Tubby Dunn’s mother was Tillie, who had been, until that May, the Beaumonts’ housekeeper. The Dunns lived just streets away from the Crescent – streets and a world away, in a tall, pinched house on Magdalene Street in the great shadow of St Joseph’s Church. The Dunns, Philip knew, were Romans, and Romans, he’d been told, were Romans because they didn’t have a picture of the King in their church. Tubby’s real name was Norman, after his uncle who had died in the Great War, but at home he was known as Tubby because however much he ate, his shoulder blades stuck out like bent coat hangers, his eyes were big in the bone of their sockets, and because the Dunn brothers liked a joke.
Learning didn’t come easily to Tubby. Alf, his brother, told Philip it was because when Tubby was a baby, he slept in the bottom of a chest of drawers and that, one day, their Auntie Vi’s husband shut the drawer without thinking, and Tubby nearly suffocated in his sleep before their mother realized.
Alf was thirteen and Frank, the eldest of the Dunn boys, was fif-teen. Plus there was Peg, their little sister who was always crying. Tubby’s father, Mr Dunn, worked as a street-lamp fitter until the blackout came and the Corporation turned off all the lights. He was a hunched man with black eyebrows and deep grooves like tramlines in his forehead. For a time, he had work painting all the bulbs in train carriages blue; then his papers came, and Tubby heard his mother crying in the lav at the end of the garden.
Washday for Tillie didn’t end on Mondays now that she took laundry in. The windows of the house were always misted up, the kitchen was tropical, and sometimes when Philip watched her bending over the heaps of ironing, the pure smell of the starch and the hiss of the iron made him feel like she was caught in a battle she would never win. The pile of laundry was always as high as before.
He’d smile hopefully at her over his piece of bread and scrape, and she’d smile back, brushing steam and long strands of red hair from her cheeks, and in those moments, her face seemed to shine just for him, and he loved her as much as his own mother. She was different, of course; different because she was always the same, always just herself, and that meant he could be just himself too when he sat in her kitchen, and he didn’t worry about not being enough for his mother who only had him to love.
On Saturday mornings, he never minded walking with Tubby from shop to shop to collect enough cardboard and rubbish for Tillie to burn in her copper all week. Afterwards, they doubled up on Philip’s bike for the weekly ride to Billet’s for sweets or they goose-stepped their way to Dowley’s to share a fourpenny piece of fish and a penn’orth of chips. But that Saturday, Tubby was distracted. ‘I’ll be going now, Phil. Frank said I ’ave to meet him and Alf.’
Philip wished Tubby could give him even just one brother. ‘Can’t I come?’
The Palace Pier was quiet for a sunny Saturday in June. The rides were empty, and the penny arcade didn’t jingle and ring. Old people snoozed on benches. Children hung their heads over the white railings, grinning as if they were about to set sail. Couples ambled to the end for the view, imagining it – the ships materializing on the horizon, the glamorous flash of cannon-fire – for don’t our fears also conceal our wishes?
Philip looked longingly at the sea, but no one had said anything about swimming. Instead Frank marched them on to the damp shingle beneath the Pier. They stared up through the shadows to its rusty iron girders. Feet drummed overhead. Someone’s lemon ice dripped through the slats of the deck like wee. A pigeon lay rotting a few feet away. Alf said to Frank, ‘You first, then.’
‘You.’
‘You’re older.’
‘You’re milky.’
‘No,’ said Alf. ‘You got the bigger bellows.’
‘Bigger goolies, you mean.’
Alf went for Frank’s groin. ‘That’s what the totsies say an’ all.’
Frank wrestled him to the ground. ‘You callin’ Lorraine a totsie?’
Tubby looked on, mesmerized. Philip wished he hadn’t come. Then Frank released Alf from the headlock, opened his mouth, and let out a powerful hum. Alf and Tubby started to vibrate too, in key, and before Philip could ask, the Dunn brothers exploded into song. Alf did the melody, Frank the low notes, and Tubby the harmonies, with Frank waving a hand at Philip, meaning, Sing, why don’t you?
It was gloomy as a crypt under the Pier, no matter how jaunty the tune. Philip didn’t know the song. He knew only the national anthems from the BBC at night and the hymns from church. He smiled at the brothers, blushing at his failure. He wished he was a Dunn brother with a barbershop voice.
It was a tuppence piece that first hit him in the head. Shillings followed, some bright, some grimy green. Revelation rained down through the planks. The Dunn brothers had wooed the audience overhead.
Philip felt that, in the hunt for their wages, he could redeem himself. He was the fastest and had the best eyes in the murk, and all four boys were still clambering on their hands and knees when they heard the sound of the single engine.
Frank popped his head into the sunshine. ‘’Ere, Alf,’ he said, his voice going funny. ‘Lamp this.’
Alf got to his feet. Tubby followed Alf. Philip followed Tubby.
A seaplane was skittering down in the shallows of Brighton beach. Somewhere, on the deck overhead, a woman screamed.
‘Christ,’ breathed Alf. ‘This is it.’
‘Fuck,’ muttered Frank.
The boys gawped from the shadows.
‘An’ here come the bogies.’
Police from the King’s Road pounded towards the surf. Over the boys’ heads, on the deck of the Pier, feet thundered for the exit. Ten yards from shore, the hatch of the seaplane shuddered open. Frank took a step back. ‘You can get over a hundred geezers in those things.’
Philip wished he had remembered his gas mask. Tubby cowered behind Frank. Philip cowered behind Tubby. At the hatch, a single man appeared.
‘Is it Hitler?’ Philip’s stomach jumped and flopped.
‘I need the bog,’ whispered Tubby.
‘You two,’ ordered Frank, ‘shut your clappers.’
The invader was dressed in a sober suit. His dark hair lay, freshly combed and flattened, across the high white dome of his head. For a moment, he seemed to contemplate his audience on the beach, as if they were the spectacle and not he. Then he removed his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers up, and slid into the choppy sea.
People from a tea dance at the Old Ship came out and clung to the railings on the prom, the women pressing their hands against their legs to stop their dresses from blowing high. The German negotiated the waves, carrying his shoes at chest height. On the beach, four bobbies clutched their batons. The seaplane lifted off, its floats skimming the waves.
The onlookers – stray sunbathers, children, old couples and arcade attendants in their jackets and epaulettes – stood transfixed at the green railings of the King’s Road, watching the lone enemy struggle against the surf to the shallows and hop painfully over the stones. When he arrived on the beach, his jacket and trousers were streaming. He had to bend double to breathe. Nobody moved. Then he straightened, raised one long arm and reached, tentatively, for something in his breast pocket.
‘He’s got a pistol,’ said Alf.
‘A grenade more like,’ said Frank.
A bobby shouted, fierce as a Legionnaire.
‘Get down, you three!’ said Frank. ‘Now!’
The bobbies charged.
Wee streamed down Tubby’s leg.
Something small and white fluttered in the invader’s hand.