V for Victory

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Nearly with you,’ said one of the Heavy Rescue, crouching so that he could speak under the widening crack, and even from her position several feet above, Winnie could hear a voice in reply, hoarse and blasphemous.

  ‘That’s Smiler,’ she said, but the first out of the darkness was Alice, the barmaid, her face and shirt soaked with blood from a long head wound. ‘I can’t see,’ she kept saying, as she was lifted up to street-level, ‘I can’t open my eyes,’ and then Addy was eased out into the lamplight, shouting with pain from a broken leg, the knee bending the wrong way, the foot flopping like a piece of wash-leather, the stretcher party handling him with infinite gentleness, and then Smiler, crawling out, talking the whole way: ‘… didn’t hear nothing until the ceiling came down, and then I dived under the bar like a bleeding goalie … Hi ho, Shorty!’ he said, spotting her, clambering up the slope under his own steam, the smell of stale beer and blood and urine preceding him, his eyes feverish with the euphoria she’d seen before, in those who’d miraculously escaped. ‘Basset was over by the Gents. Did you find him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He caught her expression. ‘Gone, is he? Those bastards. Those bastards flicking a fucking switch somewhere, and never mind who gets it. There was two old chaps in here as well,’ he said, looking round towards Hubbard. ‘They was sitting at a table by the window.’

  ‘We’ll keep looking,’ said Hubbard.

  Smiler refused to see the first-aid team, or even have a cup of tea, and went stumping off home to his wife and mother-in-law, insisting, too, that he should be the one to tell Mrs Basset (‘I was at their bleeding wedding, wasn’t I?’), and Winnie went on working until Larwood turned up from Borough Control, and told her that he was taking over and she should hop it. It was nearly eight o’clock, the sky a dirty white and the air full of dust; a bulldozer was beginning to shovel spoil into the bomb crater. On Longford Row, a lorry belonging to the Pioneer Corps had arrived, piled high with tarpaulins for the denuded roofs, and the greengrocer on the corner was arranging a pyramid of cabbages in his glassless shop-window.

  Winnie went to Post 9 to lock up, and it wasn’t until she noticed the blanketed lump on the camp-bed that she realized that it was hours since she’d last seen Avril.

  ‘Oh,’ said her sister, sitting up. ‘Is it all over? Sorry, I lasted till around four and then I simply couldn’t stay upright any longer. Did they find your wardens?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, they did. Smiler’s all right, but Addy’s badly injured and Basset was killed – the pale man, with the cheekbones.’

  ‘Oh, Winnie …’ And the note of sympathy in her sister’s voice dislodged something in Winnie, so that she found herself weeping.

  ‘You were marvellous, you know,’ said Avril, struggling to her feet from the low bed. ‘I almost wish I could write the book again, now that I’ve actually seen you at work. You really were terrific.’

  Genuine praise, untainted with Avril’s usual patronage; Winnie turned the words over in her head, like someone examining an unexpectedly valuable present. ‘Well, you did all right too,’ she said.

  ‘Did I?’ Avril looked delighted. ‘Well, I tried my best. But I was terribly proud of you. I wanted to tell everyone you were my little sister.’

  ‘That I was your what?’

  ‘Oh, don’t get cross, Twinnie. It’s just the way I think of you.’

  ‘I was born first – you really are the limit, Avril.’ She blew her nose, hard. ‘I’m going home. I’m back on tonight.’ She shooed her sister out of the Post and locked the door.

  ‘Bye, darling,’ said Avril, heading for the Tube and the Ministry of Information, looking as if she’d slept for twelve hours on satin pillows.

  As Winnie walked back to the flat, thinking only of taking off her boots and falling on to the bed, she was stopped by three separate people offering her breakfast, and by a black-and-white cat which ran towards her as she passed the ruins of Falcon Road. She stooped to scratch its head and it butted its hard little nose into her palm. Winnie had seen it before, hanging around the derelict basement flat whose illegal occupant she had never managed to catch up with. Looking along the row, she realized that the shape of the terrace had changed since yesterday – the houses, already roofless from the previous V-2 to hit the sector, had collapsed inward, the lower storeys split by broad cracks. Last night’s rocket might have landed a quarter of a mile away, but here it had delivered the coup de grâce.

  Winnie picked up the cat and walked uncertainly towards the flat she’d previously visited; was it the one with half a gate hanging from a single hinge, or its neighbour with the cream-stuccoed wall, peppered with old shrapnel wounds? The cat answered her question by wriggling from her arms and picking its way towards the latter. The stairs down to the basement entrance still showed evidence of having been cleared by the occupant, but the door itself had burst outward, and as Winnie descended she could see that what had happened at the pub had also happened here, and that the interior was now a dense wedge of ceilings and floorboards from the storeys above.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said to the cat, who was trying to insert its head between the layers. The whole place felt desperately unsafe, plaster dust trickling through the wreckage. Winnie took out her torch and shone it into some of the gaps in the strata; she glimpsed a section of bannister, a crushed lampshade with a purple silk fringe, a shoe, a row of wrought-iron coat-hooks. She turned the torch off and then, after a moment, turned it back on. She flicked the beam across the piled debris, found the shoe again, and this time leaned closer, her face pushing up against a splintered board. She could see it clearly now: it was a man’s shoe, the laces tied in a firm double bow. The sock was rucked around the ankle and above it she could see two or three inches of livid calf, the rest of the leg engulfed in rubble. She moved the torch away, and inserted her hand into the gap. The foot had stiffened and the calf was ice-cold.

  ‘Go home, get some kip,’ said Larwood, after she’d retraced her steps to the Incident Post to report the body, but when at last she was sitting, wrapped in a blanket in front of her two-bar fire, the black-and-white cat with its face in a saucer of pilchards (it had followed her the whole way to her front door), an oblong of unexpected sunlight on the wall behind, she no longer felt tired – or rather, she had moved beyond sleepiness into a state in which the events of the day were ineluctably unscrolling in her head, each moment as vivid as the next, her inner eye darting between Basset’s face and the circling starlings, the dense khaki of the lentil soup from the WVS van, the shift-worker who’d shouted at her for waking him when she’d knocked on his shattered front door, the raw meat of bodies, a budgerigar pinging its bell in a crumpled cage, the lady who’d sung ‘Oh, Mr Porter’ from the cupboard under her stairs to guide the diggers towards her, a living child holding the hand of her dead sister, a broken mirror in a hill of rubble, flashing like an Aldis lamp at every touch of a torch-beam.

  She was roused from her thoughts by an odd noise from beneath the bed – a series of rustles and snaps – and she leaned over and lifted the counterpane. The cat looked back at her. It was lying on its side, its claws embedded in the wicker of the suitcase in which Winnie kept Emlyn’s letters; after a short pause, it resumed its meditative rending of the fibres.

  ‘Get off,’ said Winnie, pulling the case towards her. Unhurriedly, the cat detached itself and began instead to investigate the fringe of the rug, lifting and carefully examining separate strands, as if working on quality control at the mill.

  There was dust on the case. Winnie shoved it back into the narrow gap, and thought immediately of the dark space under the bar of the Fox and Grapes, which had saved three lives today. If she were still sending letters to Emlyn, what platitude would she have written about the last eighteen hours? ‘I’m quite tired after a busy time at work, but nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t cure’? ‘There was a bit of damage in our area, but I’m absolutely fine, so no need to worry’? So much breezy euphemism; if they e
ver met again, he’d be expecting a twinkling optimist, like Jessie Matthews tap-dancing on a revolving cake while warbling, ‘Over my shoulder goes one care.’

  Winnie scratched the top of the cat’s head, and it abandoned the rug and jumped on to her lap. It was thin but healthy-looking and didn’t appear to be pining for its previous minder, whoever he’d been; the dead man’s identity would become a police matter now, she supposed.

  She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and at once saw the mauve-dappled leg in the ruins, and it was no good, she thought, snapping her eyes open again; she wouldn’t sleep until she could slough off some of these images, and she transferred the cat on to the bed and poured herself a drop of sloe gin. During the Blitz, when every night had been piled with incident, she had tried keeping a diary, but had found it a chore rather than a release; a trip to the pub with her colleagues had always been far more helpful, the horrors unplugged by caustic language and a stream of macabre jokes.

  She sipped the gin. The faintest of noises came from the bed. ‘Emlyn,’ she said, fixing her eyes on the glass, ‘can I tell you about what happened today?’

  No one ever telephoned Green Shutters, so when Vee heard the ringing while she was pegging washing the next morning, she assumed it must be coming from the Lumbs’ house. There was a stiff wind and the sky was patched with blue, but there was also a line of cloud marching eastward which meant that, chances were, she’d have to take the washing back in again in an hour, and then put it all out for a second time an hour later and that would be the whole morning gone, and she was just retrieving an escaped tea-towel from one of the apple trees when Noel appeared at her elbow.

  ‘Lady Gillett just rang.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She lives at Greenbanks. The house next to Taormina.’

  ‘At the top of the road?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lady Gillett? But what does she want? Who is she?’

  ‘I think she’s the widow of a baronet – you’ve probably seen her in passing, she looks like Sargent’s portrait of Madame X. She says there’s a misdelivered letter for you at her house, and what she described as “items for collection”.’

  ‘A letter? For me?’ Vee’s throat was all ice – she hadn’t expected another so soon: the blackmailer may have missed one appointment, but he was clearly wasting no time. She pegged the last tea-towel and dried her hands on her apron, wishing that Jepson were home. ‘I’d better go and fetch it, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘I think I should warn you that Lady Gillett sounded rather cross. She said, “My front garden is not a goods yard.”’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I have no idea, but she seemed to think it was your fault. Would you like me to come?’

  ‘No, I … no, you stay and do your History.’

  ‘It’s Geography this morning, the Carpathians. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just busy, that’s all. Have you fed the chickens?’

  ‘You know I have, you saw me from the window when I came back with the eggs.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  She tried to steady herself, and Noel watched her narrowly, trying to surmise what had rattled her, and there was still that chilly gap between them, plugged with secrets. Vee went in to fetch her coat, and dithered between her beret and her best hat.

  ‘Did she sound very posh?’

  ‘Yes, extremely.’

  The hat, then. She wedged it on and caught Noel’s eye. ‘All right, you can come, in case there’s something to carry,’ she said. Though mainly in case Lady Gillett tried to start a conversation.

  Greenbanks was a three-storey house built of brick the dull purple of uncooked kidneys and set well back from the lane, its long front garden surrounded by high hedges. The area of lawn nearest to the house was a puddled swamp, pock-marked with deep boot-prints.

  The door was answered by a maid in a fancy bandeau, who immediately moved aside as a woman a few years older than Vee, with a face like a lurcher and a pair of bottle-green corduroy slacks, came hurtling up the passage.

  ‘It was appallingly inconsiderate,’ said Lady Gillett, apparently by way of greeting. ‘Eleven at night. That’s the time they arrived, hammering at the door. The maid had gone home and I had to answer it myself, and if you must know, I am still frightfully, frightfully cross about the whole thing. If I hadn’t had sharp words, they would have left everything on the doorstep. On the doorstep! And I have people coming round for luncheon, including a very senior member of the Ways and Means Committee. As it is, they’ve left the lawn looking like the paddock at Epsom and the entire side-path is blocked. So you’ll understand why I am so absolutely furious, and if you don’t remove every single item immediately, I shall be forced to ring the authorities. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ said Noel.

  Lady Gillett dragged her gaze from Vee.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We haven’t the slightest idea what you mean. Who are the “they” you are talking about?’

  ‘Americans!’ she said, as if it were obvious. ‘In a jeep! They had already unloaded everything by the time I opened the door, and refused to take it away again, despite the fact they’d delivered it to the wrong person. Here!’ She took a folded envelope out of her trouser pocket and thrust it at Vee. ‘This morning I asked my maid who on earth “Mrs Overs” was, and she told me that you were the woman who runs the boarding-house at the end of the road, and of course those stupid men had confused Greenbanks with Green Shutters.’

  ‘Now, hang on—’ began Vee, but Noel had already taken a step forward, his chin raised, his voice as deep as Vee had ever heard it.

  ‘My aunt is not a “woman who runs a boarding-house”,’ he said, ‘but someone who has spent the last four years feeding and accommodating essential war-workers, rather than sitting on her arse being waited on by the only remaining servant in Hampstead. I have heard snobbery defined as the pride of those who are not sure of their position, and your own is clearly balanced on the edge of the abyss. Where are the goods in question?’

  Since last she’d spoken, Lady Gillett appeared to have been shot and stuffed, but her eyes flickered to the right, and Noel squelched across the lawn and looked around the corner of the house. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said, involuntarily, and heard the front door shut sharply.

  There were seven crates, each nailed shut, each stamped with ‘US ARMY PROPERTY’. He lifted one, and found it extraordinarily heavy.

  ‘Mar!’ called Noel. When she didn’t reply, he looked round the corner to see her reading the letter.

  ‘It’s from Mario,’ she said, her voice airy with relief. ‘He says he’s sorry and he—’

  ‘Sorry about what?’

  ‘For leaving me in the lurch in Brighton. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t want to listen. There were no trains and he got arrested and I had to find my own way back and …’ She scanned the few remaining lines: ‘“So, Toots, they’ve put me in the guardhouse till we leave the country, but the boys are dropping off a few gewgaws from the stores. Thanks a million for looking after Mrs O’Mahoney’s Baby Boy. Your pal always, Mario xxxx.”

  ‘So what have they left?’ she asked, unwilling to muddy her shoes.

  ‘Unlabelled crates – we won’t know till we get them back. I’ll have to fetch the wheelbarrow.’

  It took forty minutes to transport all the boxes, Noel pushing, Vee steadying, and there was something about the task so reminiscent of their past adventures – the suppressed excitement, the makeshift, furtive speed of the transfer, the unsanctioned nature of the goods – that when Noel saw Lady Gillett peering down at the devastated lawn through an upstairs window, he hissed, ‘Peelers!’ and Vee jumped about a foot before feinting a smack at his head.

  ‘Anyhow, she should be Digging for Victory on that lawn,’ she said, censoriously, as Noel guided the final barrow-load between the gate-posts of Green Shutters and round towards the back garden.

&
nbsp; ‘Or planting rice, given its current state,’ he said, and she laughed. He went to fetch the toolbox and, nail by screeching nail, removed the first lid.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ said Vee.

  They ate frankfurter sandwiches for lunch, followed by cling-peaches and chopped pineapple, and then opened a can of peanut butter to see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘It’s the look of it,’ said Vee, declining a taste. ‘It reminds me of when we had a cat.’

  They’d quickly run out of shelves in the larder and had transferred the bulk of the tins to the lumber room, stacking the Spam, chicken roll, ham-and-eggs, frankfurters and beef stew in a revolving bookcase and the canned fruit and vegetables in the stained-oak linen press. Unclassifiable items (‘Cheese? In a tin?’) were on the windowsill behind a drawn curtain.

  Noel ate a second spoonful of peanut butter and washed it down with Florida orange juice. ‘Why were you so worried about the letter?’ he asked. ‘What did you think it was?’

  ‘Oh, I …’ There was a pause, while she tried to think of a plausible answer.

  ‘The rates,’ she said.

  ‘You paid them in December, and they always make you angry, not frightened.’ He was looking straight across the table at her, gaze on the level, as tall as she was; grown up, nearly.

  ‘I’m being blackmailed,’ she said. ‘I got a letter last week from someone who knew I wasn’t really your aunt, I don’t know how they found out. I should have told you, it’s your business as much as mine – it’s just that you’ve been … a bit offish. But I should have told you.’

  The room seemed to heave under Noel’s feet, like the queasy shrug of an earthquake.

  ‘So you met him,’ he said.

  ‘Who? The blackmailer? No, I was supposed to, but he never turned up – I thought the letter would be him, writing again.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Noel.

  ‘What?’