Crooked Heart (22 page)

‘What are you talking about?' Outside the window she could see another hillock of fresh rubble in another windowless street.

‘We heard four bombs dropped in a row, didn't we? Ours was the fourth. I'll bet this was where the third one landed. It's about a quarter of a mile away and there've been no raids in this bit of London since then.'

‘He's right,' said the elderly gentleman standing beside him. ‘The buggers dropped a stick of half-tonners going nor-nor-west, pardon my language.'

‘Pardoned,' said Vee, closing her eyes again.

Noel laid a ruler across his mental map of North London, lined up the first two sites and, after some consideration, marked the next cross beside St Dominic's Priory. He felt guiltily pleased when the bus passed two friars exiting the church through a hole in the lady chapel wall. There was a crater in the playground of St Dominic's School next door, and a huge, leafless tree beside the road had snapped like a toothpick. The exposed wood was a sheaf of pale yellow splinters.

Noel shifted the imaginary ruler south-east.

‘First one they dropped was the worst,' said the old gentleman. ‘It hit a gas main, firefighters there till morning.'

‘Diversion,' called the conductor. ‘We will be diverting down Queen's Crescent and then Haverstock Hill.'

Noel worked out where the next mark would come, and frowned. The bus swung round a corner.

‘Which street had the gas main?' asked Noel.

‘Mafeking Road.'

Vee opened her eyes.

‘What was that?'

‘Mafeking Road. Blew up half the damn street,' said the old gentleman. ‘Pardon my language.'

Vee nudged Noel. ‘Ring the bell,' she said.

Where the solid, four-storey Victorian terrace had stood, there was only an undulating black wall, punched through with rectangles of sky.

A rope hung limply across the road. Noel stepped over it and walked towards number 23. Through the gap where the main front door had stood, he could see the scarlet berries of a rowan tree in the back garden. There was a frill of molten metal beside the doorstep; it took him a moment to realize that he was looking at the bootscraper.

‘Wait for me,' said Vee. She caught up, and stood beside him as he looked down into the basement area. It was half-full of water, the surface scummed with ash and dotted with islets of charred wood. Only the top part of the window hole was visible and it framed not a pin-neat room but a dense mush of broken bricks.

‘The floorboards burned through,' said a voice. Vee turned to see a girl of about twelve with a baby on her hip.

‘It all fell in and they haven't got the people out yet and my cousin who's a fireman says they won't ever get anyone out because there'll be nothing left of them after the fire.' She shifted the baby on to the other hip. ‘You're not supposed to go near it, in case it collapses.'

‘So why are you here then?' asked Noel, savagely. He walked straight past her, away from the terrace, his face white.

‘Don't mind him,' said Vee. ‘He's had a shock. We both have.' Her cheek throbbed as if someone were rapping it with a drumstick. ‘We knew the lady who lived in the basement of number twenty-three.'

‘Oh.' The girl slid a curious look at Vee's face. ‘And did you know the man as well?'

It took a moment for Vee to realize that the question was awry. ‘What do you mean,
did
? Mr Overs wasn't down there. He was on duty. He'd started his shift.'

The girl was already shaking her head, her expression tense with superior knowledge. ‘When the bomb went off, Mr Overs rushed back here and went in to try and rescue Mrs Overs.'

Yes, thought Vee, heavily, yes of course he did, that's exactly what he did; no power on earth could ever have stopped him.

She couldn't speak. She looked back at the window full of bricks. So they were both down there, poor sods, poor dull, devoted sods, and she would have been down there too, in that shoebox inferno, if Margery Overs hadn't been so . . . so . . . She shoved the uncharitable thought away and then flinched as a rat plopped into the basement lake and swam for the steps.

‘Horrible,' she said, inadequately.

‘Yes, it's very, very sad,' agreed the girl. The baby was wriggling, and she gave it her knuckle to suck. ‘Did you get hurt in an air-raid too?'

‘In a manner of speaking,' said Vee.

She found Noel sitting on a low wall just around the corner, and she sat down beside him.

‘I'd better tell you,' she said, ‘they're both gone. Your uncle went back in there to try and get your aunt.'

‘They're not my aunt and uncle,' said Noel, automatically, his lips barely moving. He stared at his shoes for a full minute before speaking again. ‘I have to tell you something. Something terrible.'

‘Go on, then.'

‘When I lived there I used to hope that I'd wake up in the morning and they'd be dead and Mattie would be alive again. That's what I hoped for.' He fiddled with one of his shoelaces and waited for a response. ‘Don't you understand?' he asked, when there was none. ‘I wished they'd die. I honestly did wish that, every single day, and now they're actually
dead
.' He
looked round at Vee defiantly, as if hoping for a smack on the ear.

‘Well, you can try and blame it on yourself if you like, but I think Hitler had something to do with it.'

He started to speak.

‘No,' she said. ‘You didn't make it happen. Lots of people are dying. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, and some of them are loved and some of them never got a single speck of love while they were on this earth, but none of them are dead just because a ten-year-old didn't like them.
Eleven
,' she corrected quickly, before he could jump in. ‘Goodness knows I've wished plenty of people dead in my time, and it never works. Never.'

That sounded wrong, she thought.

‘Bad thoughts aren't the same as bad deeds,' she added, and that sounded better.

They sat in silence for a minute or two, but the wind was picking up and the air was full of black ash.

‘Let's go,' said Vee. ‘You'll have to help me up, I'm as weak as a kitten.'

He gave her his arm, and she kept hold of it, all the way to the bus stop.

‘I
feel as if I've been away for a month,' said Vee. ‘I'd for gotten how clean it was here. And the air's nice and fresh.'

‘It's the same as when you get back from a holiday,' said Noel. ‘Though usually it works the other way around, doesn't it? Everything at home seems duller and smaller.'

‘I wouldn't know, I've never been on a holiday.'

‘What, never?'

‘We had a chapel day trip to Saffron Walden, once. It was foggy.'

They were standing on the pavement outside St Albans station, oddly, mutually reluctant to step back into their life there. It was ten o'clock and the morning sky was the colour of cold cocoa, threatening snow.

‘People are staring at me,' said Vee. ‘What do I say if they ask? Where do I say we've been?'

‘Visiting my relatives.'

‘And one of them punched me?'

‘You could tell the truth, say that you got injured in a raid.'

‘No.' She didn't want to be a sensation; the spotlight made her panic. ‘I'll say I fell over in the blackout. Heaven knows enough people do.'

And she recalled, suddenly, the thrilling snippet of local news that she'd overheard the week before – overheard and then forgotten in the scramble of events that had followed.

‘What's the matter?' asked Noel.

‘I've got to pop into the insurance office before we go home. I've just remembered something.'

They were passing Fleckney's Garage when Noel heard his surname called, and he looked up to see Mr Waring crossing the road, a crocodile of children trailing behind him.

‘The wanderer returns! Mrs Sedge' – the teacher lifted his hat, paused momentarily when he saw her face, and then gave a little bow – ‘I rejoice to see that the lost sheep has been gathered to the fold.'

‘Yes, he's back,' she said, awkwardly. ‘Needs feeding up a bit.'

‘And when shall we be seeing him in the classroom?'

‘Tomorrow,' said Noel, just as Vee said, ‘Today.'

‘
Today
,' she repeated, more firmly, giving him a look to remind him of his new, childish, status. ‘I'll take your case and you go along with Mr Waring. I expect that he's doing something educational, aren't you, Mr Waring?'

‘We're on our way to Brickett Wood for a lesson on edible fungus identification.'

‘Well, there we are. Useful as well.'

She ignored Noel's pale glare; it would be much easier to sort out her business at the Firebrand office without him.

It didn't take long – in fact the whole procedure went so smoothly that she felt like composing a testimonial:

I insured my elderly neighbour at a shilling a week, and twenty-eight pounds and a florin has just landed safely in my purse, thanks to the efficient and honest services of this company. I'll certainly be recommending Firebrand Insurance to all my friends!

Gratefully

A housewife of England

Old age had at last caught up with Miss Fillimore, who had
keeled over while walking her dog one evening, gone – according to the Coroner – between one breath and the next; a kindly death, especially compared to those poor souls in Kentish Town. The funeral had already taken place and Vee wasn't sorry she'd missed it; funerals always raised uneasy questions in her mind about the afterlife, and the difficult prospect of meeting those who'd gone before, particularly those whom God hath joined. When her own time came she didn't want to be ushered through the pearly gates only to find Samuel Sedge waiting for her with a song-sheet.

There had been forms to sign at Firebrand, and then a delay while the clerk went to fetch the key to the cash-box, but Vee had never had so sweet a wait. As she walked back to the flat, the bundle of money seemed to lighten the suitcase, rather than the reverse, and she spent it a few times in her head, first blowing the lot on a convalescent holiday in a spa hotel – her feet up on a chaise longue, a maid bringing her tea, Noel sitting in a nearby armchair with his nose in a book – and then changing her mind and buying a fawn cashmere coat for herself, and a brand-new bicycle for the boy. The next fantasy, a motor-tour of the Lake District, halted abruptly when she found that she couldn't open her own front door.

She inspected the key, in case it had sustained its own bomb damage during the week in London, and then she tried again. It wouldn't turn in the lock. She took a step back and looked at the door and noticed a pale crevice in the wood beside the jamb, where a long splinter had peeled away. There was a dent in one of the panels as well.

Abruptly, the door opened from the inside.

‘Yes?' said a small, pale figure in a flannel dressing gown.

Vee couldn't speak at first, just flapped her mouth. ‘That's my dressing gown,' she said, at last. ‘What have you done to my door?'

‘We had to change the keyhole.'

‘What?'

‘To get different keys.'

‘You've changed the
lock
? What are you doing here anyway? It's my flat, I'm a legal tenant, I'll have the law on you.' She was pushing past the Austrian girl as she spoke, using the case as a battering ram, turning to shove her out into the street. Explanations could wait: there was a
foreigner
in her bloody flat, and one who'd kicked her way in, by the look of it, and was now shouting her head off and clinging on to the door and—

Vee registered, suddenly, exactly what it was that the girl was shouting.

‘Donald!' called Hilde again.

Vee's head swivelled. At the top of the stairs, she saw her son. He was carrying a rifle.

Behind her, Hilde slid back inside the hall and closed the front door.

‘This person has attacked me, Donald.'

‘You've gone to Ireland,' said Vee.

‘She has bended two of my fingers. They are very painful.'

‘And I'm not a
person
!' shouted Vee, turning on the girl. ‘I'm his
mother
. I pay the rent for this place and I'm telling you to get out.'

‘No,' said Donald.

‘What?' Vee turned her head again, too quickly, and this time the whole world turned with her and she found herself clutching the banister. ‘You've got a gun,' she said, faintly, closing her eyes to quell the heave of the floor. She heard Hilde patter past her up the stairs.

‘Are you hurt?' asked Donald; there was, possibly, a thin thread of concern in his voice.

‘I got a concussion in the blackout, broke my cheekbone, had to have an operation, thank you for asking. This is my flat and I'm coming upstairs and I'm going to make myself a cup of tea
so you'd better get that girl out of my way if you know what's good for you.'

‘I do know what's good for me,' said Donald, in a peculiar tone of voice, and when Vee opened her eyes, Hilde was at his side, clutching his arm, looking down at Vee with those little black eyes.

‘May I ask you take off your shoes,' she called down.

‘Ask away,' said Vee. She dragged herself upstairs, and pushed past the pair of them on to the narrow landing.

Someone had hung a picture on the wall, a framed print of snow-covered mountains. Someone had tacked a fringe of beads on to the plain lampshade.

She opened the door to the kitchen and stared at the white tablecloth, the basket of raffia fruit, the vase of dried flowers, the easel – the
easel!
– by the window, slanted so that the morning light fell across a badly drawn tree. The curtains were tied back with ribbons. There were napkins on the table. In napkin rings.

‘I will make the tea,' announced Hilde, bustling in. ‘Sit, please.'

Vee started to argue, and then wearily pulled out a chair.

‘I've only been away a week,' she said, to no one in par ticular. There was a scraping noise behind her and she looked round to see Hilde on her hands and knees with a dustpan and brush, sweeping the diagonal route that Vee had just taken to the table.

‘Lemon or milk?' asked the girl.

‘What?'

‘With your tea. Lemon or milk?'

‘And where are you proposing to get a lemon from? Mussolini dropping you a parcel?'

‘I have a liddle dry peel from the last time I saw one.'

‘Milk.'

Donald eased into Vee's field of vision. He propped the rifle in a corner and sat down at the other end of the table.

‘What's going on then?' asked Vee, sharply, as if she was
speaking to a passing stranger rather than the fruit of her womb. ‘Why are you still here? Why have you got a gun?'

‘I joined the Home Guard.'

‘Whatever for?'

‘To get a firearm. Hilde had the idea.' He spoke her name with careful reverence, as if he'd get a cash prize for every mention.

The name in question was taking biscuits out of a tin barrel that Vee had never seen before, and arranging them on a plate.

‘And was it her idea to move herself in?'

Donald looked shifty.

‘It's a long story,' he said.

‘I've got plenty of time,' said Vee. ‘I'm not going anywhere – I
live
here, don't I? And before you start, isn't there someone else you should be asking about?'

There was a pause. Donald fingered his moustache.

‘I saw Gran outside the Co-op, she was with Cousin Har—'

‘I mean Noel! I mean the little boy you took to London and then lost.'

‘Did you find him then?'

‘Yes.'

‘So that's all right.'

‘No thanks to you.'

There wasn't a trace of guilt on his face, but there was something else – an expression, an
air
, that was unfamiliar. She couldn't quite put her finger on it.

‘I thought I'd never see you again,' she said, the plaintive words out before she knew they were there.

‘Something happened. We had to change the plan.'

‘Donald?' It was Hilde speaking, holding out a tray to him. He stood up and went over and got it, Vee watching with astonishment.

‘And now I will join you,' announced Hilde, taking a seat. She looked perfectly composed, sitting there in Vee's dressing
gown, on Vee's chair, in Vee's kitchen. Vee herself swung round so she didn't have to look at her.

‘What?' she said. ‘What happened?'

‘I can't say.'

‘What, we're just going to sit here and have a little chin-wag about the sugar ration while a German pours me tea and wears my
clothes
?'

‘Austrian.'

‘And what sort of woman's still in a dressing gown in the middle of the morning?'

‘This week I am on night shift at the factory,' said Hilde. ‘I was almost in my bed when you came.'

‘In
my
bed, almost in
my
bed.'

‘Mum—'

‘Would you like a Vanillekipferl?' Hilde seemed preternaturally calm, holding out the plate of biscuits.

‘No.'

‘I have baked them, but there is no vanilla or budder so they are very plain.'

‘They're not the only ones,' said Vee with a venomous glance at her.

‘No, Mum, you mustn't speak to Hilde like that.'

‘I can speak to her how I like. This is my flat, my table, my—'

‘I love her.' Donald uttered the threadbare old phrase as if it were newly stitched.

‘What?'

‘And she saved my life.'

Vee looked from one of them to the other, the large man (that was it, that was the expression she'd spotted: he looked like a
man
, his jaw as firm as Desperate Dan's) and the small, pale girl with her hair scraped back in an unbecoming bun, her eyes like currants on a dish.

‘What do you mean?' she asked, feebly.

‘We should tell her,' said Hilde. ‘Because she has to know about the money.'

‘What money?'

In the pause that followed, Vee found herself taking a biscuit. It wasn't bad. ‘What money?' she asked again.

‘
I
will tell,' said Hilde. ‘I read the ledder you brought to me, Mrs Setch. Donald asked that I should talk to him about a matter that is Life or Death, so after my shift I came here, to this small flat and we spoke about these things for a long time, didn't we?'

She wheeled her gaze round to Donald, and he nodded. That afternoon, seated at the kitchen table, behind the drawn curtains, he had started to explain the whole bloody mess to her, and she had peeled away his lies like someone stripping wallpaper: the hush-hush job, the landlady, the nobby background, the London club – he had confessed to everything, exposed the unglamorous truth. And afterwards, when she'd asked for time to think, he had sat in misery and listened to her footsteps as she'd walked from room to room around the flat. She'd paused in his mother's room and he'd heard the squeak of the dressing-table mirror and had known she was looking at herself and he'd wished he could look at her too – wished he could stand behind her with his arms around her waist, gazing at their twin reflections.

Without her, he felt halved. A thought, tentative and unfamiliar, had wriggled up from some previously unvisited region of his brain: she deserved better than him.

‘Then someone broke the door,' said Hilde.

He'd known it was death thundering up the stairs, and when the two men – the pallid one from Kensington, and a squat thug with hands like shovels – burst into the kitchen, he was still sitting on his chair, paralysed. In seconds, there was a razor at his throat, pressed to his Adam's apple so that he couldn't talk, or shout or even beg, and a warm thread crawled down his
neck, and pooled in the notch above his breastbone; the world receded, so that he seemed to be looking through the wrong end of a telescope at two tiny men, discussing in conversational tones whether they should kill him in the bathtub or in a bedroom, and he had no thoughts left, only fear roaring around the inside of his skull like a stunt motorcycle.