Attend

by West Camel

  ‘Mrs Clyffe frowned at me, urging me to clear the bricks, painted blocks like nougat, orange in the hot flame light. They made chipping clinks above the roars.

  ‘“You’ll have a baby one day, Deborah, you silly little thing,” Mrs Clyffe had said.

  ‘Where was my baby?

  ‘Mrs French’s thick arm flopped down onto my lap. I fell back and gasped, but my scream was stifled by the growth of smoke above me. I ducked back and worked quicker; the big woman’s body was a lot to uncover. The flesh had split in several places. A dead child clung to a bloody leg. I dug and cleared.

  ‘The fire was near now, bellowing hot, loud breath into my ear, into my face. There were far shouts to get out; a flash of torches passed over my head.

  ‘I worked on, up the belly; the dress I had made – the tight, neat seams held true, just twisted and dirtied. And here were the big breasts, the dressed pulled open, a child at each dark nipple, faces wet with milk or blood, glossy in the firelight. One was too old to be fed, needing just comfort. And here, on my side, the baby, still latched on, its head caved in. My back was scorching; breathing stung.

  ‘When had Mrs French taken the baby? How long to pull a baby to your teat?

  ‘A long, grating shriek filled my ears. It wasn’t human. It was the building. A pillar buckled. I jumped back from the messy family. The big, red, angry face was still covered in rubble. I thought to clear it, but the pillar snapped, the floor above slumped and they were buried again; gone.

  ‘There was no way forward now. I was trapped in my corner. Across the basement, a huge distance away, I could see shadows rising, pushing each other aside, pulling each other up the stairs. Another shudder and I was knocked sideways, onto the heap that covered the Frenches.

  ‘Swimming in the bricks I coughed and gulped in an orange fog. I had lost all direction.

  ‘How long it was, I don’t know, but among the smells of dust and fire and burned meat, the cold, damp, scent of river mud reached me, blowing in from long before, from when Mrs Clyffe had told me off and cradled me, and forbidden me, and I had disobeyed her. I scrambled up from the pile of bricks, my bag in my hand somehow. I was being urged on: follow the cool breeze. It came from the recess I had sat in; a hole gaped in the wall I had leaned against.

  ‘I plunged into the chilly darkness of the tunnel that had opened up for me once again.’

  Chapter 19: Sam

  Deborah stopped speaking, slowed down and the torch beam landed on a blank brick wall. They had reached a dead end – large grey breeze blocks filled a ragged hole. Deborah stared at it for a while, then said, ‘On the other side is the basement of the Methodist Mission’.

  It seemed to Sam that they had walked a lot further than the short distance it was above ground between Albury Street and the rebuilt Methodist Mission, where he got off the bus coming home from work.

  ‘Everyone died. Everyone except me.’ Deborah’s voice croaked a little; this was a very different woman from the one who had entered the shelter that night. ‘I should have picked up that baby. Maybe he would have survived with me. I don’t know.’ It was difficult to see in the torchlight, but he was sure she was crying now. He wondered whether to reach out to her, to encircle her in a hug, to show her that however small and slight she was, she had at least one friend. But while he debated, she turned around to face the way they had come. ‘There was nothing I could do for him anymore. And I would have died, if it wasn’t for that damned motif.’

  Sam couldn’t help letting out a sigh.

  ‘A hole opening up right behind me – giving me an escape. What were the chances? I didn’t realise at the time, of course; I just crawled into it.’

  Now Sam put out his hand and laid it gently on her shoulder. ‘Of course; it’s instinct to save yourself.’ Deborah moved forwards and Sam’s hand dropped –whether by her shrugging or moving away, he wasn’t sure. He could only let her walk on and continue speaking, telling him what she needed to say – be it truth, or imagination, or a curling blend of the two.

  ‘I ran, or walked, I don’t remember which; I just got away. It wasn’t until I fell over in the dark that I realised where I was, where I’d come back to.’ She twisted back round to him. ‘I hadn’t had a single thought about these tunnels in years – not since I’d come back to Deptford from the orphanage; not since I’d found out Mrs Clyffe had gone. I had a torch in my bag – in the blackout you had to have one in case you were caught out – but I didn’t think to get it out straight away, I just picked myself up and kept on going, feeling along the walls. And when I remembered I had it, and turned it on, it hurt my eyes, and I could see blood on my hands and I knew I must have burns on my head and it was so painful even to breathe. And I still had no idea it was the motif that was doing it – keeping me going. I just went on and on. I couldn’t go back, and anyhow I’d lost my way. Sometimes I turned the torch off.’

  It was suddenly black. Deborah had switched the torch off now. Her voice came out of the darkness. ‘I thought I was lonely before – I lived by myself, ate by myself, worked by myself. But in the blackness without the first idea how to get out, that’s when I knew how alone I was.’

  Sam’s throat felt tight, as if a slim, strong hand were clamped over his trachea, forcing mucus and tears up into his sinuses. He wanted to push past Deborah and run back to the house, get out into the open, back to his parents, to someone. To Derek, he realised, and finally – finally – he didn’t turn away from the thought.

  Deborah turned the torch back on; somehow she had moved quite a way ahead of him down the passage. She shone the beam back on him so, for a moment, he couldn’t see her. And, as she was now silent, it was as if she had evaporated and it was, after all, just him down here.

  She cast the beam away. ‘And that’s how I got back to where I first found it – to the place where I found her, and her bits of cloth and the scrap of fabric with the motif stitched on it.’

  She set off at a pace now, so that he had to break into a trot to catch up, trying to convince himself that his heavy breathing was not approaching a sob, but was because of the stale air and the fright from her turning the torch off.

  They were silent as they went, Sam pulled onwards as if he were tied by a safety rope to Deborah, impelled to go wherever she went, not asking any questions. He let his gaze drop to his feet, and stopped seeing the complex shadows she cast behind her. Instead, he saw Derek throwing his ring into the river in that great arc it had made, then standing for a moment to greet Sam’s reaction. But Sam had been hard-faced, tilted his head on one side. And Derek had left. Of course he would not call; Sam stumbled on.

  Deborah was accelerating, the tunnel seemed to be descending; there was more water in their path, more streams flowing down the walls. The foam had sat on the river surface for a long time, but had eventually been washed away. Sam’s face was wet; drops of water from the ceiling must have fallen on him. The tunnel levelled out and they had to negotiate piles of mud and rubble. The water flowed strongly down the walls now and the rushing made him suddenly worried for their safety. He squinted upwards at the black ceiling.

  Deborah stopped abruptly, so that he nearly ran into the back of her. A heap of earth seemed to block the passage, reaching halfway up the wall. But through it had been cut a narrow passage. ‘We’re here,’ she breathed and began to edge through, beckoning him on. It extended for several yards, and he saw that the ceiling had caved in all along this stretch. She was already at the other side and ducking below the heaped soil while he was struggling to squeeze through the wet, narrow gap. For a moment he thought he was stuck and wrestled himself free in a panic, bursting out of the earth to find her trying to pull something from the mud, the torch lying on the floor beside her.

  ‘This is where I found her.’ She stood up, her face splashed with mud and slime. Sam wondered what he looked like. ‘Each time there’s a new fall, either something gets hidden, or I find something new.’ A corner of cloth protruded from the mud
; she bent over again, pulling at it to get it out, then she squatted and scratched away to reveal a little more. Her skirt dipped into the puddles on the floor and she made little grunts of effort. Her hair was streaked with dark shadows of dirt.

  ‘It won’t come. I’ll have to bring a spade down to dig it out.’ She straightened up again, putting her hands on her hips, panting, her previous emotion apparently chased away by her exertions. ‘Only about half of this had fallen when I was here the night of the bomb.’ She picked up the torch and scanned the ceiling and walls, then turned it onto the ground. ‘Have a go at that for me, will you?’ She shone the beam on the corner of fabric. Sam couldn’t refuse – if he managed to pull it out, or simply rip a piece off, maybe they would be able to go. And when they were out, he would phone Derek, no matter what the time was.

  Deborah lit his hands and watched him work in silence for a while. Then she said, sounding far away, so that he looked around to see if she hadn’t walked off. ‘You know, as you grow up, you stop being sure of your memories – what was real, what you’ve imagined. But that night, after the bomb, I felt like I was a little girl again and that woman was still trapped here with all her tapestries and cloth.’

  Sam stopped digging and glanced up at Deborah for a moment. Then he went back to scraping at the mud and pulling at the piece of fabric, but it was stuck fast. Deborah’s talk was becoming so much babble now; he almost told her to sew it onto the white sheet – then she could tell it to him later over a cup of tea. But she was his only escape – he would never get out of this tunnel without her.

  ‘So I began digging for her. There I was, burned and shocked from the bomb, and I started digging for a woman I’d seen almost thirty years before. I couldn’t save the baby in the Mission, so I thought I could save her, I suppose. But I found nothing.’

  Sam mouthed ‘What a surprise’, the movements of his lips disguised by straining to pull the material out. It slid towards him a little, and he actually felt a stupid little sense of satisfaction.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about how to get out; I was thinking about finding her – that I should have saved her back then, when I was a child, and now I was getting a second chance. It was like, if I found her, I’d find my way back to the hospital. And Mrs Clyffe would be there and would give me a good telling-off, but then kiss me and tell me, “Of course you can stay. How could I let you go, eh?” And I’d live there until I grew up and met some nice chap of my own and had a baby, one I could hold and take care of – not just leave to die.’

  Sam twisted around to look at her again; the light of the torch shining on the floor gave her a gaunt look.

  ‘I didn’t find her, but I found the rest of it – the cloth, the tapestries, the stitch-work, the chest, filled with mud – like it had been waiting down here for me for all those years to come and find it. So that I would understand.’

  Sam gave one more irritated, muscular tug, and with that, the wet earth gave way in meaty plaques and the long strip of woven fabric came out in his hands; he stumbled backwards.

  ‘You did it!’ The light danced around as Deborah moved in to look. ‘Thank you, Sam. That’s very useful. I’ll take that back with me.’

  As she took the cloth from him – a strip of rough linen coated in endless years of river mud – he swayed; perhaps from being up all night, perhaps from standing up too quickly.

  ‘You see – this is what’s kept me coming back down here all these years. This is how I know what happened to me when I learned to stitch the motif.’ She brandished the brown scrap at him. ‘I pick up whatever I can find. I’ve become quite the archaeologist, just like Mr Mellor himself.’ Her grin was almost a snarl and the torch beam darted up and down as she pushed the piece into her already overfull bag. ‘A lifetime of study it’s been, but now I understand what the motif does. Mr Mellor would have been proud, if he’d ever bothered to come back. I would have brought him down here – if he’d just have shown me that courtesy. He could have brought his team of archaeologists down. They could have done a dig.’

  Her hair was a messy mane of white and dirty tresses. With the crumbling arch of the tunnel around her, she was a beast in its lair; she had lured him down here and any second she could dart out a fang or a talon and wound him, bind him, trap him in a sticky web. But then she turned back to him, and she was a mucky infant, slipping seamlessly from make-believe to real, and he had simply followed her down here to play along.

  ‘I’ll take this home, wash it, and maybe copy it, and it will be another piece in the story.’ She widened her eyes, apparently artless. ‘And perhaps I’ll understand it all even better.’

  Sam took a step back and stumbled on the slippery mound of mud; his hands sank into its softness as he tried to steady himself and avoid slithering to the floor. Deborah extended her hand to help him up, but he managed to get on his feet without her help. ‘We should go back,’ he said, turning to edge back through the pass.

  ‘No, it’s this way,’ Deborah indicated the other direction with her torch.

  His heart tripped. ‘But we came from that way.’

  ‘It’s a maze down here. I took you to the Mission – this is a quicker way back to the house.’

  He had no idea whether he trusted her now; he had not believed there was a tunnel, he had not believed there were tapestries and cloth in it, but he was here and he had just retrieved a piece for her. He had no choice. All he wanted was to be in the outside air – on his way to Derek.

  Deborah laughed; despite her wet face, which must be tears, she laughed. ‘Don’t worry. The night of the bomb, I was lost until I got to here. And then it was just like I was seven again, holding my little bit of candle. I found my way out, no trouble at all.’ And she picked up her bag and marched off.

  Sam kept close to her, and within just a few minutes, he recognised with relief the bricked-up doorways and the wider tunnel of the stretch that must lie under Albury Street. None of this was so far for their adult strides, but for a lost seven-year-old, it must have been a lifetime’s journey; one he realised, watching Deborah’s swaying back, wet skirt and straggling hair, she had still not come to the end of. He drew up beside her now that the tunnel’s width allowed it, and put his arm across her shoulders, drawing her to him, so they walked on to the exit together. For a moment down here he had been chilled. A flick of a line had whipped him forward to a possible future moment, where he was utterly alone, his life a fantasy. He knew now had to get to Derek. He had to grasp the fast-moving rope that raced through his hands, burning his skin, and stop Derek from getting away.

  But Deborah would remain down here. And as if she had heard his thought, she whispered, as they turned the corner and approached the door, ‘Sometimes in this tunnel, I feel like I never got out that first time. Just like Mrs Clyffe told us we wouldn’t.’ She produced the key from the bottom of her bag and let them out into the basement where the greying morning light was just revealing the contents of the rooms for what they really were.

  Chapter 20: Anne

  The morning after the christening, Anne arrived at the house beside the creek to find the door open and Deborah standing over the stone sink, up to her elbows in soap foam, washing the winding sheet.

  ‘It’s got rather dirty,’ she wiped a cloud of bubbles from her nose. ‘These suds do soap up, don’t they?’

  ‘I think you’ve used a bit too much.’ Anne stepped forwards and brushed another knot of froth from Deborah’s soft hair. ‘It’s all about a tiny bit to do a big job, these days.’

  ‘Yes, well, it doesn’t cost me anything.’ Deborah tittered and winked.

  Anne leaned against the draining board as Deborah chattered on. But spits of water and spots of froth hit her, so she sat down at the table and watched Deborah’s little figure jiggling about as she took length after length of the sheet into the sink and kneaded it, talking all the time, at first in her everyday voice, but quickly adopting the measured tones Anne by now recognised. Deborah was telling ano
ther story; this time about when the Methodist Mission was bombed. Anne recalled her grandmother mentioning the same incident as they waited at the bus stop outside the Mission one Saturday morning.

  There were moments in the story when Deborah stopped, bent over her work, her hands deep in the water. Anne couldn’t see her face, but she knew it well enough now to imagine the creases around the tight pink mouth, the puckering skin around the clear blue eyes as Deborah reached a part that was difficult to tell. And then she pulled another length into the sink and continued her washing.

  At last she hauled the whole sheet out, and said, in a much brighter voice, ‘Right. You can help me wring it out.’

  Deborah stood confidently on the narrow ledge outside the house, while Anne stood by the open door with one foot inside. They turned the sheet carefully in opposite directions so that it began to form a tight, even twist. The water pattered down the wall and onto the creek below – a slightly misty colour, because Deborah had used too much powder. They were silent while they worked; streams trickled down Anne’s sleeves, tickling her forearms – a little irritating and a little pleasurable, all at the same time.

  She glanced up at Deborah as they squeezed and wound the hard rope of cloth. Her soft face was set into lines of effort; her lips thinned with each turn, with each spurt of water from the coils of the sheet. She seemed happy to have told the story, if rather tired by it – her age clear in the bright Sunday sunlight.

  There had been bombs all over Deptford, Anne knew. Her grandmother had often talked about air raids, nights spent in the shelters and families losing everything; there was no reason to doubt that part of the story. But just inside the door, beside her foot, was a large wooden bucket of muddy water, from which a rough tawny fold emerged.