Mr Tait’s blue Alexander’s bus sneaked over the brown brackeny hillside without my noticing. I must have been tying Mavis’s shoe, which Miss Weatherbeaten brought back to me, to my belt. What a relief! Being without it had made all those bombs go off inside again. Rosie was back but I didn’t want to talk to her.
Mr Tait was the very, very last person off his blue bus, although there were lots more people still on it, most of them peering out of the windows at us. In fact he was so much the last person, I thought he wasn’t on it at all and I had taken hold of Miss Weatherbeaten’s hand before I realised what I was doing. The bombs fizzing away made my chest feel sore and tight, so I had to stand very still in case I set anything off and my legs would turn to jelly and I’d sink without a trace.
And then he stepped down from the bus and gave us a wave. He put a big suitcase and a carpet bag down on the grey tarmac. Then he went back up again into the bus and came back down with a bird cage with a bright yellow budgie in it. He waved this at us with a triumphant smile.
Oh, goodie! I thought. A budgie. What about my mum and Mavis?
Miss Weatherbeaten went to help him. This left me and Rosie standing with each other. I didn’t want to look at her and anyway Mr Tait had gone back into the bus for something else and he was going to need more hands that just Miss Weatherbeaten’s to carry it all up the hill so I followed her and left Rosie by herself. I nearly said ‘Stay there’, but that seemed too mean, even to me, and she probably wouldn’t do it anyway. The thing he’d gone back inside the bus for was his very fancy stick that looked like a bedpost. This he waved at us too, but I think it was meant to be friendly.
‘Lenny, you’re here!’ said Mr Tait in a cheery voice. ‘Goodness, what a lovely hat!’
I hid my happiness under its brim.
‘And what a lovely dress, Rosie!’ he said.
I hid my consternation too. That’s another word from my dad. It’s got nothing to do with stirring, or not much.
‘Goodness!’ he said, in a different voice.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘I know, but there was no choice.’
They were looking at my trousers. I felt my face blush to match their red blood colour.
‘It’s only until her own clothes are washed.’
‘Well, but really? Couldn’t she just have stayed indoors?’ said Mr Tait.
But I liked the feel of the trousers. They were warmer for a start, even if they were meant for boys, and they covered my skinny legs and the scabs and bruises that were all over them. I was about to point this out but I saw that his face had lost the smile he arrived with even though his voice was still gentle. And what did trousers matter anyway when there was news to be had about my mum and Mavis?
So we set off up the hill to the hut. Miss Weatherbeaten carried the suitcase, Mr Tait carried the carpet bag and I carried the budgie cage. The adults went first, then me, then Rosie.
‘It’ll be weeks before the factory is running properly again . . . ,’ said Mr Tait. ‘. . . devastation is extraordinary, just extraordinary . . . incredible there’s anyone left at all . . . nothing of the school, no, nothing of any of the schools, I think . . . .’
They kept lowering their voices so I wouldn’t hear. Why do grown-ups do that? I might have been young but I wasn’t an idiot. I could understand things and I wanted to know what had happened, what the town was like, who he saw.
‘It’ll take ages to clear it up,’ said Mr Tait. I couldn’t hear the next bit, something about unexploded bombs, and then he laughed. How could he laugh at a time like this? What unexploded bombs? Did he mean the ones inside me? Why wasn’t he telling me about my mum and Mavis? What if the news was bad, I mean really bad, worse than my mum being in hospital and not knowing where Mavis was?
‘Mr Tait . . . ,’ I said, but Miss Weatherbeaten was talking. He held up the stick to indicate I should be quiet. I closed my lips so tight it hurt.
He laughed again and said, ‘Well, well, well. They’re even tougher than I thought. But really, I do think trousers on a girl is a step too far, even for a girl with grit in her bones.’
So the grit was in my bones. I thought about this. Was I turning into a boy? Hair, trousers and grit? Mavis and my mum wouldn’t recognise me. I stopped for a second to think and Rosie bumped into me. It gave me such a fright I fell and dropped the budgie cage and it rolled back down the hill. I wrapped my arms around my head and the pretty hat with the ribbon and flowers was squashed all any old how over my face. I couldn’t see anything at all except the ricochet of a blast across a road, and that was inside my head.
Rosie ran down the hill for the budgie. I wished Mr Tait would help me. He knew what to do when that kind of thing happened, but when I opened my eyes he was standing a little way off gazing at the last glimmers of light that were strung across the hills made stripey by the trees. Miss Weatherbeaten wiped the wet fronts of my legs, which were now muddy with falling and bloody too. I could feel the sting in my knees.
The budgie was still alive, which was a surprise, and Mr Tait didn’t seem to mind that I’d dropped it. He said its name was Joey, which I thought was a boring name, to say the least, so Rosie and Miss Weatherbeaten set about renaming it. Miss Weatherbeaten wanted to call it Prometheus and Rosie suggested Runaway, and when they asked me I said I didn’t care. Names like Nuisance and Stupid came into my head but I thought I better not say them out loud.
‘Joey,’ I said finally, which stopped all their silly chatter right away.
We arrived at the hut and I could see kids up at the rope swing.
‘Goodness, young lady, what a fidget!’ said Mr Tait. ‘You can go up and have a shot on the swing if you want.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. I held up my hands so he could see the sore bits.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see. Would a pair of gloves help?’
And without waiting for a reply he produced a pair of brown leather gloves, man’s ones but not very big. Mr Tait was not very big.
Rosie and I trooped in silence to the swing and sat on the roots of a tree at the edge of the spreading beech while the other kids played on the rope swing.
‘Why aren’t we going on it?’ she said. ‘Mr Tait said we could.’
‘Shut up, Rosie,’ I said.
She touched her earlobe.
‘Don’t you want to go on it?’ she said.
‘Shut up, Rosie.’
‘Why not?’ she said, fiddling now.
I pulled Mavis’s shoe round in front of me and held it.
‘Why not?’ she said again.
Why didn’t she just shut up like I told her to?
‘Lenny?’
‘Don’t you even care?’ I spat at her. ‘Your whole family are dead and all you want to do is go on a stupid rope swing.’
The boys’ shouts fell away and the rope creaked against the branch. A bird flapped in the tree overhead and its silhouette slid silently across the deep blue sky. Rosie sniffed. One of the boys jumped off the launch pad and stood, legs apart, in front of us. I didn’t know which boy it was. I hid and didn’t look.
‘Is that true?’ he said.
‘Is what true?’ I said.
‘Are all her family dead?’
Rosie was pulling madly at her ear.
‘Yes,’ I said, looking boldly now at the small bad boy Dougie. I was fed up trying to explain. ‘Every single one.’
‘My mum’s coming soon,’ said Rosie.
Dougie laughed.
‘Shut up, Dougie,’ said Sandy who was behind him.
‘People don’t come back when they’re dead,’ said Dougie.
‘Yes, they do,’ said Rosie. ‘My mum always comes back.’
‘Your mum must be a ghost then,’ said bad George.
‘That’s not funny,’ said Sandy.
‘Does she go “whooo, whooo” in the night, then?’ said George.
‘Leave her alone,’ I said. ‘She’s only wee.’
‘I bet your whole family’s dead too,’ said George to me and he made a whistle-boom-crash sound just like the bombs we’d all heard, him included.
‘They’re not,’ I said emphatically. ‘They’re in hospital.’
‘Well, in that case they’ll be dead soon.’ He put his hands together and looked at the sky and pretended to pray. I wanted to punch him in his stupid stomach.
‘They won’t!’ I said.
‘Yes, they will, especially your mum,’ he said. ‘She’ll be getting what’s coming to her by now, in hell, where she belongs.’
‘No she won’t! Don’t you say that, don’t you say that about my mum!’ I was shouting now, and remembering the old woman in the street with her bags with Mr Tait. ‘Don’t you say that!’
‘She’s a tart,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that. That’s probably what she was doing when the bombs were going. WHEE-BOOM-CRASH . . . aaah!’ He made kissing noises.
I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew it was nasty to my mum, so I shouted, ‘She’s not a tart! She didn’t do anything! She went to the pictures with a nice young man!’
‘Maybe you’ll be a tart too one day.’
‘I won’t!’
Rosie had started wailing. ‘I want my mum!’
Sandy and Dougie were telling big bad George to shut up and trying to drag him away but he flung his fists at them and they stumbled out of his reach. But now Mrs Mags and Mrs Wilson had come out of Mrs Mags’s hut. I didn’t wait. I didn’t want to hear anything, so I shouted all the way down the hill.
‘It’s not true! It’s not true!’ I tried to run with my hands over my ears but it didn’t work.
And Rosie came after me shouting, ‘I want my mum! I want my mum!’
And then suddenly she stopped.
She was shaking a little fist at them – her other fist on her waist, her legs firmly apart and her head thrust forward.
‘I’ll get my dad to you!’ she said in a little girl’s big growl. ‘And then you’ll know all about it!’ She waved that fist at them again and turned to me with her bottom jaw stuck forward and her lips all squeezed together. Then she swung back towards them and shouted, ‘And she’ll get her dad too!’
She stomped towards me so that I had to get out of the way, and then on past towards our hut and banged into the door. I could just make her out in the half-light fumbling with the door handle in the dark. ‘Let me in!’ she shouted, so they did.
When I caught up she had wrapped herself around Miss Weatherbeaten and was sobbing loudly. Joey the budgie was on top of the dresser. Mr Tait was on the edge of his rocking chair.
‘Lenny,’ he said in his nice soft voice. ‘What on earth is the matter?’
He stood up and the rocking chair clattered backwards against the wall. Joey stopped singing just as Sandy and Dougie arrived, which made me leap across the room to Mr Tait who was standing not quite upright, with his wiggly bedpost stick.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said.
‘Sorry, Mr Tait,’ said Sandy. ‘It was George again.’
‘George was it?’ said Mr Tait.
‘He called her mum a tart,’ said Sandy.
‘Did he now?’ said Mr Tait.
‘Yes, sir, yes he did.’
‘I think I asked you to look after these two young ladies whenever I’m absent, did I not?’
‘Yes, sir, I know.’
‘Was it so very difficult?’
Sandy hung his head.
‘I shall speak to his aunt, your mother, Mrs Mags, in the morning.’
Mr Tait was bent forwards as if his back was stuck and wouldn’t unwind. He was leaning on his stick and his other arm was around my shoulders. I don’t actually remember how that came about but I was glad of it. My heart was thumping so hard I didn’t even know. My lovely hat with the band and the flowers was round my neck to one side and it was only afterwards that I realised my ear was bleeding again.
Mr Tait seemed to think better of being hard on Sandy, and I was glad because he didn’t seem bad like the other two, like bad George or Dougie who was skulking now behind him.
‘Thank you for trying,’ said Mr Tait. What he really meant was ‘goodbye’ and Sandy took the hint and left, taking bad boy Dougie with him.
‘Where’s my mum?’ I said before he could say anything else.
He seemed to stoop a little further. The rocking chair stopped rocking. He lowered himself into it. He looked older than he had in Clydebank. Loose folds had formed under both eyes and his leg seemed to be giving him more trouble than before. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a broad pasty forehead with lots of lines running across it and a broad mouth with pale thin lips.
I stood close to him watching his every move, this bringer of news, watching for a sign: was it good or bad, how good, how bad?
‘She’s in the Western Infirmary,’ he said at last.
He sniffed and drew a clean white handkerchief out of the pocket of his brown jacket. He blew his nose with a great big HONK which surprised me so much I jumped back a step.
‘Sorry,’ he said, smiling for the first time.
‘Mr Tait is very tired,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten from the sofa where she had retreated with Rosie. ‘Perhaps we could talk about this in the morning.’
‘In the morning?’ I said, swirling round to face her.
Before I could say any more she directed her eyes pointedly at the top of Rosie’s head, which was falling into her lap. I felt all those words bursting up, wanting to fly out of me like little bombs, words like ‘They’re. All. DEAD!’ And ‘Explain!’ And strings of words like ‘What about me?’
‘But . . . ,’ I said instead. Miss Weatherbeaten shook her head and looked away.
I turned back to Mr Tait who was smiling. He held out his hand to me but I kept mine safely by my side.
‘D’you know what Lenny?’ he said. ‘I’m very, very tired. I’d like to eat some of that lovely soup that Miss Wetherspoon has so kindly made for us and then I think I might put on my coat that I brought with me today, and go and sit on that bench, out the back.’
‘But . . . .’
‘Rosie looks like she’s very tired,’ he went on. ‘Have you been very busy today?’
‘Rosie?’ I said.
He took my hand, this time without asking. ‘Hmm?’ he said smiling. He had a kind face with soft grey eyes with wrinkles round them. He was trying to tell me something. Suddenly I twigged.
‘Can I . . . ?’ I said shifting my eyes in the direction of the outside bench.
‘Hmm,’ he said, and let go of my hand.
‘I’ll put the soup out,’ I said.
Of course what actually happened was Rosie fell asleep right there on the sofa next to Miss Weatherbeaten with the empty soup bowl still in her lap. Her head fell back, her mouth fell open, her hands fell away from the bowl, and the spoon slipped round its edge with a tuneful scrape. Miss Weatherbeaten tucked her arms underneath Rosie’s legs and shoulders and lifted her through to the little bunk room at the back. Mr Tait lit the way with the candle and for a brief couple of seconds I was left alone in the pitch-dark except for a tiny glow from the front of the fire. Even the budgie was quiet. The horse above the fire swung soundlessly as if it was running on cushions.
Mr Tait and Miss Weatherbeaten came back into the room and sat down on either side of the stove and me. Mr Tait put the candle back on the ledge beside the stove and leant back in his rocking chair and rocked.
‘Your mum, Peggy Gillespie,’ he said, as if I had more than one, ‘is in the Western Infirmary in the West End of Glasgow,’ he said.
I knew that. He’d already told me that.
‘She’s in ward twenty-seven.’
I nodded in case it might hurry him up.
‘She’s not very well,’ he said.
That sick feeling like a prickly itch inside me started up. I felt very hot and moved back from the fire.
‘She’s going to be alright,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten quickly. ‘At least she’s not going to die.’
My eyes smarted with sudden tears.
‘Well, there’s no need to cry,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘I’ve just said she’s going to be . . . .’
‘She’s going to be mostly alright, in the end,’ said Mr Tait. He was right forwards on the front of his rocking chair now, staring at me, but he glanced briefly at Miss Weatherbeaten.
I wiped my face with the sleeve of my jumper.
‘Don’t . . . ,’ started Miss Weatherbeaten.
‘What do you mean?’ I said to Mr Tait. ‘Mostly alright?’
‘I mean . . . I mean . . . .’
I held my breath until I was fit to burst. A chill went up my back so I moved in towards the fire again.
‘I mean she’s lost a leg,’ he said. ‘Or part of one.’
‘Which one?’ I said, trying to keep still, and not disturb the bombs.
‘Oh, now, I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’
‘How much? How much is . . . ?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know that either.’
‘Didn’t you see her?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you even see her?’
‘No, Lenny, I didn’t,’ he said.
‘She’s in there with no leg and you didn’t even see her?’ I said. I stood up. ‘Why didn’t you see her?’ How could he? She was all alone with strangers in a hospital with her foot . . . .
‘There was a lot to be done today,’ he said. ‘The factory is still burning. Some of the roads are still blocked. I thought it wiser to use the time when I wasn’t at work to collect some of my belongings from the remains of my house.’
The last thing I saw at his house was the head in the sea of bricks. It floated through my head now. I shook myself to get it to go.
‘Can we go in the morning?’ I said in a whisper.
He took my hand in his again and swung it to and fro.
‘Sit down, Lenny,’ he said, in his soft voice. ‘Sit down and we’ll talk about tomorrow later.’
‘But we have to go tomorrow,’ I said, and I straightened my arm so that he couldn’t swing it any more. He let go.
‘And so you shall,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot to be done tomorrow too. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about your mother. They had no more information at the town hall, and I gather we’re lucky to have that.’
‘She’s all alone,’ I said. ‘You said you knew her.’
‘I do know her, Lenny,’ he said. ‘The trouble is . . . .’
Again he stopped and his wrinkles all sunk over his brow so that I couldn’t see his eyes for a minute.
‘. . . your mother doesn’t like me very much,’ he finished.
When I thought about it I knew that was probably true. She thought he was a bad man with a big stick for naughty kids like me. She had told me that herself, but when I really thought about it, it didn’t seem to be true. He was a kind man with a bad leg and a big stick to help him walk.
But I had to listen to what my mother said.
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Why doesn’t she like you?’
Mr Tait was a person who liked to think carefully about what he said before he said it. It could be a bit wearing if you were in a hurry to know something.
‘Someone thought she was doing things she shouldn’t have been doing at work,’ he said, ‘and I heard the rumours and warned her. I think the rumours began because the shift organiser likes her and gave her extra shifts to help her make more money. Someone wasn’t happy about this – first they invented nasty stories about her and then they made an official complaint. She thinks it was me, but it wasn’t.’
‘What did they say she was doing?’ I said.
‘Goodness, too many questions!’ he said with a long sigh, shifting back into his seat. ‘That’s private business and for adults. She’ll tell you in her own time if she sees fit.’
‘She wants to go to family in America,’ I said. ‘She and my dad wanted us to. Uncle James lives there. I suppose we can’t now, if she’s only got one . . . .’
‘Nonsense,’ he said, with unusual vigour (my gran’s word for what she uses for scrubbing stairs). ‘People with legs missing can go to all sorts of places. All you need is a good stick.’ He tapped his own which lay against the arm of the rocking chair. ‘And plenty of gumption.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘And your mother’s got plenty of that.’
I got the feeling he liked my mum, even though she didn’t like him.
‘But . . . promise . . . please can we go and visit her tomorrow?’
‘Yes, we can go and visit her, if they’ll let us in,’ again he glanced at Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘You know they probably won’t let you in, don’t you? They don’t let children in.’
I saw Miss Weatherbeaten was smiling at me, but there was something funny about that smile, like it was only her mouth doing it and the rest of her seemed to hang, heavy, as if she couldn’t move.
‘Did you send her a message saying I’m alright?’ I said.
‘He couldn’t,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten, coming to life again. ‘He didn’t know where you were.’
‘Oh!’ I said. My poor mum. She’d be worried sick. I lost the key, I lost Mavis and then I lost me!
‘What about Mavis?’ I said. I knew the answer before I asked.
‘Sorry,’ he said quietly, reaching for my hand again. ‘No sign of a Mavis Gillespie. But you know, Lenny, it’s chaos down there. Not much has changed since we came away, just no bombers. People got onto buses or went with other people, just like we all did. I’ll go back tomorrow and I’ll ask for Mavis and I’ll tell them where you are.’
The tears smarted to my eyes again. I let them run and I sat there on the three-legged stool and held Mavis’s shoe. Nobody uttered a word. Even the horse over the fire seemed to have come to a temporary halt. Mr Tait scraped his rocking chair over the floor and put his arm around my shoulders. He felt solid like an armchair and warm, though his jacket was rough on my face, and he smelled of the fires but also of tea and toast.
‘Is it true?’ I sniffed. ‘Is it true or do you know she’s dead and you just won’t tell me, to be kind? Do you really know she’s dead?’
I sat resolutely on my three-legged stool waiting for his answer, letting him hug me gently. He withdrew his arm from my shoulders and I peered at him through blurry eyes to see how truthful he was being.
‘I don’t believe in lies,’ he said. ‘Especially in such matters as life and death. Even with children.’
He glanced past me at Miss Weatherbeaten then back at me. Then he paused.
‘Lenny, my dear,’ he said, at last. ‘You must wipe your tears and save your grief for when you need it, which indeed, you may not.’
He said this kindly, without bossiness or harshness, and he laid his hand on my own hand, in which I turned the shoe that might have been Mavis’s, and I let him pull me gently towards him so that I could lean against him and let my sobs subside. Miss Weatherbeaten maintained her silence on the old sofa.
‘Now,’ he went on. ‘Tomorrow . . . .’
But there was a knock on the door and all heads turned towards it.
It was Mrs Mags and behind her she had a whole crowd of lost people who had come from Clydebank like us. She wanted us to share our hut with them, and seeing as it wasn’t ours and they were in the same state as us, we had to, and soon we were stuffed fit to burst with filthy people who smelled of that horrible smell that I didn’t want to know about. We tried to make everyone as comfortable as we could but we had nothing to give them except our floor.
Mr Tait slept in the rocking chair, his leg raised on the three-legged stool. Miss Weatherbeaten lay in the bed opposite ours in the bunk room. I clung to Rosie and she clung to me and above us there were two other kids and two more above Miss Weatherbeaten. It was a long awful night. The floor of the stove room was a mass of bodies, arms and legs spread everywhere in a tight space.
In the dim light of the early morning I stole through to Mr Tait who was goading the fire into life so we could drink some hot black tea before our journey to the Western Infirmary, to where my mum was.
‘That one’s not breathing,’ I whispered, indicating a man whose head was half under the sofa. ‘He’s sleeping the sleep of the . . . .’
‘He’s sleeping the sleep of the absolutely exhausted,’ Mr Tait whispered back, ‘and we’re not going to waken him.’
I watched this man, wanting him to move. His head was on one side and his cheek seemed to have sunk inwards. One eye was slightly open. On the sofa above him lay a girl in a dress that was nearly as ragged as mine. She was bigger than me and had a little kid lying in the crook of her arm, a boy in short trousers with fat stumpy legs and a sudden mass of red curls on his head, his face black.
The grey woollen blankets that I had helped Mrs Mags carry lay over the people on the floor. Some had SA embroidered in red on them. What did that mean? Silly Asses? Sold Already? Sweet Apples? Save Auntie? It was the same letters I had seen on the side of the big blue van that had been in the field behind the Halfway House pub. (Halfway to what?) And what was everyone going to eat?
‘Mr Tait?’ I whispered.
He handed me some tea. The horse over the stove tapped against the wall as if it was eager to get going.
‘Yes, of course we’re still going to town,’ he said. ‘Mrs Mags and Mrs Wilson will look after everyone, and the budgie. Mrs Wilson has more people at her hut and the Salvation Army will be back later.’
Ah, the Salvation Army, hallelujah people in funny hats with trombones at Christmas, except they hadn’t had their trombones the day before, only blankets and soup.
We drank our tea until it was time to wake Rosie.
‘It’s time to get up!’ I whispered in my dad’s stage whisper. ‘Rosie!’ I said. ‘We’re going back today!’