What Was Promised (13 page)

Bernadette comes on. She is afraid of Michael Lockhart – she admits it to herself, freely – but she has the pride not to show it. ‘Shame,’ is all she says again, and she touches Pond, just on the shoulder, like a child playing a game; and gently, though her eyes in the dusk are fierce. Like a cat’s, Pond thinks.

Little more is said between them. Lockhart mutters something gruff, and off he goes with his girls while Bernadette shepherds the boys. At her door Pond stops. She thinks she’ll have to have him in, but ‘Thank you, Mrs Malcolm,’ is all he says, very formal.

‘You’re welcome,’ Bernadette says, and still stern, ‘You stay out of his way, that man.’

‘I will,’ Pond says, and goes.

‘Bed,’ Bernadette says to her boy, and Jem does as he’s told, cowed, no fuss, though it’s still early. She lets him read to get him calm, and after she puts out the light she can still hear him whispering, reciting in the dark the lines he’s learned by rote, as if poems were protections.

We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?

*

Outside the rain begins. Under the streetlamps the pavements teem with it. Inside, Dora sings to her boy.

Unter Yidele’s vigele

Shteyt a klor-vayse tzigele

Dos tzigele iz geforn handlen

Dos vet zayn dayn barur

Rozhinkes mit mandlen

Shlof zhe Yidele, shlof.

‘What does it mean?’ Pond asks.

They are in the kitchen, Pond in the tub, Dora washing his hair by the light of the paraffin lamp. The electrics are out on their floor tonight, and something or other is broken, too, in the Columbia Buildings Baths, as something or other often is these days: so Dora must heat the kettle on the gas and wash her child herself.

Not that it’s a chore. Not that she minds doing this. Dora has catching up to do.

‘Oh, well, it’s just a song,’ she says. ‘It’s silly, it doesn’t mean much. My mother sang it when I was small. It says that, one day, you will go work in the markets, like your father. You’ll sell raisins and almonds and be a wealthy man. You like it?’

Pond thinks. He nods.

‘Sing it again,’ he says. So Dora does, running water through her fingers, running her fingers through his hair.

‘There!’ Dora says. ‘All rinsed. Let’s get you dry before you catch cold. Up you get, hutch-plutch!’

Pond finds his feet. He looks ahead, chin up, over Dora’s crouched form. Even now that he is hers he rarely meets Dora’s gaze, let alone the eyes of others: he is animal-like in that. He looks towards the window, the courts and ruins beyond made indistinct by the dark and rain and the patterned glass, the pale suds creeping down over his imperfect skin.

There are new bruises on his shoulders, but they don’t worry Dora: boys will be boys, she thinks. Worse to her is his eczema. The worst sores have infection in them. The doctor tells Dora so, but it’s not so bad, it’s not forever, they have a paste for it.

He has hair around his thing. Dora doesn’t look at that. It doesn’t frighten her any more, but she skirts it with her eyes, in much the same way that Pond skirts the dangerous faces of others. The first time Dora washed her boy, her hands froze when she saw that growth. The organ seemed, then, not to belong to him. It seemed part of a man, shadowed, glabrous. It had no place on the body of her boy.

Now she is used to it, almost. Pond is what he is. He is as Dora found him. She couldn’t have found him sooner, could she? Dora cherishes what she has. What can she be but grateful?

She wraps the towel around him. ‘We have boiled eggs for supper. And your father is getting chips and scratchings and gravy, too, if they have any to spare. Isn’t that nice?’

‘Yes,’ Pond says.

‘And when you’re dressed we can try those shoes. Your father was clever, he got them just for mending a clock and they’re almost new, but if they don’t fit yet we can put them away, can’t we? You’ll grow into them. Do
you
know any songs?’

For a moment she thinks he hasn’t heard her. She is about to let it go (and why even ask? He is not a boy for songs) when she feels Pond straighten under the towel. He begins to sing.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag

And smile, smile, smile.

While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag

Smile boys, that’s the style.

What’s the use of worrying
–

‘Don’t stop!’ Dora says, but it’s too late, he has.

‘My mum did that one,’ Pond says, ‘but I don’t remember what comes next.’

Dora sits. The towel is round Pond’s bruised shoulders. His head is bowed. If there was a light heart in him he’d look like a boy playing at knights, but there isn’t and he never will. Never playful, nor even boyish. He looks more like an old man than a boy, an old man worn to meekness, frowning at some irretrievable memory.

You must miss your mother very much
. She almost says it now, as she has almost done many times. But better not. Better not to hear the answer.

How she wishes she could tip his chin and raise his eyes into the light! But that, too, Dora does not do. She is afraid he might flinch at her touch, now that he has drawn back into himself. She closes her hands on themselves and leaves his face in shadow.

The front door slams. ‘Horrible out!’ Solly calls. ‘Hello? Where’s everyone gone in here?’

Dora says, ‘I think I know the rest. We could try it together. We could sing it for your father.’

‘Alright,’ Pond says.

They begin the song again, softly and imperfectly, in the half-light of the kitchen.

*

‘I don’t know why we play with him,’ says Floss. ‘He’s not normal. It’s not a
normal
name, is it? You didn’t half give him a fright.’

Her dad is eating. He’s got the same tea Floss had: hot pot. She’s staying on his right side now, good and washed and dressed for bed, where Iris is tucked up already, mumbling to her made-up friends.

‘Floss,’ her mum says, ‘let him eat.’

Floss tries. She stands at her father’s shoulder.
Music Hall
comes on the wireless, soft, that being the way he likes it. When he’s done he takes out a Benson and Hedges. He only smokes the best.

‘You look like an actor in the pictures,’ Floss says, and her dad smiles at that. He doesn’t, really, but Floss knows that’s what he means. Even though he’s hardly finished eating he smiles for her, because he likes her best. Whatever trouble there is, Floss is his favourite, she knows. And he is hers.

When Dad was young he had a stroke. A stroke is like an awful shock. It’s why parts of him don’t work and why he didn’t go to war. That’s why Granddad cut them off. Because Dad didn’t do his bit, even after Floss’s uncles died. There was an argument. Dad called the war a fool’s errand, and Granddad could never forgive him.

Floss liked her granddad. He used to give her Scottish shillings. She has a silver rattle he made for her christening.

Cut off
. Like when you trim the blooms. You cut away the dead wood, the spent petals, stems and leaves, so that the punters see only the good. But Dad isn’t dead wood. Even though he got cut off he’s still well, he’s never spent.

Mum sits down. ‘Now, Floss,’ she says.

‘I didn’t do nothing!’ Floss exclaims, but her mum
tsks
.

‘Your father and I’ve been talking. I know you won’t like it, but I’m telling you and you tell your sister. I don’t want you going on the waste ground any more. You’re to stay off, both of you.’

‘What, Long Debris?’

‘All of it. No climbing fences. And never you mind why.’

Floss sulks, but her heart’s not in it. ‘For how long?’

‘Floss,’ her mum says, and her dad stubs out his cigarette.

‘It can’t be forever.’

‘No, not forever.’

‘So how long, then? A week?’

(And her voice has changed, though she doesn’t know it. It’s hard and sure, now; it’s the voice Floss uses with the other children. She sounds as unyielding, now, as her father, when he dickers a bargain.)

‘How
long
?’ she says again, but it’s her dad who answers.

‘You’ve been running wild,’ he says. ‘It’s time you were growing up.’

‘It ain’t fair.’

‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ he says, and Floss knows by his eyes she will.

‘Bed now. And tell your sister,’ her mum says, as Floss grates back her chair.

The bedroom is all dark but for where light creeps in from without. As her eyes get used to it she can make out Iris in the gloom. She’s talking to herself, sitting the way she always sits when she’s playing her made-up games, with her head on one side, like a waiter. ‘What?’ she says to the air. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose so.’

She starts when Floss gets into bed. ‘What did they say?’ she asks, in her normal voice.

‘None of your business,’ Floss says. ‘Come
on
, will you, what are doing, just sitting there, muttering?’

When Floss gets in, Iris does. ‘I was waiting for you,’ Iris says. ‘Is Mum coming soon?’

Floss sighs. ‘Who cares?’

They lie side by side in the darkness. ‘We’re not to go in Long Debris,’ Floss says at last, bitter.

‘It’s not Mum’s fault,’ Iris whispers. ‘I think something bad happened there. I saw after school, there were all policemen –’

‘Who cares?’ Floss says again, ‘
I
don’t.’

She’s tiring now. It makes it hard to brood. She rolls into Iris’s flank. ‘I heard you,’ she whispers hotly. ‘Talking.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Iris says. ‘Anyway, I’m allowed to talk to him.’

Him
is Semlin. Semlin is Iris’s made-up friend. She’s had him for a long time, just as long as they’ve lived in London.

Floss says, ‘What does he look like, then? Is Semlin handsome?’

Iris giggles. ‘Of course not!’

‘Well, what does he look like, then?’

‘He doesn’t look like anything,’ Iris says, and yawns. She is falling into sleep; the softness of it dulls her sister’s malice.

‘I can’t see him,’ Iris murmurs. ‘He’s not
real.
’

As if it’s Floss who is making things up! As if Semlin is
her
friend. She can feel Iris, shifting into sleep beside her.

‘If he’s not real,’ Floss whispers, ‘then why’s he called Semlin?’

‘Because that’s his name,’ Iris says, with the false simplicity of dream. And then they’re both asleep, one on the heels of the other.

*

EXTRA FOOD EXPECTED FOR CHRISTMAS

MORE TEA AND SUGAR

Mr Strachey, Minister of Food, stated at Westminster yesterday that there is an expectation of extra rations of tea and sugar for Christmas this year. There will still not be as much sugar as there was last year, although it is hoped there will be more tea.

Rather more poultry is anticipated. Fresh fruit, except apples, should be available, and at the beginning of December there may be another small allocation of dates.

_____

BORSTAL FOR £60 ROBBERY

Three boys, GEORGE EDWARD KNIGHT, 16, labourer, JOHN RONALD KNIGHT, 16, labourer, and JOHN ROBERT YEOMANSON, 16, driver’s mate, were at the Central Criminal Court yesterday sentenced to three years at a Borstal institution after pleading “Guilty” to two charges of robbery, and one of breaking and entering a dwelling-place and stealing therein. The RECORDER, Sir Gerald Dodson, expressed hope that they would be detained for the full period of time.

It was stated that the three lads had escaped from an approved school. While lodging at a Maltese Café in Pitsea Street, Ratcliff, they broke into a house at night at Shoreditch and attacked the male and female occupants, threatening them with an iron bar, and robbed them of £60 and various articles.

_____

MAN’S REMAINS ON BOMB SITE

BELIEVED KILLED MONTHS EARLIER

The remains of a man were found at 11 a.m. yesterday in the flooded cellar of a condemned building near Columbia Road, Shoreditch.

The remains were discovered by Paul Jones, dairyman, of Ezra Street, one of whose milkers had strayed into the condemned building. The remains were taken to Leman Street Police Station where a
post mortem
examination indicated that death occurred between three and four months ago. The cause of death was likely blood loss caused by multiple lacerations made by a sharp instrument – possibly a knife. In a statement to the press to-day, Police-sergeant Richard Wise, of Leman Street, stated that the remains have been reasonably well preserved by the enclosed cellar and the water in which they lay.