She remembered how bad he’d looked when he’d limped off the train that had brought him back from the war in Spain. He looked like that again, she thought, only worse. The mandarin collar of the heavy wool serge tunic had chafed his neck so badly that blood oozed from his Adam’s apple and the uniform was so thoroughly soaked that she had to peel it off him practically strip by strip.
He stood naked before her, too exhausted to be embarrassed, and let her sponge him with warm water from the kettle and rub him down with her own special bath towel. He looked bad, Breda thought, really bad but also rather magnificent, with his pale skin and long stringy muscles and the haggard face that hinted what he’d look like in ten or twenty years’ time.
‘How long’ve you got?’ she asked.
‘Four hours.’
‘Do you want to eat first, or sleep?’
‘Sleep.’ He winced when she massaged his shoulders. ‘Had some Bovril at the station; that’ll do me.’
‘Bend over.’
Stooping, he let her draw his head down into her lap to dry his hair. He groaned and closed his eyes.
‘Sore?’ said Breda.
‘Stiff.’
In other circumstances she might have teased him with a suggestive remark but she had too much respect for what he’d been through, whatever it was, to do so now.
She gave him the towel to finish himself off, lifted his boots, spread the tongues and placed them carefully in the hearth. She picked up his trousers and, stepping to the sink, tried to wring them out, but the serge was too heavy to release much water. She would hang them, and the tunic, out on the line to dry in the sunlight as soon as he went upstairs.
He wrapped the towel about his waist and stood quite still while she dabbed Germolene on to his Adam’s apple and tied one of Billy’s old baby bibs around his neck to keep the ointment from soiling the bed sheets.
‘There!’ she said. ‘You niff a bit but you do look better.’
‘Is Billy okay?’
‘He’s out in the yard shootin’ down Germans.’
‘Tonight,’ Ronnie said.
‘What about tonight?’
‘You can’t go back to your ma’s place.’
‘Why not?’
Ron shook his head. ‘The building isn’t safe.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Came round that way.’
‘Did you talk to the old man?’
‘He wasn’t there. Nobody was there except coppers.’ He clutched the towel with one hand and, frowning, said, ‘Listen to me, darlin’. I mean what I say. I saw what happened to Stratton’s an’ I’m tellin’ you, the building isn’t safe. It may look okay but it’s shook to the foundations an’ one big blast will bring it down on you.’
‘What do you want us to do?’
‘Stay ’ere.’
‘You think the Jerries are comin’ again?’ Breda said.
‘I’m sure they are.’
‘Right.’ Breda nodded firmly. ‘Here we stay.’
‘Fetch your mother an’ my old man,’ Ron went on. ‘Bring them down here too. It’ll be a tight squeeze but our shelter’s well protected an’ the vent’ll keep the air sweet.’
‘You won’t be ’ome tonight,’ Breda stated.
‘No,’ Ron said. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back. Wake me at three. I’ll have to shave before I go out.’ He looked around the kitchen. ‘Be careful with that loose window, Breda. Keep Billy away from it. I’ll fix it when I—’
‘Stop frettin’ about the window an’ go to bed,’ Breda said. ‘You do what you gotta do. I’ll take charge of things ’ere.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I know you will.’ He drew her to him and kissed her. ‘Three o’clock, love?’
‘Three o’clock, it is,’ said Breda.
‘Calm down, Basil,’ Robert Gaines said. ‘It wasn’t her fault. I dragged her away.’
‘You can’t simply go haring off without a word to anyone. Where were you?’ Basil said, then added, ‘No, don’t tell me.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ Susan said. ‘We were working.’
‘Working? Where? Not here, that’s for sure.’ He leaned forward on his chair, planted his fists on the desk and glowered up at Bob. ‘I thought you’d gone to Dover for the weekend.’
‘That,’ Bob said, ‘is one story.’ Digging into his jacket pocket he brought out his notebook and flapped it in Basil’s direction. ‘And this is another. Gold, my man, solid gold. We’ve been down in the East End collecting hot copy from the horse’s mouth. Give me fifteen minutes air time and I’ll deliver you a programme that’ll really make our listeners sit up.’
‘Trust you, in other words?’
‘Why not?’ said Bob. ‘I’ve never let you down before.’
‘That’s true,’ Basil conceded. ‘I must have the script first thing tomorrow. Do you need a desk and a shorthand typist?’
‘Nope,’ Bob said. ‘I’ll hole up in my apartment, catch a few hours’ sleep then get down to it. You’ll have the material by nine Monday, I promise.’
‘I trust you’re not planning on taking Susan with you.’
‘She’s your girl, Baz, not mine,’ Bob said. ‘Anyhow, I prefer not to be distracted.’
‘Quite!’ Basil said. ‘Well, don’t let me keep you. You’re not the only one with a lot to do. Susan, do you have everything you need for a long stay?’
‘I could do with an hour off to pick up some clean clothes.’
Ostentatiously, Basil consulted his wristlet watch.
‘Four,’ he said. ‘I need you back here by four. All right?’
‘What if there’s another raid?’
‘Do the best you can,’ Basil said.
Bob opened the office door and ushered Susan into the corridor just as Basil called out. ‘By the by, how did you get into the East End?’
The van was back safe and sound in the yard, and no one seemed to have missed it.
‘Taxi,’ Susan said. ‘We hired a taxi.’
‘I hope you’re not going to charge it to expenses?’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Bob Gaines said and chased Susan towards the lift before Mr Willets could ask any more awkward questions.
It took Breda all her time to persuade her mother that Stratton’s was unsafe. Only a declaration by an inspection officer that the building needed shoring before it would be habitable again finally convinced Nora that, with Matt at work on the dock, spending a night in Pitt Street with Breda and Billy was preferable to going alone to a public shelter.
She packed a canvas shopping bag with food scoured from the ruins of her kitchen, including a piece of boiled ham that, when washed, would do nicely for supper, and collected clothes and sheets from the bedrooms in spite of Breda’s warning about the shaky state of the stairs.
There was still no gas or electricity in Pitt Street but men were digging under the macadam at the street’s end and water from the taps in the sink had been restored. Breda built up the fire in the grate, filled a kettle and, using an old piece of wire mesh as a grid, set the kettle on the coals to boil, then, seizing her chance, nipped out to the lavatory to make sure that the cashbox was still safe behind the cistern.
On returning to the kitchen she found Nora setting out plates for an early supper. Billy, hungry as usual, had been given a slice of bread and marmalade to keep him going and, seated cross-legged on the carpet, contentedly watched the kettle come to the boil. Breda lit a cigarette and, perched on an arm of the fireside chair, said, ‘Ma, do you ever think about Dad?’
Nora polished a fork with a dishcloth before she placed it on the table. ‘Not after what he done to me, no.’
‘It wasn’t ’is fault.’
‘Sure an’ who’s fault was it then?’
‘Oh,’ Breda said. ‘You mean what ’appened years ago. I was thinkin’ of what happened more recent, like.’ She paused. ‘Ever wonder what ’e’s up to these days?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’
‘What if ’e was to walk in that door right now?’
‘I’d send him packing.’
‘What if I was to tell you ’e might be dead?’
‘More likely he’s in the jail. Serve him right.’
‘If ’e was dead, though,’ Breda pressed on, ‘I mean, if we knew for sure ’e was dead …’
‘Would I marry Matt Hooper, is that what you’re asking?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Sure an’ I would.’ Nora placed the fork on the table and squared it precisely. ‘You wouldn’t mind, would you, dear?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Breda. ‘I’m all for it.’
‘What about Ronnie?’
‘Ronnie’ll do what ’e’s told,’ Breda said, then, laying it on a little thicker, added, ‘Anyway, Ron’s always looked on you like you was ’is mother.’
‘Does he?’ said Nora, pleased. ‘He’s a good man, Breda. You’re lucky to have him.’
‘Yeah,’ Breda said. ‘I reckon I am.’
She went to the window and tucked the blackout curtain around the shaky frame, then, by candlelight, they sat down to eat. A half-hour later the big Sunday night raid began.
There had been some damage to a railway bridge that crossed the King’s Road and a gang of workers in brown overalls were noisily unloading scaffolding from a lorry parked at a corner of the Gardens. There was activity around the mouth of the ground shelter too but, thankfully, no sign of fire engines or ambulances. Aware that Basil had done her a favour by turning a blind eye to her absence that morning she’d summoned a taxi to bring her home and, with the meter ticking away like a time bomb, had asked the cabby to wait outside to return her to Broadcasting House.
To her surprise no windows in her flat were broken and the lights still worked. The bed tempted her, the bath more so, but with Basil waiting and the taxi meter eating up her salary, she settled for a cold-water splash and a change of clothes then packed a suitcase with everything she might need for a long stay in the stuffy corridors of Broadcasting House.
She grabbed Maugham’s The Painted Veil and Compton Mackenzie’s latest, which Vivian had insisted she read, and stuffed them into her case. Looking round, she suddenly became aware how empty the flat seemed in the afternoon light and, yielding to impulse, fished a fountain pen and notepad from her bag and dashed off a brief letter to Danny.
She signed it, hastily added a kiss, found an envelope and addressed it and then, with the suitcase in her hand and the letter in her pocket, left the flat in Rothwell Gardens for what, as it happened, was the very last time.
Three was bearable, Breda thought, but with Ron and his old man in here too, vent or no vent, the atmosphere would be suffocating. She’d purchased a box of batteries from the same shifty source as she’d purchased the tinned fruit but half of them turned out to be duds. Wary of running out, she extinguished the pocket torch and lit a candle instead, a candle that stank the place out and, in Breda’s imagination, sucked up air like a vacuum cleaner sucks up dust.
Nora was propped up on the bunk, Billy by her side. She had started out with a blanket over her legs but the heat in the shelter under the stairs didn’t take long to build up and she’d soon discarded it. Even Billy was sweating. Nora peeled off his pullover and shirt and fanned him with one of his comics while crooning her version of a South Sea Island ditty that still managed to sound like ‘The Rose of Tralee’.
Such diversions did not distract Billy for long. When the bombs began falling in earnest he too became agitated. He kneeled on the bunk, braced like a runner in the starting blocks, and neither Nora nor Breda could persuade him to lie down.
Breda was never sure at what point in the course of the raid it dawned on her that the outhouse might be a target and that if it went up in smoke her father’s cash and her son’s future would go up in smoke with it.
‘Ma,’ she said shrilly, ‘I hafta pee.’
‘Hold it in, dear. It can’t last much longer.’
‘I hafta pee. I hafta.’
‘Use the pail. That’s what it’s for. We’ll close our eyes.’
‘No, I gotter go to the toilet,’ Breda cried, petulant as a child, and wrenched open the shelter door before her mother could stop her.
Cool air rushed in. The window above the sink had been blown halfway across the kitchen, the tattered shreds of the blackout curtain plastered against the guard that Breda had hooked over the grate. The wireless set, Ron’s pride and joy, had toppled from the dresser to the floor where it lay in a tangle of valves, wires and splintered wood.
Crouched in the doorway, Breda hesitated.
She found her pocket torch, switched it on and played the beam on the carpet of debris in the corridor. She could hear guns barking in the distance and the strange, soft, sifting sound of the breeze billowing through the hole above the sink but, at that moment, no planes and no explosions.
‘Two minutes, Ma. I’ll only be two minutes,’ Breda called and, stepping over the junk, stumbled through the kitchen and ran across the yard. She tugged open the outhouse door, clambered on to the pedestal and, with the torch between her teeth, fumbled for the cashbox and brought it down.
She felt better at once. With the box under her arm, she stepped down from the pedestal and backed out into the yard.
She didn’t really hear the bomb.
First thing she knew of it, the lavatory door was bowling over and over, like the page of an old newspaper, her skirts whipped up around her waist, her mouth was pulled open and her hair felt as if it were being ripped out by the roots. Then, punched square-on by the blast wave, she was hurled backwards into the sludge that poured from the roots of the outhouse.
She lay spread-eagled on the ground, blinded, deafened and unable to breathe for several seconds, with only the stink of drains and the shrivelling stench of high explosive to tell her that she was still alive. Then, hoisting herself up, she saw that where her house had been there was nothing but a vast heap of debris illuminated by a roaring gas jet that flared up like a beacon into the smoke-filled sky.