Joe arrived back in Odessa Street in the late afternoon, approaching from the west by way of Silkweavers Row and Frenchmans Lane and so avoiding the main roads. He stopped in the shadow of the boarded-up Hero of Trafalgar pub, aware that any number of people might recognise him.
But no one stirred.
The street was silent, deserted, and its silence disturbed him. It was almost as though the people could sense there was going to be a raid. He had heard somewhere that birds and animals knew an earthquake was coming before it happened, that they flew off or slunk away into the undergrowth long before the first tremors could be felt. That was how it seemed to him, standing in the shadow of the Hero of Trafalgar pub.
He thought: Nancy will believe I am in Liverpool by now, perhaps even in Dublin. She will expect me to have sent her a postcard and here I am, hiding in the shadows not twenty yards from home.
Thinking this made his head throb. It made something surge up inside him that was part despair, part joy. He thought about the three days and three nights he had spent in a lifeboat adrift in the ocean wearing a dead man’s clothes and how he had expected to die but he had not died, and in light of that miracle he attempted to make sense of his current situation but he could not. It did not make sense. He wanted to see his wife and child. It could not hurt to see that all was well before attempting his escape a second time.
As he waited a rabble of small children tumbled out of a doorway and began a noisy game. Mrs Bantry at number 4 came out onto her doorstep, her coat wrapped tightly around her, watching the children and smoking a Craven A. She was close enough that he could see the wisps of blue smoke from her cigarette whipped away on the breeze, he could see the dullness in her eyes that precluded either hope or fear. He remembered that Jack Bantry had knocked out all his wife’s teeth one drunken Saturday night. Jack Bantry was a prisoner in Burma now, Nancy had said. It seemed likely that Mrs Bantry, silently smoking her Craven A, wasn’t praying for the end of the war.
It was a clear sky above and Joe was no longer sure what he waited for. He felt as though he had spent all his life waiting. What did it matter if Mrs Bantry saw him, if the small children noticed him or not? He thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and set off towards the children, passing Mrs Bantry, and making for his own house. He would see Nancy, he would talk to her, just for a minute. It flashed into his mind that he could persuade her to come with him, that the three of them, he, Nancy and Emily, could journey to Dublin together—why not? She might be persuaded, though it was a crazy idea, impractical at best, suicidal at worst. Still, the thought flashed across his mind—how could it not?
His footsteps quickened as he neared the house and he remembered the trepidation with which he had approached the house three months ago at the start of his leave, uncertain of so much. Now he moved swiftly, reaching the door and letting himself in. Once inside he leaned against the door, catching his breath and listening, realising how tightly his nerves were wound. Upstairs he could hear the Rosenthal children, one of the boys left in charge barking out orders, suggesting that Mrs Rosenthal was out. But downstairs all was silent.
‘Nancy?’
His voice was hushed, though it was daft to imagine that someone might be listening, that someone might be hiding in one of the rooms. He pushed open the bedroom door with his foot and looked inside, but it was clearly deserted, Nancy’s things, and Emily’s too, strewn about much as they had been that morning when he had left. He went into the kitchen and saw no sign of recent activity there either. Indeed, things were put away and cleaned up.
They had had nothing when they had moved into the house, he and Nancy. They had gone to the pawnbroker on Hackney Road and dug out mismatching cups and saucers and plates, knives and forks and some funny little teaspoons that had ivory handles and would have been expensive once, but the handles came off as soon as you picked anything up and that had made them laugh, each mealtime, without fail. But today everything was put away.
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table because his legs were shaking and weak. His emotion, his love, had made him weak. Had made him fearful. He had got this table for Nancy not long after he had come home on leave, when he discovered she had burned the old table for firewood the winter before. He had following Harry’s lead and scoured the bombsites and found this one, a card table, from a posh house up near Vic Park hidden in a back room beneath a half-crumbling wall and he had dug it out with his bare hands and carried it home over his head at midnight. And since then it had been constantly covered in newspapers and ashtrays and empty cigarette packets and the leftovers of their meal. For Nancy was unconcerned by housework. But now everything was neat.
He looked around the room, feeling her presence all about him. He smiled, a warmth spreading through him as he imagined her coming home and finding him here in their home, seated at the table. Then all he had to do was persuade her to come with him, now, right this minute. It would be easy enough to leave it all behind if they left together. And in his mind he had already left it behind and knowing this brought a sort of calmness.
But it was odd that everything was neat and tidy and put away.
‘We had chips!’
He spun around to see one of the Rosenthal girls standing in the doorway in a long grubby dress, clutching a bedraggled doll in her arms. It was Pamela. Or Barbara. He had trouble distinguishing the younger ones.
‘Did you, luv? That sounds very fine. Your mum in?’
The little girl thought about this then she shook her head very firmly.
‘Who’s in charge? Is it Billy?’
Again she shook her head and stuck her thumb in her mouth and the other one, Barbara or perhaps Pamela, appeared silently beside her in an equally grubby dress. ‘We had chips for breakfast!’ said the second child, echoing her sister. ‘It was waiting for us when we come home from the shelter. Mum said it was the fairies what made it and left it for our breakfast.’
This seemed unlikely but Joe didn’t argue. Whatever had happened had clearly made quite an impression. The kitchen didn’t smell like chips had been fried recently and he wondered when this marvellous event had happened. But it hardly mattered, did it, in the scheme of things?
‘Do you kids know where Aunty Nancy is, and Emily?’
But they both just looked at him.
The knock on the door made him jump. It shattered the peace.