Out of the Blackout (24 page)

‘Oh—that night. We told you about that. But it wasn't just that night—it was all the nights leading up to it. Weeks. Months.' She passed her hand across her forehead, and in remembering that time she displayed for the only time in Simon's acquaintance with her some crack in the carapace of confidence that enveloped her. She was remembering fear, blank terror. ‘Raids, raids, raid. Sirens, trips to the shelter, to the Underground. People huddling on the stairs, the platforms, along the corridors. Explosions . . . fires. Every time you came out, you looked to see what was gone. It was like hell on earth, and it went on and on . . .' Slowly her complacency returned. ‘I think it was a miracle I kept my head that night, I really do.'

‘Len, I suppose, lost his?'

‘Well and truly. He'd been cracking up for weeks. If they were coming, why didn't they come? If Britain was going to be
bombed into surrender, why didn't we surrender? One of his best friends in the British Union had just been interned. Would he be next? In April he sent little David to Sussex. That was the beginning of the end between him and Mary. Now Ma was his only ally in the house, and she wasn't exactly a comforting body. Then that night he seemed to go over the top.'

‘What was it about?'

‘Funny thing is, I can't remember. We'd been in the shelter, I remember that, and had come out after the all-clear, about half past ten. We saw that houses in the area had been bombed. Mary put Ted to bed, and came down again, and then it all blew up. She'd lost the battle over David, because she half thought Len was right, that he ought to be in the country. Now she gave whatever strength she had to defend Ted. To tell you the truth, I think it was about nothing. That's often the way, isn't it? It was something like Len using Ted's ration card to buy extra sweets for Ma—some fiddling thing like that. Ma always liked her sweet things, and never got enough of them during the war. But however it started, it developed into a real slanging match—Len going on about Yids, Mary about greed and heartlessness. Davey not being there gave Mary courage, I think: he was out of the battle. I do remember her telling Ma to her face she was greedy, and that took nerve, I can tell you. She was quite able to defend herself, of course, but Len charged in, all synthetic outrage at the insult to his mother, and soon there were blows as usual . . . Then suddenly Mary was on the floor.'

‘Dead?'

‘Yes. We didn't find out for a few minutes. I remember saying: “You ought to be ashamed. Go and make her a cup of tea, Ma.” But when Ma had put the kettle on, she still hadn't stirred. Len was looking at her, hopping from one foot to the other, his red, bleary little eyes all wide with fear. Then we found she was dead, and Ma decided what we had to do.'

‘I might have guessed she'd arranged it all.'

‘Oh yes—trust Ma.
She
wouldn't lose her head in a crisis, not Ma. First she went and found this bombed house that the ARP and fire people hadn't got to yet. Then she and I and Len took Mary there—' Connie shivered, and drew a large old woollen cardigan round her shoulders—‘carrying her between us, like she was wounded, or drunk, through those pitch-dark streets.
We just left her there, in the sitting-room, with the other dead. We told the police later that she'd been worried about some friends she'd made, who'd only recently moved there, and had gone to see them just before the raid. It was really quite convincing, thanks mostly to Ma. It was only much later, when I found out who they were, that I thought the Jews really did have a habit of catching up with Len. Anyway, all the time we were carrying her there, her arms around our shoulders, like she was walking with difficulty, all the way there I was thinking and thinking . . . And as I say, I'm proud I didn't lose my head.'

‘Thinking? What do you mean? What about?'

‘Ted, of course.' Connie smiled at Simon, a secret little smile, almost conspiratorial. We're both men and women of the world, it seemed to say. ‘Doesn't do any harm to tell now, it being so long ago. I was thinking of me being lumbered with Ted again, now Mary was gone. Just when I was thinking of doing some light war work, getting out a bit more. I did that later, you know: worked near an American air base in Norfolk. Had some times, I can tell you! And here was Mary dying on me, leaving me lumbered with the kid again . . . So I was thinking. And what I did was quite clever. Really very cunning, though I say it myself.'

‘What did you do?'

She edged forward the whole heavy top of her body across the table, and there suffused her face a slow smile of the most complete and cloudless self-approbation.

‘As soon as we got back to Farrow Street, I said to Len: “You do realize, don't you, that Ted was sitting at the top of the stairs. He must have heard everything.” '

‘Had he been?'

‘Not that I know of. That was the beauty of it! The cunning! Though of course he
had
heard them often enough, and Len knew it. He went wild, practically off his head. “He'll have to be got rid of,” he kept saying. Just like one of those old melodramas. I wanted to laugh. “You're not planning on killing two people in one night, are you, Len?” I said. But he was quite mad—hissing it out, in case the neighbours were still up. Children were all the same, he said. If the police really leaned on them, they couldn't keep things quiet. Ted had it in for him, Len said.
“Did you think he ought to have a special place in his heart for you?” I asked. Len got wilder and wilder, just like I intended. Ted would blab what he knew just to spite him, Len said. Ma was getting pretty worried too—I liked that: Ma, the human whalebone, almost getting jittery! And when they were both in a proper old tizz-wozz, up I came with the solution: “We can get rid of him without killing him,” I said.'

‘How would you do that, then?' asked Simon ingenuously.

‘Easy! I said to Len: “Look, there's parties of evacuee kids going off to the country every day from Paddington. If we get at him tomorrow morning, put the fear of the devil into him, tell him he's to tell no one who he is, or where he comes from, then we can attach him to one of those groups going off tomorrow, and we'll have seen the last of him. Suits you, and it certainly suits me!” '

‘How clever,' said Simon, admiringly. ‘That was really smart.' That was obviously Connie's opinion too. She smiled at him triumphantly. ‘And is that what you did?'

‘That's exactly what we did. It
was
a bit wicked, thinking back on it, but wasn't it ingenious? Next morning we got him up early. Ma was cleaning up all traces of the fight. I let Len do most of the initial stuff, so if it all came out I could say I only went along with it to shield Len. That way I was covered. Len told him he was to go away. Something terrible had happened. He was to keep who he was an absolute secret, with some pretty graphic threats as to what would happen if he didn't. He was not to tell anybody anything about himself. He was to lie, make up whatever he fancied, but if he told them who he was—well, you know the sort of thing you terrify kids with.'

‘But it was a hell of a risk, wasn't it?'

‘But Len thought he would be
more
of a risk if he stayed. And I had a line of retreat open. It all came together so beautifully. I remember later on, sitting in his little room, and he and I were bundling some of his things—God knows what, I hardly knew what was going on—into a little case and a satchel. And he said: “What is it that's happened? Is it Auntie Mary?” And I said: “No, she's just gone away to visit Davey. It was to do with the war.” That seemed to satisfy him. I think he wanted to go, you know. Then we both took him to the Station, Len muttering threats the whole time. Len didn't want to be seen with him, so he went
to the office and clocked on for duty. I took him to the platform. Len knew there was one train with evacuees going to the Oxford area, and another going to the West. I looked at them both. One seemed to have a lot of teachers, some of them carrying cases. Not very promising. I chose the other—I don't know which it was. There were two teachers, but they were obviously just loading the kids on to the train. When they both got on to check the carriages, I whispered: “Remember, not a word who you are. Think up a nice new name! Find yourself a nice family to live with!” Then I shoved him forward, and made myself scarce. I watched him go up to the group, and get on the train. I waited till it drew out. It seemed an age. Then I went back home—to all the business of declaring Mary missing. By lunchtime Len had been to the hospital and identified the body. By evening there was just the three of us in the house, and I was congratulating myself. Really it all went wonderfully smoothly!'

Simon looked at her—fat, comfortable, amiable—‘a good sort'. And he saw beneath the surface amiability, the comfortable self-approval, a moral vacuum more frightening than any of Len's casual brutalities or mean-spirited hatreds. Without sense of right or wrong, without love or sense of responsibility, there was in her mind only an abyss of complacency and self-love which made the blood run cold and numbed the heart. It was with this woman, rather than the Cutheridges, that he might have dragged out his childhood and youth. His heart sang out with gratitude at his deliverance. He said:

‘You really managed it admirably.'

‘Yes, didn't I? You could say it turned out well for all concerned. I bet Ted found some country family that looked after him all right. It's better for kids growing up in the country, isn't it? And I was shot of him. Mind you, I had a nasty moment a little later on.'

‘What was that?'

‘It was late that evening, and we were all in the house. The bereaved family. Len was wondering how he was going to tell Davey when he went to visit him. And while we were sitting there, talking low (as was only respectable, Ma thought), Ma asked about getting Ted away. She said “Good riddance to bad rubbish”, in her pleasant way. She asked how I'd joined him on to a party, and I told her, and I said it really felt like a burden
physically lifted off my shoulders as I saw him walk down that platform, his little case in his hand, his satchel on his back. And Ma thundered: “You didn't send him off with his satchel?” ' Connie Simmeter laughed and laughed. ‘Do you know what I'd done?'

‘You'd sent him off with a satchel with his name in it.'

That's right! After all our precautions! I didn't know his bloody name was in it. It was Mary did all that kind of thing for him. Typical of her to write his name in it, in indelible ink, when he started school. We lived in fear for days. Len came over here, to Islington, to look for another house and a new job—not hard then, with everyone away at the war. But every night before we moved we expected a visit from the police, or at least a welfare officer. You'd think with a name like Simmeter they'd have been able to trace us easily enough, wouldn't you? I don't know what it was—everything was chaos in those days, so perhaps there was just a mix-up and everyone thought someone else was investigating it. Or perhaps he realized the danger himself, and blacked it out, or said the satchel was another boy's. Anything could have happened.'

‘Yes, anything could,' said Simon. ‘In point of fact I threw the satchel out of the train window. Thank God—I threw it away. Good night, Miss Simmeter.'

Thinking over the interview later, as he often did, Simon was always glad he hadn't called her “Mother”.

D
uring the early 'eighties, the London Zoo went through something of a crisis. Or, as several of the board preferred to put it, it was in a crisis situation (Simon was never quite sure whether this made it sound more or less critical). Admission fees had been drastically raised, and the number of visitors had correspondingly fallen. Finances were rocky, and many of the Zoo's traditional policies were called into question. Its affairs appeared all too often in
Private Eye,
and circulars were sent to all the staff which had an almost wartime sound to them, warning them against loose talk. A well-loved animal moped itself to
death in captivity, and the Zoo's whole approach to the custody of wildlife became a matter of public debate. A shake-up was necessary—new investment policies, new houses for many categories of animals, a new relationship with the visitors. The governing board had to be shaken out of its complacency. One of the new members of the Board was Sir Isaiah Mandel.

He was by then semi-retired from the family businesses, and very rich indeed. Semi-retired, he would explain with a great laugh to anyone who asked, meant that he only interfered when he felt like it. The family business which had once been a chain of jewellery shops had expanded and diversified into so many fields of activity that no one (apart, perhaps, from Sir Isaiah himself) could have come up with a list of each and every pie that the firm had a finger in. Nor had business been the only field of Sir Isaiah's activities: he was on the board of the National Theatre, had been chairman of the Parole Board, and was often to be seen sleeping at Glyndebourne. He had been put on the board of the Zoo to shake things up.

He went about things fairly unobtrusively. In the weeks after his appointment he was to be seen walking around the Zoo—a paunchy, energetic figure, with a bald head and a hearty manner, peering, surveying, and noting down. He talked to keepers and members of the public—even, it was rumoured, to some of the animals as well. He examined the power structure, stewed over the books, and generally seemed to be making a thorough job of whatever he was doing. In 1983 Simon was acting head of the scientific staff, and in November of that year Sir Isaiah invited him for lunch in a little restaurant in Mayfair.

Sir Isaiah was very genial, and the lunch was extremely good. Simon noted that Sir Isaiah seemed to acknowledge no dietary restrictions. He had done his homework on the most obvious aspects of Simon's private life, and questioned him pleasantly about it while they read the menu.