Crooked Heart (7 page)

‘Spitfire Fund,' she said to the woman who answered the door.

‘What's happened to Edna?' asked the woman.

‘Who?'

‘Edna Cleverley who does the Spitfire collection.'

‘Hurt her foot,' said Vee, randomly.

‘How?'

She hesitated. ‘Tripped over a dog?'

The woman frowned. ‘She doesn't have a dog.'

Leave now
, ordered a voice in Vee's head. ‘Next door's dog,' she heard herself saying.

‘The collie?'

‘That's right.' A miracle. Vee smiled breezily and rattled the box.

The woman shook her head. ‘I gave something last month,' she said, and closed the door with a hint of a slam.

Vee glanced in the direction of Noel. He was staring directly at her. She skipped a couple of houses, for no reason other than nerves, and swung the knocker of the third.

Another child answered, a thick-set boy this time, with pink cheeks and a scornful mouth.

‘Spitfire Fund,' said Vee.

‘That's not a Spitfire.'

‘What isn't?'

‘On the box. It's a Wellington.'

‘Is it?' She peered at the picture. ‘Well, it doesn't matter.'

‘I'd like to see you try to fight a Messerschmitt with a Wellington,' he said. ‘It'd matter then all right.'

She gave the box a shake.

‘Haven't collected much, have you?' he asked. ‘What you got in there, a button?'

‘Can I speak to your mother?'

‘She's not in.'

‘Why aren't you at school?'

‘None of your business.'

‘You've got a cheek, speaking to me like that.'

‘You gonna stop me?'

‘Somebody damn well ought to.'

The boy turned his head. ‘Dad!' he shouted, up the hall. Vee started to walk very quickly back along the road, her best shoes rubbing.

‘Come
on
,' she called to Noel before she reached him. She dared a look back before she turned the corner and the boy was gone, the door closed; he'd been codding her. She sat on the wall to catch her breath.

Noel had already stood up, and remained standing as Vee slipped off a shoe and rubbed her heel. Distantly, a church clock struck the half hour. The last time she'd been in Watford, there'd been plenty of motor traffic, but nowadays the roads were nearly all empty, and it was as quiet as a village. She could hear someone scrubbing a pavement. And sparrows bickering. And a man shouting, ‘Oi, you! You on the wall there! Did you just swear at my boy?'

She rammed the shoe back on, and started running. She could hear Noel peg-legging along behind her. A bus was coming up the road and she reached the stop and waved a hand,
and scrambled on board while it was still moving and Noel jumped up beside her, limp momentarily forgotten. There was the faintest flush of pink in his cheeks.

‘I need to try another place,' said Vee.

She took a seat, and peered between the strips of grimy tape on the window. Larger houses, she thought: the sort of places where the kiddies would be away at boarding school.

It was important to have a
plan
.

When they got off the bus again seven stops later, Vee took a newspaper out of her bag. ‘Here,' she said. ‘Mrs Pilcher gave me last week's
Advertiser
. There's a Children's Corner in it, competitions and suchlike. You can read it while you're waiting.' She nodded at the bench beside the bus stop. After a long moment, Noel reached out his hand for the paper. He watched Vee walk away along Linden Avenue, grey coat, grey hat, her head twitching to and fro as she inspected the houses on either side of the road. The first time he'd ever seen her he'd thought of a magpie, but now she seemed more like a pigeon, drab and directionless, pecking at anything that looked as if it might be edible. At one point, she paused to crane over a laurel hedge; at another she started to open a gate, and then closed it again hastily. It was obvious that she was doing something that she ought not to be doing. He felt a little tug of curiosity; it had been a long time since he'd last felt that.

Vee dwindled into the distance.

The front page of the
Herts Advertiser
was all fine print; scores of tiny advertisements for accommodation, lodgers, help wanted.
Lady Fremantle recommends her useful maid; good needlewoman, fond of dogs.

He turned the pages, his gaze bumping across the columns, snagging the odd line:
A fine of 5s was imposed on Alfred Field of 27, Cravells Road, Harpenden, at St Albans Divisional Sessions on Saturday, for driving a horse and cart without front lights
. Reading
felt effortful. It was odd to think that for years he had sucked up print without thinking. Since leaving Mattie's house, he hadn't finished a book. He couldn't follow a plot any more, the meaning seemed to bypass his brain, or else stuck to it briefly and then fell off when he turned the page, like an inadequately licked stamp.

Children's Corner. How to make a useful and decorative letter rack. Take an old picture frame, approximately 12" by 8". You will also need scissors, drawing pins, an old newspaper, poster paints, glue or paste, a brush, a pot of clear varnish . . .

Without books, he'd had no way of making the time pass quickly. The hours at his aunt and uncle's house had stretched like knicker elastic. He had done mental arithmetic, or played ludo against himself, rotating the board between each go. And he had written a diary in code, updating it every quarter of an hour. 9.15
Auntie Margery is making an apple pie
. 9.30
Auntie Margery is sweeping the kitchen floor.
9.45
Auntie Margery is washing dishcloths.
10.00
Auntie Margery has just looked up at me and sighed.
Uncle Geoffrey had removed the diary, and given him a wall-map instead, with a box of red glass-headed pins, so he could mark the advance of the British Expeditionary Force in Europe. And then Germany had invaded Belgium and France and all the pins had gone tinkling back into the box again.

The sum of £96 4s 1d was raised as a result of the house-to-house collection taken recently in aid of Red Cross Parcels for British Prisoners of War. Mrs Freda Lambert, chairman of the Harpenden and District Branch of the Red Cross, stated, ‘We have been delighted by the unstinting generosity shown by Harpenden householders towards such a worthy cause.'

Noel read the paragraph a second time. He felt as if someone had just reached into his head and given his brain a sharp pinch. Holmes would have put down his violin at this point; Sam Spade would have reached for his gun. Noel snapped the paper shut and looked along the road. A hundred yards away, Vee was talking to someone, her head bobbing nervously.

She could hardly believe it. Here she was, at the swanky end of Watford, standing outside a house that had to be worth hundreds of pounds, and the owner had not only refused to hand over a single penny, but had actually followed her up the garden path and on to the pavement and was giving her a lecture on communism. She couldn't grasp the half of what he was saying. He had a long face with a mouth like a letter box, and leaflets kept shooting out of it. Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact. Imperialism on Both Sides. The Worker Betrayed. Words rattled past her ears. He was scarcely looking at her; it was as if she were the front row of a vast audience.

She edged away, lowering the collecting box. A few coins slithered around inside – three or four bob at most, a rotten profit for a whole afternoon. Take out the cost of the train and the bus, and the strain on her nerves, and it wasn't worth it. Another plan kaput.

The mouth carried on moving. Struggle on Two Fronts. Spectre of Capitalism. Government Lackeys. Something moved beside her, and she turned to see Noel, blank-faced at her elbow.

‘Oh, it's my little lad,' she said, gratefully. ‘He's been waiting for me like ever such a good boy. I'd better take him home to his tea, hadn't I?'

‘And when they come and march him off to the front, perhaps you'll reconsider,' said the man. ‘With the financial support of people like yourself, the capitalist-engineered armed conflict will be eternal.'

‘Yes,' said Noel, ‘isn't it strange that there's always enough money in the coffers for a war?'

In the pause that followed, Vee seized the boy's hand and dragged him away along the road.

‘I think that chap had a screw loose,' she remarked, as they waited for the bus, ‘though he's right that the war's a racket, they're all on the make. That's what Donald says as well. Sir Winston Chiseller, he calls him.'

Noel was looking at the collecting box in her hand. The picture of the aeroplane was starting to peel off, the words
Heathen Mission
clearly visible beneath.

‘How much did you collect?' he asked.

‘What?' Vee twisted round to look at him.

‘How much money did you actually get?'

‘Never you mind.' She put the box in her bag. ‘Here's the bus coming,' she said, brightly, ‘we'll soon be home.'

Noel spoke again. ‘Because the house-to-house collection for Red Cross Parcels in Harpenden raised over ninety-six pounds.'

‘
How
much?' She turned, her arm still stuck out to signal the bus.

‘Ninety-six pounds, four shillings and a penny.'

‘
Ninety-six!
'

‘I expect they had quite a few collectors though, not just one.'

‘Yes, but even so, that's a . . . a . . .' With an effort, Vee remembered what she ought to be saying. ‘There are a lot of people collecting for Spitfires as well,' she said. ‘Lots and lots of us.'

Noel slid her a look; she busied herself, sorting out change for the conductor, trying to stave off panic. He'd guessed what she was doing, she could see it in his eyes. She didn't know how she could ever have thought him simple; he was the opposite – he was like one of those fancy knots, all loops, no
ends. And he'll tell, she thought. That's what children do, unless they're given a reason not to.

‘I expect you'd like more sweeties,' she said. ‘Shall we stop off at Woolies on the way home?'

He said nothing.

‘Or some pocket money?' she suggested. ‘A little bit of pocket money?'

He shook his head.

‘Well, what then?' she hissed, close to his ear. And then, when he didn't speak, she let out a sigh like a deflating tyre. ‘All right, all right,' she said, bitterly. ‘First thing when we get to St Albans, we go to the Town Hall and give the money to the fund.
Won't
all those councillors be pleased?'

‘No,' said Noel. ‘I don't want any more Spitfires. There shouldn't even be a war, I don't believe in it, I don't care if we lose.'

Vee found herself feeling shocked. Even if you knew all the politicians were out for themselves, you had to want England to win, didn't you?

‘Perhaps I ought to give them a bit,' she said. She tried to imagine herself going up to a collecting box and actually putting money in. And being thanked, like Lady Bountiful. She'd just nod and not say anything; you wouldn't want to show off.

‘No, don't give them
anything
,' said Noel. Mattie would never have given a penny.

‘So what do you want, then?' asked Vee again. ‘You must want something.'

On the train journey back, he turned her query over in his mind, examining it, as if it were a puzzle to which he'd once known the solution. Since that frozen December morning when he had found Mattie on the Heath, her face a mask of putty, her feet cobalt, he had only
not
wanted things. It hadn't occurred to him that anyone might ever ask him that question again.

Little brain-teaser for you, young Noel: what exactly would you like?
Inside his head, the old life seem to expand, squashing the present into a thin rind. When Mattie had hugged him, it had felt like being enfolded in a mattress. He could see her heavy-featured face and hear the vigour of her voice.
What shall we do today? Go and visit poor old Rameses II at the British Museum, see if he's managed to unwrap himself yet, and then lunch at the University Club? Or would you prefer Lyons? Yes, better puddings there, I always think. Incidentally, did I ever tell you about Roberta in the British Museum, chaining herself to Laocoön and His Sons? Which London statues would you most like to have in the garden? Oh those are splendid choices, absolutely splendid – we shall have Nelson in the front garden, and Boadicea in the back, and on fine days I shall hang the tea towels from her chariot wheels . . .

He had never been bored with Mattie, never, never, never and now he was bored all the time,
all the time
; it was unbearable, like following mile after mile of grey string, with nothing at the end of it but a grim, distant, adult version of himself.

‘Here we are,' said Vee, ‘chop chop.'

He followed her out of the station. ‘I want to do it too,' he said.

‘Do what?'

‘Collect money, the way you're doing.'

‘No,' she said. A woman with a yellow headscarf was passing, and Vee nodded and called out ‘Hello, Mrs de Souza', and the woman with the headscarf seemed not to hear her at all but went sailing straight past.

‘That's Mrs de Souza,' said Vee. ‘Her husband owns the shoe shop where my son used to work. They sell brogues for nearly ten pounds there, the leather's like satin. She's a snooty type.'

‘I want to help.'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘It'd be wrong.'

‘So how come
you're
doing it?'

‘You're supposed to be limping.' She looked up at the abbey clock. ‘We're late, I need to be getting Donald's tea ready.'

She started to walk faster. She was feeling rather frightened. It was like the verse in Hosea: she'd sown the wind and was reaping the whirlwind. She could almost feel the devil snapping at her heels.