The Dynamite Room (5 page)

That was why the Spielmans had left. She remembered cycling past their house and seeing it boarded up. That was almost a year ago now. Before that there had been firecrackers through their door, smashed-up plant pots in their front garden, kicked-in fences. Someone even painted the word
Traitor
across the side wall. Her mother and father wouldn't talk about it—you didn't always know what went on behind closed doors—and, a week or so later, the Spielmans were gone anyway.

Taken,
Mr. Morton told her.
Best thing for 'em.

Taken where?
she'd asked.

The Isle of Man. That's where they take 'em. To the prison.

He said they were traitors. Fifth columnists.
And they had pigeons. You know what pigeons mean?

She didn't.

Communication,
he said, nodding knowingly.
Sending messages, I shouldn't wonder. You can't trust anyone.

She huddled in the dark of the wardrobe, holding the torch she'd taken from beneath her bed close between her knees so she could read the pamphlet. She stumbled over some of the longer words, but she understood most of it. She'd read the leaflets with an exhilarating mix of fear and excitement maybe three or four times before, but that had been when she'd wanted the invader to come and had thought of it as a game; now that it had really happened, she couldn't stop her hands from shaking.

She read on, reviewing some of the sentences several times until the words sank in and she was sure they would stay in her head when it came time to burn the leaflets, or bury them.

The pamphlet seemed to assume that if invaders came there would be some time to prepare, and perhaps there had been. Perhaps her mother had already put some of the advice into practice, although the Crossley was still in the garage and her mother had made no attempt to hide any food. If anything, there were more tins and packets stockpiled in the larder than before, despite all the government warnings against panic buying.

She remembered reading to her mother from the first pamphlet that had arrived, following her about the house as she had done chores: up the stairs and along the corridor, a pile of sheets in her mother's arms, then into her parents' room, where her mother had set to changing the bed.

It says, Do not give a German anything,
she told her mother.
Do not tell him anything.
Hide your food and your bicycles. Hide your maps.

Yes, all right, all right,
her mother said.
Now, come on, you're getting under my feet. I've a WVS meeting at eleven, and at this rate I shall never make it.

You can't take the car,
she told her mother.
You have to dis…able all vehicles,
she read, stumbling over the word.

That's only if the Germans come, Lydia. And they're not going to, are they, not this morning anyway; I'm only popping out for a couple of hours.

And then Bea had arrived, always in her tweeds and hat, the front door opening, her voice yodeling up the stairs
—Yoo-hoo! Annie!—
sending her mother into a flap.

Oh Lord! Is that the time? Look at me—hair in a mess and still in my petticoat.
She turned to Lydia.
Darling, be a poppet and hang the washing out, will you? And where is that boy hiding himself?
She stood and looked about her, as if expecting Button to suddenly materialize from beneath the floorboards.

And then she was gone, clattering down the stairs, Bea saying things like,
Annie, darling! Am I early?
And Lydia's mother saying,
No, I'm late as usual.
Heavens, what a morning! It's all hands to the pump here. Any news from the boys?

Lydia had walked over to the wardrobe and flung open the doors. There was Button, just as she knew he would be, staring up at her from between the racks of clothes with his big, watery eyes.

With her father and brother gone, and her and Button evacuated, she had huddled under the covers in Wales worrying about her mother alone in the house. And what now? What had happened here? Were the fields and marshes and woods and villages awash with German soldiers?

She flicked the torch off and sat in the darkness, listening to her own breathing. She pressed down on her heart to try to quiet it, but it only seemed to bump harder against the inside of the wardrobe, the sound reverberating through the floorboards and down the walls and along the floor and, no doubt, up through the soles of his boots, so he would know exactly where she was. She sat with her back to the side of the wardrobe and her legs outstretched so that, if she pointed her toes, she could touch the other side. After a while she brought her knees back up and squeezed herself into the corner. She had pins and needles, her throat was parched, and she was frightfully hungry. She had no idea how long she had been hiding in there. The wardrobe smelled of damp wood and dusty clothes, even though it had nothing in it anymore. She pretended that Button was huddled at the other end. After a while she heard his breathing in the pitch black, but when she reached out her hand to him there was nothing there.

No one knew why Button always hid in the wardrobe.

Perhaps that's how they live over there,
Joyce from The Cricketers had said.
Perhaps he always hides in boxes. You know what these boys are like.

Lydia's mother worried about his parents. You heard such terrible things.

Yes, and you wouldn't want to be stuck with him,
said Bea.
I mean, it's all very well doing the right thing for a few weeks while this nonsense blows over, but you wouldn't want to be stuck with him.

No,
her mother agreed.
I suppose not.

The truth was that no one had quite known what to make of Button. He didn't speak a word of English, barely a word of any language, it seemed.

In Wales Mrs. Duggan took an instant dislike to him: his pale face, his scrawny limbs, that dark hair of his, and the slightly pointed eyebrows that gave him a look of constant surprise.

Looks a bit too primitive for my liking,
she said to Lydia.
How come you've been lumbered with him?

But Lydia didn't know. Button had just come, having been billeted with the McGowans at first, but that didn't go down well, not with them being Catholics and him being a Jew.
You have to look after him,
her mother had said.
He's a long way from home.

The boy was definitely odd. A week into his time with them, he found Lamb and, from that point on, took to dragging him around the house. Lamb was a life-sized stuffed toy mounted on a narrow red trolley with wheels and a handle. She and Alfie had both used Lamb as toddlers, waddling behind him as they'd learned to walk. As she got older, she had attached a strip of cloth to him as if it were a dog lead, and it was with this that Button dragged the lamb about, his gas mask fixed over the animal's moth-eaten head.

Sometimes in the night, when she couldn't sleep, she thought she could hear him pulling the lamb with its mask along the hallway, the wheels of the trolley quietly squeaking and rattling over the floorboards. She imagined the silhouette of them in the corridor: Button's face and the lamb's rubber snout.

The wardrobe was stifling. She switched the torch on, changed her mind, and turned it off again. Better not waste the battery. If she strained very hard she could hear the wireless in the kitchen. There had been a soft hammering earlier but it had stopped now, replaced by the sound of swing music swelling up through the floorboards. Her mother couldn't bear silence so the wireless was always on, providing a constant bubbling of chatter and songs. She could hear her mother's voice now just behind the music, half singing, half humming.

Taking the torch and the pamphlets with her, she opened the wardrobe door and stepped out into the semidarkness of the room, placing her feet softly on the floorboards so as not to make a sound. It was only when she had shut the wardrobe behind her that she realized there was no singing, no sound of swing from the wireless at all. She held still and listened and, for a moment, thought that perhaps the man had gone.

On any other day like this, the doors and windows would have all been open, music playing from the wireless or from her mother's quick fingers as she sat at the piano. Her father would be in a deck chair with his newspaper, reading bits aloud to anyone he caught wandering past. Or listening to the news as he polished his brogues or filed down a bit of wood for some project or another: reports of German submarines and E-boats in the North Sea, or Luftwaffe planes flying inland. Or perhaps he would've just been catnapping. For months their nights had been restless, and everyone was tired and irritable; it was an unspoken rule that you slept whenever and wherever you could.

Once, before the war, a giant zeppelin floated over Bawdsey, down at the end of Hollesley Bay, like an involuntary thought. And for some time her mother had thought there were funny things going on at Bawdsey Manor. Rumors spread that it had been bought by the military, and they'd seen metal towers above the trees, lines of steel posts, and extra fencing. All very suspicious, her mother had said.

Her father turned the page of his newspaper and drew on his cigarette.

If something secret was going on at the manor, it was secret for a reason, her father felt.
I wouldn't ask too many questions, Annie, if I were you.

Her mother thought they should be told.
But George, what if it's dangerous?

I'm sure it's not, darling. I'm sure it's perfectly safe.

It was bringing too much attention to the area, her mother said.
We've enough eyes and ears about the place as it is.

She sat on her parents' four-poster bed—a remnant of the times when her mother's family had been wealthy and they'd owned a paper mill at Bramford, now long gone. The man had been quiet for some time but now she could hear him prowling again. She heard kitchen cupboards being opened and shut. His footsteps were the slightest squeak of wood and nothing more, as if he was already getting to know the house, its loose boards and creaking giveaways.

She looked down into the garden, thinking for a moment that she might see Jeremiah's white tail bobbing up and down somewhere among the undergrowth. If she had managed to get out, if the man had let her go, Lydia would have run away through the woods, to the village or the railway line, or just out across the marshes. But then where, she wondered. Who would she go to? What would she do?

As she padded back to the wardrobe, she had an idea. She hurriedly folded the pamphlets around her calves and pulled her socks up over them. She went to her mother's dressing table and checked the drawers, but nothing there needed to be hidden from him.

In her own bedroom she took her identity card from her suitcase and went to search through her books. Her
A History of England
had a number of maps of the country and of the local area, and she carefully folded the relevant pages, making the crease good and sharp, then tore the pages out and returned the book to its shelf. She gathered her own stories from the shoebox beneath her bed—she didn't want him reading them—and pushed them all up inside her dress, along with the pages of maps. When she was done she stepped out onto the landing. Looking down the corridor at the closed door at the end, she took a deep breath and slowly walked towards it. She stood outside for a moment and leaned in so that her ear was almost against the door. She thought she could feel the wood breathing. Something inside. She took a step back. Not now. Not today. But if no one else came back to Greyfriars, she would have to go in.

She could hear him in the hallway, then the front door opened and shut, followed by the sound of footsteps crunching across the drive. She went to the top of the stairs and leaned over the banisters, listening. More footsteps, stones crackling under boots, then a dull
twack;
something fell to the ground. She would have to be quick. She clung to the edges of the steps where they were less likely to squeak as she carefully made her way down. Creeping to the front door, she squinted through the keyhole. She couldn't see much, but the garage doors were open; her father's rusty lock and chain were lying broken in the gravel. She turned the handle and pulled but the door wouldn't budge. She tugged furiously at it, then felt in her pocket for the key, but it wasn't there. Had she left it on the little side table when she'd first come in? She must have done, but now it was gone.

She ran into the kitchen and tried the back door, pulling at the handle, and then twisting it and pushing at it. The bolt was pushed across at the top and she reached up on her tiptoes to pull it back. She tried the handle again, but the door still wouldn't open. Studying it more closely, she felt her stomach suddenly turn. The door was nailed into its frame.

She ran out of the kitchen and hurried from room to room, desperately now, trying to push open the shutters at the windows one by one—but the planks were still in place, nailed across them on the outside, so that no matter how hard she tried she couldn't push them open. She stumbled back into the middle of the sitting room and saw the telephone on the side table. She'd call someone. Anyone. Get somebody to come. But when she lifted the receiver and listened, the line was dead. She heard nothing but the sound of her own breathlessness and then her sudden, sobbing tears.