Homing (26 page)

She came to Stephen’s canteen, pulled in behind the ambulance, and saw his familiar figure bending to offer a cup of tea to an exhausted warden who sat with his feet in the gutter. She was able to recognize old Smedley, wiping at a trickle of blood down his blackened face, his uniform covered with dirt and plaster, as though he had himself been dug out of something. Sylvia
approached
them, herself well disguised with grime.

“Hullo,” she said, and Stephen glanced up at her and reached for another cup of tea.

“We’re in a mess here,” he said. “Tilton is missing, and his aunt is being brave.”

“Where was he last?”

“They’re digging for him,” said Stephen briefly. “Evadne’s over there, waiting. She had just come in as Tilton and Smedley went out.”

Sylvia took the tea and sat down on the kerb with it beside Smedley, inquiring how he did, and receiving a somewhat punch-drunk account of the incident. Except for the rescue work the street was now perfectly quiet—traffic had been diverted with No Entry signs and the Germans had gone home to
breakfast
. Suddenly the sun showed itself through the smoke haze, and another day had begun.

Perhaps it was the tea, perhaps it was Stephen’s always bracing presence, or the usual profound post-raid stillness and exaltation—strength flowed back into her with an almost physical impact. There, you see, she reproached herself. It was just a bad night. I told you it would end like this. Anybody’d think you’d never seen a raid before. Tired. Everybody’s tired. That’s to be
expected
. Well, anyway—nobody caught me wobbling. Nobody has to know.

“Jeff’s here,” said Stephen. “He’ll be looking for you.”

“Where? Maybe he went back to the Post—” She glanced round eagerly. Jeff too. You see? I told you so.

“Try down by the ropes.” Stephen pointed to where a
policeman
was supervising the erection of a barrier around the new crater which had a jagged wall rising behind it. “He went thataway.”

The bomb had been down long enough for the dust to settle a bit, though the smell was still very noticeable. The front of the house still stood, the steps, the door ajar on its hinges, the glassless windows, with curtains blowing in and out. Then there was a big piece gone, and beyond it a nearly complete room, open on the front side, with pictures askew on the walls and a bowl of flowers intact on the centre-table. Fine plaster dust and house rubble lay over everything and blew along the floor and coated the furniture. It was exactly like a stage-set, Sylvia thought, with the fourth wall neatly removed to face the audience—the kind of set that always drew a round of applause as a tribute to its detail and realism.

Jeff had paused there, listening to the policeman beside the ropes. She slid her hand under his arm and felt it gripped against his side as she joined the group. The face she raised to his
welcoming
smile was serene, if dirty, the tear marks already overlaid with a more recent deposit from the smoky air. Nobody could tell, not even Jeff, by looking at her, that for once, during the past
night, she had wavered. His arrival brought the final reassurance to her recovered morale, and there was another day for Sylvia.

“—one of the miracles,” the policeman was saying. “She wasn’t hurt. If only they wouldn’t try to go back for their bits and pieces, we had quite a time with her about that. That wall can come down any minute now.”

The sun looked out again, slanting into the room. The ambulance still waited, its stretchers out. The rescue squad and the wardens were still digging, surrounded by the eerie quiet that always covered the scene of an incident.

“There’s three more in the shelter under there, besides the missing warden,” said the policeman, pointing next door where everything was in a heap. “A bad job with that wall, but if nothing more is dropped it may hold for a while anyway.”

“Mm-hm.” Jeff looked at the wall and looked away, at the men working below it, and then at Sylvia standing beside him. “Are you about ready to knock off?” he said.

“Back to the post a minute, to make sure about Myrtle, and then we can go.” She smiled up at him confidently as the All-Clear began. “That was quite a night,” said Sylvia. “Let’s find Evadne while we’re here, and ask about Tilton.”

“Stevie will know where she’s got to,” Jeff agreed, and they filtered through the little group that always gathered where ropes were stretched around forbidden territory.

“There ’e is!” cried a woman’s voice. “There’s my
dickie-bird
! Listen to ’im, pore little soul, all unconscious!”

Sylvia paused. Somewhere a canary was singing. Jeff had not noticed, and she turned back, trying to trace the sound.

“Under the table, ’e was. I told ’im ’e’d be safe there, and ’e was!” A stout middle-aged woman stood with her hands on the rope barricade, leaning across it towards the room which lacked a fourth wall. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears, one hand was bandaged, her clothes were torn and ruined with grit and chimney soot. “Somebody please fetch my Dickie out of there—”

One of the ambulance girls took hold of her arm.

“They can’t get to him just yet,” she said soothingly. “They’ve got to try for the shelter people first, you know. You just wait a bit—he’ll be all right.”

“Not if that wall comes down, ’e won’t. ’Ere, I’ll go in meself, it’s only a step—”

The girl held her arm firmly.

“No, much better not. Leave it to the men, they know how, they’ll get to him, you’ll see—”

The canary went on singing. Midge would not have called it a voice. It was high and shrill and common—a cockney canary. But all unconscious, as she said. Something very strange had happened in the night, and nobody had come round with his breakfast, but the sun was shining—a little more sun than usual somehow—and so he sang.

Sylvia surveyed the open room thoughtfully. She could see the cage now, on the floor under the table where the bowl of flowers stood. A bright table cover, laid on corner-wise and now dimmed by the dust, half hid the bird.

She looked up at the wall of the house which had been blown away. It had an angle at the back, which seemed to her practised eye able to hold it up. The wall wasn’t sheer, it had two legs, as it were. There was no fire, the only thing that ever made her hesitate. One more for Midge….

She ducked under the rope and ran lightly across the broken bricks and rubble towards the song. Someone shouted once—the policeman?—and then there was silence intensified.

Jeff standing beside the canteen with Stephen, looked back just in time to see her enter the shell, and felt Stephen’s hand close hard on his arm.

“
Stand
still!
” said Stephen between his teeth. “Don’t anybody move, or make a noise.”

They waited, afraid to breathe. She was so light, so quick, she moved so easily. She wouldn’t set things rolling and drifting, the way she moved….

She had reached the room, which was now in full sunlight. She stopped, picked up the cage, spoke to the bird, and started back with it—light, swift, skimming….

Several squares away a red bus was feeling its way along the roped-off, dishevelled streets—observing its detours, jolting a bit here and there on the ruptured, uneven pavement. It was within its rights, it moved cautiously, everyone had done the right thing. But from it, like a ripple on the surface of a pond, a tremor spread—imperceptible except to the ragged wall, which wavered, leaned, mumbled, and collapsed with an awful slowness, blotting out the sunlit room.

At the same moment Jeff lunged forward towards the rain of concrete. As he passed the rope and reached the fringe a piece of the cornice struck him and he went down.

While the air was still full of débris and dust, and fragments still rattled down, the rescue men who had been beyond the fall swarmed in. Jeff they got hold of almost at once, and carried him out to where the ambulance stood. Laid on a stretcher, he immediately tried to sit up, with a grunt of pain. His left arm and shoulder were useless.

“Take it easy,” Stephen’s voice said beside him. “Evadne’s here. Hang on to Evadne. I’m going in.”

Sitting on the kerb with his feet in the road, Jeff swayed blindly against some one who proved to be Evadne. An ambulance girl knelt at his other side, cutting away his
coat sleeve
. Some one held a damp cloth against his face, wiping off the grit and blood.

“She only needed ten seconds more,” he said.

A cup of tea appeared before him in a hand. He stared at it blankly.

“Drink it,” said Evadne’s voice.

He took the cup obediently in his right hand, which was raw and dirty and scarred, and felt the hot sweet liquid on his tongue.

“She won’t be alive,” he said, when he had swallowed once.

“Drink it, Jeff,” said Evadne, and the cup crashed on the pavement, splashing them both with hot tea, and he hid his eyes with his hand, making no sound.

Evadne sat beside him, wordless, motionless, holding him against her, and they heard the picks and shovels at work behind them, and low voices, and some one sobbing quietly while they waited.

T
HERE WAS
no longer any question about who would be going to Farthingale for Christmas. Bracken hired a car, Stephen and Evadne put Jeff into it, and rode with him through the wintry Cotswold countryside.

His arm and shoulder were in a bulky cast, but he could still get about on his feet, if he cared to. Until the day they left London he simply sat wherever they put him, quiet,
self-contained
, docile—no trouble to anyone. They cut up his food for him, and he ate it methodically, with his good right hand. If they spoke to him, he gathered himself together and replied sensibly. If they didn’t he was silent, looking straight ahead of him.

Shock was all very well, said Evadne. But it should wear off. Numbness can’t last, however merciful.

He had volunteered only one sentence since it happened. When they first brought him home from the hospital in the cast and sat him down in the drawing room in Upper Brook Street at tea time, Midge on the table in the corner began to sing.

They watched Jeff discreetly, for this was one of the hurdles. At first he seemed not to notice. No one else appeared to notice either. It was normal for Midge to sing at tea time. There was less to sing about lately without Sylvia there, but she always came eventually, he had learned. He was a canary, not a dog with second sight and an always anxious heart. There were voices and lights in the room, and the accustomed clink of china, and he joined in with his song. Sylvia would come.

They made conversation, while Jeff sat silent, drinking tea and not meeting their eyes. Then—

“Take it away,” he said, and Dinah reached obediently for his cup.

“The bird,” he said, without emphasis. “Take it away.”

Dinah rose, making no comment, and carried Midge’s cage into her bedroom and shut the door on him. Nobody referred to him again. But it was one of the signs that they had something on their hands. Midge remained there in London when they took Jeff to Farthingale.

Word of Sylvia’s death had gone ahead of him by telephone, Bracken to Virginia, the strong if apparently casual bond between brother and sister eliminating any necessity for breaking things gently or circumventing facts. Each of them had their own problem. Jeff in London was dazed and rebellious, besides his painful injury. Mab at Farthingale would be torn asunder by her grief for Sylvia, her pity for Jeff, and the tragic circumstances of that December morning which could not be kept from her.

Mab would have to know that Sylvia had died bringing out a charwoman’s canary—the flattened wires of the cage and the dead bird were beside her body when they got to it. Mab would have to know that Jeff’s physical injury would be slow to heal, and that his mental state made him unable to bear the sight of Midge. Mab could not be spared anything, for her own sake, because it was just possible that if she understood, if she herself could be made to face things, she might be able to help them reach Jeff in his dark little private world of horror.

She’s too young for this, Virginia thought, standing with both hands to her face when Bracken had rung off. She isn’t old enough or wise enough. It will only knock her over too. We have no right to ask this of her now….

And before Virginia had at all got herself together Mab came running down the staircase and stopped short at sight of the quiet figure by the telephone. Her startled eyes met Virginia’s and all the colour left her face.

“What is it?” she whispered, holding on to the banister. “Who called?”

Virginia collected her from the bottom step with an encircling arm and walked her silently into the drawing room and closed the door behind them.

“Gran—
it’s
Jeff!
”
Tense fingers gripping—white face upturned—naked terror, for Jeff.

“No—no. Jeff’s coming here. He’ll be all right. But we’ve lost Sylvia.”

“N-not—
dead!
”

“Very quickly—before they got to her. She didn’t have to endure.”

Mab drew back without a sound. She did not hide her face, but it became a rigid mask of self-control, undistorted, but frozen, with widened eyes which saw nothing. Virginia reached for her, entertaining a passing fear that she might faint. Without seeming to elude her hands, but somehow untouchable, Mab found the end of the sofa like a blind person and sat down. Virginia moved quietly to sit beside her, waiting. Finally she took one of the clenched hands in Mab’s lap and uncurled it, cherishing it in hers.

“A brick wall came down,” she said, believing anything was better than the silence. “The raid was over. She went after a canary in a cage, in a bombed house. They heard it singing, and Sylvia slipped under the rope before they saw her. Jeff tried to run in as the wall fell, and it damaged his shoulder and arm. He’s in a cast. But that’s nothing that won’t mend. The shock may last longer. They want to get him down here as soon as possible—get him to stay in bed and rest. Will you mind coming in with me again, so he can have your room?”

No answer. No response. Mab’s hand lay lax in hers.

“Mab. We have to help Jeff now. We have to think how we can help him.”

Mab spoke without moving.

“I should have gone to Williamsburg,” she said.

“You—what—?” Virginia bent closer to hear.

“I shouldn’t be here. I should have gone away. He won’t want to see me now.”

“But of course he will! You may be the only one he wants to see. He can’t bear the sight of poor Midge.”

“Nor of me.”

“I don’t see why you say that, Mab. We’re all counting on you to be able to do something with him. I know it’s a lot to ask of you, but—”

“He won’t want to see me. I’ll have to go away.”

“Mab, this won’t do, this isn’t like you. Tell me what you’re thinking, I don’t understand.”

Mab said slowly, with great effort, not meeting Virginia’s eyes, “Will you please write to Mummy and ask if I can go back home at once?”

“To London? No, I will not!”

“You could say you need my room here.”

“Not till I know what’s in your mind. I never—”

“Jeff will know.”

“Jeff? He can’t think at all. He’s in a fog. We look to you to help bring him back to normal, so he can face things and go on. Mab, tell me what’s behind all this. You’d never let Jeff down. He’ll need you now. Why are you funking it?”

Mab looked at her then—wide green eyes in a paper-white face.

“I tell you he won’t bear the sight of me either,” she said.

“But
why
,
I can’t see—”

“Because he’ll never believe I didn’t wish Sylvia dead.”

“
Mab
,
you can’t—”

“I didn’t, of course. I swear I didn’t. I loved her. She was the most beautiful, shining person I ever saw.”

“But
of
course,
darling, nobody could possibly—”

“You all know that I’ve loved Jeff all my life. It’s no secret from anybody—he knows it—Sylvia knew. Sooner or later it will occur to all of you that I must have wished for Sylvia to—wished that Sylvia wasn’t—” The unnatural calm broke suddenly into quivering appeal. “Oh, Gran, not you! Promise
you
won’t ever wonder if I wanted him to be without her!”

Virginia caught and held the thin, tense body against her breast, and Noel, who had sat awed and unhappy all this while, looking on, put his forepaws up in Mab’s lap and nuzzled an anxious, comforting nose against her arm, and for the only time in his life was ignored.

“Mab, my dear, foolish darling, nobody on earth could possibly imagine such a thing!”

“I loved her—I’ll miss her as much as he does—they belong
together
,
there’s no place for me—I never thought of
me
,
Gran, I never wanted Sylvia to die, and I have no right to go on living now, with Sylvia dead—”

Tears at last, and great sundering sobs. Virginia held her, rocking, crooning, saying foolish comforting nonsense, until she was quiet and spent, her face buried against Virginia’s shoulder.

“There,” Virginia said then, when she could be heard. “There, you see? That’s what comes of peering and prying into God’s will. We come up with all the wrong answers. How on earth could your loving Jeff bring any harm to Sylvia? Nobody in this family, least of all Jeff, is likely to confuse the Battle of Britain with some kind of witchcraft. My dear—what happened to Sylvia was all a part of this dreadful pattern of grief and
destruction
we’re caught up in. We mustn’t try to read into it any private significance or superstition. There is a kind of massive coincidence at work these days, Mab—nothing rhymes, and
there’s no reason anywhere. It’s easy to decide that we are the victims of a particular cosmic malice—until we realize that nine out of ten people must feel exactly the same. You can’t have destruction on this scale without smashing all the laws of averages and probability—I’m talking nonsense, Mab, I’m ’way beyond my depth—all I’m trying to say is, don’t for God’s sake try to run His universe. You must learn to take it as it comes,” said Virginia, groping after Oliver’s philosophy, which was, after all, just that there was always something to be said for being alive, even if you had to wait a bit.

They wouldn’t let him see her, when the blanket-covered stretcher was finally brought out. He remembered firm hands that held him back, perhaps Evadne’s, and a man’s voice roughly kind, that said, “Don’t look, sir, I wouldn’t—not now, sir—” He was not sure, as time went on, that it was for the best that he had not looked, because when he got out of the hospital they had put her away forever, which left him wondering.

And yet, thanks to them, he could only remember her as she had always been—whole and alive and beautiful. And surely she would have preferred it that way. (“Don’t look now, I’ve got me curl-papers in,” she would clown it, with her head done up becomingly in a towel after a shampoo.)

And at that point he would pass his good hand again across his eyes, to wipe away the stretcher going past him with the blanket pulled so smooth and tidy across its light burden.

Someone had cried and cried—the woman who owned the bird, Evadne told him—not for the bird, not any more, but for Sylvia, and for him, and for her own unwitting part in what had happened. Had they left the bird there in its crushed cage, or had they brought it out too, for decent burial? He would have liked to ask Evadne. It was one of the things he still wondered about. But even in the car on the way to Farthingale he still could not trust his voice to speak of it.

What had become of Midge, he wondered, since that day when Dinah took him into her room and left him there? Some one would have to take care of Midge, he was accustomed to love and conversation and titbits. Some one would have to pamper Midge, Sylvia would think of that, wherever she was, it must be done for her. But he had not brought himself to speak of that to
Dinah before he left London. Dinah was out all day at her office, and Midge would be lonely. If Sylvia had foreseen that Midge would need a guardian other than himself she would certainly have chosen Mab. But he knew, as the car bore him westward into Gloucestershire, that he could not without breaking down ask Mab to take charge of Midge.

For a bird, Sylvia had died. Not for a child, not for one of the dauntless old ladies who stuck it out in London so as not to give Hitler the satisfaction. For a shrill yellow canary, no less valuable in the eyes of that sobbing widow woman who had lost everything else than the banded, pedigreed, alto Roller who had
accompanied
Sylvia everywhere for the past ten years. It was not poor Midge’s fault that Sylvia was dead, and he must not be allowed to pine. Just so long as one never had to see or hear him again, in the rooms one had shared with Sylvia. Take him, one must say to Mab, and love him, but keep him out of my sight. Always.

That would be easier to accomplish than Mab might realize, at first, because they wouldn’t be seeing much of each other from now on. Impossible, now that that strange fourth dimensional attraction between them might get the upper hand, with Mab growing up so fast and Sylvia gone. Mab must be left quite free to fall in love with someone else when the time came. Sylvia’s death was a barrier between them quite as final as Sylvia’s living presence. There would be no stepping round Sylvia to Mab now, any more than if she were still alive. Sylvia would always be alive, somewhere, his wife, his first and only love. Mab would
understand
that, he thought, without any futile words from him. Less difficult for them both if they saw less of each other now that the barrier between them had merely become invisible.

Mab was watching from the window as the car came into the carriage sweep and stopped in front of the steps. With her cheek against the cold glass she could see Stephen step down and turn to help Jeff, slow and clumsy in his heavy cast, and then Evadne. Reluctantly she followed Virginia into the hall. It would have looked very odd if she had not been there to meet him. Because of his injury her usual reckless greeting was ruled out in any case. Perhaps he would have to go straight to bed after the journey. Imagine hoping that she wouldn’t have to talk to Jeff, or see him alone. She thought she would be able to tell at once by his face, if he was dreading the meeting as much as she did….

They were coming into the hall. There was the brief, scented smother of Evadne’s embrace, Stephen’s brotherly kiss, and then
Jeff—tall and bulky in the cast—drawn and gaunt, but trying to smile—nothing in his face but pain and fatigue and something like compassion, the way he had looked at her that day in the wood….

“Oh, Jeff—” she said, and laid her face against the sleeve of his good arm.

“Hullo, Mab.” His hand found hers and held it warm and close and let it go. “Don’t cry, now, or you’ll get me started,” he advised in his slow, easy voice.

Virginia took over.

“Jeff, you’re to go to bed at once and have your dinner on a tray. You’ve got Mab’s room, and she and I are together in mine, we like it, and there’s a radio on your bedside table and some new books, and we’ll take turns running up to sit with you if you get bored. Come along, now, Stevie will help you get settled in.”