These Dark Wings (18 page)

Oakes mutters some words about the long day ahead and quickly leaves me standing alone in the kitchen. I release the plug and with a low gurgle the dirty water drains away.

I have, without meaning to, come to the roost. Cora perches atop the inner wall. The sharp wind that tears the clouds above only ruffles her wings. She stays firm, claws curled, head cocked.

It is not time for her feeding. More than bombs and smells and traitors, it is the lack of food that has made her life different.
Does she understand why? How the world is different?

The sun shines, yet it no longer bounces off her, no longer reveals the deep blue polish that is her true colour. Other birds look fragile; not ravens. Ravens are hard, sturdy – survivors.

I stand there, staring at the plane trees, slowly blinking away hot tears.

It’s a bloody bird! Mum was killed, and Father drowned before I was old enough to even remember his face, and I am crying over a bloody dying bird.

No. Cora is not dying.

Not while I am looking after her.

School is hellish. My workbook is almost full and I’ve taken to borrowing paper from Leslie. This at least gives her a chance to tell me more stories. Even though raids have become a dreadful bore, Leslie still makes a fuss over every one.

‘Another Tube station was hit,’ she says, handing me three sheets. ‘Sloane Square. Got people just as they stepped off the train.’

‘Horrible.’

She leans in. ‘Everyone died. Thrown all over, some on the live wires. And what’s worse, the explosion tore off all their clothes, so there’s just naked bodies hanging from the girders.’

‘Hanging?’

‘If you’re lucky. Most of what they found were just bits. A foot on the tracks, an arm on the platform. They sweep them all up in a dustpan.’

Leslie has many stories like this. Two left feet found in a gutter, a torso on a rooftop – and, everyone’s greatest fear, people buried alive. She is not trying to scare me, not really, as much as she is showing that
she
is not afraid. But as she talks her face is more drawn than usual.

Even as I listen, my eyes wander to Timothy Squire who, as always, stares straight ahead.
What is he thinking? What is he planning?

At least I know why he didn’t want to take me to the docks on my birthday. He’d just been down there, looting.
That
is why he missed Churchill’s visit. Those things, glittering in his closet – watches and bracelets, not bombs. He is not a bomb expert. He is a thief. He
is
a rotten liar.

Who cares? Things outside are worse. Other stories and rumours besides Leslie’s have reached us. Of boroughs where water is unsafe to drink, where it must be boiled only there’s no gas to do so. Oakes goes on about it over breakfast. Still, it is exhausting to worry about the other boroughs, the other cities.

During a break in Leslie’s stories, I whisper, ‘Will they invade? Truly?’

‘Doubt it, myself,’ she answers slowly. ‘They haven’t yet, and my father says it makes less and less sense. Longer nights and high tides, sea mists and fog.’ She shrugs. ‘But it’s Hitler, so.’

How long can we wait, bombed every night, for the Germans to invade? A headache is coming.

Germans can’t invade across the channel, Uncle said. The North Sea is our greatest ally. The Old Man has been a friend to British sailors for hundreds of years, now it protects us all.
That is how much he cared for Father. He doesn’t even remember that the North Sea killed him.

I am tired. Tired of Timothy Squire lying to me, of everyone lying to me. Tired of being here, waiting for the next dreadful attack.

Miss Breedon calls us back to attention, but no Latin exercise can distract me.

Timothy Squire will ask again. He will want you to come.

What can I say?

I open Cora’s cage. I know right away, of course. No movement, no croaking of her thick noise.

I peer inside just long enough to see her, sideways in the straw nest, rigid and unmoving. I step away, heading towards the Green, the scaffold, the walls, my breath catching in my chest.

I must tell Uncle. I should have told him before, when there was still time.

It was not time she needed. It was food.

Before I was brought to the Tower, two other ravens had died in a bombing raid (‘the spares’). Cora, who used to sleep under the boilerhouse with one of the spares, was brought to the cage so that they could all be together. Cora was always the smallest, the most shy. Now she too is gone.

Kraa.

I back away from Grip’s sharp challenge. Does he, too, blame me? Grip and I stand, facing off, in the slashing wind.

With a final cry, he stomps away, towards the dark teeth of the battlements.

I am alone on the Green.

Thursday, 31 October 1940

‘Where are we going?’

Timothy Squire’s voice floats back to me on the cold air. ‘Not far.’

We’ve already gone far. So far, in fact, that I can no longer see the Tower on the horizon. Blitz streets all look the same. Sandbags and barbed wire with gardens dug up for allotments. I was never quite sure, when Flo and I ventured out along the canals, where exactly to turn and when. Without her it was often a sight – a tree here, a yellow boat there – that helped guide me back home.

Why I am here at all is the real question. Timothy Squire lied to me. He doesn’t really care about bombs or comics – only robbing people. He never talks to me at school, or in front of anyone else. And all these friends he’s always telling stories about? I’ve never seen a single one.

So why am I here?

Bridges slide past and we keep walking, tracing the loop of the river. Timothy Squire does not search the landscape for clues. He stalks the streets without doubt, without wrong turns or confusion. I am silent, tracking the route in my mind. Few people wander the streets. The pubs too seem empty.

Is that Pimlico Station? We are close to Victoria Station then. I can imagine it, crowded with people carrying suitcases, trying to get the hell out. People are going to Hampstead, Leslie says, just to live in the fields. It is fearsomely cold, as the wind musters itself for another winter. If it gets as bad as last year, I don’t know how you could survive in a field.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘This way.’

One thing is certain; these houses are not bombed out. This does nothing to calm me, though, as Timothy Squire’s intention is clear. I never told him how much I hate this. ‘This is different,’ he will claim. The tall, stately house fronts, the window sills full of pots, the flowers long dead, seem to prove it. This neighbourhood is untouched.

He is scared, that is all. He thinks the invasion is coming. That we need food, supplies – as much as we can get our hands on.

He might be right.

If I’d come with him more often, maybe I could have saved Cora.

No. I could not have fed Cora some old lady’s necklace.

Timothy Squire looks to have found something to his liking. He strides up to a semi-detached house, presses his face up to the white shutters. Is it abandoned, though? With so much moving, so much coming and going, who knows if the people have really left? Why would you leave such a safe area?

‘Dust covers,’ he says triumphantly.

We sneak round the back. I do not want to watch to see what he does, but he calls me closer.

‘Look. Getting through a locked door is nothing.’

He holds up a long rusty nail, slides it into the keyhole.

‘Just sweep it around until you feel the catch, then twist – and push.’

The door creaks open. I stagger ahead, as if a spell is broken.

We will not be able to trick the wardens here.

We stand in a drawing room with a red and yellow rug, glass-fronted bookcases, and some type of Indian statue staring back at us. The room is cold. Like the Tower, in a way. Long abandoned, perhaps. Is this what a house feels like left empty and unused?

Timothy Squire knocks the money out of the gas meters. Long moments pass as he fusses with the coins.

‘What if they come back?’

‘“Come back”?’ He laughs, high and humourless. ‘Once the invasion starts, all this will belong to the Jerries. Better off with us than with Hitler.’

‘If you’re so sure we’re all going to die, why do you need other people’s trinkets?’

He looks up at me, serious. ‘I am not going to let us die.’

I frown, say nothing.

A radio, he claims, is what this is all about.
For our safety.
I wander round as he finds one, shoves it into his pack.
Why can’t he just use the wireless at the Tower?
I see something in the wardrobe. A coat, maybe for a girl or a short woman. Warm, full-length and a nice lilac colour. Why wouldn’t they take it with them? Do they really have no need for a beautiful warm coat in this freezing weather?

I look but I can’t see Timothy Squire anywhere. The coat
is
too long, but it is not unwearable. Mum would love it. The softness of the sleeve.

On the walk back to the Tower, Timothy Squire keeps glancing at me.

‘This stuff is better off with us, Magpie.’

I shake my head. He says ‘us’ even though I did not take the coat. I watch him through narrowed eyes. He strolls along, arms swinging, new treasures in his pockets.

He is afraid of the invasion. That is why is he acting like this.

We are all afraid.
We don’t all rob people.

‘Timothy Squire,’ I say, as we hurry through the cold, ‘you must promise me. Promise you will never do that again.’

He makes a face. ‘No. Why would I?’

‘Because it’s horrid. And wrong.’

‘No, it’s—’

‘I mean it. Promise.’

‘Who else is going—’

I look over at him, his large forehead red from the wind.

‘Promise me. You won’t.’

He makes another face, but it changes, softens.

‘Fine. Right. I promise.’

Sunday, 3 November 1940

Red as a fox, her hair catches the lamplight. In the doorway, I watch her. I struggle yet cannot move. Just then she sees me. In the night, silently, Mum rises to hug me.