Behind the Scenes at the Museum (11 page)

Modelia was owned by Mr Simon but it was run by Mrs Carter. Mr Simon called Mrs Carter his ‘manageress’ and Bunty’s father said he’d never heard it called
that
before. Bunty wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by this, although there was no doubt that there was something slightly racy about her employers – Mr Simon was foreign for a start, Hungarian even, although when the war broke out he became very vocal about his British nationality. He was short and had a shiny bald head and was always immaculately dressed, with a big, gold fob-watch looped across his waistcoat. ‘He’s a Jewboy, isn’t he?’ Clifford, Bunty’s brother, asked when Bunty first got the job and Frank nodded and rubbed his thumb against his fingers.

Bunty couldn’t stand Clifford or his opinions. He was a cocky little so-and-so, Bunty and Betty agreed behind his back. ‘Jewboy’ was an odd word that didn’t really suit Mr Simon at all – he was never mean and he certainly wasn’t a boy and, if anything, reminded Bunty of a well-dressed seal.

He adored Mrs Carter, or Dolly, as he called her when there were no customers in the shop, and the amount of hand-kissing and eye-gazing that went on made Bunty feel quite uncomfortable sometimes. She couldn’t recall ever having seen her own mother and father do more than exchange a slight peck on the cheek. Clifford said that Mr Simon had a wife ‘locked up in the nut-house’, and that was why he didn’t marry Mrs Carter, although there was more ‘how’s-your-father’ went on in Mrs Carter’s flat above the shop (according to Clifford) than happened next door, where newly-weds Maurice and Ena Tetley could be heard exercising their bed-springs through the wall of the bedroom that Bunty shared with Betty. Bunty and Betty had many a late-night whispered discussion about what exactly Maurice could be doing to Ena to produce such a noise.

Bunty liked both Mr Simon and Mrs Carter, especially Mrs Carter who was a large woman about the same age as Bunty’s mother but without the drab patina that Nell had acquired over the years. Mrs Carter was blonde – very blonde – and wore her hair in big rolls and laid her make-up on ‘with a trowel’ according to Frank. She also possessed a huge bosom that looked as though it would burst if it was pricked with a pin. She was a real mother-hen to Bunty, though, cluck-clucking around after her and saying things like, ‘How’s our little Bunty, today?’ and giving her discreet hints about her appearance so that Bunty no longer wore ankle socks, flat shoes, and the bob that she’d had from the age of five to fifteen, but was quite the thing nowadays in heels and stockings and even lipstick. ‘Our young lady,’ Mr Simon said approvingly when Mrs Carter made Bunty do a twirl for him in her first grown-up frock.

Nell wasn’t a great one for compliments, she didn’t like people getting above themselves. Nell had adopted the philosophy that, generally speaking, things tended always to get worse, rather than better. This pessimistic outlook was a source of considerable comfort to her – after all, unhappiness could be relied upon in a way that happiness never could. Nell preferred the extremities of her family – the eldest and youngest, Clifford and Ted – Ted in particular, which was strange, Bunty and Betty agreed, because he was the most obnoxious little weasel that ever lived. Babs had managed to gain a little prestige within the family from being the eldest girl and from being a no-nonsense, practical sort and Betty had found a place as Frank’s baby, but poor Bunty was stuck right in the middle with nothing to mark her out as special.

‘Yes please, dear!’

Bunty was currently trying out a personality based on Deanna Durbin, which involved adopting a sweet and kind-but-plucky sort of persona. It went down very well with Mrs Carter and Mr Simon but was totally overlooked at home.

‘I’ve got my sugar through here, Bunty!’ Mrs Carter’s ladylike tones cracked into indecorous Yorkshire when she tried to shout.

‘Rightio!’ Bunty yelled back.

The shop was deserted. It was a Sunday and Bunty had offered to come in and help with the stocktaking. They sat round the wireless with their cups and saucers on their laps, listening to a programme called ‘How to Make the Most of Tinned Food’ while they waited for the Prime Minister to make his ‘statement of national importance’. When Mr Chamberlain said
I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received and consequently this country is at war with Germany
a little shiver ran down the back of Bunty’s neck. Mrs Carter sniffed noisily; she had lost a husband in the Great War and her son, Dick, was just the right age to be killed in this one.

‘Well, so,’ Mr Simon said, raising his cup and giving a little cough, ‘I think we should have a little toast.’

‘A toast?’ Mrs Carter repeated dubiously.

‘Yes – to the fighting bulldog spirit. Britons never shall be slaves and good riddance to Mr Adolf Hitler!’

‘Hear, hear!’ Mrs Carter and Bunty chorused – Bunty the more enthusiastic of the two – raising their tea-cups. ‘Rule Britannia!’ Bunty added in a very plucky way.

Bunty had great hopes for the war; there was something attractive about the way it took away certainty and created new possibilities. Betty said it was like tossing coins in the air and wondering where they would land – and it made it much more likely that something exciting would happen to Bunty and it didn’t really matter whether it was the unbelievably handsome man or a bomb – it would all mean a change in one way or another.

Clifford was called up and Frank went round the house saluting him and calling him ‘Trooper Cook’ and seemed to have quite forgotten how unpleasant a war could be. Clifford was very smug about it all. Sidney, Babs’ fiancé, got his call-up papers at the same time as Clifford and the wedding was arranged with what would have looked like indecent haste before the war.

When the bridal couple came out of the church Mrs Carter and Mr Simon were among the well-wishers on the steps and Mrs Carter handed Babs a little sprig of white heather which she took with a look of slight distaste and Bunty heard Clifford say ‘What’s that blowsy tart doing here?’ and Bunty went hot and cold and looked at Mr Simon to see if he’d heard; but he kept smiling benignly at everyone and when he spotted Bunty he gave her a little wave.

The reception took place in the same church hall that Mrs Sievewright had chosen for Percy’s funeral-tea and consisted mainly of all the men getting very drunk on a syrupy milk stout that was definitely from under someone’s counter but nobody seemed to know whose. ‘Mum’s the word,’ the normally quiet and sober Sidney said, before downing a pint in one, to shrieks of encouragement from the wedding guests. Babs was furious. ‘You’ve got to indulge us,’ Frank laughed, leaning heavily on Sidney for support, although Sidney was so drunk that it was a miracle that he was still vertical.

‘Why?’ Babs snapped in her best matronly manner. Babs was only eighteen but had some very old ways.

‘Because,’ Frank said darkly, ‘we’re all going to die.’

‘You’re not, you silly old fool,’ Babs hissed at him and Bunty thought that if she’d said that to her father, he’d have slapped her face. Sandy Havis from next door came up and tried to whirl Babs off in a dance but she stalked away, saying, ‘Dance with Bunty instead, I’ve got better things to do,’ and headed off in the direction of Clifford in a vain attempt to get him to impose sobriety on the gathering.

‘What about it then, Bunty?’ Bunty liked Sandy Havis; when she was little he used to push her around in her pram and he had such an open, cheerful manner about him that he endeared himself to most people. He wasn’t at all handsome, quite the opposite – he had bulging thyrotoxic blue eyes and a ridiculous shock of sandy hair, hence his nickname – his real name was Eric. He launched Bunty on an energetic two-step – the music was provided by an old wind-up gramophone and a selection from Sidney’s eclectic record collection. Sandy had always reminded Bunty of a nice dog – trustworthy, loyal and endearingly eager to please – so it was a bit disconcerting to be enveloped in the swamp of his beery breath and find him trying to nibble various bits of her and all at about sixty miles an hour around a makeshift dance floor.

When the record finished Bunty was sweating with exertion and was keen to get Sandy off the floor before the music got going again. Misinterpreting her prodding and pushing, he circled one arm very tightly around her waist and started moving the fingers of the other one up and down her ribs as if she was a piano. By the time she’d managed to push him into the corridor that ran the length of one side of the hall he was quite carried away with his rib-playing and kept saying, ‘Can you recognize that tune, Bunty? Eh? Eh?’

‘No Sandy, I can’t,’ Bunty said firmly, trying to twist away from his drumming fingers. He was surprisingly strong, Bunty remembered Sandy had been a champion swimmer at school. ‘Go on, guess, go on,’ he urged.

‘“Putting on the Ritz”? “The Blue Danube”? “The Yellow Brick Road”?’ Bunty hazarded at random. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ Sandy shouted. Sandy was on leave from the Merchant Navy and, unbeknown to Bunty, had vowed that he was going to have a woman before he went back on his ship the next day, so he didn’t have much time left. ‘This is my sister’s wedding,’ Bunty said indignantly when Sandy put his tongue in her ear. ‘This is a church hall,’ she tried when he started investigating her groin with his knee. Finally, she bit him on the hand, very hard, so that he leapt back in astonishment and, shaking his hand as if to cool it down, he looked at her admiringly and declared, ‘What a tiger!’ Bunty rushed back into the heated mayhem of the reception, but his words lingered on in her mind. She rather liked the idea of being ‘tigerish’ and even practised a quiet growl to herself. Her personality shifted up several gears, from Deanna Durbin to Scarlett O’Hara.

Some time later, the remnants of the wedding-party retired to the house at Lowther Street. Bunty had surreptitiously drunk three half pints of stout by this time in an effort to join in the ambience of the occasion and was surprised to find herself – as if by magic – slicing bread in the kitchen. Two well-muscled arms suddenly slid round her waist. Bunty had been planning to flounce and pout the next time he tried anything on (in keeping with her new character), but when Sandy said, ‘Hello, Bun, my little cream Bun,’ and poked her in the back in case she hadn’t got the joke, she started to giggle and Sandy said, ‘God, Bunty – you’re squiffy!’ which made her laugh even more and it wasn’t long before he’d persuaded her outside and was pushing her up against the back wall of the house. It was like being at the mercy of an octopus, he had hands everywhere and Bunty kept feebly incanting, ‘This is wrong,’ until Sandy, in a state of some desperation, said, ‘I love you, Bunty, I’ve always loved you – we’ll get married on my next leave,’ and Bunty, instantly baffled into thinking this was true love (it happens all the time), let him have his wicked way, comforting herself with the fact that it might be her last gift to him before he died and taking her mind off it by gazing at the almost-dead clematis on the other side of the yard. ‘What a woman!’ Sandy said as he reached a rapid and rather undignified climax. Bunty felt absolutely disgusted by the whole process, particularly as he banged her head off the drainpipe in his excitement, but at least she had a better idea now of what Maurice Tetley was doing to the bed-springs (‘Never!’ a wide-eyed Betty said when Bunty told her).

By the beginning of 1942 Bunty was pretty much fed up with the war. She was sick of Dr Carrot and Potato Pete and Mrs Sew-and-Sew, and would have given anything for a big box of chocolates and a new winter coat and if she met the Squander Bug in the street she was personally prepared to take him round every shop in York. She really wasn’t in the spirit of things at all.

There wasn’t any romance in the air either. Sandy Havis came home on leave in the February. Bunty had remained faithful to their plighted troth only because there hadn’t been anyone else who was interested in her. She saw him come home, duffle-bag slung across his shoulder, whistling in a very jaunty fashion as he pushed open the door of the Havises’ back yard, and had to duck down beneath the bedroom window-sill in case he saw her. He looked even uglier than he had done the last time she saw him and it made her flesh crawl to think what she’d let him do at Babs’ wedding.

Sandy, who was ploughing the great, grey Atlantic on the convoys, was very put out at Bunty’s distant demeanour. Like Frank before him, Sandy was convinced his chances of survival were slim. Unlike Frank, he was right and three weeks after returning to duty his ship went down with all hands and a cargo of Spam. Mrs Havis, naturally, was distraught and Bunty felt pretty bad as well. Betty broke into tears when she heard the news because he was ‘such a nice boy’ and Nell said, ‘They all are.’

The house at Lowther Street was sandwiched between two founts of grief because only the week after they heard the news about Sandy, Ena Tetley on the other side lost her husband, Maurice. She had a baby by then, six-month-old Spencer. She turned very queer after Maurice died. Frank said she’d lost her mind and avoided her but Nell felt duty-bound to call in every day like she did on Minnie Havis.

Ena wouldn’t let the baby out of her sight for a minute; in fact she got so bad that she wouldn’t even put the baby down in his pram or his cot and wouldn’t let anyone else touch him; she just carried him around in her arms all day long and slept with him in her bed at night. She spent a lot of time in the back yard, gazing at the skies, waiting for Spencer’s father to come home (Maurice had been the navigator on a Wellington) which was bad enough in daytime but was frightening when she was still there in the dark, the baby crying and coughing in the cold spring air, and someone had to go round and persuade her to go back inside. Even the mourning Mrs Havis was driven to comment that you had to control your bereavement a bit.

Nell, unable to stand it any longer, passed on the detail to Bunty (Babs was living with her in-laws on Burton Stone Lane), and she had to go in every morning before going to work and make Ena a cup of tea and spoon out powdered milk for Spencer’s bottle. Spencer was a most unattractive infant, always bellowing with anger and nappy rash. He had red sores around his mouth and a permanent plug of thick, yellow snot in his nose. He smelt bad as well and his nappy was disgusting. Nell told Bunty to change him if he was wet, but he was
always
wet and Bunty felt sick at the very idea and ignored her mother’s instructions. Bunty vowed she would
never
,
ever
have babies. It was a tedious start to the day having to sit with damp-eyed Ena and howling Spencer. Sometimes at work, Bunty imagined she had them in her sights,
bang bang
.

She hadn’t seen Mrs Carter for months but decided to visit her and ask her advice about Ena, amongst other things, but the shop was deserted and the curtains drawn in Mrs Carter’s little flat above. She rang and rang but there was no answer and when she came down again the barber from the shop opposite said, ‘I think she’s gone away – her son was killed, you know,’ and Bunty felt suddenly very cold because she’d met Dick Carter once and he’d been a good-looking boy with a dazzling smile that had made a fifteen-year-old Bunty blush down to her toes. So no help with bereavement there.

That was about the middle of April. At the end of April, on a Tuesday, Bunty had gone with her friend Vi Linwood to Clifton Cinema to see
So Ends Our Night
with Fredric March and both were agreed it wasn’t up to much and they’d have had a better time at the Electric where they were showing
Hellzapoppin
. They walked home through Bootham Park followed by a bright, cold moon. ‘Bombers’ moon,’ Vi said, and Bunty shivered and said, ‘Don’t say that, Vi.’

The siren had Betty out of bed like a scalded cat. Almost simultaneously a strange, deep, rumbling shook the terrace and Bunty opened her eyes to see a bright white light and for a second she thought it was the moon and then realized it was flares dropping everywhere. They were in the Morrison shelter in the living-room within a minute, Ted carrying their ginger cat Totty and Mrs Havis in her hairnet diving under to join them with her Scottie dog Rex, who everyone hated because he was an ankle-nipper. ‘Baedeker raid,’ Ted said; and everybody hissed, ‘Be quiet,’ as if the bombers overhead might hear them. ‘Heinkels,’ Ted said and Nell said, ‘
Ted!
’ ‘Probably a couple of Junkers out front. Called the flying pencil because of—’ Betty hit him. ‘Somebody should go and get Ena,’ Nell said, but then the bombs
really
started thudding down and they had a job to stop themselves from going mad, all squashed in the Morrison like that. There was a terrifying BANG that later turned out to be the doors being blown off their hinges, then an even louder
BANG!!
that turned out to be Ena and Spencer making the ultimate sacrifice.

They came out with the all-clear at dawn and Frank said, ‘Well, I’ve never been so grateful to hear anything in my life.’ St Martin-le-Grand destroyed, the roof of the ancient Guildhall turned to ash. The riverside warehouses, the
Evening Press
offices, the Art Gallery, the School for the Blind – all in flames. Not a pane of glass left in the magnificent arched roof of the railway station. The carriage works smashed, trains damaged, schools and houses wrecked – five nuns killed at the Bar Convent School, the emergency mortuary in Kent Street nearly full.

Bunty walked along Bootham on her way to work, the same route she had taken to get to the cinema the night before. There were no windows left in any of the big Georgian houses and the only sound was the eerie noise that tons of broken glass make when they’re being swept up. But at the end of Bootham, the Bar stood untouched, and rising up behind it was the great bulk of the Minster, unscathed by the Nazis, and Bunty’s heart swelled with pride and wartime spirit and her personality underwent another metamorphosis to become very like that of Greer Garson in
Mrs Miniver
.

A road was closed because of a crater and Bunty took a detour by the street where Modelia was and was shocked to see the little shop – and the flat above – exposed to the air like a doll’s house with the front taken off. She could see the gas stove in the kitchen and the display shelves with Mrs Carter’s Worcester plates and, down in the shop, a tailor’s dummy, headless and legless like a torso, and a couple of frocks hanging on a rail, swaying gently in the breeze. ‘Place was empty, they weren’t there,’ the barber said, sweeping furiously at glass on the pavement. His red and white pole hung above the door, twisted and bent, and there was a sign placed in his glassless window that said, ‘Business as Usual. Bombed but not Beaten.’

Not so Ena and Spencer, who were found still in Ena’s bed which had fallen right through the floor into the living-room below and the rescuers said it was tragic to see that little baby curled up in his mother’s arms, looking so peaceful (for once). Mrs Havis, Bunty, Betty, Ted, Nell and Frank had all been astonished beyond words when they surveyed the destruction of the next-door house, the all-clear siren still echoing in their ears. ‘Phew,’ Ted said eloquently.

Nell picked up a silver teaspoon which was lying in the brick dust of their back yard. ‘Ena’s George the Sixth Coronation teaspoon,’ she marvelled. ‘Not even bent.’ Bunty felt quite uneasy when she remembered that only the previous morning she had grudgingly stirred sugar into Ena’s cup of tea with that very spoon.

Watching the grey, dusty bodies of Ena and Spencer being carried from next-door was a sobering experience and around the tea-table that night they all agreed with Frank when he said that, in war, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice had to be made. They were eating potato pie and cabbage from Frank’s allotment on the edge of the football pitch and Bunty was playing with the cabbage until Frank said sharply, ‘Something wrong with that cabbage, Bunty?’ and Bunty shook her head and forced herself to eat a mouthful of the slippery stuff. She didn’t like Frank’s vegetables because there was generally something lurking amongst the leaves – a dead earwig or a little slug overlooked in the rinsing process. She’d washed the cabbage herself tonight and sure enough there had been the smooth body of a slug, rolling over and over in the water in the sink, and for some reason Bunty thought of Sandy Havis choking to death on oily sea-water in the Atlantic, trying desperately to swim for his life and then rolling down – over and over – into a lost, watery grave. What did you think of when you were drowning? (Nothing in Sandy’s case because he was hit on the head by a crate of Spam as he fell into the water.)
So ends the night
, Bunty thought.

‘Poor Ena,’ Betty said, her eyes filling up with tears. ‘Bloody Jerry,’ Ted said and Frank clouted him for his language. (Poor York, undefended by barrage balloons and ack-acks and the nearest fighter plane ninety minutes away, even though Churchill, for whom poor Spencer had been named, knew all along, thanks to the Bletchley codebreakers, that the German bombers would be over York that night, guided by a wonderful, clear moon.
Bang bang
.)

Not long after the Great Air Raid there was a surprise visit to Lowther Street. They’d been sitting peacefully round the wireless listening to ‘The Brains Trust’ when there was a knock at the door and Bunty was sent to answer it.

A tall, young man in officer’s uniform stood there, his RAF cap pushed to the back of his head in a casual way so that you could see how curly his blond hair was. He grinned at Bunty and said, ‘Hi,’ in a very un-English sort of way.

‘Hello,’ Bunty said with a good deal of national reserve and waited for him to explain his presence. He was really quite handsome with his blue, blue eyes and his hair was lovely – far too good for a man (none of Nell’s children had inherited the cherub curls, although both Babs and Bunty made many attempts to emulate them with perming lotions and peroxide).

‘Let’s see,’ he grinned. ‘You must be Auntie Nell’s daughter?’

‘Auntie Nell?’ Bunty repeated, trying to work out this relationship. The man stuck out his hand towards her. ‘I’m your cousin, Edmund.’

‘Who is it?’ Frank yelled from the living-room in chorus with, ‘Shut that bloody door!’ from a female air-raid warden in the street, and Bunty yanked the man into the passage and shouted, ‘It’s our cousin Edmund!’ Nell came hurrying out of the living-room and stood, quite transfixed at the sight of the stranger. He held out his arms and walked towards her, ‘Auntie Nellie?’ and Nell fell down in a dead faint.

‘What the bloody hell’s going on, Jerry landed or something?’ Frank grumbled, coming into the passage. The man tried again, holding out his hand to shake Frank’s. ‘Uncle Frank? It’s Lillian’s boy.’

‘Edmund?’ Frank whispered, a look of wonder on his face, as if he were witnessing a miracle. Edmund pumped his hand up and down vigorously for a few seconds before they turned their attention to Nell, still prone on the floor. Bunty and Betty helped her into a sitting position and their cousin Edmund squatted on the floor next to her. ‘Auntie Nellie?’ he said, with a beautiful smile. ‘Lillian sends her love.’

Their cousin Edmund was quite something – a handsome, brave bomb-aimer stationed at Croft and delighted to meet his English cousins. Cousin Edmund, Frank said, was the ‘spitting image’ of Nell’s brother Albert, and he laughed and said he’d thought it was a ghost walking in the door when he saw him. Nell hadn’t heard from her sister Lillian for twenty years and the last time had been a cryptic postcard from Vancouver saying, ‘I am doing well, don’t worry about me,’ which naturally made Nell worry because she didn’t know there’d been anything
not
to worry about. There had been no address to reply to and she’d never heard from Lillian again and so she worried even more. In fact she’d decided her sister was dead and now that she’d discovered she was alive she was furious with her for not keeping in touch. ‘She promises to write,’ Edmund said. Lillian, it appeared, was married to a man called Pete Donner and was living on a farm on the prairies and Edmund had a ‘kid brother’, called Nathan.