Small Island Read online

  ‘Oi, leave that. That belongs to this house.’

  ‘It’s mine,’ she said.

  ‘Give me that. I’ll keep it until we’ve cleared this lot up.’

  ‘It’s mine – it belongs to me,’ the woman was shouting. It was just a little brooch, no better than one you’d find in a Lucky Bag. The woman was pitifully pleading now – a kid clinging to each of her legs. ‘It’s mine. I swear, honest. It’s mine.’

  ‘Give it to her,’ I said to the warden.

  ‘Not until I have ascertained whose property it is,’ he said.

  ‘What does it matter? It’s just a little tuppenny-ha’penny brooch,’ I whispered to him.

  ‘It is my job to make sure . . .’ he began, for all to hear.

  ‘She’s just lost everything. And this is not her first time. Can’t you just give her the benefit of the doubt?’

  ‘It is my responsibility to see no looting takes place in this . . .’

  So I said to him, ‘Oh, fuck off.’

  Bernard didn’t say, ‘Over my dead body,’ because we’d all become a little superstitious during the past year. Instead he said, ‘Under no circumstances . . . it’s out of the question . . . Queenie, have you gone quite mad?’

  ‘They’re people,’ I said. ‘They’ve got nowhere to go.’

  ‘They’re not our sort.’

  ‘But they need helping.’

  ‘They can’t stay here. There are places that will take care of them.’

  ‘They’ll be no bother.’

  I wished the little mites were being quieter at this point. But they weren’t. They were running round our living room, jumping off furniture, playing planes and bombs and making the appropriate racket. Their mother, feet up on a chair, sipped tea and smoked Bernard’s cigarettes.

  ‘Just for a few days.’

  ‘I’ve made myself perfectly clear.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Bernard. Have you no pity?’

  ‘They’re filthy, Queenie,’ he whispered. He had a point. Their heads were infested. If I turned the little boy Albert on his head the lice would have carried him away.

  ‘We’ve got all this room. How can we when so many have nowhere?’

  ‘The authorities will deal with them. You can’t help everybody. There’s a war on.’

  ‘I know – that’s what I mean.’

  I took that poor bombed-out family to a rest centre. We collected the other two kids and the baby from the Underground. And when I came back to our house later, I walked in to tell a thunderstruck Bernard that I didn’t care what he said, I didn’t care what he thought – I had got myself a job. So there!

  Twenty-seven

  Queenie

  Sometimes they were still smouldering like a burnt pie pulled from an oven. The pungent stench of smoke, the dust from rubble steaming off them. Shuffling in or being carried. Some wrapped in blankets, their clothes having gone flying off with the blast. Blackened, sooty faces, red-rimmed, sunken eyes with whites that suddenly flashed, startled, to look around them agog like they’d stumbled on to another planet. And shivering, there was so much shivering.

  Population, we called them at the rest centre. The bombed-out who’d had the cheek to live through the calamity of a world blown to bits. Leaving the cardboard coffins empty but filling up the classrooms of the old school building with their tragic faces and filthy clothes that made miners fresh up from the pit look like Christmas fairies. They came in as a crowd like you’d wade through on the Underground or elbow during a department-store sale. And that’s how some saw them – population, not people. Not mothers called Mavis who, stunned speechless, clutched two small children crying for their mum to make the banging stop so they could get to sleep. Not a ten-year-old son called Ralph, trousers soggy with wee, who tried to save bunks with carefully placed socks, jumpers and a fierce face. Not a husband called Sid, whose bloodstained arms held each one of his family in turn to tell them he’d go back to recover what he could from their bombed home. Not a young woman called Christine, who clawed at a warden’s back begging him to find her fiancé who was lost under a toppled wall. Just population. A mass whose desperation made them seem like the feckless, and whose drab presence drained the classrooms of all colour until even the white potties in the corner glinted like diamonds. I would never forgive Hitler for turning human beings into that.

  And it was my job to find out who they had once been and where they had once lived. Even the ones who couldn’t remember or couldn’t hear because a blast was still ringing in their ears. It was raucous some days at the rest centre, me straining to hear those weary fragile voices. Other days were so frighteningly silent I wished someone would scream or even start a chorus of the dreadful ‘Roll Out The Barrel’. And sometimes when there were just too many – when even I had to fight my way in – I’d forget a queue, just turn round to the first person I saw and say, ‘Do you need helping? Good, then I’ll start with you.’

  Twelve-hour shifts, fourteen sometimes, I had to do at Campden School rest centre. And when I got home Bernard would complain that there was nothing on the table except dust. It wasn’t for himself that he was worried, he took an unusually long time explaining, it was for me. ‘I’m just worried that this job is proving too much for you, what with everything . . .’

  Meanwhile at the rest centre two women were sitting there grinning gratefully at me. Violet and her sister Margery. Both husbands were away. One in North Africa, the other in Northampton. They’d got three children between them – twelve, eight and another who, they told me, was a bit slow.

  ‘The house is completely gone,’ Violet said. They’d lost everything but they giggled. Hysterical euphoria, I was warned, what with the relief of them all being safe. Dug out of their Morrison shelter when Margery tapped on the ceiling rose, which was just in reach, with a teaspoon. ‘Our ration books are still there in the sideboard, you see.’ Another chuckle. ‘It’s under there somewhere but it’s not a priority, they told us, to find things like that. People and persons, that’s their job, they said.’

  ‘Right, well, to get replacement ration books,’ I began, ‘you’ll need to apply to the administrative centre at the town hall. Or your local food office. Just go to one of those places – I can tell you what bus to get – and fill in a form for yourselves and each of your children . . .’ Both of them were staring vacant as shop mannequins.

  ‘Shall I write that down?’ I asked.

  ‘Write what down?’

  ‘What I just said.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘About the ration books.’

  ‘We lost them with the house. They’re in the sideboard, you see. We need to get new ones.’

  I should have been asleep on my days off. Lulled drowsy by ordinary daytime noises I’d thought so loudly disturbing before the war – postmen, delivery lorries, kids playing cricket in the street. But as often as not those precious days were spent craning my neck trying to calculate how long a queue could go on. Six sausages and a loaf of bread later and I’m still trying to work it out. If I cooked the dinner and Bernard and Arthur ate it sharpish, I could wash the dishes, and a few clothes from the basket, iron my dress for work, a shirt for Bernard, then maybe get an hour and a half sleep in my feather-pillowed, clean-sheeted, highly sprung bed before they started – the bombers – and I had to go to the Anderson to kip in Armageddon.

  Didn’t seem any point being at home for just a few hours when in the morning I had to fight my way through an upside-down world. Roads that should have been familiar turned to wastelands strewn with mountains of wreckage, the displaced intestines of buildings spewing everywhere. Coughing in the fog of rubble dust. Stepping lightly over this, teetering over that. Forced round corners to avoid a factory still ablaze. Gushing streams of water lapping at my heels. Glass crunching under my feet. One morning, looking up a road near home, I recognised nothing. I was a foreigner to this newly modelled place. I had to ask a warden, ‘Have you seen Longbridge Road?’ And even t
he warden was puzzled, looking around him as if he’d mislaid his hat. ‘It used to be around here somewhere,’ was all he could offer. I had to start spending nights in the rest centre, too, because those few miles to work were taking me hours! But Bernard didn’t like it. He turned up at the centre more than once, standing in the doorway on tippy-toes, scanning the classroom until he’d found me.

  ‘I just need to know you’re alive,’ he’d say.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I’d tell him. ‘Very much so.’

  ‘You say you lost all your clothes in the fire,’ I said now, ‘and your coupons.’

  ‘Miss, what I’m standing up in is all I’ve got, is what I’m telling you.’ And that was no more than tatty rags. The man’s son was wrapped in a blanket with no shoes on. ‘My boy here was in bed. I was making a quick cup of tea. I only had time to grab him when I see the thing falling out the sky. Then suddenly nothing and we’re on fire. My neighbours are screaming, I can hear them through the wall. I get him out. My wife, she was in the shelter – well, she’s in the hospital now. Dunno what happened to next door.’

  ‘There’s clothes in the other classroom. You could go in and get something for your son and—’

  ‘We tried that, miss. One of your colleagues pointed it out to us when we came in. But there weren’t any trousers left, well, not to fit ’im, and my boy really don’t wanna wear a dress.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, looking for advice in my little book. ‘To replace your clothing coupons you’ll need to get the form CRSC1 from the administrative centre. That’s CRSC1. Fill it in, then forward it by post, to the Customs and Excise office at the Board of Trade in Westminster. That’s in . . . SW one.’

  ‘Right – is that it, then?’ he asked.

  And I had to tell him, ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we could have another go in the classroom next door.’

  There were just not enough bunks. People were having to sleep on the floor.

  ‘But my house has gone. Surely there is some compensation I can have now so I can find another property?’

  ‘Well, madam, you could try writing to the Assistance Board or send to the War Damage Commission for a form C1 but they don’t usually pay out until after the war.’

  ‘Usually! What are you talking about? How many wars have we had where this has happened? And please, miss, don’t get me wrong but what exactly will they do with my claim if, God forbid, we don’t win?’

  Sometimes the food ran out and all we had to offer anyone was a blinking cup of tea.

  ‘Have you no other relatives that could take you in?’ I couldn’t stop this woman crying and why should she? Her husband, her mum, her dad had all been killed at the mouth of a shelter. She was at least eight months pregnant. Her only reply was a very slight shake of the head.

  ‘Tell you what, I could get you evacuated if you like?’

  ‘The road to hell,’ my mother would tell Father, after he’d given another miner something she thought he shouldn’t, ‘is paved with good intentions.’ He’d shrug. The only paving left in London was that sort. And me at my desk diligently deferring to my pamphlet for Loss or Damage Services was laying every last blinking stone to hell and back. My job was no more than to send the still shaking and stunned round London – once, twice, three times – to answer more questions, fill in more forms so they might get back some of what, through no fault of theirs, had just been rudely taken from them.

  Mrs Palmer insisted I call her Dora. She’d been bombed out round Hammersmith way, with her husband, three sons and a very manky cat. ‘I just looked at the house and there it was, gone.’ Returning from the billeting officer she skipped towards me fresh as a girl. ‘They’ve found us a lovely place, Queenie. I can hardly believe it. Guess where it is? Go on – you’ll never. Connaught Street. Can you imagine? My husband’s always wanted to live somewhere posh like Connaught Street. It was like a dream for him. And here we are being offered a flat in a house down there. Ordinary people like us. It’ll take his mind off losing his foot. So, I’ve been sent back to you to see about getting some furniture.’

  ‘What happened to all yours?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh, it was all lost, Queenie – every last stick.’

  ‘Did you make a claim for it at the time?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. My husband sees to things like that and he was in the hospital until couple of days ago.’

  ‘So you haven’t filled out a PC54?’

  ‘I think I can safely say no. But I can do it now if it would help.’

  ‘When was your furniture damaged, Mrs Palmer?’

  ‘Please call me Dora – you make me feel so old. Now, let’s see, it’ll be about two months now. ’Cause Jack was in the hospital six, seven weeks. Me and the boys were at my sister’s until that took a hit. Been here a week or so. Yeah, about two months.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. My little book was telling me that with the PC54, the claim had to be forwarded to the District Valuer within thirty days of the damage or loss occurring.

  ‘Is there a problem, Queenie?’ she asked. My head became such a weight that I could not lift it to look her in the eye with that news. ‘Is it something Jack will have to do?’

  ‘For furniture, Dora,’ I began hesitantly, ‘you should have put in the claim within thirty days of the loss.’

  Clear as a silent-movie star, her face ran through an assortment of expressions – roughly corresponding to a baffled how, what and when. Then her eyebrows rose briefly to spring apart with understanding before sinking back down to a confused anxiety, while she said a quiet ‘But . . .’

  Bernard was so furious with me that the vein on his temple that used to annoy me when he ate was standing up pumping like it had a heart of its own. ‘Queenie, for the last time, it is not our furniture to give away. It belongs to my father.’ I’d arrived at the house with a van and two men, who prudently kept their eyes down as they passed carrying a table and another chair.

  ‘I’m not giving it away – I’m lending it.’

  ‘It’s still not ours – even to loan.’

  ‘It’s doing nothing upstairs, just sitting in those rooms covered in newspaper. It’s just a couple of beds, a table and four chairs. We’ll not miss them before they’re back.’

  ‘Where are they going? Who are you giving them too?’

  ‘Mrs Palmer – Dora and her family.’

  ‘Who on earth are they?’

  ‘They’re from the rest centre.’

  ‘Absolutely not, Queenie! We don’t know these people. How can you be sure you’ll get the furniture back?’

  ‘I know I will. I promise I will.’

  ‘Are these people our sort?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Queenie, for God’s sake, have some sense. You can’t help everyone. Isn’t it enough that you work all hours at that place? Look at you – you’re tired. You look awful.’

  ‘Thanks, Bernard.’

  ‘I’m just thinking of you.’

  ‘They’re just borrowing the furniture until I can get them some. Otherwise they’ve got a requisitioned flat with nothing in it. Nothing at all.’

  ‘That’s not our problem.’

  ‘Oh, no, sorry, that’s where you’re wrong. Bernard, there is a war on.’

  ‘I’m very well aware of that.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Well, let me tell you something, let me give you a fact – there’s thousands of people having much more of a war than you are.’ And as soon as I’d said it I wished I hadn’t. He reeled from me as sure as if I’d spat in his face. Swallowing hard to guzzle up those words he nodded at me – just a little – then turned to walk into the gloom inside.

  Dora found it hard to stop thanking me. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done, you’ve been such a help, Queenie, you really have . . .’ Out on her precious Connaught Street she didn’t appear to want to stop waving goodbye. I was quite a way down the road and could still hear her calling, ‘How can we ever thank
you enough? Don’t be a stranger. Come any time.’

  ‘’Bye, then,’ I was saying when I noticed a woman running after me down the street. Well dressed with delicate heels that clopped on the pavement like a thoroughbred.

  ‘You there, you there,’ she called. ‘Are you responsible for this?’ I stopped for a moment until she said, ‘I want to know on whose authority those people have been put into that property.’ I began walking again, fast, as she chased after me saying, ‘I want to know the name of your superior. I want to make a complaint. I’m not happy to have those people living here. This is a respectable street. Those kind of people do not belong here. Let me tell you, there will be a great deal of trouble if they stay because I am not happy about it, not happy about it at all.’

  Twenty-eight

  Queenie

  It was my fault that Bernard volunteered for the RAF before waiting to be asked. Men not in uniform began to look out of place in streets rolling in blue and khaki. With us having to import Yanks and him still wearing what he liked, he was self conscious, apologetic, even. But it wasn’t that – it was all that catastrophe that dodged in behind me every time I came home from the rest centre. And when he tried to turn away he’d look straight into another war – scarred into the face of his own father. He had to join up. And the RAF wanted him. A skinny bank clerk who always blew on his tea before he drank it. A man who had trouble finding enough rage to scare next-door’s cat out of our shelter. And it wasn’t just that the military could see his wiry frame fitting into any desk space no matter how small: Bernard was to become part of their fighting machine – they were sending him overseas. Mr Todd slapped his back, saying, ‘Good show, Bernard, good man.’ People who would never before pass the time of day with me asked after my husband. And when I talked about him I plumped almost as proud as Auntie Dorothy with Montgomery. I swear his shoulders got broader, his hands more manly with every leave. Even the back of his neck looked fearless with the collar of his RAF blues pressing against it. I was almost jealous now someone else wanted him. He’s my husband, where are you sending him? Training in Skegness and Blackpool, he was home more often than he used to be. But overseas! Where overseas? How far? We live on an island, for God’s sake, everywhere is blinking overseas.