These Dark Wings (10 page)

Mum.

The bus, full to bursting, squeezes round the fallen bricks. Tired faces are visible through the blast netting at the windows.

Mum’s last day was on a bus like that. It is strange. I always thought of her, elegant in her dress and hat, reading the early papers in her Tube seat. I can see her, folding the paper, and at Holborn Station stepping off the train and out into the day.

In my mind I see the shelter with my headmaster and the WVS woman, that endless night, the growing hollow dread that life was about to change forever.

I stop, staring, as the bus heaves past us. The bus is wrong. I don’t know why, but I
know
it is.

It is all wrong.

‘Magpie. Look at this.’

I turn, absently. I have been standing in a daze, as if someone has knocked me on the head. Timothy Squire is showing me something. He is back to his old self. He doesn’t notice my sadness, doesn’t notice me. Just talking, talking.
And he called me Magpie!

‘It’s huge!’

‘Yes,’ I say.

I stop thinking about Mum, about what name Timothy Squire calls me, and focus on where I am. I can only let myself think of one thing: escape.

Already we have reached the docks. The wharf is a massive concrete sprawl the size of several playing fields. Black shadows of cranes are everywhere. I look wildly for a great ship, waiting for me, bound for Montreal. I have seen many, from the Tower, that were surely headed for Canada. Up close, however, it is harder to tell.

The docks lurch with people. It is not at all how I imagined it. So different from the canals of home, the bright-coloured houseboats of Little Venice.

‘They always target here,’ Timothy Squire says, his voice serious. ‘The target is the guide.’

For once, I know what he means. The docks are the gateway between Britain and the world: bringing in war materials, food, help. If you bomb the docks, the ships get destroyed
and
the fires help the planes orient themselves.

I have heard many stories – areas bombed so heavily that buried fires still burn. We push closer, dodging a rough hole in the cement.
How deeply buried?
Then Timothy Squire laughs, and his voice resumes its mischievous tone.

‘When the bombs hit in the summer, rats poured out of those buildings like waves. Thousands of them!’

I turn in horror, expecting to see a tide of rodents swelling round us. He goes on talking, about flaming barges filled with coconuts, which burned for days, nothing could put them out. In the brief second where he draws a breath, I speak.

‘What are those ships for?’

I point past a distant column of smoke, rising from behind the river. From here I can see that it climbs miles high, darker than the dark clouds.

He laughs. ‘You’ve never been down here before?’

‘I have,’ I say defensively. ‘I just don’t know a lot about the docks, or what’s where.’

‘Never could have guessed,’ he says. ‘That smell, yeah? What’s that like to you?’

I inhale deeply, playing along. The air is pungent, heavy.

‘Nutmeg,’ I say. ‘Like Christmas.’

Timothy Squire nods. ‘Spice docks.’

Other smells too. Sulphur and char. He then proceeds to tell me all about the warehouses, the wharves, the nearby rail lines and power stations. Further east, the Woolwich Arsenal, the Ford Motor Works, the Beckton Gas Works. Not a word about where the passenger ships are docked.

I
have
been here before, even visited the Tower. I was very young, and hardly remember anything about it. One thing I do remember, though, is the river, up close. It was not like this, thick with ships and smoke.

In my mind, the water is quiet and calm, leading out to the North Sea. It seemed impossible that it could have harmed Father. Impossible that it could have killed him.
Then why are you so afraid?

‘When Dunkirk was on, you should have seen it,’ comes Timothy Squire’s voice. ‘Everything that could float. Destroyers, paddle steamers, sloops. More ladders than you ever saw, hanging over the sides of each ship. Everyone down here was making ladders.

‘Then the barges came, and the small boats, red, blue, yellow – fishermen and crabbers, some of them never been off the river. Headed to France to pick up the army. Mad, isn’t it? At second tide they all left – it was about as dark as it gets in summer, but you could see them clear, just a block of boats, filling the river. Still, no lights or any noise, hoping the Germans wouldn’t know they were coming.

‘It was like the Spanish Armada,’ he says, breathless. ‘They brought back thousands – tens of thousands – of soldiers. The Germans kept on bombing them as they headed home. Everywhere ships burning and sinking. Imagine it.’

Clumps of people fill the alleys. Refugees maybe, or poor children who had been evacuated and drifted back to London. Yeoman Brodie said there are more refugees every day: French, Czech, Polish, Dutch. Everyone looks lost, strange.

Everywhere ships burning and sinking.

The flats are small, poorly made. The abandoned ones look the same as those with people in the windows. We pass a large black man, and some people not speaking English. A new, unnameable smell hangs heavy in the cold air.

‘We’re near the coloured quarter, Jews and Indians too.’

I nod. I know that once the war started, aliens had to move away from the coast – had they all come here? I remember too what Mum said about ‘class feeling’.
During war, we’re all the same.
We still don’t
look
the same, though. Mum always said not to be narrow-minded.

Lonely fires burn themselves out. It is amazing how slowly all the clearing up is done.

‘It’s nice to be out,’ I say instead.

Timothy Squire gives me an odd look, perhaps guessing my lie, and I immediately ask, ‘So you spent your whole life here?’

‘’Course.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Like it? Sure.’ He frowns. ‘Not Frederick. Or Malcolm – or anyone from class. Or any of the Warders, the old bores. It’s brilliant, though. And with Elsie and the NAAFI girls here now...’

‘Elsie?’

But he is already walking down the wharf.

‘Come on,’ he says.

We get free of the docks, and once again I recognize things: the post office, newspaper and cigarette shops. I can smell something delicious – the smell of frying.

‘Look at this,’ he says in awe, standing over a clump of silver. He gestures for me to pick it up.

‘What is it?’

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’re a bright spark, have a guess. Go on. Give it a go. It’s why we’ve come.’

Not certain he isn’t teasing me, I reach down and grab the clump of metal. Cold, and only jagged on one edge, it’s some piece of shrapnel; I’m not listening to the lengthy explanation. The silver reminds of something else, something I am foolish enough to have forgotten until now. Even if I could sneak off to the docks and find a ship bound for Montreal, how would I pay for it?

And when I arrive in Canada, where will I go? Ask around until I find someone who knows Florence Swift from Maida Vale?

The North Sea is dangerous. It killed Father.

I offer the metal to Timothy Squire and, after a moment of fake protest, he pockets it.

As we march down the narrow streets, past the small ruins of terraced houses and the great ruins of factories, the sound of the lapping river recedes. I clutch my bag tightly, my eyes turning back to the waiting ships.

‘So what bomb was it that got you?’

‘What?’

‘Well, you were bombed out, weren’t you? High explosive?’

I shake my head. Can’t we talk about anything else?

‘You don’t know? Your own house, and you don’t know?’

He seems truly shocked.

‘Maybe now,’ I say, refusing to look up, to look west. ‘Maybe now it is in ruins. When I came here, the house was fine.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

He is looking at me like I have wings or something.

‘My mum died,’ I say. My throat is hot. ‘On a bus. I don’t know what type of bloody bomb it was, all right? She died, and my father drowned when I was five. My house was fine, but I couldn’t go on living there alone, could I? My only family left is my uncle, so
that’s
what I’m doing here.’

‘Did you get the furniture out? Or was all your stuff spoiled?’

‘Why would Uncle take the furniture out? If the house is still standing when the war is over I shall want all the furniture exactly where it was.’

It is late. No matter what arrangement the Warders have – and they seem to have an arrangement with everyone – the fish market looks closed. It
smells
open, though. Then a woman walks past – shiny face and tall hat – a bag in her hands. The scent of fish tickles my nose.

I hang back, shivering, while Timothy Squire strides ahead. I wonder if I should try to change into my trousers, or at least put on my wool coat. What would Timothy Squire think?
He would wonder why I am carrying all my clothes to the fish market.

Before I can decide what to do, he has returned with a newspaper-wrapped fish. How do I not eat this myself?

‘We should get back,’ I say. ‘We’ll be late.’

Timothy Squire smiles. ‘I know. This was your idea.’

But our pace has quickened. The air is cold, with sand blowing around us from torn sandbags. I am aware of eyes watching us. The refugees from the docks?

What time is it? None of the church clocks tell the right time any more. Entry to the Tower is banned after 7 p.m.

‘Well? What will we do? We won’t make it back in time.’

He is still smiling, as if inspecting some newly discovered piece of shrapnel. I am sure someone is following us. Two kids, carrying food through the streets at night?
By the docks.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘There’s a drainpipe.’

A drainpipe?
I hurry ahead at a jog, with Timothy Squire stubbornly walking behind me.

We have to climb a drainpipe? In almost darkness? And over the wall? A far more dangerous route than the handholds on the side of the Develin Tower. What will Uncle say? Oh, and if someone sees us – in the dark – and thinks we are spies? Parachutists?

I walk even faster, willing the Tower to appear.
It will be worse if someone catches us before we get there.
In the dim light I can make out four towers, rising like great teeth. There it is! I couldn’t have imagined being happy to see the great pile of stone. And thank God the guard is still visible at his post.

He does not even look angry.
He was waiting for us
.

Of course he was. He wouldn’t lock up with us still out there. Another truth rushes in, and my face feels hot.

Timothy Squire was teasing me.
There is no drainpipe.

Mr Thorne nods and Timothy Squire, handing him a wrapped bundle, has the nerve to smile back.

Wednesday, 16 October 1940

Hitler swooped down on us again last night. Never before did I think of night as early, middle, and late. It used to be one blank stretch.

Yesterday I awoke in the late night, a Wife’s words in my head.
I can’t bear the night. I can’t bear the night.
When I tugged free a wax earplug, the bombs roared. Moments later, the siren called us all into the shelter.