Fireweed (5 page)

‘
Fifty pounds?
' I said. ‘
Fifty pounds?
'

‘How long will it last us,' she asked, ‘if we're careful with it?'

‘Oh, for ever, I should think,' I said. ‘Just about for ever!' That great feeling of freedom swept over me again.

‘Oh, ripping!' she said, grinning at me. ‘That should be long enough. The war won't last for ever, will it, Bill?'

‘Come on,' I said, starting to run away, along the pavement by the river. ‘Come on!'

Later we sat in St James's Park, on the grass beside the lake. There was barbed-wire all over the Horse Guards parade, and the soldiers on guard there were in khaki; but we had been to Trafalgar Square, and Whitehall. There were wardens' posts and shelters covered in sandbags set up round the edge of the park, but the middle was the same as it used to be. We were eating lunch; sandwiches, and mugs of hot tea, bought from a W.V.S. canteen in a lorry parked in the Mall. There was some sort of fire-fighting exercise going on, and people marked A.F.S. were swarming over from Green Park, and the canteen was for them really, but they didn't mind serving us, They were hearty women in green overcoats, very cheerful.

While we were sitting there an air-raid warning sounded; a horrible wailing noise, running up and down the scale.

‘What's that?' cried Julie, jumping up. ‘Oh, what do we have to do?'

‘Have some more beef sandwich!' I yelled at her, raising my voice above the din.

‘Where are the shelters, Bill? Oh, come on, run!' she said.

‘They're too far. Right at the edge of the park,' I said. ‘We'll be all right here.'

People around us were picking themselves up, and walking away. ‘We don't want to be seen, or they'll tell us to take cover,' I said. ‘Let's go over there.' I led the way into a clump of rhododendrons, and we lay down on the leaf mould beneath the branches, out of sight. I lay on my back, munching, and looking at a patch of sky framed by the dark leaves overhead. Then I turned my head, and looked at her. She was very white; so pale that a few faint freckles across her nose and cheeks showed up for the first time.

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘They blow a whistle for immediate danger, in lots of factories and offices. We'd probably hear it.'

‘Oh,' she said, letting out a long breath, ‘I didn't know.' Then we heard a droning noise above us. There was a line of white across our patch of sky. We could see planes up there, wheeling and diving, soaring, and chalking crazy scribbled loops on the sky. If they were shooting at each other the noise was drowned by the Ack-ack guns which opened up all around us, stuttering angrily at the sky. Then the fight moved away beyond Victoria. The guns were quiet. We lay there still, and looked at the empty park. It was full of birds: water birds, tree birds. They did not take cover, nor even flutter at the sound of guns. At last the all-clear sounded, one smooth note, and gradually people reappeared, and we got up, and went out of the park to see Big Ben. The blankets we had bought that morning were in a new canvas rucksack over my shoulder.

‘I wonder what they're like close to?' she said, half to herself.

‘What?'

‘Those planes we were watching.'

‘I'll show you,' I said. We walked across the top of Whitehall, just beside King Charles, waiting for the traffic. Lots of the passing cars were sploshed with brown and green paint, for camouflage, and one even had a mattress strapped across the roof, to absorb bullets. On the other side of the street was a little toyshop, selling mostly those horribly painted soldiers which people buy as souvenirs. But it had planes there too. There weren't many toys around in the war, and most of them were horrid, but there were those tiny planes, exact little models, made of some super shiny metal that looked just like aluminium, though I suppose it can't really have been, when people were being asked to give up their saucepans for the war effort. We looked into the windows for a bit, and I told her the names of all the different planes.

Then I dug into my pockets, and found my very last sixpence, all that I had left of the money my father sent me, and I slipped inside, and bought one of the Spitfires. I felt a bit silly when I got out onto the pavement again, so I thrust my hands into my pockets, and sauntered off down the street, with Julie trotting beside me. ‘Just wanted a closer look,' I said, lightly.

‘For an awful moment I thought you were trying to shake me off,' she said.

‘No,' I said, suddenly serious. ‘No, I won't do that, I promise you. We might as well stick together. And girls really shouldn't go around all by themselves. I think I'll look after you.'

‘Thanks, Bill,' she said. ‘You're a brick.'

I think it was because I had half expected her to say that anyway she had the money, that I thought this remark so splendid. I felt solid, and brick-like all the way down Whitehall.

We looked at Big Ben from Westminster Bridge, and then from Parliament Square. We heard it strike two. Then we wandered around the Abbey, giggling at the dramatic monuments to white marble gentlemen who seemed so pleased with themselves, although they were dead.

Outside again we walked past the statue of Cromwell; beyond it the road was cordoned off. Two men were sweeping the pavement; it was scattered across with lumps of stone, and shattered glass. As we rounded the corner of Westminster Hall we saw what it was. Half the great east window of the hall had been blown out, and was lying across the pavement around the foot of Richard Coeur de Lion, and his bronze horse, I remember how black the yawning gap in the tracery looked. It brought things home to me, that. Seeing ugly old shops and shabby houses knocked apart had not seemed so appalling as seeing the wreckage of that lovely patterned stone.

‘Bloody swine!' I muttered.

‘How awful,' she said, very softly. We stood looking for a minute. I remember that the fragments of stone were grey where they had been exposed to the grimy London air, and creamy yellow where they had been broken across. Splinters of glass lay among them, sparkling in pale sunlight. I looked sideways at Julie. Her face looked very still and quiet. Then suddenly, as she raised her head to toss away her hair, the gloom on her countenance lightened, till she almost laughed.

‘Oh, look, Bill, look!' she said, pointing to the Lionheart, riding above us. Proudly, above his head, pointing skywards, he held his great long-sword; but the sword was bent. At first glance it made the great horseman look comic; both of us were laughing aloud. But then, as we let laughter die away we saw that it also made him look resolute, and turned the cheap heroics of his gesture into a battered defiance that would not be overcome.

The sweeper nearest us raised his head and, nodding towards the statue, said to us:

‘Don't seem to bother '
im
, do it?'

‘Will they be able to mend the window?' Julie asked him.

‘Stones is easier to mend than bones,' he told her. ‘Mind you gets tucked up safely at night, young miss.'

We wandered on. ‘Now we've got a rucksack to put things in,' I said thoughtfully, there are a lot of things from home I wish I had.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘My penknife, for a start. And my torch. And something to read when I can't get to sleep in those shelters. And I'd very much like a shave.'

‘
Shave?
' she said, incredulous. ‘You don't need to shave!'

‘I jolly well do! About once a week or so.'

‘Well, I can't see any beard on you.' She stared at my chin.

I raised my hand instinctively, and stroked the soft absurd pale down that grew there. She laughed again.

‘Really, Bill, you don't need to shave
that
off! That's not a beard!'

‘It makes me feel a fool,' I said, sourly.

‘Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, let's go back to your house.'

‘I suppose I really ought to go and see if my aunt's there again now,' I said. I hadn't really meant to go back right away. I felt very reluctant, as though something nasty would happen if I saw anyone I knew, though I hadn't the sense to work out why I felt like that. Stands out a mile to me, looking back, but as Julie said, I wasn't very quick on the uptake. After all, I was only fifteen.

We went home on an Underground train. It was very smelly down there, because of all the night shelters. They left their stink behind them. The barricade was still across the road. The doorstep was even more dirty, and all the windows looked dead; I don't know how it is that one can see from the glass, as one can in human eyes, when there's nobody at home, but it's true. We didn't walk straight up the street to be caught and warned off by the warden, but slipped round the little lane that led between the small gardens at the back. That too had a notice, UNEXPLODED BOMB, propped up against an old oil can, but we just walked past it.

I opened the gate at the end of our garden, and we went down the path. It looked different: the leaves were all golden yellow on the apple tree, and the grass had grown long, and was jewelled with dew, even then, in the afternoon. At the end of the garden, next to the house, was a deep pit, about six feet wide, into which the windows of the basement looked. It had stone steps into it, which led to the back door. And lying in this sunk place, lodged against the kitchen windowsill on one side, and against my aunt's parsley and mint patch on the other, was the bomb. Its nose-cone was on the windowsill, poking through a broken pane, and its finned tail was on the herb bed. We stared at it, fascinated. Looking up I saw broken branches in the apple tree, and looking down I saw a long scuffed mark on the lawn.

‘Look, Julie,' I said, excited. ‘It fell into the tree, and that must have broken its fall a bit, and turned it sideways, so that it slithered along the lawn, instead of falling on its nose, and that's why it didn't go off. It just slipped along there, and stuck.' Indeed, the scuff marks and scratches on its grey sides were already bright with new rust and where the leaky gutter spilled over it it had grown a streak of livid green algae, absurdly, as though it meant just to stay there, and weather into the surroundings like a fallen tree.

‘I don't like it,' she said. ‘Let's go.'

I think I would have said it if she hadn't, but now she had I felt different. ‘No,' I said. ‘I want my things.'

Her face whitened, visibly, as I watched. ‘But we'd have to go right under it!' she said.

‘Cowardy, cowardy, custard!' I said, to make myself feel brave.

‘Are you really going to?' she asked.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘Really.'

‘Well, if you are, I'm coming too,' she said, firmly, taking a tight hold of my hand, and marching me towards it.

So we went. We walked down the steps, and across the narrow yard, stooping under the bomb, past it, and getting to the door. I slipped my hand round the doorpost, and found the key, as always, wedged between the doorpost and the wall, where the fit was bad. I turned it in the lock, and let us in.

It was dark. The bomb blocked out a lot of the light. Its nasty snout was nearly resting on the draining board beside the sink. Broken glass from the window lay across the floor, and dust lay thick on the table and the dresser. Julie was shivering. I heard her teeth. You know people say teeth chatter, and that's just what hers were doing. I don't know what came over me, but I looked and looked, and saw how she was, shivering, hugging herself round with her arms, her eyes looking huge and dark, and it made me feel cruel.

‘I want a cup of tea,' I said. ‘I'm going to shave. Make me a cup of tea.'

We both looked round the place, seeing the horror of what I had just said. There were tile cups and the teapot on the dresser; about five steps away. Then five steps back to get the kettle from the stove. Then the tap, about three inches from the surface of the bomb. Then the stove again.

‘The gas!' she said, very breathlessly. ‘They'll have turned off the gas! They must have turned it off, must have! It might explode,' she added in a more normal tone.

‘It's an electric stove,' I said brutally. ‘And the mains switch is just above it,' and full of manly strength I went off up the stairs, three at a time, to the bathroom.

I was sorry by the time I had lathered my face. I hoped she would come up and join me, but she didn't. I hoped she wouldn't set it off; I supposed she would kill me too if she did, and that made it all right to be up here, shaving. It wasn't as if I was safe. My razor blades had got rusty while I was in Wales, and the water was cold, so it took some time. Then I went and fetched my torch and penknife from my room, and some clean socks while I was at it, and a shirt, and that copy of
Kidnapped
that I had pretended to read when I was angry with my aunt. Then I went downstairs to the kitchen.

She had the tea made, cups laid on the table. The table had been dusted too. She had even found a packet of biscuits in the larder and put them out. Her own tea was poured out, and she was sitting reading one of my aunt's copies of
Picture Post
.

I stood in the, doorway, looking at her. I expected her to be triumphant, gloating; or maybe, to reproach me for my monstrous behaviour, sullen stares like the ones my aunt was so good at. Instead she looked up and grinned at me, and said, ‘Come and have some tea! Look at this.'

‘This' was a picture in the magazine, of St Paul's Cathedral. The heading was UNEXPLODED BOMB THREATENS ST PAUL'S. We could see a great yawning black hole in the pavement outside the south transept. Heads together, while we drank tea, we read about the bomb disposal squad, who were trying to deal with the bomb. They had dug down thirty feet before reaching it, and were still trying to defuse it when the paper went to press.

‘You know,' she said, ‘it's supposed to be good.'

‘What is?'