Crooked Heart (19 page)

‘Excuse me, can you tell me the way to Hampstead Heath?'

A girl giggled and then murmured something.

‘Lovely,' said a male voice, muffled and salacious. ‘You're so
lovely
. . .'

Vee turned and started to retrace her steps; if she could find the pub again then she could get directions. She recrossed two roads and suddenly there was a tree ahead of her that hadn't
been there before, and grit underfoot, and she stumbled over a split sandbag and dropped her torch. It went out as it hit the pavement, and as she knelt to retrieve it, she heard a new noise: the pulsing drone of bomber engines, low and directionless. Above the rooftops, a trio of searchlights joined the first.

She found the torch but the end had sprung off and the battery was gone, and after a hopeless search, sifting with trembling hands through sand that smelled of dog's business, she crouched on the pavement and listened to the distant dull crumps and thought of Noel, on his own and facing a second night of this. She reached for the words that might protect them both.

‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night' – her mouth was so dry that the syllables clicked together like beads – ‘nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.'

In swift answer, a light blinked in the sky overhead, followed by a sudden splash of rose across the clouds; a second later and the roar of gunfire reached her, loud enough to drown out the engines, each shell repeating the blink, splash, bang of the first, and Vee remembered those cheerful girls on the Heath, manning the big guns, and the thought was enough to get her to her feet, though her knees felt like sponges. She began to grope her way forward, running her fingers along the high brick wall that edged the pavement.

‘R
oom for a little one,' said the shelter warden. ‘Where's your ma?'

‘At work,' said Noel. ‘She said I should come here by myself if the siren went.'

‘Find yourself somewhere to sit, then.'

The air was warm and damp; he could smell chips and the harsh whiff of disinfectant. In the dim light, there were no obvious gaps in the rows of seated figures, and he stumbled forward along a corridor of knees. ‘Watch yourself,' said someone, sharply, as he trod on a foot. He reached the far wall without finding a space, and hovered aimlessly until a large woman shifted a buttock and he was able to cram in beside her. She settled back down again and he found himself pinned upright, scarcely able to breathe, the large woman on one side and a man with a running head-cold on the other.

Outside the guns were still popping. In the house on the Heath, it had sounded as if they were in the next room, the walls shuddering with every shell, and Noel had sat in the dark and gripped his thighs in panic until, during a pause in the gunfire, he'd heard the scrabble of mice, skittering around his shoes, and that had been enough; he'd fled down the lane and on to South End Green, and had found a public shelter next to the police post.

‘'Scuse all,' said the man with the cold, sneezing again. ‘Wish I'd stayed in bed.'

‘Wish you had too,' said someone opposite. ‘It's bloody raining in here. I need a bloody umbrella.'

‘I can't help it.'

‘You can help not having a bloody handkerchief.'

‘I don't like swearing,' said the large woman. ‘It's not necessary and if you ask me it's the sign of a small vocabulary.'

‘So you want me to sit here and come up with another word for “bloody” while he's drenching me three times a minute?'

‘Sanguineous,' said Noel.

There was a huge thud – felt rather than heard – and one of the shelter lights went out. A woman shouted ‘
Oooh!
', and there was a rustle of nervous laughter.

‘Anyone fancy a song?' asked someone.

‘No.'

‘They always sing in the shelter behind the Pond Street flats.'

‘Why don't you go there then?'

‘Just trying to cheer things up.'

‘I'll tell you what would cheer me up,' said a man with a high, nasal voice.

‘What?'

‘A beer. Fetch me a beer and I could sit here with a smile.'

‘Whisky for me,' chipped in another voice.

‘And me.'

‘Make mine a double,' called someone from near the entrance. ‘And a bottle of champagne while you're at it.'

‘Bottle . . . of . . . champagne,' said the beer drinker, as if writing down the request. ‘Any more orders?'

‘Jug of eggnog.'

‘Can you do food as well?'

‘Our staff are at your disposal.'

‘I'll have a chocolate cake, then.'

‘I'll have the same.'

‘Cream horn, please.'

‘Crate of bananas.'

‘Joint of beef with Yorkshire pudding and sponge custard for afters. Mind, it has to be treacle sponge.'

‘Turkish delight.'

‘Gross of torch batteries and a new kettle.'

‘Box of cheese straws.'

‘Hair grips.'

‘Ham.'

‘My Leonard back again. My Leonard . . .' This last was a sort of howl that sliced through the laughter. For a long while nobody spoke.

‘Now then, Mother,' said a man's voice, helplessly.

The woman next to Noel swivelled and reached down, nearly pitching him off the seat. When she straightened, he heard the slither of a paper bag, and then the sound of slow eating. Saliva filled his mouth.

‘Can I have something?' he asked.

‘What?'

‘Can I have something to eat?'

‘Cheeky so-and-so, where's your manners?'

‘Please may I?'

‘All right then – hold out your hand and don't ask for no more because you won't get it.'

He felt something round and cold on his palm: a boiled potato. He ate it in three bites; it tasted of nothing, and clung to his teeth like flour paste.

At the other end of the shelter a baby started crying, a thin, dreary whine that went on and on and Noel felt like joining in, flinging his head back and wailing because nothing had gone right since he'd come back to London and if he were to update his careful list, it would be a mass of crossings-out.

He'd never reached Kentish Town library. The hand on his shoulder had belonged to a grey-faced truant officer who'd been patrolling the High Road like a shark. She'd sunk her teeth into Noel's hastily invented story, shredded it, and then dragged her prey all the way to the council offices in Mornington Crescent, where a temporary classroom had been set up in the lobby.

For the rest of the day, Noel had sat between a half-wit boy and a terrifying girl with a cold sore on her lip. After a lesson on factors, they'd been instructed to write an essay entitled ‘Why I Need to Go to School in Wartime' and Noel had produced nine pages of impassioned counter-argument, interrupted at intervals by the girl throwing spit-moistened paper pellets at his head.

By the time he'd been released, the library had closed. Instead, he'd gone to a café, been thrown out after making a cup of tea last for two and a half hours, and had then sat beside a bus stop and re-read his book until the siren had sounded and the streets had cleared, after which he'd made his way to the pawn shop where he'd seen Mrs Gifford's medals.

This was the part of the plan that he'd relished in prospect, allowing himself little tastes of the scene, as if it were a sweet held under the tongue. He'd be standing in a doorway close by, just another shadow in the blackout, waiting for an explosion loud enough to drown out the sound of an ammonite being lobbed through a plate-glass window. He'd be wearing gloves – both to avoid fingerprints and to protect himself from broken glass – and a scarf pulled up over his nose and mouth as a disguise, and once he'd retrieved the stolen pins, he'd flit off into the night, taking the back streets towards the Heath; unnoticed, untraceable . . . Of course, he'd probably have to leave the ammonite behind, but it would be lost to a noble cause and in any case he rather liked the idea that the only clue to the
Mystery of the Missing Medals would turn out to be one hundred million years old.

The plan had collapsed immediately and for the most prosaic and predictable of reasons: the pawn-shop windows had wooden shutters, padlocked into place. Noel had stood there for nearly half an hour, hanging on to the padlock as if it were a strap on the tube, sure that a solution would come to him if he could only think hard enough. (What did burglars use? Skeleton keys? Jemmies?) The night was full of sound: guns, aircraft, bombs; he could have broken every window in the shop with impunity.

He gave the padlock an angry rattle and the shadow of his hand – huge, a giant's fist – leapt across the shutters; the world was suddenly bathed in amber light and he jerked round and saw the High Street, actually
saw
it, every shopfront, every lamp-post crisp and vivid, the shadows as neat as if outlined with a narrow nib.

‘
Hoy!
'

And high above the shops, swaying downward, a cluster of brilliants, a spangled pendant, mesmerizing, beautiful . . .

‘You.
You!
'

Noel detached his gaze, dragged it over to the figure running across the street towards him and tried to bolt, but a hand reached out and snagged his arm; he found himself running on tiptoe, his collar in a vicious grip.

‘Standing drooling at a flare as if it was bonfire night, you bloody little idiot! Don't you know that Jerry use those so they can see what they're going to
bomb
?'

The light flung their shadows in front of them; Noel could see his own scurrying legs, the dome of the policeman's hat.

‘Where d'you live?'

‘Primrose Hill.'

‘What are you doing all the way over here then?'

‘Visiting my gran.'

‘Don't believe a word of it. Get
indoors
!' This last to a couple standing cuddling in the street. Noel's breath was coming in squeaks now, his bad foot beginning to flap.

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘Where d'you think?'

‘I haven't done anything wrong.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Honestly I haven't, but I can give you some information about a crime. A real crime. I've got a letter I can give you with all the names and details.'

‘What? Come on, pick your feet up.'

‘There's a warden who's stealing things from bombed-out people.'

‘What, just the one?'

‘He's
stealing
things and then selling them.'

‘They're all stealing. Whole of bloody London's at it.'

‘But' – he tried to crane round; the policeman mustn't have heard him correctly – ‘the man I'm talking about is an
air-raid
warden. He's supposed to be looking after the public. And that pawnbroker where you found me just now – he's receiving stolen goods!'

There was a series of barks which Noel realized was a laugh. His collar was suddenly released and he was given a gentle shove along a sandbagged passageway.

‘Get yourself into a shelter, Sherlock.'

It was the tube station; Noel turned but his captor had already gone.

‘You all right, son?' asked a woman ticket collector. ‘Had a bit of a fright, have you?'

‘I told that policeman about a
crime
' – his voice was loud and indignant – ‘and he didn't do anything. He didn't even ask me the name of the criminal.'

‘What sort of crime?'

‘Theft. From people who've been bombed out.'

She nodded glumly. ‘There's a lot of it going on.'

‘But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be stopped.'

There was a crash outside that jarred the whole floor.

‘You'd better get downstairs,' said the collector.

‘So you're saying that because it's common it's
acceptable
?'

‘I'm saying that unless you get underground you're liable to get blown up.'

‘You mean that collective safety's more important than collective morality?'

‘Go downstairs.'

‘Which makes us actually no better than the enemy that we purport to despise.'

‘Gus!' – she was calling over his shoulder – ‘Gus! I need a hand. Can you make this blinking little walking dictionary get into shelter?'

Noel turned before Gus could arrive, and started down the stairs, and it was only when he'd reached the bottom that he realized he'd left his suitcase on the pavement beside the pawnbroker's. As well as the ammonite, it contained a change of socks, a spare jumper and two tins of sardines taken from Vee's store cupboard.

He spent the night on the stationary ‘up' escalator, since the platform was already full. An elderly man gave him a meat-paste sandwich, and a folded newspaper on which to sit, but it wasn't until the small hours that he finally slept; he woke to find people stepping over him, whole families streaming upward towards breakfast, work, school.

Above ground, a gritty wind was blowing and the road was littered with broken roof slates. Noel retraced his steps of last night and was pleasantly surprised to see his suitcase still sitting beside the pawn shop. He opened it and found that both tins of sardines had been swiped. He closed it again, and looked in the pawn-shop window and saw that the shelf on which he'd seen
Mrs Gifford's pins had been cleared and was now occupied by a row of Toby jugs and a stuffed badger.

After that, since it was the only thing he could think of to do, he walked home to Mattie's house – a long walk, up the High Road and clear across the Heath, a thin cold rain starting as he slogged the final half-mile and turning to sleet as he climbed awkwardly over the low fence at the back.

The kitchen door-key was under a flower pot in the summerhouse, just as it had always been. At first he couldn't turn it in the lock and then he remembered the old trick of leaning on the jamb, and the key swivelled so suddenly that he skinned a knuckle.

‘Hello?' he called, pushing open the door. He waited for a moment, to give time for Mattie to reply (‘And hello to you, young man'), though he knew of course that she wouldn't; the house felt as empty as a robbed tomb. One of the kitchen blackouts had fallen down, and in the grey light he could see that the sink was clear and the cupboards all closed; someone had been in at some point and tidied up. Someone had switched off the electricity too, and the gas, though the water still ran – pale brown, iron-rich, straight from the spring that fed the ponds on the Heath. He scooped a handful and tasted pennies.

Someone had tidied the dining room as well, and the drawing room, clearing the floors and tables, returning books to bookshelves, closing albums, shutting pencils in drawers, straightening the items on the mantelpiece, clapping the chess pieces back in their box so that the rooms looked neat and ordinary, as if anyone at all might have lived there.