Somewhere Over England (20 page)

He passed the cottages which were built of grey stone. The women hanging out washing nodded and waved. Would they if they knew what he was? He waved back, then walked quickly on. Were people shouting at his mother, cursing her husband, his father? Was she safe, were bombers dropping their loads
now as he walked along safely, as his father sat writing letters safely? Chris kicked at a stone, his feet cold in his boots. He dug his hands into his pockets, his gloves not keeping his hands warm. Laura said that they thought his dad was the same as the others, a British soldier.

He looked back at the women. Laura had also said there was no point in putting out washing today, it was too cold and there was no sun.

He stopped at a gap in the houses, leaning on the stile. The trees were wild and free not like the club-like ones which lined the London streets. The fields stretched into the distance gently rising into a sloping hill. White frost streaked the brown earth and the straw stubble which lay in furrowed lines. The beetfields were further from the village.

He kicked at the post and watched the ice in its cracks shatter and whiten. He kicked again then stood still. Ice covered the fence too and each head of dried cow parsley, each twig of the hedge, each blade of grass. The puddles in the road were thick with it.

‘I hate you, Daddy,’ he said and knew that he was speaking aloud because he could see his breath burst into the cold air. I hate you, Daddy, he said again, but to himself this time. I hate you for making me different, for making Mummy have to listen to people who shout. For making Mummy have to work in London while the bombs fall and you sit on an island and I stand here, safely. I hate you for making me lie, making me say you are a soldier, making me want the bombers to be hit by ack-ack but when they are I hate you again because I think of Grandpa and can’t cheer. He dug at the puddles with his heel, again and again until the ice was crushed and shattered.

But I love you, too, he thought as he walked on and so he pushed the thought of his father away because it was too difficult, all just too difficult.

Mary was waiting by the forge, the hem of her smock dress hanging down at the back. Her mackintosh hem was down too and her cardigan sleeves hung below the cuffs. Her wrists were red from the cold and her gloves had holes in the fingers. She waved and beckoned but he couldn’t run because it was too slippery.

They stood beneath the awning and watched as Ted the
smith talked to the carthorse. It was tethered to an iron ring in the wall. He nodded at Chris.

‘Come to see us again have you?’ he said as he reached down and lifted one large hoof between his knees, bending double, paring with the knife, his leather apron stained and burnt.

He grunted as Chris nodded.

‘Got your postal order too, I reckon, my old boy,’ he said, his head down, his voice muffled as he eased back.

Mary looked at Chris and then away but he caught her arm, pulling the postal order for sixpence from his pocket. ‘We’ll go to the shop afterwards. Mrs Briggs won’t say the sweets are all gone. Laura went in and told her that they should come out from under the counter. Sweets weren’t just for village children.’

He smiled at her and was glad his mother sent him this each week for his pocket money and that there was enough for Mary to share. ‘And come to lunch. Laura said you must.’

The smith was pressing a red-hot shoe on to the hoof and they heard it sizzle and watched the sweat run off Ted’s nose and down his face to his shirt. The heat from the fire reached them and warmed them. They moved closer. Ted lifted the shoe off and doused it in the water tank and the smell came up with the steam to mingle with that from the charred hoof.

They waited until all four were done and then Chris moved to the grindstone near the wall and wound the crank, sharpening his penknife, though he seldom used it.

They moved on then, to the bottom of the lane, shouting back at Tom and Joe who had moved down from London too. They waited for them, walking with them, sliding on the ice, passing the goat which was tethered by an iron ring to a thick stake in the middle of a field between Teel’s Lane and the crossroads. Chris pushed his hands into his pockets. He wondered if Mrs Briggs would be cross after Laura’s talk.

The Post Office was open and smelt of spices and tobacco. It was dark after the whiteness of the frost and the mahogany counters gleamed. Chris asked for a quarter of gobstoppers after he had cashed the order, knowing he would get six and some liquorice. It was Mr Briggs in the shop today so it was all right after all.

He passed the gobstoppers round and then they slid down Nag’s Lane, balancing, waving their arms, wobbling on the
stream of ice. They did not speak much and when they did they dribbled pink saliva and laughed. Joe told Chris how his foster-mother had rushed out last night to bring in the washing off the line in case a German bomber came and the whiteness guided him to her cottage.

They laughed again but then walked quietly for a while, round the back of the pub where sometimes a packet of crisps could be found, unopened. There was none today and so they leaned against the wall, still not talking but thinking, because they knew the bombs were dropping on their homes in London whilst here people knew nothing of the noise and the dust and the screams.

The village boys came then, kicking a football up the back lane and so they made up two teams and the village won 6–2, but it was five boys against four, Joe said, squaring up as Ted’s grandson laughed. But then they squatted, while Joe pulled out a Woodbine packet, squashed and flattened from his coat pocket, lighting up and talking of his father in the Army, waiting to kill some of those German bastards.

‘You shouldn’t smoke. You’re only ten,’ Mary said, taking another gobstopper from Chris, pushing it into her mouth, wiping her hand across her lips. ‘You only do it to look big.’

‘You don’t need to smoke to do that, do you?’ Joe said, drawing on the cigarette, blowing the smoke up into the air while the others laughed.

Chris wanted to push him back so that he fell and pull his cigarette from his mouth, because Mary had flushed and dropped her head, and because Joe had called the Germans bastards. But he just pushed himself upright and walked away because Joe was much bigger and he was scared.

He took Mary back for lunch, eating the pie slowly at first, watching Mary looking at the pastry and the meat, then the knife and fork until Laura showed her how to eat.

‘I only have chips at home and eat ’em with me fingers from the newspaper,’ Mary said, her elbows wide, her hands awkward. ‘My sister’s too busy. She’s got a job. It takes her out a lot, that and her boyfriend.’

‘You must miss your mother,’ Laura said.

Mary shrugged. ‘I don’t remember ever having one. She died when I was two. You can’t miss what you don’t know, can you?’

‘What about your father?’

‘I don’t remember him either.’

After the pie Laura took them out into the garden, round to the north side to the rain butt where they watched as she scraped the ice and frost off the top. They brought it into the house where she showed them how to crush it, then mix it with milk, cornflour and honey from Mr Reynolds’s hive. They ate it from dishes in front of the inglenook fireplace and Laura nodded when Chris asked if the slates were in place in the chimney ready for the evening. He and Mary were frightened that the firelight would beckon to bombers which might fly overhead.

They stayed in all afternoon, playing snap and dominoes, laughing at Laura who lost, watching as she fell asleep in front of the fire, whispering, not shouting, ‘Snap’. And then they just sat sprawled in chairs, feeling the heat of the fire, listening to it crackle and Chris almost told her about his father because he didn’t want to lie to Mary but he did not because neither did he want to lose her.

Helen walked through the streets, glass crunching beneath her feet, shrapnel lying on the ground still warm from the afternoon raid. She thought of Chris’s letter telling her of his conker swaps and was glad that normality existed somewhere.

She was tired, more tired than usual today. The warehouse behind the bank had been hit last night. The coffins had gone up in flames and the plate glass windows of the bank had shattered from the blast and the heat. Water had poured in from the fire hoses which had been used to stop the bank from burning. Helen had arrived in the morning to see Mr Leonard in boots and coat, his bow tie immaculate and his face red with fury, standing on a chair directing the staff as they brushed at the water, the glass, the dust which filled the banking hall.

He had handed a broom to Helen, pointing to his ground floor office which he felt she, as his secretary, should deal with but she had passed it back to him, telling him he should do that himself while she helped in the bucket chain which was bailing out the basement strongroom. She had not listened to his protests but had smiled as Joan and the others turned away to hide their laughs because Mr Leonard did not care to deal in practicalities. He had come in from another branch to take over the position of manager two months ago when Mr Aster, Dr Schultz’s friend, had been killed during a raid. He always wore a bow tie and would not allow gloves during office hours, though he wore them himself. He hated Germans and Jews.

All day there had been no gas or electricity and daylight was kept out because the windows had been boarded up, the hammering piercing their headaches. They had been cold and wet and the dust had hung in their hair and throats but by eleven o’clock in the morning the bank was open for business, though Mr Leonard had complained that his hands were quite ruined.

‘In spite of your gloves?’ Helen had asked.

The accounting machines were out of operation and most of the typewriters were no longer serviceable. All entries had to be made by hand in the light of candles whose flickering was reflected in the pools of water which remained in some areas of the banking hall. All letters had to be handwritten and as they worked, the frost cut through the staff so that they felt sick with cold.

Helen had gone out to a café and arranged that jugs of coffee should be sent into the staff, sending one in to Mr Leonard who smiled until she told him that she had billed it to the bank. He did not protest, though, but insisted on Helen staying late to finish urgent correspondence. Tit for tat, she thought as she passed dark shops, walking in the middle of the pavement, feeling her way past sandbagged lampposts, Belisha beacons, and other pedestrians.

A lorry had given her a lift this far, the driver asking if she knew where he could find a Christmas tree for the second festive season of the war. Helen had shaken her head, not knowing. She did not want to know either because she would not be able to see Chris. Mr Leonard had refused her request for leave which was why she had thrust the broom at him. He knew, of course, that Heine was German but now she was fighting back.

Number eight Warden Post was on her right; she could see it quite clearly now that the wind had carried the clouds clear of the moon. It was bright and the clouds had almost gone. A bomber’s moon, she thought, and then the air raid siren rose and fell and the man walking behind her increased his stride as she did, hurrying towards the Underground station which was just ahead. The planes could be heard beating in the air and she ran. Joining all the others who pushed into the entrance of the station and down the steps, but she wanted the District Line and so she turned, forcing her way through the people, taking the route she needed, then on down the corridor.

It was warm on the platform and camp beds were already set up for the night, row upon row with women guarding two or three until the family arrived. So few children, Helen thought, standing and watching. So few men out of uniform. She smiled as two women danced to an accordion player. They lifted their skirts, kicking their bare, mottled legs high as three sailors whistled and clapped.

Joan spent each night in her local station with her mother, she had told Helen. It was safer, more fun than on their own. More women were dancing now, their laughter ignoring the raid above them which was pulverising the city, perhaps their homes, but what else could they do? What else could anybody do? Helen watched as an old woman took out her Thermos flask and poured tea into a cup, tilting back her head and drinking. Helen watched as she placed it on the ground, taking her paper packet of sandwiches from a shopping bag on her camp bed, tearing the bread and scrape of butter into bits before eating them. She looked up at Helen and smiled, holding out a piece to her.

‘’Ere you are, dearie. Have some bread and butter.’

Helen smiled back, shaking her head. Knowing that the woman would need it for herself because she would not move from here until the morning.

She walked along, away from the blankets which hung from a wooden frame around the toilet buckets. The stench was still strong down at the other end of the platform and it was too warm, fetid. She undid her coat. A train came and although it was not hers the draught it caused was welcome and she wondered how these people could bear the airless stench once the trains stopped for the night.

She put her hands in her pockets and eased her feet in their boots and thought that anything was better than being crushed beneath the rubble of your home.

Her train came then and she could find no seat but did not expect to. She hung on the strap, feeling bodies close against her, hot and heavy, but when she reached her station and the fresh cold air she was sorry to leave the company of others.

The raid was over but the sky burned red as she knew it would. Rescue lorries ground past her as she walked on down deserted streets which had not been hit tonight. But there was still time. Yes, there was still plenty of time.

There were gaps in the terraces where houses had once been and through these she could see that the warehouses in Mill Street had been hit. She could see and hear the flames leaping high into the sky and then there was an explosion and she ducked instinctively, knowing it must be the spirits exploding. She held on to a lamppost, watching as more fire engines clanged and roared down the street towards the conflagration.