Crooked Heart (2 page)

‘Reports from whom?' asked Mattie, booming out the last syllable, so that it sounded like a dinner gong.

‘Neighbours,' said the warden. ‘Shutters open, shutters closed, lights on and off. They said it looked like signalling. Not that it was, I'm sure,' he added, hastily, seeing Mattie's expression, ‘but people are entitled to be a bit anxious at the moment, aren't they, madam?'

‘Miss,' corrected Mattie. ‘I am not a brothel-keeper.'

‘I have to warn you that the next step is a summons,' said the warden.

‘D'you hear that?' asked Mattie, turning to Noel. ‘This little man is threatening me with court.'

The warden flushed a dark red. ‘There's no need for rudeness,' he said. ‘I'm enforcing government rules. And while I'm here, I'd like to ask whether the following have been carried out. Taping of windows. Readiness of buckets containing sand and water. Insulation of a room to be used as refuge in the event of a gas attack.'

‘Are those, too, legally enforceable?' asked Mattie.

The warden shook his head.

‘Then no,' said Mattie. ‘Go away, little man, and interfere with someone else.'

‘You do realize,' said the warden, his voice hardening, ‘that the courts take blackout infringement very seriously indeed. We're not just talking about fines here; there could be a prison term.'

He left, crunching along the sandy path to the front gate. Mattie gave a little grunt and Noel looked up at her. Her face was puffy and skewed, as if the warden's last sentence had been a blow with a boxing-glove. ‘Those places . . .' she said, and gripped Noel's hand. ‘Never,' she said.

In the weeks that followed, Noel found himself thinking about Dr Long, who taught algebra and physics at St Cyprian's, and who presented each new law or principle to the class as if he were lifting a jewel out of a casket. Dr Long expected interest and asked for wonder, unlike Mr Clegg, whose Geography lessons were like a series of punishments. Thirty strokes with the principal exports of the Malay Peninsula.

‘Imagine,' Dr Long had said to Noel's form last term, ‘imagine Archimedes' lever. Imagine it stretching from star to star, one end nudging the base of our planet, the centre of it propped on a titanic fulcrum, and at the other end, standing on a cloud of galactic dust, a small man in a toga. He extends a hand, he places a finger on the end of the plank, he presses down . . . and our Earth goes bowling across the universe.'

One nudge and the world was changed. The warden's visit had done it; it had flicked Mattie out of her orbit and now she was spinning off on a course of her own.

She drew up a list of neighbours who might have reported her to the warden. It started off with Mr Arnott, who lived in the next villa, but then she kept adding names until everyone was on it. ‘We shall no longer speak to them,' she said to Noel. ‘In fact,' she added, ‘I should prefer not to see them at all.'

Now, when they went out for their morning walk, Noel had to go to the front gate and check that the road was empty before Mattie would leave the house. Though they weren't really ‘morning walks' any more; Mattie wasn't sleeping well, and woke late, so it was almost lunchtime before they were cresting Parliament Hill. The lessons were replaced by occasional questions: thirty-five multiplied by fifteen, the Roman invasion, the life-cycle of the honey bee. Once Mattie woke him at dawn, and asked him to name three British scientists. ‘Newton, Boyle, Darwin,' he said, yawning, while a wren shouted in the ivy outside.

The days became untethered. Mealtimes slid around or disappeared altogether. Noel ate mainly biscuits for three days, and then found a cookery book. The recipes were wonderfully satisfying; it was like doing an equation, in which the correct answer was edible.

‘Very good indeed,' said Mattie, of the blackberry pie that he made with fruit picked on the Heath, but she ate only a mouthful or two. For the whole of Noel's life with her, she had been quite large – stout and solid, like a tree-stump, but now she was dwindling. Her stockings drooped. She had no time to eat, she said; there were too many things she needed to do.

One morning, he came downstairs to find that all the helpful labels he'd written had been crossed out. He was standing with ‘
CUTLERY DRAWER
' in his hand when Mattie came into the kitchen.

‘Someone's been breaking in and writing messages,' she said. ‘I shall have to have a new lock installed on the . . . the object for opening.'

When Uncle Geoffrey rang the doorbell on the following Sunday, Mattie stayed seated, finger marking a place in her book. Noel stood up, and she shook her head at him.

The bell jangled twice more, and then they heard the gate creak.

‘There,' said Mattie, looking pleased.

‘I just need the WC,' said Noel, and ran upstairs. He peered out through the round spyhole window on the landing and saw Uncle Geoffrey still standing in the lane, looking unhappily back at the house. Noel ducked down, counted to a hundred and looked again. Geoffrey had gone.

‘Why didn't we want him to come in?' he asked Mattie, that evening.

‘Who?'

‘Uncle Geoffrey.'

‘They all know each other,' she said. ‘Wardens. All authority is linked, Angus, that's how the world is run. Independence is one's only hope. You must promise me one thing.'

‘What?'

‘To never tell anybody anything.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘You called me Angus,' he added, after a moment.

‘I did not.' She spoke with absolute certainty.

That was the first time he really felt afraid; soon, he began to carry the feeling around with him, a cold scarf wrapped around his neck, a stomach full of tadpoles.

The autumn was warm and dry. Noel raked and burned leaves while Mattie did other things. He wasn't sure what. The two of them had started to revolve in different directions, moving into alignment only three or four times a day, at meals, or in the drawing room where Mattie would delve around in the desk, rearranging papers, while Noel sat in the window seat and read all of Edgar Wallace and then all of Dashiell Hammett. Sometimes he sat and watched the lorries lurching along the track.

They had no more visitors, apart from delivery boys, and the postman, and once a woman who was collecting for the North West London Branch of the Army Comforts Fund. Noel watched from the drawing-room window as she sprinted away up the lane, Mattie shouting after her. Uncle Geoffrey made no further appearances, and neither did the local warden. Noel would walk round the outside of the house every evening, making sure that no chinks of light were visible.

Winter seemed to start suddenly. He woke one morning, and saw his own breath. The scuttle in the kitchen was empty, and he went outside to the bunker and raised the heavy sliding door. A cascade of small coals tumbled out, and then a slither of
paper. Letters, open and crumpled. A thick sheaf of forms, torn in half. He crouched and fingered them, and saw his own name under the smears of black. Gathering the whole lot up, he took them to the summerhouse.

It was in a corner of the garden: a fretwork chalet, built on a turntable so that it could revolve to chase the sun. At some point it had rusted and stuck, facing east, and then ivy had crept across the roof so that now it was just a green hillock, rarely used. The wood of the front rail was silky with age. Noel knelt on the cold boards of the porch, and spread out the papers:

A letter from Mr Clegg, the headmaster of St Cyprian's, suggesting that Noel should join them in Llandeilo:

. . .
unless, of course, you have made other arrangements for his education, in which case perhaps you would be kind enough to let our bursar know as soon as possible, and to settle your outstanding account accordingly. Places at St Cyprian's are greatly sought after, especially in light of the current international situation, and I think you may find that your godson's capricious approach to study, coupled with his reluctance to participate in team activities may not be catered for with the same degree of tolerance at other educational establishments
. . .

National registration forms, dated 7th September:

There is a legal requirement for you to furnish such details as are requested on the following pages. Without this information, we will be unable to issue the ration book that you will need for basic food purchases, or the national identity card, which it will be necessary for you to present whenever requested by authority. Please use black ink. Erroneous or deliberately misleading information will result in prosecution.

Two letters from Uncle Geoffrey and Auntie Margery:

25th September 1939

Dear Mattie,

Geoffrey called on Sunday, as per usual, but perhaps you were out.

On the other hand, perhaps you were feeling ‘under the weather' and had rather not receive visitors. Geoffrey thought he saw Noel, but perhaps he was mistaken.

Should he call next Sunday instead?

Yours affectionately,

Geoffrey and Margery Overs

 

9th October 1939

Dear Mattie,

Just a little note. We tried to telephone you, but there must have been some fault on the line since you were unable to hear our voices.

Is all well with you and young Noel? Shall Geoffrey call on the usual Sunday this month? We imagine there may be some little jobs around your house needing attention, and it's always Geoffrey's pleasure to help out.

Yours affectionately,

Geoffrey and Margery Overs

Geoffrey and Margery always said ‘we' for everything, as if fused together like Chang and Eng. He imagined their ears jointly pressed to the telephone. He had witnessed that call, he realized – Mattie listening silently for a few seconds before replacing the receiver.

His hands were black. He filled the scuttle and dragged it back to the kitchen and when the range was lit, he burned the papers one by one, keeping only the letter from the National Registration Office. He would write to the office, he decided, asking for another set of forms, and when those arrived he could fill them in himself.

He washed his hands, and made some porridge. Mattie was awake; he could hear her talking to herself. She'd been doing
that, off and on, for days now – odd, chipped remarks, without obvious context, as if she were reading a newspaper article, and throwing out comments. ‘Never asked permission,' he heard her say, from halfway down the stairs, ‘just went full speed ahead. It's a bit thick, if you ask me.' He heard her slippers slapping down another three steps, and then pausing. ‘I
told
you it damned well wasn't,' she said. The footsteps began again, but this time heading back up towards her bedroom.

Noel looked at the spoonful of porridge he was holding. It was wobbling, and he realized that his hand was shaking. He put the spoon down and knitted his fingers together. It must be awfully cold, he thought, to make him shiver like that.

He found a pair of mittens and a scarf in the boot-room, and then, because it seemed silly to dress so warmly and stay in, he went out. He had an urge to go somewhere quite far away, and he hopped on the 136, going down Pond Street, and stayed on it until it rounded the corner at the North Side of Regent's Park. As soon as he got off, he could hear the gibbons hooting.

It was at least six months since he'd last been to the zoo, and it was a shrunken, toothless version of its old self. The pandas and elephants had been moved outside London, the aquariums closed, the reptile house emptied of poisonous snakes. He asked a keeper what had happened to them, and the man – the sort who thought himself funny – took out a handkerchief, placed it over his own nose and mouth, and feigned death throes. ‘Had to do it,' said the man. ‘Once Hitler starts, it'll only take the one bomb and Camden High Street'll be crawling with rattlers.'

The remaining insects in the insect house were mostly ants and beetles. Noel stood in front of the glass box that had once held black widow spiders. ‘My tutor at Somerville looked just like that,' Mattie had remarked, when they'd been here in early spring. ‘Spindly little arms and legs, and a great round body. Devoured her husband directly after the wedding, apparently.'

He went to the café and ate a teacake, and then spent a
quarter of an hour tailing a group of Canadian airmen, marvelling at how many times they swore and then calculating an average per minute (twenty-three).

‘Hey, kid,' said one of them, eventually, ‘fuck off or we'll throw you in with the fucking chimps. You've got the ears for it.'

There was no bus coming. He started to walk back across Primrose Hill, and rapidly wished that he hadn't. At the zoo, the only children had been toddlers with nursemaids, but out here there were packs of boys, dangling from trees, playing football, jeering at the ladies digging allotments on the south slope. One group was engaged in a spitting competition, with a woman's bottom as the target. As Noel passed by, one of the spitters detached himself, and swung into step beside him.