an actress, dear?’

  ‘Most certainly not!’ The woman managed to laugh and look offended at the same time. She had bad breath and overplucked eyebrows. ‘Well, shall we get acquainted anyway, seeing as it looks like we’ll be here for some time – the guard told me there’s a problem with the signals so there’ll be a delay.’

  ‘What’s that?’ The man with the bowler sitting opposite appeared from behind his copy of the Standard.

  ‘Problem with the signals, apparently,’ the woman said, as if she were delighted with the opportunity to give them all the bad news. The man harrumphed and disappeared back behind his paper. The two ATS girls by the door exchanged worried glances. The woman in the far corner put down the complicated Fair Isle tank top she was halfway through, checked her watch, sighed, and picked up her wool again, knitting even faster now, as if her clicking needles could somehow speed up time.

  ‘My name is Potts,’ the woman said, holding out a hand as if they were at a dinner party, not stuck in a second-class carriage in the rain. ‘Mrs Frances Potts.’ Her fingers were slippery-hard, like raw chicken bones.

  ‘Laura Knight,’ Laura said. The woman – Mrs Frances Potts – let out a sound like a yelping terrier.

  ‘Laura Knight! So that’s why I recognised you!’ She had the attention of the whole carriage now and she wasn’t about to squander it. ‘Dame Laura Knight, the famous artist – but I was only just reading about you in the paper this morning. Look!’ She jumped up, knocking the umbrella sideways, and pointed a finger at the front page of the man’s copy of the Standard. ‘More Allied Successes’, exclaimed the headline. Laura hadn’t noticed before, but there, indeed, towards the bottom of the page and opposite an advert for a coat sale at C&A, was a picture of her. ‘Ruby in canvas’, it said above the portrait. Of course, it was the hoo-hah about the Ruby Loftus portrait, which had just gone up. Mrs Frances Potts was now holding up the paper for the whole compartment to see, like a schoolmistress in front of an infants’ class. ‘Well, how marvellous. What a very great pleasure to meet you, ma’am,’ she said, before returning the Standard to the bowler-hatted man and sitting back down next to Laura. ‘And where are you off to today, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  Laura reminded herself to smile. ‘Not at all. I am on my way up north. I’ve been asked to undertake another work for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee.’

  ‘Another factory?’

  ‘No, outdoors, this time. I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘Can I ask where?’

  What a nosy bird this Potts woman was. ‘I’m not sure I should mention – careless talk and all that.’

  ‘Oh, quite. And your husband? It said in the paper that he wasn’t well enough to attend the unveiling.’

  Why did everyone keep asking her about Harold? ‘A head cold, that’s all. Not worth dragging him out of his sick bed to bring him to a draughty gallery, but quite well enough to cope on his own.’

  ‘You must miss him, though?’

  Laura suppressed her irritation, and folded her right hand protectively over her left, even though she was wearing gloves, and nobody would notice the missing ring. ‘I do miss Harold when I have to travel away for work,’ Laura said. And as she spoke she realised it wasn’t a lie. She did miss him. She missed the companionship. She missed having someone to bounce ideas off, someone who understood her work. She missed the pot of tea for two, and the bickering over precious treacle. But the Harold she missed was a different Harold, wasn’t he? The man she thought she was married to was different from the one she’d discovered during the Nottingham commission. No, it was all over between them, wasn’t it? It had to be.

  The Potts woman was nodding, head tilted, as if she understood perfectly. Who knew, she might very well be a journalist, or married to one, Laura thought, with all these silly questions, and continued, ‘It is always so hard to leave behind the ones that you hold most dear. But I remain very aware that I am far from the only woman who has to suffer the pain of separation in these trying times. And what is a few weeks away painting pictur
es for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, when so many of our brave young people have to face a far greater separation from the ones they cherish?’ Laura said, nodding sympathetically in the direction of the two ATS girls, who smiled back at her.

  There was a pause after her little speech. The Potts woman was leaning forward with a sincere look on her spiky features and the bowler-hatted man was nodding behind his paper. The elderly woman’s knitting needles clicked against each other. There was a grinding jerk and the train lurched forwards a few inches then stopped again. Laura stacked up cheerful anecdotes and memories like dominoes, and prepared for the duration.

  Chapter 26

  George

  The tired autumn air lifted his hair from his forehead. He pushed his trilby back on and turned away from the grave. He’d left a pot of chrysanthemums this time: orange and burnt-smelling. Organ music filtered out from the church, and the sound of voices: ‘Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven . . .’ He couldn’t face church these days – all those people, the effort of it. It had been difficult enough going round to the Simmons’ for dinner.

  His shoes crunched on the path as he walked away. Wood smoke scented the air – a bonfire somewhere nearby. Virginia creeper twisted like flames up the rectory walls. There was the rumbling zoom of a squadron of Stirling bombers overhead. He looked up and watched them rush through the scudding clouds, like southbound geese, beyond the trees and disappear.

  The package rustled in his pocket as he unlocked his car and climbed into the driver’s seat. The air inside the car was still and warm. It was just a minute’s drive round the corner, past a couple of houses, then he parked up again and got out. All he needed to do was to deliver the package. Violet Smith, it said on the front in large, looped script. Violet Smith c/o Mr G. Handford, Esq.

  He stepped out of the car and pushed open the gate to Cloud House. There were stained-glass flowers above the red front door. But no letterbox. He cast his eye around. Why was there no letterbox? Should he wait? The church service must be nearly over. Could he catch her on her way back? He baulked at the thought of giving it to her in person. No. There would doubtless be a housemaid or someone who could pass it on to her later. He knocked on the shiny crimson paintwork, heard footsteps and the click of the catch.

  The door opened inwards to reveal a woman carrying a shawl-wrapped baby. As the door opened fully, the baby began a choking mew. It sounded like a kitten. Did they all sound like that? he wondered. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind just passing this on to—’ He paused and reached into his pocket and felt for the parcel as he spoke.

  ‘Mr Handford!’ the woman with the baby interrupted. He looked at her. Without the lipstick, with her hair greasy-loose and dark circles round her eyes, he simply hadn’t recognised her.

  ‘Violet?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry, I – I assumed you’d be in church, so I simply wasn’t expecting—’

  ‘It’s fine. I expect I look a little different. I haven’t had much sleep, recently.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I – um – thought the baby wasn’t due until next month.’

  ‘So did I.’

  The baby carried on making the mewling sound, and she jigged it in her arms, saying ‘Ssh-sshh, there now, little one’. Just like a real mother would, just like Lexi would have done. But she is a real mother, he inwardly berated himself. Maternal instincts trump morality, or immorality, or whatever all this sorry mess is.

  ‘Are you well?’ He didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Oh, she’s well enough. It’s just this colic. She howls every time I put her down. Mrs Scattergood said I was in no fit state for church, so I’m supposed to be helping out in the kitchen.’

  ‘Good, good,’ he said. A stupid thing to say. How was any of it ‘good’? ‘Will you – will you be coming back to us?’

  ‘Of course. Any day now. As soon as they’ve done the medical checks and confirmed with the foster parents.’

  ‘Then shall I tell Matron to have a bed ready?’ She nodded. ‘And I’ll make sure you’re only put on light duties in the factory for the next few weeks. How about the cranes? You’d be sitting down most of the time, then?’

  ‘That’s kind of you, Mr Handford.’

  He didn’t feel kind. He felt unease rising like nausea. But he looked directly at her, then, into her brown eyes with the mauve semi-circles below them, like bruises. ‘I never thanked you,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘They said you were trying to rescue her when she – when it happened.’

  ‘You have nothing to thank me for.’ He watched her swift frown, saw her jiggle the sobbing child even faster.

  ‘You tried.’

  ‘I failed.’ She turned away from his gaze.

  It was too big. It was too big to talk about. He wondered if they ever would? Or would it become another one of those things, like Lexi’s death, like Violet’s baby – another one of those enormous, painful things about which one never spoke?

  He could smell the scent of braising meat from inside the house, hear the sound of a clock ting-tinging the hour. ‘I should probably let you get on with Sunday dinner,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you for visiting, Mr Handford,’ she replied, turning back to look at him.

  ‘George – you can call me George outside of work.’

  ‘Thank you, George.’

  ‘You’re very welcome. I’m glad both you and the baby are well and I’ll see you back at work soon, I hope.’

  ‘Yes. Soon.’

  They nodded at each other and she closed the door. In the distance was the sound of the Nottingham train chugging into the station platform.

  It was only once he was already in the car, waiting at the barrier for the train to leave, that he noticed the rustle-bulge of the packet in his pocket. He hadn’t even given it to her, in the end. He couldn’t face going back, not now. The barriers started to lift and he released the handbrake. Never mind. It surely wouldn’t be anything so important that it couldn’t wait a few days until she was back at the factory, would it?

  Laura

  To be out in the open air again, how glorious!

  The boys had driven her in their bone-shuddering tank right to the top of the hill, just so she could see the layout of the training camp and the landscape beyond. On the way they’d passed a group of swarthy-looking prisoners of war with huge red circles painted on their clothes, working the land. And Laura was reminded of the clown face she’d painted on the bomber at RAF Mildenhall. The crew had re-named it ‘Circus’ after she’d finished. She hoped it hadn’t proved too much of a target, that big red splodge of a nose; she hoped that it had brought them luck, somehow, those dear boys. Was it still flying, her circus plane, or had it come wailing down over Europe somewhere? She hadn’t heard – but then one didn’t, did one?

  The POWs waved their hoes in the air and cheered. ‘Eye-ties,’ the fair-haired gunner yelled to her over the guttural judder of the engine. ‘Must’ve heard about Naples.’ Laura smiled, and waved back.

  Now they were here, up on top, the lowering sun to their right casting endless navy-blue shadows from hedgerow and armoured truck. The colours of the countryside were as concentrated as pure pigment, and the cool air sharp as lemon juice on her tongue. When they turned off the engine she could hear the rustle and twitter of sparrows in the hedge. The boys (for boys they were – the commander only just nineteen) helped her off, careful as if she were a china doll. One of them even apologised for the mud.

  She walked up the hill a little further, to get a good view over the top of the tank. Down in the valley, the training camp spread out like a discarded picnic: Romney huts like sausage rolls and people scurrying ant-like. Tanks beetled a pale figure of eight on the chalky ground between the camp and the railway line. She put down her bag on one of the ice-hard ridges of mud in the shadow of the hedge, where the
late autumn sun hadn’t had a chance to thaw the ground – and wouldn’t, until spring, in all likelihood. (She had forgotten how much colder it was here up north – it had been half a lifetime since she lived in Staithes – and she was glad of the fingerless gloves that one of the sweet WAAF girls had knitted her at the airfield last year.) Laura took her sketchbook and pencil from the bag.

  Almost winter already, she thought as she drew, taking in the cool strokes of afternoon sun, threadbare trees, and empty skies.

  The gunner had set up a stove near the parked-up vehicle, and began to brew up. He’d taken off his beret, and Laura noticed how his blond hair fell in a golden lick over his forehead, the way a cat’s tongue curls as it yawns – such a beautiful line. Laura began to sketch, quickly, before he could notice he was being observed, and stiffen up, the way people would. There were distant growls from the tanks on the driving track, and the occasional stutter of fire from the ranges, but other than that it was peaceful up here: no horrific factory din, no roar of planes taking off or bombs dropping down, no London traffic noise. Quiet, almost. She tilted her head. Just that faint metallic whine, insistent as a mosquito. It had been with her since the Nottingham commission. Would it ever go away?

  Laura flicked a page and turned her attention to the driver, a compact black-haired Welshman, who was lying on the front of the vehicle, using his folded beret as a pillow, whistling a tune she didn’t recognise. She sketched his slung-out body, muscle-taut even in repose. The commander popped a head out of the hatch and called out to ask if she’d like a smoke, then, and when Laura said ‘Ra-ther’ he pushed himself up and out of the vehicle and lit one of his own for her, walking up the slope and popping it into her mouth as she continued to draw. They were being very kind about having her foisted on them, she thought, even though she was certain that they’d rather not have had ‘Grandma’ out on manoeuvres with them.

  There was a chink of metal against metal, as the gunner stirred the tea in the mess tin. Laura took a drag from the cigarette. She cross-hatched a few shadows beneath the driver’s sketched body before pulling out the fag from her mouth. ‘How kind of you, Corporal,’ she said. He said, ‘Not at all, ma’am,’ and stood at her shoulder, looking out over the rolling countryside, green-gold and tapestry-rich in the late afternoon sunshine.