The Corner House (11 page)

She sat in the kitchen where gas mantles had glowed for what seemed like endless nights. With just one penny left for the meter, the fragile globes would soon cease to glow. ‘Don’t break the mantle,’ Mam was always saying. ‘They don’t grow on trees, love.’

Oh, where was Lucy? Lucy, Jessica’s special friend, was invisible to all other people. Lucy, with blond hair like Jessica’s and blue eyes like Jessica’s, had abandoned her creator, had disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Mrs Harris, who held strong opinions on the subject of Lucy’s existence, had not visited for a while now, was probably helping more babies to be born. ‘Lonely children with good imaginations often make up invisible friends,’ Mrs Eva Harris had been heard to opine.

On the hearth, a blue-rimmed enamel mug held water, while a small bowl contained a few unsavoury crumbs of stale bread. The wireless had given up the ghost, its spent accumulator standing uselessly beside it. In the scullery, milk had soured in the jug, cheese had hardened until it looked like cracked yellow soap. But she would have to eat the cheese, because there was nothing else.

The fire had gone out ages ago. Mam would wake soon, the child insisted firmly. Mam would come down and do the magic, rattling old ashes into the pan, crumpling paper, building a little house of firewood and balancing coals on the structure until the flames licked and took hold. Mam was clever. She could make pies and cakes, could fry an egg so that it was all soft in the middle, but brown and
crispy-laced round its rim. Mam was so quiet, so cold.

Jessica had slept with Mam, had piled blankets and coats on the bed, had snuggled close so that the German aeroplanes, if they came, would not find her. But Mam was so quiet, so cold.

No-one had come to the door for ages. There was no jug on the step, so Mr Jones had not stopped to pour milk and replace the saucer-lid that was usually left by Mam outside the front door of number 34. Mrs Kershaw at number 32 was in. Mrs Kershaw was rattling her poker in the fire, was preparing food for her family.

The child’s stomach groaned. She imagined the smell of frying bacon, remembered sausages, black puddings, toast. Even a dreadful concoction involving dried egg would have been welcome.

The clock had stopped ticking. It sat in the middle of the mantelpiece looking down on her like a dead thing. She knew about dead things. Dead cockroaches, dead mice, dead rats. They were always stiff, those little mice, with strange mouths that seemed to set in a very unhappy, thin line.

She was sitting with her back to the window so that she could keep an eye on the coal hole. If she stared hard at it, nothing would happen. Only if she dozed off in the horsehair rocker would the things come out and get her. What would they do if they did get her? Would they make her dead and stiff, would they leave her with her mouth set in a sad, thin smile? She recalled sitting on the stairs while Mam had listened to Valentine Dyall. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Valentine Dyall always asked, his deep, dark voice booming all the way from London to the wireless on the dresser. Jessica was not supposed to listen to
the Man in Black. The Man in Black was for grownups who could make fires and turn great big keys in doors, folk who could collect coal without fearing the devil.

Her feet were going numb again. She lifted them up and screwed her legs beneath the navy blue dressing gown. She was wearing three jumpers, two skirts, two pairs of socks and this boy’s dressing gown that Mam had picked up at a jumble stall. Jessica had sworn that she would never need the item, but it was useful now because it was big enough to fit over all the layers of clothing. Her hands were encased in another pair of socks.

Something was wrong. She leaned back and looked at the washing on the pulley line, everything arranged in order, Mam’s things, her own things, sheets, pillowcases and towels. Two flat irons mocked a fireless grate next to the mug of water. There was an ironing blanket in the dresser, an old brown thing from the army. If she closed her eyes, she would be able to see Mam spitting on the iron, but Jessica’s eyes were on point duty. Even the blinks were rationed, because things under the stairs moved as quickly and as silky-smoothly as the voice of Valentine Dyall. ‘Lucy?’ she whispered. Why had Jessica’s special friend chosen to leave at this terrible time?

She had tried to turn the heavy door keys, had tried to go outside to find Mrs Kershaw or Mr Moss from further down. Mr Moss from further down kept pigeons and breathed sneezing powder up his nose. The little hairs that grew out of his wide nostrils had turned brown with the snuff. He had three snuff tins. One was plain black and for everyday use, one was silver and for Sundays. The third had a picture of an eagle on it, a gold-coloured eagle that stuck up a bit
and could be enjoyed by small fingers. That was his weddings and funerals tin.

Mam’s mouth was set in a thin line. Mam was cold and stiff like the little mice who ate the special, tasty poison in the night. The poison was in a green tin behind the curtain that hung like a skirt below the scullery slopstone. The back and front doors were closed tightly, each with a four-inch key sticking out of its lock. Jessica could not manage to budge the keys, had been unable to get out to the lavatory in the yard. Her toilet was an enamel bucket in the front room. Soon, she would die.

She wondered about dying. Would her mouth go thin and sad? And what about her sins? Martin Toohey from number 38 had told Jessica about sins. Martin was eight, and he had made his first Holy Communion a few months earlier. Martin had worn a borrowed suit that was miles too big. He could go to confession if he did anything wrong, but Jessica couldn’t, as she was too young to receive the Blessed Sacrament. You had to reach the Age of Reason before you could be absolved. Jessica had no need to worry about the naughty days when she had stolen condensed milk, as she had not reached the Age of Reason. She would go straight to heaven once the breadcrumbs ran out.

Jessica considered heaven. Miss Brown, who was in charge of the infants at St Mary’s, seemed very keen on heaven, but Miss Brown was old. Perhaps heaven became a good idea for old people. But Jessica wanted to play shop on the bombsite, wanted to hold Mr Moss’s pigeons, throw them into the air and watch them fly away. He was generous with his pigeons, was Mr Moss. He allowed all the local children to handle them.

She wanted to go back to the infants’ class. Sheila was in Infant One and so were the twins from Noble Street – Annie and Mary Bowles. Sheila Davies was Jessica’s very best friend. Sheila had red hair and freckles, and she could nearly do double-unders with a skipping rope. The twins were Jessica’s nearly-best friends, and their mam didn’t mind when they played with Theresa Nolan’s daughter. Theresa Nolan was upstairs in the front bedroom. She was still and cold, and her mouth was set in a thin, sad line.

Jessica stared fiercely at the coal hole cupboard. No-one would want her. Mam had been cast out in disgrace before Jessica’s birth, because Jessica had no dad. Even if she did manage to get out of the house, there would be nowhere to go. She did not understand why not having a dad was disgraceful, because Martin Toohey had no dad. Mr Toohey had been killed in Italy while carrying messages on a motorcycle, but Martin’s mother was not in disgrace.

Mam was dead. Jessica stood up, her gaze still welded to the coal hole. Like a sleepwalker, she removed the sock-gloves and walked across the kitchen until she reached the bad place. It was time to go in, time to face whatever lay on the other side. Perhaps Lucy would be in the coal store with the evil ones. In that case, going in was probably the right thing. Or was it? She did not begin to understand her actions, yet she recognized their importance. Slowly, her hand raised itself and touched the handle. It was a latch fastener with a spoon-shaped dent where many thumbs had pressed. She opened the door and walked into hell.

The darkness was terrible. For a split second, the urge to run back into comparative safety was almost
overwhelming, but Jessica resisted. The bad things under the stairs were very quiet. She still failed to comprehend why she had entered the coal hole, yet she knew that this act was significant. If the bad things got her, she would die. If she died, she would not be hungry and cold, because nobody was hungry or cold in heaven. There was no threat of limbo, as Jessica had been baptised. Straight to heaven, then. Too early, she supposed, because most people who died were old, like Mr Moss. Still, dead was better than no mam and no dad, better than the orphanage and the sad, grey clothes the mother-and-fatherless children were forced to wear.

She stood very still, her heart thumping against both ear-drums. If she survived this encounter, she might just break a window and get out into the yard. But why should she? Where could she go? Except for Mam, no-one wanted her.

Something moved, scuttered across her feet and scrambled its way into a pile of slack coal. It was either a mouse or a rat, but Jessica remained motionless. Mice and rats would not kill a little girl. ‘Are you there?’ she asked tremulously. Her voice was thinned by lack of use. She waited, every pore on her body open, every hair on her skin erect.

No reply came. ‘You’re not here.’ Her tone was stronger. A small part of Jessica felt a flicker of disappointment. Fearing things under the stairs had taken her mind off other subjects like the bombed-out people in the next street. ‘You’ve never been here,’ she advised her indiscernible enemies. ‘You’ve been in my head like the stories and like Lucy.’ Lucy had lived in the roof, had hummed songs while Jessica lay in bed waiting to sleep. Lucy was made up; so were the other beings, Jessica
surmised. There were no demons in 34, Emblem Street, Bolton, Lancashire.

Another terrified creature rattled about where the devil should have hid. ‘I’m not afraid any more.’ Jessica sank to her knees, did not feel the splinters of coal as they cut into her legs. She said an Our Father and a Glory Be, then leaned her weight against the door. Mam was dead. Mam wasn’t going to wake up. Mam’s heart had been weak ever since she’d been a little girl with fever.

The idea of a world without Mam was not acceptable. There was an orphanage in Lostock where children lived. Some came to St Mary’s for lessons, and they all had dull clothes. But the orphanage was not the real worry. It was the thought of a Mam-less existence. Mam played with Jessica, taught her to read and write, helped her with sums and colouring. Mam worked just part-time because of her heart, so Jessica always knew that Mam would be waiting inside number 34 when she came home from school.

She closed her eyes at last. There was nothing to fear, because she had faced the ultimate darkness. Tears squashed their way past tight-closed lids, collected on her face, dripped down onto her hands. Mam had beautiful red hair, a sort of golden red that was lighter in summer. She had large grey-blue eyes, a beautiful smile and a lovely voice. She sang, did Mam. She sang all Irish songs about mothers waiting for their sons and daughters to return from abroad. She sang ‘Danny Boy’, ‘The Rose of Tralee’, ‘Irish Eyes’.

With sobs shattering the lyrics, Jessica sang ‘Irish Eyes’, but she never got to the end. Her exhausted little body could take no more, so it closed down and allowed her to dream of happier times. She saw Mam
laughing while she threw darts at playing cards, saw her trying to win a coconut and a goldfish at St Mary’s School Fair. Then Jessica was in the front room laughing while Mam attempted to paint the walls. There was more distemper in Mam’s hair than on the crumbling plaster. Theresa Nolan came to life for a few short moments in her little daughter’s subconscious mind. In her sleep, Jessica smiled, though the quiet sobbing continued.

Ernie Moss was an air-raid warden. He lived at 26, Emblem Street with a three-legged dog called Albert and a loft filled with prize-winning pigeons. Although the Germans had practically given up the ghost, Ernie still took his job seriously. Rome and other foreign parts could be as near liberated as they liked; Ernie would carry on making sure that nobody on his patch showed so much as a flicker during the hours of darkness.

He was a bit worried about number 34. She kept herself to herself, did Theresa Nolan. A grand-looking lass, she had been cast out by her father and was making a fair job of bringing up little Jessica on her own. But no milk had been delivered, and the upstairs black-out had been in place for a while. ‘What must I do?’ Ernie enquired of Albert.

The three-legged Welsh collie gazed adoringly at his master, a black ear fully alert, a white one at half-mast.

‘I mean, she often leaves black-outs up, like. She’s got a funny heart, needs to rest. But she should have gone to work today, I’m sure.’ Theresa worked just three mornings each week, helping to prepare food for munitions workers.

Ernie bent down and scratched the side of Albert
that was unreachable to the dog. Ernie often acted
in loco
missing leg; he seemed to know when Albert needed a bit of relief or grooming. ‘Last time I knocked to see if she were all right, I got sent off with a couple of fleas down me lug’ole,’ the warden muttered. ‘She were in bed with a cold nearing bronchitis, didn’t want disturbing. So I don’t know what to do.’

Albert shared his master’s unease. He stood to attention on his front legs, balanced his weight on the over-burdened third and cocked his head to one side. Albert could hear the silence, was able to sense disquiet behind the green-painted door of number 34. He barked and lolloped towards the house, his tail dragging sadly over the single rear limb.

Ernie had a lot of faith in dogs. If a dog was worried, then the world should follow suit. Unlike felines, who simply tolerated mankind in return for food and shelter, dogs had an affinity with their human companions. There was something wrong in Theresa Nolan’s house. Ernie Moss walked to the top of Emblem Street, where he saw the local bobby having a word with Danny Walsh, the fishmonger. The latter stood by his shattered window, while two small boys hung their heads in shame.

‘You shouldn’t play cricket on the road,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s dangerous.’

Ernie Moss interrupted the proceedings. ‘Can you come down Emblem Street, George?’ he asked the constable. ‘I could be wrong, but there might be summat up inside one of the houses. No sight of nobody for a day or two.’