The Dynamite Room (3 page)

She checked the bolt across the hatch and, emptying the coats to make her own nest of sorts in the corner, heaved the ottoman across the hatch as well—just to be doubly safe.

She tried to make herself comfortable but the coats smelled of wet fur, and she wondered how long they'd been abandoned there, slowly rotting. It was getting dark. She would keep the oil lamp going as long as she could; that way at least she might stop the night from completely swallowing her.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Alfie was in his cricket whites out on the lawn, bouncing the ball on the underside of his elbow and catching it as it flipped into the air. She could see him quite clearly—his blond hair, blue eyes, the golden tan to his face. She concentrated on making him real, on remembering something good. They were playing cricket—Alfie, Eddie, and her—and she was infield as usual, which meant she spent the whole time chasing the ball and never got to bat.

Alfie tossed the ball to Eddie and took position—
Bowl!
—and Eddie bowled, his ginger hair flapping. The ball arced through the air, and as it came down Alfie leaned forward on one leg and hit the ball with a
whack.
It whistled off to the left and struck a tree on the edge of the garden where by some magic it was stopped short, caught within the fork of two branches.

Out!
yelled Eddie.

That's not out!
said Alfie.

Tis!

It's not!

It is! Out!

I'm not!

You are!

Alfie looked up at the ball wedged in the tree.
Oh, bugger it!
he said, swearing with his usual gusto.
Look at that! In the damn ruddy tree!

She remembered watching from the terrace as the two boys stood around, hands scrunched in pockets, staring up at the branches and trying to work out how to get the ball down—an image of Alfie in her head pushing his hair out of his eyes, Eddie next to him, always the less impressive with his pale skin and gangly limbs, and yet, as her mother said, such a dear. Alfie was training to be a carpenter and always had dusty arms and splinters in his hands, and looked rather fine, Lydia thought, in his overalls.
People are always going to need carpenters,
he said,
'specially in a war.
Eddie had his eye on the air force, but of course that never worked out because, with his epilepsy, Eddie wasn't going anywhere. He would end up spending his days sitting in a field in a damp pillbox stocked with iron rations and toilet paper, with nothing for company but a battered rifle and the chums his grandfather grew potatoes with, while Alfie gallivanted around Europe having all the fun.

Alfie kicked his shoes off and clung to Eddie as Eddie hoisted him up on his shoulders. From there, in his socks, Alfie climbed up into the tree. He pulled the cricket ball out of the branches and dropped it into Eddie's hand.

She could see Alfie now, standing in the branches, the sun washing through him in his cricket whites. She would always remember it: a tall, lean figure with a shock of blond hair standing among the illuminated leaves, almost illuminated himself in the sunlight, like something heavenly. But only ever for a moment, because he was soon scrambling down and onto Eddie's shoulders, Eddie setting off with him, running across the lawn, both of them laughing and yelling until they fell sprawled across the grass in a terrible tangle of limbs and set to wrestling like they always did, rolling around on top of each other and trying to pin each other down, grunting and laughing and shouting,
Submit, submit!

That had been the end of May, less than two months ago; it was the day before Alfie had left, sent out on a draft to France by his own choice, and two days before she was packed off herself to Wales. Within a week they were all scattered, a whole family blown across Europe—Alfie, her, and their father too, who'd been sent off with the navy. Only their mother had been left behind. Now even she was gone.

She pulled the blanket tighter around herself.

In the morning she would walk to the railway station and somehow get herself back to Wales and Mrs. Duggan. She'd shut her eyes and her ears to everything there and not let it eat at her. She'd leave a note for her mother and tell her to come and rescue her. Perhaps that was where her mother had gone. Perhaps they had passed each other on different trains, meeting for that split second as their carriages swept by each other on the tracks. Perhaps her mother was on her way to the little Welsh village now to look for Lydia when Lydia was here instead, in the dark and too scared to sleep, scared of the man in the Hillman Minx coming back for her, scared he might have followed her and knew where she was living, scared of the gas.

In their drills they had been taken to green gas vans parked by the school and told to put their masks on and step into the van, which had been filled with foul-smelling smoke. That way, they'd been told, they'd know if the masks were working.

But what if the gas isn't like smoke?
someone said.

Of course it's not like smoke!
said the woman from the WVS, and she laughed.

But no one said what it
would
be like. What if it was like tiny seeds in the air, or the sparkling particles she'd seen in the hallway as she sat on the kitchen worktop? What if it looked like the dust in the attic, or like nothing at all, just bad colorless air, unwittingly breathed in and out?

She sat upright and fumbled under the coats for the box. She took the mask out, then took a deep breath and pulled it over her head.

She tried to breathe normally. She took long, deep breaths and heard the rasping back and forth of all the air and tiny particles being drawn in through the filter, into her mouth and down her throat, deep, deep into her stomach, where the poison would lie twinkling in her lungs.

She tugged the mask off again and laid it on her chest, trying to catch her breath, and shut her teary eyes. She couldn't wear it; she wouldn't. She didn't want to die here, but if everyone else was dead and gone, what did it matter? She sat for a moment, then she slowly opened her mouth, opening her throat as wide as she could, and took in as much air as she could manage, breathing in every mote of dust and every poison particle.

She woke with a lurch, and it was a moment before she realized that she was no longer in Wales, sharing a bed with Button. She had heard the wailing of a beast in her dreams, had seen the eyes from her own stories watching her in the dark. The room felt clammy, and she could just about make out Mr. Tabernacle and the sheen of his single black eye.

There was a soft creak of wood downstairs, and she listened. Footsteps. She got onto her knees and pressed her ear to the floorboards, listening for her mother, waiting for her voice. She tried to trace the movement, holding her breath as one stair creaked, and then another, before it went quiet again. Then more footsteps, going in and out of each room, but too cautious perhaps, too careful. She pressed her ear harder to the floor. She heard the throb of blood in her ear, like the soft pulse of the house, and then the squeaking tap in the bathroom slowly being turned, something scrambling up through the pipes, and then a sudden retch of water and a voice, a profanity, almost like a bark, that didn't sound like her mother at all.

She sidled nervously across the floor and hunched beneath the window. For a while there was nothing but an uneasy quiet. Then the footsteps came again, quietly coming right up to the steps of the attic this time, and suddenly, from inches away, a rattling. The hatch in the floor bucked and jolted, and she almost shrieked but the bolt held firm, and, under the weight of the ottoman, there was no way in. She clamped her hand across her mouth, the other pressing at her heart.
Don't breathe. Don't cry out. Don't make a sound.
After a moment the attic steps creaked and whatever was there moved away until it was gone, and for a long time she could hear nothing but the slight quivering of her breath.

She was used to sleepless nights. They all were. She was used to lying in bed, hearing the sound of bombers droning overhead, followed sometimes by the snarl of pursuing fighters. Even in Wales there had been disturbed nights as a lone plane tore up the sky, and for a moment you could imagine a single package of death whistling down through the clouds to you,
From Mr. Hitler, with Love.
The silence was worse. The silence made room for other things to creep in, from her dreams and from the stories she wrote, her imagination turning real.

She sat there now, listening. It must have been an hour or two, maybe more, since she had heard the noises downstairs. She stood and pushed the ottoman back as quietly as she could, squatting down to listen again before she pulled back the bolt and slowly lifted the hatch just enough to peep through. The attic stairs were shadowy, the hallway a somber gray. She hauled the hatch open and laid it gently on the floor. With her toes fumbling in the darkness for each step, she eased her way down, pressing herself against the wall at the bottom of the attic staircase before she found the courage to look around the corner.

Along the landing, a single slip of moonlight fell across the carpet from her mother's room. She used it as a guide, allowing it to take her footsteps to the top of the stairs, where she peered down over the banisters and waited. After a minute she sidled her way down, one careful step at a time until she was at the bottom, her feet curling on the cold floor.

She crept sideways down the hall, her hand feeling along the walls, edging up to the corners and door frames. At the end, the kitchen waited dark and empty. The sitting-room door was open, and she took a few small steps in, her hands held to her mouth to smother the sound of her breath. The room seemed somehow darker than the others, just the heavy silhouettes of furniture: the lumpy backs of leather chairs, the blackout sheets pinned, the bony legs of a side table with the Bakelite telephone crouching on it, and her mother's piano and stool, both ghostly beneath old sheets.

She took another step in and, as her eyes readjusted, the darkness shrinking back a little, she saw the silvery glass of water on the floor at the far end of the room and then a figure huddled beside it in the shadows beneath the window. She must have made a sound, because the figure moved slightly, and something clicked. It was a man, holding a pistol, the barrel pointed towards her. The sudden sense that she was the subject of his gaze lit the room up around her as though he were shining a torch. She wanted to move, to run, but her feet were rooted to the floor, and panic had snatched away all her breath.

She could barely see his uniform in the dark, but it reminded her of the Essex Regiment when they'd come up this part of the coast the previous year. When he finally spoke his voice was quiet but firm, and she glimpsed his teeth. For a moment she thought he was grinning—then she realized they were gritted in pain.

“Why are you here?” he said.

She tried to answer, but couldn't find any words. Her throat was clamped tight.

“I said—why are you here?”

She couldn't even swallow. Her fingers found the button of her cardigan and twisted it on its threads.

“I live here,” she finally ventured.

His eyes remained fixed on her.

“Where is your family then?”

“Out,” she told him, the lie slipping from her before she could catch it.

He watched her from beneath his scowl. “Out?”

She nodded. “They'll be back soon though. Any minute…”

The man laughed.

Without taking his eyes off her or lowering his gun, he rose to his feet and she stumbled backwards.

“Where are they then?” he said.

He held her in his stare. The pistol wavered in his hand and she saw then that it was wet, bloody perhaps, and that there was blood on his shoulder and down his arm too, a smear of it across his face. He took a step closer, and she clamped herself rigid; rubbing at his forehead, he took a couple of steps back—and then, as if changing his mind, came towards her again, straightening his firing arm now and pointing the pistol with some certainty. She waited for the shot, for the hot impact, but his arm dropped again and, with a sudden bellow, almost simultaneous with her own shriek, he kicked at the glass of water and it exploded into shards against the wall.

He leaned his hand against the window frame, catching his breath and watching her from beneath his scowl. His breath came like snarls through his gritted teeth and his gun hung loose in his hands; then he straightened up and pointed it at her.

“Go back to bed,” he said. “Go on! Now! And don't leave your room. Do you hear me?”

She backed towards the door, still saying nothing.

He jabbed the gun at her. “Do you understand?”

She nodded. Then, scrambling out through the doorway, she ran down the hall, up the stairs, and into her room, slamming the door behind her and pushing everything from her bed to the floor. She jumped in and pulled the covers to her nose. She lay there, holding herself as still as possible and listening as hard as she could, but all she could hear in the darkness was the sound of her breath blasting against the bedsheets and the throbbing of her heart.

He gathered up as many bits of glass as he could find in the dark and emptied them into a teacup on the dresser, rubbing the dusty shards from his hand. The pain in his shoulder was excruciating, burning right through to the bone and sending piercing stabs down his arm and across his chest. The blood was soaking through the dressing and his shirt. He covered his eyes with his hand and listened. He had to focus. Stay calm. He couldn't let the girl being here trip him—not now.

He moved to the window and tried to look through the slit in the blackout cloth that he had cut with his knife. It was almost impossible to see anything through the rip and the dusty glass and shutters, but he'd see a torchlight if someone was coming, and that was enough. He leaned back against the wall and allowed himself to breathe, tipping his head and glancing at the ceiling. He checked his pockets. Everything was still there: identity card, letters, the photograph, the dog tags, the ten pounds in English notes, the Browning back in its holster, the spare magazine. He had to keep checking these things; had to know everything was in its place.