I slid down off the wall and wiped the dust from my hands on my thighs.
‘She’s not Irish is she?’ Finn said.
‘Who?’
‘Your nan?’
‘Nope, Londoner through and through. Why?’
Finn began wheeling his bike towards the entrance of Tall Trees and I followed.
‘I met one of the residents the other day and you remind me a bit of her.’ He looked over his shoulder and grinned at me. ‘She wasn’t impressed by my job either.’
‘I wasn’t not impressed. I just questioned whether it was, in fact, a job.’ I frowned. ‘She was Irish, this resident?’
Finn nodded as we went through the entrance of the home and I shut the metal gate behind us.
‘There are no Irish residents,’ I said.
‘Well this lady was definitely Irish, definitely a resident, and definitely not happy to see me.’
‘Oh,’ I said, remembering my conversation with Cyril. ‘I think she’s new. Sometimes they’re a bit prickly when they first arrive. It’s no wonder really, it’s scary for them. Like your first day at school but a million times worse. I usually try to find something they like, or something we have in common and use that to help them feel more at home. One of my ladies likes Earl Grey tea so I always bring her some teabags.’
Finn gave me a little sideways look that I couldn’t quite read.
‘That’s kind,’ he said. ‘You’re kind.’
I ducked my head, embarrassed by the praise. ‘I need to go to the dementia unit,’ I said. ‘That’s where my nan is.’
‘Come and see me before you leave, and I’ll show you those pictures.’
‘Okay,’ I said with a nod. ‘I will.’
I pushed my bike to the rack and locked it up.
‘Hey!’ The shout made me turn. Finn was standing a little way away, shielding his eyes from the sun.
‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he called.
‘You didn’t ask.’
He laughed loudly again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Stephanie,’ I said. ‘But my friends call me Stevie.’
‘See you later, Stevie.’
I waved to him and then I wandered up the path to the unit, to see my nan.
To my delight, today was one of my nan’s good days. She knew who I was straightaway.
‘Stephanie,’ she said. I went to where she was sitting in her usual chair by the window. ‘Hello, dear.’
I braced myself for the normal barrage of questions about Max, but it was my father who was on her mind today.
‘Where’s that useless dad of yours, eh?’
‘He’s in Portugal, Nan.’
‘Portugal?’ She looked pleased with herself and then she began singing about going to sunny Spain and clicking her fingers like castanets.
‘That’s right, Nan,’ I said, laughing. ‘Just about.’
She settled back in her chair. ‘Useless.’
‘Do you remember the Blitz, Nan?’
Nan turned her dark eyes to me and for a moment I thought she’d gone again. That happened sometimes – she’d have a period of being lucid and then it was like a cloud had descended and she was back to not remembering. And even when her mind was clear, her thoughts danced about. But then she nodded.
‘I was only a nipper.’
‘I know.’ Nan had been born in 1935, so she would barely have started school when the bombs began falling. ‘You stayed in London, though? You weren’t evacuated?’
Nan shook her head. ‘I stayed with my mum.’ She laughed. ‘She was a right piece of work. She went to prison.’
The word made me widen my eyes in alarm. Had she heard about Max and got confused?
‘What? Your mum didn’t go to prison.’
Nan folded her arms. ‘Me and Auntie Sandra went to visit her.’ She smiled fondly. ‘You can’t just take stuff that belongs to other people though. She needed to be punished.’
‘She went to prison? Really?’ I said. Perhaps Max’s recklessness didn’t come from our mother after all.
‘My old mum could sell sand to the Arabs. My Geoff’s the same.’
‘He is,’ I said. I had to be honest, she was right about my dad. He was a born salesman.
‘We’ll go to the bombsite and see what we can get,’ Nan said in a sort of sing-song way, like she was talking to a child. ‘See what we can sell.’
‘Did your mum steal from bombed-out houses?’ I asked. ‘That’s terrible.’
She gave me a sudden grin. ‘I had a hat with a bow on it. I loved that hat.’
She put her hands on her head like she was putting on a hat, and I watched, feeling strangely disappointed. I liked the idea of the Blitz spirit and everyone being nice to everyone else. I had thought the war was all singing songs and eating powdered egg and huddling together in the tube. But times were tough back then. Perhaps people did what they had to do to get by.
Nan leaned forward and patted my hand. ‘The horses all died,’ she said.
I blinked at her, not knowing what she meant. ‘Which horses?’
‘In the dairy. The horses all died when the bomb fell. Lying there on the cobbles, they were.’ Her eyes glazed over. ‘I cried and cried.’
‘I’m not surprised, Nan.’ I wished I hadn’t asked. ‘That’s awful.’
‘I had a hat with a bow,’ she said again.
‘Sounds lovely.’
‘Where’s Max?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Is he coming to see me today?’
I shook my head, feeling sad. ‘He’s busy, Nan,’ I said.
*
I stayed with Nan for a while, and I chatted about the flowers in the garden and the rain and everything that wasn’t Max’s whereabouts, and then I went to find Finn.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that he had a cupboard to work in. His cubicle, which was off the reception area of Tall Trees, fitted a tiny desk and that was it. He was surrounded by boxes, because clearly he was sharing his space with Cyril who was using it to stash supplies of loo roll and cleaning products and a broom.
I tapped on the door lightly and Finn, who was bent over a book with his back to me, turned round and smiled.
‘Stevie,’ he said, closing the book. ‘Perfect timing.’
‘Are you sure I’m not disturbing you?’
‘Not in the slightest.’ He gathered together some papers and a thick folder. ‘Shall we go into the lounge? I can spread everything out on the table in there and the residents quite like seeing the pictures. It gets them talking and I love to hear their stories.’
I nodded, thinking how nice his enthusiasm was. It seemed a long time since I’d been so enthusiastic about anything. ‘I was asking Nan about the Blitz earlier. She told me some things she remembered. She could tell me more about the bombs than she could about yesterday. But she was so young – she wasn’t even at school when the war began.’
‘There aren’t many people left who were there,’ Finn said, handing me a bundle of papers. ‘Can you take those? That’s why I love hearing these stories now because in a few years there will be no one left alive who can remember.’
‘It’s important,’ I said, meaning it. ‘We need to write this stuff down.’
We walked along the corridor to the lounge. Inside a few of the residents were watching Cash in the Attic, and a couple more were reading, or chatting quietly.
‘Hello, Finn,’ a resident called Kenny bellowed as we walked in. He was deaf as a post but he hated his hearing aids. ‘How’s that book on Millwall coming along?’
‘Slowly,’ said Finn. ‘Very, very slowly.’
‘Too busy writing about Charlton’s glory days are you? Mind you, that won’t take you long.’
‘Rude,’ Finn said mildly. Kenny chuckled in delight and I looked at Finn questioningly.
‘Kenny’s a Millwall fan,’ he explained. ‘And I’m Charlton.’
I grinned. ‘You’ve found something in common,’ I said. ‘Like me and the teabags.’
‘You’re right.’
Finn put his papers down on the table and I did the same, then we both sat down and I looked at him expectantly.
He didn’t disappoint me.
‘Like I said, Tall Trees was originally the South London District Hospital,’ he said. He opened one of the folders and took out a photograph. ‘Here.’
I looked. There was the main building, looking very similar to how it did now, except the far side of the building looked different. And at the end, where the dementia unit now stood, was a row of very large poplar trees.
‘Tall trees,’ I said triumphantly. ‘They must have cut them down to make space for the dementia unit.’
‘I guess so.’ Finn pointed to the part of the building that was different now. ‘And this bit of the hospital fell down after a bomb.’
‘Tall Trees was bombed?’
‘Sort of.’ He sat back in his chair and grinned at me. ‘And that’s why I’m here.’
‘Spill.’
‘A bomb fell on the road outside, in early 1941. The hospital’s foundations became unstable. Word is that they’d dug out the basement to fit more beds down there or an operating theatre – I can’t remember the details – and hadn’t supported some of it properly. Anyway, that part of the building collapsed in on itself.’
‘Oh gosh,’ I said. ‘Were the patients killed?’
Finn shook his head. ‘By some miracle, not one patient was hurt. There was one chap who was injured and he did die later on but he was a member of staff, I think. And he was the only casualty.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘It must have been very frightening.’
‘Must have been.’
‘So what’s all this got to do with you?’
‘When they rebuilt the damaged part after the war, they shored up the basement obviously, but they left the rubble as it was because it was too costly to dig it out again. A couple of years ago, they were renovating the home, and they considered expanding into the basement.’
I shuddered. ‘Who’d want their room down there?’ I said. ‘I can’t see that being popular with the residents. They all love looking out into the garden.’
Finn shrugged. ‘That’s probably why they decided against it. But as part of the plans, they had some of the rubble left over from the bomb cleared. And they found this.’
He opened the biggest folder and from inside he produced a large, A4-size book. It was bound with a stiff spine and thick covers – it looked like the old family Bible I remembered Nan having, or an old-fashioned photo album.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a sort of scrapbook.’ Finn did a little bounce on his chair like an overexcited schoolboy. ‘There was a nurse who worked at the hospital, whose name was Elsie Watson. She kept this notebook for most of the Blitz. As far as I can tell, she gave it to her patients and they wrote in it.’
‘What did they write?’
‘All sorts of things. Some of them wrote messages for loved ones. Others wrote down their memories of the time. They had huts here, round the back, where they looked after injured airmen from Biggin Hill.’
‘Oh that’s not far from here,’ I said.
‘Exactly. So they were in the hospital along with injured civilians and they all seem to have embraced the idea. A couple wrote poems. Or Bible verses. There are thank-you notes to the staff. Some of them drew pictures of the view from the windows or places they’d been.’ He smiled at me. ‘A few drew Elsie and the other nurses.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ I breathed. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘I know.’ Finn put his hand on the book in a territorial way. ‘I’ve had a look through but I’ve barely begun to read all the notes inside. It’s a treasure trove.’
‘How did you get it?’ I said.
‘We just got lucky really. When the book was found by the contractors, they passed it to the bosses at Tall Trees – not Blessing, the people who run the company. And one of them is a bit of a history buff so he brought it to my department for us to have a look at. Obviously with everything that’s happened recently, it’s taken us a while to get it organised but now I’ve got my mitts on it.’
‘So that’s why you’re here?’
‘Yes. I could work in my office but I like being here. It makes it feel more alive. I’m planning to read the whole book and then maybe write my own book about it. There are so many stories in here just waiting to be heard.’
‘What about the nurse?’ I said. ‘Elsie, did you say? Is she still alive?’
Finn shrugged. ‘No idea.’
I was doing sums in my head. ‘I suppose she could be over a hundred now.’
‘Well,’ said Finn slightly dramatically. ‘No one really knows what happened to her.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, she kept this notebook through most of the Blitz and then she disappeared. I can’t find a record of her.’
‘Oh gosh, was she killed in an air raid do you think?’
‘Maybe, but I can’t find a death certificate.’
‘So she could be alive.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Are you going to track her down?’
He made a face. ‘She’s not important really. It’s the letters and notes I’m interested in.’
‘Poor Elsie,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you curious about where she went?’
‘A bit, but I’ve learned over the years not to get side-tracked,’ he said. ‘If I start looking for her, I’ll end up down all sorts of rabbit holes and I’ll never get my own research done.’
I thought about Max, who often went AWOL for weeks at a time, and my mother, who was also fond of disappearing when things got difficult, and I wondered if Elsie was the same sort of person. Somehow I doubted it, but I found I wanted to know more about her.
‘Maybe you could …’ I began.
‘You’re here again then, I see?’
I turned to see a woman with piercing blue eyes studying us.
‘Hello again,’ Finn said. He turned to me. ‘This is Helen. I believe she’s a new resident.’
‘Hi, Helen.’ I got to my feet and stuck my hand out to her. ‘I’m Stephanie. I’m one of the carers.’
‘Not in uniform?’ She looked me up and down, and then – as though I’d passed some sort of test – she shook my hand with a firm grip.
‘I’m not working today. I just came to visit my grandmother.’
She huffed as though that was terribly inconvenient. She was relatively young to be one of our residents. She only looked to be in her late seventies or early eighties and she was straight-backed and steady on her feet. Still, it wasn’t for me to judge.
‘How are you settling in?’ I asked, giving her a cheerful smile.
‘Fine thank you.’ She turned away from me and focused on Finn. ‘I wanted to use the table,’ she said.
‘Oh sure. We’re pretty much done here anyway.’ He began picking up his papers again. I was disappointed, because I’d been enjoying hearing him talk and I was itching to have a look inside Nurse Elsie’s book. But now I’d seen what Finn was doing, I knew he would be around Tall Trees for a while to come.
With the table cleared, Finn stood up and Helen sat down. She got out a little box of note cards and a pen, and began writing. I looked at Finn and raised an eyebrow. The table we’d been using was a large one, used for buffets at birthday parties and occasionally for large jigsaw puzzles.
Finn gave me a little shrug of his shoulders. Clearly Helen wasn’t impressed by his research.
‘We’ll get out of your way,’ he said to her. She didn’t respond.
I gestured to the door. ‘I’m going to get off. I’m working later.’
‘I thought it was your day off?’
‘I work at a bar too. The Vine. Do you know it?’
Finn looked blank and I grinned. ‘It’s not really a student place.’
‘I’m not a student.’
‘Whatever you say.’
He rolled his eyes and chuckled. ‘Good luck with your plans for the mural,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you want to throw some ideas around. Sometimes it helps to have a sounding board.’
‘That’s nice of you,’ I said, torn between wanting to spend more time with this cheerful, interesting man, and not wanting to talk about my art – or lack of it – ever.
‘I’ll be in my cupboard. Come and find me, any time.’
‘All right then, Harry Potter,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’