Blitz Next Door (12 page)

Dunny told Pete he could still see torchlight through the holes in the shelter roof when he went back through the garden to his own house later than night with his mum and Wee Stookie.

Dad heard from Mr Milligan that Hugh Winters-Smith flew to New Zealand first thing the next morning.

As Pete’s war wound healed, it left a Harry Pottery zigzag scar down the side of his leg and let him escape showers for the whole first week of the Easter holidays.

He spent most of that time down in the old air-raid shelter with Dunny. They ran an extension cable inside from Dunny’s dad’s hut and blasted Mr Milligan’s records as loud as they liked, because they were too far from Pete’s house to disturb Jenny or Mum. While they hollered and practised curling their lips along with Elvis, they staged their own World Cup with mixed generations of fantasy football teams. Now and again they allowed Wee Stookie to take a free kick so he couldn’t clipe on Dunny for being mean. That meant Dunny didn’t have to forfeit his mobile phone again. Although he never really used it when he was
with Pete; he was too busy.

The boys found themselves talking about Beth. A lot: whether they would have let the young Beth manage a football team (probably not); whether the old Beth had been well enough to see the treasures her son delivered at last. (That would be amazing!) They discussed whether or not they’d ever see her wandering about the neighbourhood again and always agreed that they wouldn’t. Both boys liked to spend a lot of time studying her drawings, especially after Pete’s dad googled her and discovered what an important artist she was in New Zealand.

“That means our drawings could be important too,” Dunny said.

“Yeah,” agreed Pete. “Like those cave paintings people study to find out about past civilisations.”

“We could charge people to come and see them, Nigel. Air Raid Art, we could call it.”

“We could make postcards.”

“Sell ginger.”

“Take people on tours of the ruin, then round this shelter. Give them headphones like you get in museums.”

“Nah, hang on, Nigel. If we bring tourists in, my footballers and your record player have to come out.”

“You’re right,” Pete agreed. “Don’t want stuff nicked.”

“And we’d have to keep the shelter tidy. Bad enough doing my chores at home.”

“And who’s going to do the tours while we’re at school? Wee Stookie’s too young.”

“Suppose we could just do it in the holidays, make
some dosh for footie figures.”

“But what if we want to trampoline? Hear Elvis? Or play real football outside? Anyway,” Pete was taking a long look round the shelter, “I don’t know if Beth would like Air Raid Art. Feels kind of…”

“Disrespectful?” the boys chimed together.

“And too much hassle.” Dunny flipped the record on Pete’s turntable, put on King Creole, then danced Messi and Cantona into the centre of the shelter floor.

Pete’s mum said she would never forget the anniversary of the Clydebank Blitz because it was the night Jenny turned the corner and became the sweetest of babies. The pet name her doting godfather Uncle Jamie used the first time they’d met had stuck, although it was usually Wee Cheery Chookie these days.

The Smeatons saw plenty of Uncle Jamie since he decided to retire within a year of Pete’s dad starting work with his firm. Although still technically the boss of Milligan Architects, day-to-day operations fell to Steve, his right-hand man. This gave Uncle Jamie the time he needed to devote to old Mrs Milligan, who had grown very frail since Pete first met her.

“Living on borrowed time, poor wee sowl,” Uncle Jamie always sighed when Pete’s mum or dad asked after her. Pete wasn’t so sure about that. Aunty Mary, as Pete called her, could be sharp as a tack. On most of the occasions Pete had joined Uncle Jamie to help him record her memories, she’d recall the tiniest detail of what it was like to live through the Blitz. Pete would listen, spellbound, as the old lady and a small group of fellow survivors brought alive the past and the horror – and often the good times – of living with war.

Pete won his first ever school prize for his Clydebank
Blitz history project.

“And you a blow-in from down South,” Aunty Mary had teased when he made a special trip to the nursing home to present her with his certificate.

Pete wished he could have shown his prize off to Beth too. But she was gone.

Three days after I reached Auckland. Slipped away. Very peaceful. Family at her bedside
. No pain, Hugh Winters-Smith wrote in the letter that arrived with a parcel addressed to Pete a couple of months after Hugh had left for New Zealand. There was a catalogue inside for an exhibition of Major Works by the late Elizabeth Winters.

“Would you look at the price of these!” Dad could only gasp as he flicked through the pages.

It wasn’t the high prices that shocked Pete; it was their subject matter. Elizabeth Winters painted people caught, as though in a photograph, against a backdrop of devastation. Some of her works were actual battle scenes: wounded soldiers fallen, uniformed men weeping. Limp forms slung over the backs of muddy, crawling comrades. Most of Elizabeth Winters’ paintings, though, tackled the aftermath of bombing in a civilian setting: ruined towns, ruined buildings, ruined lives. Two children were often the only people in these war-scapes, staring out from the canvas at the viewer. Pete recognised the faces of each child: the girl was Beth, the boy himself.

However, the painting Pete lifted from layers of bubble wrap and brown paper didn’t compare to anything in Elizabeth Winters’ glossy catalogue. It was small and simple, and was of a couple on their wedding
day. A bride with bobbed hair wearing a flapper dress. Her hand clutched the arm of a handsome groom in uniform, a strip of medals on his breast, a walking stick by his side. The man’s face was painted in photographic detail, showing the contrast between his pale skin tones and his dark hazel eyes. The features of the woman’s face, however, were unclear, soft focus, although her mouth was red and smiling.

On the backboard of the painting, Beth Winters had written in a wobbly, faint hand:

To Pete

Thanks to you I was able to look on my mother’s

real face again at last.

Love Beth, your neighbour

Dunny suggested Pete hang the painting in the shelter, but Pete argued that it belonged on the wall between his room and Beth’s, even though he knew nothing lay on the other side but fresh air.

The jagged ruin of Beth’s former home had been properly cleared by Dad and Uncle Jamie. With Mum and Pete’s help, they’d filled the bomb crater with fresh soil and scattered the seeds to create a garden of blue and purple flowers, which would blossom in time for the next anniversary of the Clydebank Blitz.

Pete knew that Beth Winters had no need to return.

There were nights, though, when he held his breath and heard the notes of the ‘Skye Boat Song’ floating through the wall, played by his imagination.