Nobody Came (5 page)

C
hurch bells heralded in the new year. A new school term started; snowdrops finally pushed their heads through the soil, green shoots appeared on trees, the sun chased away grey clouds, spring arrived and my childhood ended.

Rays of early-morning sun fell across my pillow, their warmth touching my face. Still half-asleep I stretched contentedly until the realisation of what had woken me penetrated my brain: Gloria’s high-pitched drunken shouting. Nothing unusual in that, but this time I heard something different in her shrill tones: a note of hysteria, of fear and maybe even the dawning awareness that something was about to happen, something she couldn’t control. Whatever it was, it frightened me.

A male voice bellowed out, shocking me by its loudness. The words were garbled and indistinguishable. Stanley never raised his voice and the unaccustomed volume made me wonder momentarily if a new uncle had appeared.

The male voice rose and rose until it almost matched the shrill pitch of Gloria’s. Then came another sound – harsh sobs – and with a shock I realised what I didn’t want to: they were coming from Stanley.

I turned my head to see John propped on his elbow, just listening. I wanted his wide grin to break out, wanted to be reassured that our world was still all right. But for once there was no smile on his face. He looked almost frightened and the thought of John being frightened made my whole world tilt and my body shake.

Something very bad must be happening.

I looked over to the other side of the room where Davie lay on his put-u-up. He stared back at me with eyes made glassy with the onset of panic.

I knew he wanted to run over and get into bed with us. He was just waiting for me to give him a sign. But I was frozen, unable to move a fraction, even to raise my hand to beckon him.

I heard a noise I recognised from when the uncles called: the scrape of furniture being moved. But this time I sensed that it was not going to be followed by music.

The noise grew fainter and I guessed something was being dragged out to the landing.

And then there was silence; a thick terrifying silence. I reached for John.

I wanted that silence to end, but when it did it was with a scream that was unbearable in its intensity. It was followed by another and another. They bounced against our walls, vibrated in my ears and filled my mind with their horror. I put my hands over my ears to block them out but they forced their way through my fingers. Those screams belonged to Gloria.

John suddenly moved. He flew to the door and opened it. I crawled out of bed and staggered to his side. I wanted to tell him to close the door because I didn’t want to see – but then I did.

Stanley was balanced on the wooden banister at the top of the stairs. His body was swaying. In front of him there was a clear drop down to the tiled hallway three floors below. One end of a rope was round his neck and the other end was tied to a ceiling beam.

I saw Stanley’s legs shake, his body quiver. I wanted to call out to him and tell him to stay with us but the words remained in my throat. Instead we were quiet; so quiet.

Gloria moved forward. ‘Stanley,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’

He jumped.

The thunder of footsteps on the stairs, booming voices and Gloria’s screams mingled together and hurt my head. I put my hands over my ears. I wanted the noises to go away.

John shut our door. We sat on the edge of the bed, numb with shock. Davie’s tears were welling up but none of us said anything. My mind was a white blank without any thoughts in it.

I’ve got no idea how long it was before the door of our room opened. Some neighbours were standing there, with Mrs Stone, who was holding Denise.

‘He’s alive,’ someone said. ‘They cut him down. They reached him just in time.’ Seemingly the clumsily tied knot had failed to break his neck. My panic momentarily receded, but still there was a nagging anxiety. What would happen now? Could things just go back to normal? I had a horrible feeling they couldn’t.

Mrs Stone smirked at John. ‘Seems Stanley found out about your Ma’s gentlemen,’ she laughed. ‘Silly, pathetic man! He knew what she had been up to in the war. The whole town did. You’ll know all about that too, don’t you, John?’

‘Where is she?’ I asked, but no one seemed to know. It seemed that Gloria had disappeared; fled.

No, they didn’t know where she had gone; nor were they interested.

‘Where’s Stanley?’ I asked, not daring to look towards the landing where I had last seen him balanced on the banister.

Stanley had gone, they told us, taken away to a hospital by ambulance. Men in white coats had taken him. No, he wasn’t coming back either.

Still I felt nothing but blankness; it was as if I was paralysed, beyond feeling.

‘You can’t stay here,’ Mrs Stone told us with barely disguised glee.

One of the neighbours told us to get dressed and said someone was coming to fetch us. We were to stay in our room until they did.

We knew it was useless to argue. Without the freedom that Gloria’s indifference had given us, we were children who had to do what adults told us. Children did not have rights.

The voices moved from the landing to the sitting room; there was lots of talking. Straining to hear, we recognised the voices of Mrs Stone and some of the other neighbours but the wails of the baby were so loud that we couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. We got dressed in silence, as they had instructed us to do, then we all sat very quietly on our bed, our trembling thighs pressed against each other’s. We waited to see what was going to happen. I don’t know how long we waited, but it seemed a very long time.

We were brought food: cheese sandwiches and glasses of milk and later some orange squash. They allowed us to go downstairs to the lavatory, but all the time we knew we were being watched. Mrs Stone did not want us disappearing that day.

We heard more noise on the stairs: heavy footfalls and male voices we did not recognise.

‘They’re in there,’ we heard Mrs Stone say as she opened our bedroom door.

Two policemen stepped into the room. They looked stern. One was tall with a black moustache and wisps of dark hair sticking out from under his helmet. The other, who clutched his helmet in his hand, was fat, with carrot-coloured hair and a bad-tempered, flushed face. He wiped the sweat from his eyes as he came into the bedroom. ‘Why do they always have to be on the top floor?’ he asked no one in particular.

‘Get up, boys. You’re all going for a little ride. Leave everything behind,’ he said when my hand reached to pick up one of my beloved Dinky cars. I looked imploringly at my easel.

‘Everything will be sent to you later,’ Mrs Stone said, looking down at John with an expression that was almost gleeful. She certainly had no compassion for us; she never had.

We stood up with difficulty. Our knees felt shaky, like jelly. She roughed John’s hair with her outstretched, gnarled hand then harshly pushed him in the direction of the policemen.

‘Oh John, one more thing …’ He looked at her with just a tiny touch of hope in his eyes. ‘Whatever story your Ma told you, she lied. There were no American soldiers here during the War. There was only one type – the type your mother liked.’ She cackled with delight when she saw his expression change as he took in the meaning of her vicious words. Words I didn’t understand then, but they stuck in my head.

The tall, dark officer took John’s arm just above the elbow, while the carrot-haired one grabbed me with large fleshy fingers that easily met around my bony wrist. Davie, completely bewildered by the events of the morning, took my other hand and held onto it so tightly that it felt as if he would never let go.

They had sent a black police van for us; it was parked right outside the front door. Other residents of Devonshire Place were gathered round the entrance; the commotion had woken many households that morning. Something had happened and everyone was curious to see what was going on in their street. I bet they had been speculating and whispering and buzzing with excitement every time the front door opened.

We were pushed roughly into the back of the van and the door was slammed shut. The two policemen got in the front and Mrs Stone passed the squalling baby Denise to the red-haired one, who wasn’t driving. I remember that her tiny face was almost as red as his big one. There were no seats in the back for us to sit on; just a wooden bench that had been designed for grown men, not three small, frightened children whose feet couldn’t reach the floor. John and I climbed onto it, our legs dangling, then pulled Davie up and wedged him between us.

That was when he started sobbing. Not for his mother, certainly not for Stanley, but simply because he was still only three and three-quarters years old and frightened almost out of his wits. His mouth opened wide and cries of terror and bewilderment filled the air. Tears spurted from his eyes, streamed down his cheeks and blended with the snot that was trickling from his nose, running down the sides of his mouth and dripping from his chin. He gasped for breath between the sobs, choking on occasion so that his face turned scarlet. He looked at me beseechingly and I, feeling almost as terrified, looked across at John. I wanted him to say something, anything, as long as it made it all right. John was my big brother, my hero. I wanted him to give me that special smile; the one that told me it was him and me against the world of grown-ups.

But when I saw the John he had become, in just the few hours between the closing of the door on the familiar world of our childhood and being locked in the van, my fear intensified. My shoulders shook, my legs trembled, my stomach churned. I wanted to pee. I wanted to go home. I wanted to get out of the black van. The boy I knew and looked up to seemed to be disappearing before my eyes, eaten up with a nameless fear that as yet I didn’t understand. My brother, my big brother, was sitting on the bench, his head clutched in his hands and his body as slack and defeated as a little old man’s.

‘John!’ I said despairingly. He turned to look at me with eyes that were wide and unfocused. Suddenly they seemed to redden and well up and a tear trickled down his left cheek; just one.

And when I saw his fear, my mouth opened and I sobbed and sobbed.

Our pitiful cries mingled with the wails from the front of the van. Our baby sister, hearing our distress, had pushed her infant’s vocal cords to the very limit.

‘Shut up, shut your grizzling, the lot of you!’ yelled the fat policeman, shaking Denise slightly.

We didn’t, we couldn’t; only John, John who always had something clever or brave to say, was quiet.

‘Shut up, you bloody little bastards,’ shouted the other policeman. He turned in the driver’s seat to look round and glare at us.

After what seemed like a long journey the van turned sharply, braked and came to a sudden halt. My bottom slid off the wooden bench, then we heard the front doors slam and heavy footsteps approaching the back of the van. The door was wrenched open abruptly, revealing the two policemen. The fat one was clutching our sister roughly as if she was a muddy rugby ball, holding her firmly against his bulky body. The other one reached in at great speed, grabbed John by the neck of his jumper and pulled him out; it was as if he was reaching for an unwanted puppy that had been thrown into the pound rather than a boy.

‘John!’ I screamed.

‘You stay there, you little bastard,’ the carrot-haired one shouted at me. But with one man holding a screaming baby and the other a wriggling boy, for just a few seconds they had no free hands between them – a situation I quickly took advantage of. I was already on my feet after the abrupt stop and my legs suddenly gained strength as I flung myself out of that open van door. I was going to get John, to help him, to make him strong again.

I started kicking the policeman who was holding John but he took no notice of me.

A third policeman came running up and laughed at his colleagues when he saw what was happening. ‘For God’s sake!’ he exclaimed. ‘Can you boys not control three kids? Here, I’ll deal with this one.’ He grabbed hold of John’s arm. ‘He’s going straight to Haut de la Garenne, right?’

‘Right,’ was the answer.

Hearing it confirmed, the third policeman twisted John’s arm until it was behind his back. I heard him say, ‘No nonsense now, you little bugger. You struggle any more and your arm will break.’ Holding him firmly in that grip, he propelled him forward, away from us.

I tried to run after them but my arms were being pulled tightly back until I was bent almost double. I yelled, I struggled and I dug my heels into the ground, but all to no avail. I was picked up, swung into the air and thrown back into the van. My bottom landed on the wooden bench with such a forceful thump that it nearly made me bounce right back out again.

Past the bulky shapes of the policemen I watched in horror as John was hurled forcefully into another black van, like a sack of Jersey Royal potatoes being loaded at the docks. The door was slammed shut and I couldn’t see him any more. I knew they had taken him away from us and in despair I banged my head against the side of the van and yelled out in anguish and frustration.

Davie’s whole body shook as he clung to my leg. The last few minutes had shocked him into silence and temporarily stifled his sobs but they didn’t stop mine. The tears spurted from my eyes and I thought about the times when John had seen my eyes well up, usually after I had tripped and fallen hard. On those occasions he had sternly told me, ‘Big boys don’t cry.’ But that day I knew I wasn’t a big boy and neither was John. I was five and a half and terrified.

‘Where’s my brother? Where are you taking him?’ I screamed at the policemen. They ignored me and got back into the van. I sobbed louder until the whole vehicle vibrated with my misery. Baby Denise picked up on my anguish and with one extra-loud wail she added her little voice to the lament.

‘Shut up!’ the driver shouted, banging the wire mesh that separated us boys from them. ‘Just shut up, you little buggers.’ And more from a sudden overwhelming lack of energy than obedience, my sobs faded.