by West Camel
But since then.
Since then.
He was back on the outside, where he had been for so long. In this silvery glade, he was as invisible as her.
‘What are we doing?’ he murmured.
Deborah gestured to the back of the old house in front of them, and he saw the gate and a path leading behind a narrow rear wing to a back door and a low basement window. He raised his head and took in a deep breath; he noticed that his pulse had increased and the follicles of his scalp and neck were whirring.
‘That’s the house where you grew up, then? The one with the tunnel?’ He licked his lips, his mouth seemed to have become dry; he had to bend slightly to speak to her and avoid the lower branches that brushed the top of his head.
‘Yes.’ Deborah spoke without looking at him. ‘I need to go down there.’
There was a burst of voices from the street outside, footsteps on the pavement and then a door closing. Deborah put her hand on Sam’s arm, to stop him speaking. When she removed it, he asked, ‘Why now, in the middle of the night? I didn’t think anyone paid you any attention.’
The wind stirred the new leaves of the tree and faint shadows rocked back and forth across Deborah’s face, making it hard to read her expression. He wanted to giggle. His head was humming now and he felt fidgety with standing still under the tree. He chewed the inside of his cheek. The pill he’d taken had finally started to work.
At last Deborah spoke, a little defensively, as if he had caught her out. ‘You can see me, can’t you? I don’t want to take any chances; I always come after dark, anyway. You never know.’
This suddenly seemed an excellent idea – the excitement he had been looking for to purge himself of Derek.
Deborah looked at him closely and a brief gust of wind cleared her face of all shadow; for a moment it was luminous and flat. ‘We have to wait for that light to go out.’ She pointed to an upper window in a house several doors away.
‘You are careful, aren’t you?’ Sam felt himself grinning. He thought how he would tell Derek about this adventure, then frowned and noisily pulled a leaf off the branch above. He was shushed.
They waited in silence for what seemed like a long time – so long that Sam began to lose interest. He had been expecting something deviant, something criminal, but now he was beginning to wonder whether they would really enter the house, or whether Deborah would change her mind and try to take him home for more tea and stories. But she remained utterly still. He imagined prodding her to see if she were asleep, or had died on her feet – not immortal, after all – and a laugh quivered in his throat. At last, however, the square of yellow light above them disappeared.
‘Just a little while longer,’ Deborah whispered.
He scanned the rest of the buildings; there were no lights – surrounded by all these people, they were completely alone.
‘Let’s go.’ Deborah stepped forwards, her feet making no sound. He followed her as she carefully opened the back gate of the house and walked onto a messy patio; he ensured the gate didn’t slam behind him. They were on someone else’s property now, and while Deborah seemed to evade most people’s attention, he certainly didn’t; he thought of his blond hair shining in the garden lights.
She was at the back door. Sidling up to her, he saw her put a key in the lock and turn it slowly; one brittle clunk. She stopped and waited. She must have done all this many times, and again he wondered whether she really believed she could not be seen. Opening the door, she ushered him in with a fluttering hand, closing it behind them and relocking it, then gestured him down a flight of stairs into the basement.
They were in the back part – a kitchen, with a faint glow of light coming in through a high window next to the door. Deborah beckoned him after her through an arch into the front part – a room full of large box shapes, upside-down chairs and objects covered in cloths. The light was much dimmer and he could hardly make out what she was doing; he only knew she was ahead of him by the moving texture of the darkness and the sound of her skirt. There was a quiet scrape as she moved something, then he felt her hand on his arm, moving up to his head, which she pulled down; her face was close to his.
‘I’ve opened the door, go inside and then stand still.’ Her voice was almost non-existent.
She led him forwards and he felt and smelled a cool, crypt-like draught of air. Then his feet crunched sandy ground.
He was in the tunnel.
He heard the heavy door close behind him and the darkness was complete. He dared not move; a chill of damp air lay on his skin. He heard the mechanics of the key in the lock and then Deborah was all around him – her soft skirts, the slight warmth from her body. She had been behind him, now she was beside him, now ahead – as if she had walked through him. She took his hand – he had no idea how she could see it – and began to walk. He shuffled after, pulled along like a child. His shoulder brushed a damp wall: brick or stone. Then a different current of air suggested the space had changed. He realised he had stopped breathing and had to take a big gulping breath, coming to a halt to do so; Deborah’s hand slipped out of his and he was utterly alone in the black.
But there was no thrill in it. The pantomime hush and slow movements of entering the basement had been exhilarating, but now it was as if he had passed through into another place: no one knew or cared where he was. And the locked door and the silence cut him off from any risk of being caught. He thought of Derek, then shook off the image of him knocking at his door, texting him, calling him.
Deborah found his hand again and he jumped slightly – he’d almost forgotten her presence. She was pulling at him, he realised, and he let his feet move. Somehow, they turned a corner and took a few more steps. Then a plastic click, and a round of light appeared on the floor. Sam was startled, but after a second, Deborah raised it up – a torch beam that she shone into the tunnel ahead.
‘This is the first place I feel safe turning it on.’ Her voice was quiet but distinct now.
‘Just follow me,’ Deborah continued. ‘The worst that can happen is that you’ll get your feet wet stepping in a puddle.’
He started off by trying to keep pace with her while watching his feet, but soon he began to look about him. The tunnel was uniform, with mud walls held up by wooden supports that seemed sturdy enough. Occasionally, there were areas of brick in the shapes of doors or arches; he supposed that over the years the residents above had sealed themselves off from this dark network beneath them, leaving it to the likes of Deborah, which was why she could scuttle around down here, unchallenged and unattended. He was sure her gait was more vigorous than it was up above; her skirt swayed wider, she held her head higher, swinging the torch beam confidently, penetrating the endless pool ahead with a strong, straight sword of light. And in her other hand, her plump bag swung like a pendulum, the folds of the white sheet pushing out of the top, unwilling to be contained.
They passed a place where water trickled down the wall, and there were puddles on the floor and a scattering of rocks.
‘Needs some repair, this place,’ Deborah called back, her voice clear in the chill air. ‘But who’s going to do it – me?’ She chuckled comfortably. Pacing these passages, winding around the maze, it must be easy for her to talk on to herself. Until now, she had had no one to consult with, to place a hand on her shoulder and lead her back out. And he could see – more clearly with every step – how such an idea as immortality could occur to a person.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked at last.
Deborah stopped short and shone the torch in his face, blinding him for a moment. ‘I went to a christening today – yesterday.’ She moved on again. ‘A baby, about eight months old – Tom, he’s called; big family; everyone there for him, to see him through it.’ Her voice was absorbed by the mud walls, making it sound very close to Sam’s ears. He could have asked her a dozen questions, but he let her continue. ‘It got me to thinking of another baby. I don’t know if he was christened or not. It was a long
time ago. Back in the war. Nineteen forty-one.’
The sheet managed to overflow the bounds of the grey bag, and a loop of it flopped down onto the tunnel floor. Deborah stooped to stuff it back in. ‘It’s all on here – I suppose you guessed that.’ She looked up at him and hummed a laugh. ‘But this one’s all up here too.’ She pointed at her head. ‘There’s no way I’m ever forgetting it.’ And she set off again at her brisk pace, her storytelling voice filling the tunnel.
Chapter 18: Deborah, 1941
‘The bombing happened in nineteen forty-one – during the Blitz. The war went on for several years after, of course, but I always think that’s when it ended for me, that night in the basement of the Methodist Mission.
‘The air-raid siren had started early that evening, just after I’d left a house in Czar Street – without my money. Things had got nasty when I put my hand on the pile of mended and re-mended linen, and told Mrs French that she still owed me for three previous jobs.
‘She slapped her big red hand onto mine. “Look, Deborah Wybrow,” she shouted – I don’t know as I ever heard her speak in a normal voice – “I ain’t got your fucking money. There’s a fucking war on if you hadn’t noticed. My fella’s off fighting the bloody Germans, so you can walk the streets a free woman and you’ve got the nerve to start on at me about getting behind on my payments? I’ll pay you when I’ve got the money. And I ain’t got the fucking money. Alright?”
‘Mrs French was a big, loose-limbed woman. I’d seen her slap her own children, and other people’s too. And other women, for that matter, and not regretting it that I could see. I was much shorter, and in those days I was timid too. I backed away.
‘“That’s right, you go home,” she said. “I’ll have your money when I’m ready. What do you need it for, anyhow? You’ve got no kids and no bloke – and there’s nothing of you to feed. You’re certainly not spending anything on your clothes.” She gave a nasty laugh and prodded me in the back as I made for the door. It was all I could do not to turn and spit in her blotchy face.
‘She slammed the door behind me and I stumbled over the gang of little Frenches playing in the gutter in front of the house. They shouted some abuse at me and I had to take care not to walk away too fast.
‘But Mrs French was right; money was less of a problem for me than it was for most of my neighbours and customers, which was partly why I dressed so poorly: I didn’t want to be showing off the fact that I had a few pennies. So her throwing it back in my face really made me seethe. I had to stop when I reached Creek Road and take a few breaths to calm myself down.
‘The siren sounded as I stood there. I knew I didn’t have time to run the distance up the High Street to my rooms above the draper’s, and where I spent raid nights in the cellar with the draper and his wife. The nearest shelter was under the Methodist Mission; there were already people scampering towards the door with their bomb-bundles.
‘I was on reasonable terms with the draper and his wife, but even so, it felt strange to lie down near to them. I’d not shared a room with anyone since I was a young girl. They murmured a few words to each other before they went to sleep and then I’d hear their slow breathing and I woke occasionally to little kissing sounds. But the thought of being down in the basement of the Mission with all the crowds of mothers and children I could see shoving each other through the entrance was far, far worse.
‘A warden marched by, hurrying everyone along, and telling people to keep down the lights. One woman told him to shut up because it wasn’t even dark yet.
‘In the basement, women wearing their outdoor coats over their indoor aprons paddled in a sea of make-do mattresses and blanket beds, trying to settle children who wouldn’t be settled. Everyone was vying for the best spaces, and all their voices were raised.
‘I picked my way through, looking for a quiet place to sit, making a whole circuit of the basement until I found myself back at the bottom of the stairs up to the ground floor. The brief peace outside seemed better than this clammy clumping together. I thought how the High Street would be empty now, like it was first thing in the morning, when the early trains passed over on the viaduct, and I would look out of my window and notice how the road dipped a little under the station. Except now, I supposed, the light would be from the other direction, and the dirt and dust in the gutters would be tumbled into piles by the evening wind. And everything would be waiting, not for the day to begin, but for it to all come crashing down.
‘The raid was certainly early – I’d expected at least to be able to get home and fry up a scrap of meat before we had to go down. I wondered whether the draper missed me. I thought of him opening the door a crack, and poking his head out, keeping his feet and hands inside. He’d stretch his neck and survey the street, looking for my short, drab figure. But he’d see no one, and he’d sigh, and close the door, shooting the bolt across.
‘He was a good man; caring, generous. Between us, we did good business.
‘The minister came trotting down with a roll of tape and blackout cloth and put his hand on my shoulder, turning me away from the stairs. “Find a place, my dear. I’m sure there’s somewhere you can fit in.” Then he danced his way across to the high, half-moon windows and began patching up the slits and gaps.
‘There was a thud and a rush of sound on the street above. We all knew what it was: Big Bertha, the anti-aircraft gun on Blackheath.
‘“Get ’em Bertha,” a small voice rang out. A laugh was raised and the boy who’d said it stood among the bodies lying around him with a grin on his face. But the laughter soon died as everyone waited for the first trembles through the ground and sounds of showers outside.
‘I found a place at last in a slight recess in the wall, too small for anyone larger than me. I sat on the floor with my knees drawn up and my empty bag on top of them and nestled my face into the soft cotton, staring out across the broad basement, full now, and warm with the smell of coats and candles. These were the people with no room in their narrow yards for any type of shelter. Or those from the new LCC flats, who’d thought they were lucky to get a place with a tap and a toilet, but now pined for their old cellars, rats and all. Or people like me, who’d been caught out away from home, or who lived in rooms.
‘Someone started a song near by; it was softly sung, but it irritated me, I was so used to quiet and solitude. I wished I had some work with me; even in the bad light, I was sure I could manage a simple seam. Using my needle would’ve kept me calm and stopped the heaviness I felt in my chest. I couldn’t unbend my legs now either, because someone had slung a mat at my feet and placed a baby on it.
‘Peering over my bag, I saw that it was the youngest French. The family had found themselves a space beside my recess. I was trapped; if I leaned forwards, I would reveal myself. There was nothing I could do but try to make myself even smaller.
‘The first bomb was much closer than expected. The thunder could usually be heard far off, and everyone would brace themselves as it approached, hoping it would pass over. But this one must’ve been only streets away. Everyone gasped, and the minister said a loud prayer; it sounded like a plea for his own life, rather than something to reassure the rest of us. The song was interrupted, but the singer quickly began again in earnest.
‘The baby at my feet let out a wail and squirmed, rolling towards me a little. Its eyes shone in the light of the candles and lamps dotted around the floor. It stared at me curiously and let out another cry, screwing up its smudged face. Then it stopped and looked up at me, waiting. I was supposed to pick it up. I recalled the small sick bundles arriving in the house in Albury Street when I was a child. I thought of how I’d tended to them, like I’d seen Mrs Clyffe do, wishing I had her great white linen bosom to rest them on.
‘There was a whine followed by a tremor, much closer than before, followed by a long rattling as brickwork, tiles and glass rained on the street above. The baby responded with a bawl, and Mrs French’s long, muscular arm stretched out from where sh
e lay beyond the recess and gave him a bit of a shake. But then there was the voice of an older child and the arm withdrew. The baby cried again; Mrs French had too much to deal with. I should have reached out and picked up the dirty, wriggling ball. I was small, but I was large enough to care for just one; I could have lightened her burden, just for a few minutes, quieting the baby, who would keep rolling and staring into my face, as if telling me what I should do. But I was paralysed, I gripped my ankles, my knees stuck tight together, pressed into the recess, as far away as I could possibly get from the sprawl of people in front of me.
‘Without warning, the wide room became a narrow corridor – black with dust. I can’t recall any boom or bang. The baby was gone.
‘I was still tucked in my tight ball in the recess. There were some heaving shapes in front of me, lit up by licking bright light. I struggled to my feet and my head touched the ceiling, as if I had shot up suddenly. It’s blackout, I thought; they have to put that light out. I ducked under a beam and stepped into the narrow space. The dust was clearing; but it was being replaced by smoke. The light was fire. It was simple, warming yellow flames at first, but it grew brighter, showing me details. Painted bricks from the floors above lay about in heaps. I stood on the mat where the baby had rolled.
‘My ears cracked open and the low moaning and distant cries were instantly close and loud. The fire burned with a roar. I stepped forwards and back and to the side, clunking my head on the beam. It was hot. My face was coated with something thick and dry, my sweat turning it into a paste. I was still holding my bag.
‘At last I heard words: This way – this way – upstairs – out. But they didn’t sound like instructions for me. I kicked something softer than brick and looking down I saw limbs. They weren’t mine – I could move mine.
‘Where was the baby?
‘I strained my ears to hear its cry. I was on my knees, moving bricks. It had been at my feet. I was to have picked it up; held it to my non-existent breasts, pressed us into the recess, saving it.