‘I want to give them more than cups of tea,’ Poppy said. ‘Sandwiches and so forth aren’t really enough either. Though I did manage to get half a dozen tins of corned beef promised to me this morning. I called the Ministry of Food and they’ve got me on their priority list, they said, while the raids are so bad. But I still can’t get enough. Last night, Maria and Flo and Edna got through everything. I’m down to less then two pounds of tea – that won’t last half tonight’s push – and a couple of pounds of margarine. Thank God for the corned beef – I haven’t even any fish paste left! And then there’s sugar and milk – oh, it’s getting worse and worse.’
There was a little silence and then Jessie said, ‘Uh – I got a few bits and bobs in my special store you could have. For the canteen.’
Poppy looked at her and then down at the books again. She knew perfectly well what Jessie was offering. Her special store had always been the one she kept for the kitchens where she prepared the dishes the business sold to delicatessens all over London for resale to their customers (at considerable profit, somewhat to Jessie’s chagrin). It had always been a vital part of the business – indeed, it had been the first extension after the little shop in Cable Street – and though now in these difficult times its output had dwindled, still it was functioning, and functioning well. So it came as no surprise to Poppy that Jessie still had a little hoard of something tucked away in one of her capacious cellars.
But there was more to it than that. Though neither of them spoke about it at this point, both knew of the other’s awareness of the fact that these stores had been amplified by Bernie. Neither of them had spoken of him since that morning when he had appeared in the kitchens. But Poppy was sure that Jessie had been thinking about him and what he had asked her to do even more than Poppy herself had. And it was wrong, wrong,
wrong to help him in any way. Poppy felt that with a deep passion. And yet, for the canteen –
‘I could manage maybe a few pounds of margarine – as much as ten even. That’d go a long way in sandwiches, hmm? And there’s a bit of tea, too, and sugar – ’
‘They use saccharin – ’
‘Oh, do me a favour, Poppy! There ain’t one of these people you look after down there likes that nasty stuff! They’d all rather have sugar – and it’s good for ’em, too. Gives energy, don’t it? And if they don’t need energy to get people outa the rubble and to put out fires, I don’t know what they do need. Don’t be so proud, dolly! Let me do my bit of war work too, and give you something for the canteen.’
‘Is it yours to give, Jessie?’ Poppy said levelly. ‘That’s what’s worrying me – ’
Jessie began to bluster and at last their inner thoughts were out in the open. ‘So, maybe Bernie did bring me an order – is that such a terrible thing? Why shouldn’t he do his bit, too? He may be a chancer, my Bernie, but sometimes the way you go on about him, you’d think he was the devil in shoes – ’
‘He’s behaved very badly in the past, Jessie. Treated you like – I’m entitled to be suspicious. I don’t want to carry on like those people who never forget a man’s past, once he’s tried to reform himself, but the trouble is that as far as I can see, Bernie’s no more interested in reforming himself than in – in joining the Army.’
Jessie reddened. ‘You know he can’t. They told him at his medical – he’s not suitable – ’
‘I’m sure they did,’ Poppy said a little sardonically. ‘Just as I’m sure
he
made sure that he wouldn’t be. What was the method he used, Jessie? Told ’em he was a bedwetter, did he? Or that he preferred men to women? They’re the two surefire ways of getting yourself an exemption grade, or so they tell me.’
‘Listen,’ Jessie flared at her. ‘Your father served in the Army and much good it did him. Your mother’s brothers, too – didn’t some of them get killed last time? And what about your Bobby? If a man can get himself out of that sort of danger then I can’t see it’s no crime. In fact, he’d be crazy not to.’
There was a little silence and then Poppy said wearily, ‘Oh, I suppose so. I can’t pretend I’m one of those people who think
everyone ought to turn himself into cannon fodder. But it does make me furious to see someone actually profiting out of the war and giving nothing back – ’
‘So help him!’ Jessie said triumphantly. ‘Take the stuff I’ve got down there, free of charge, and there’s some eggs too, on account he’s fetching me twelve dozen a week from some farmer he’s got down in Essex somewhere, all legal on account they’re not standardized sizes or something, and that way we make sure Bernie’s doing his bit too.’ And she stared hopefully at Poppy.
Poppy couldn’t help it. She began to laugh and after a moment Jessie’s anxious expression lifted and she laughed too.
‘Honestly, Jessie, you’re such a mug where Bernie’s concerned! He’s a villain, you know he is, because he’s treated you just as badly as everyone else. Worse really, and yet you keep on trying to cover for him and make excuses for him and – ’
‘What else can I do?’ Jessie said. ‘I’m his mother.’
The laughter stopped and there was a silence and then Poppy sighed. ‘Oh, all right. I feel sick about it, but I feel worse about having nothing to give them when they come in during a raid and look so battered and – all right, I’ll take it. But it’s against my better judgement and – ’
‘Sure, sure,’ Jessie said soothingly. ‘Sure. So come down and we’ll see what we can fetch up. Bring those boxes there, dolly. It’ll take some shlapping up, this stuff, and the boxes’ll make it easier.’
The cellars were cold and damp, with little rivulets of moisture running down the walls in the long corridor that ran from one side of them to the other, but behind the snugly-fitting wooden doors that led to each enclosure, all was dry though still very cool. They had built these well, Poppy thought as she followed Jessie down to the last door on the right, which was her special store.
The big woman fumbled with her keys for a moment, and then pushed the door open and reached inside for the switch, and light sprang up from a single dusty low-powered bulb overhead.
The cellar was shelved all round, and stacked on them were piles of assorted goods; and Poppy stared round, fascinated. In all the years she had worked with Jessie, this storeroom had been sacrosanct, used only by Jessie herself, and Poppy had never felt any need to intrude in that little corner of secrecy.
Why shouldn’t her aunt have it, after all? They might be partners now, but originally the whole business had been Jessie’s and she had shared it with her niece out of sheer generosity. The least Poppy had had to do was respect this small area of her privacy.
Jessie was looking round and her voice seemed to have softened as she spoke, as much to herself as to Poppy.
‘It makes me feel safe, all this, you know. When we were kids, me and Rae and your father Lizah, rest their dear souls in peace, we used to go without often and often. Those were hard times. It ain’t good being hungry – And then I began to collect a bissel here, a bissel there and when I had things safely locked up it helped me feel better. Not so lonely – and now it’s hard times again and I got my store and to see the shelves all full, it takes the frightened feeling away – ’
Poppy said nothing but reached out one hand and touched Jessie’s shoulder and Jessie turned and looked at her, an oddly appealing little look.
‘Try not to get mad with my Bernie, Poppela,’ she said. ‘He helps me feel better, filling up my stores this way. I know it’s crazy, that it doesn’t make no difference now, what with all the money in the bank and all, but there it is. Old habits die hard.’
‘I understand,’ Poppy said. ‘Mildred used to be the same, I think – ’
‘Your ma?’ Jessie snorted with laughter at that. ‘Listen, your ma, she never felt nothing like the rest of us. I tried so hard with her, to find out when she was worried, but she never said, not her. Not even when she was a bit of a girl, living with me in my old house and waiting for you to be born, even then she never showed no – ’
‘Well, I’ve found out since,’ Poppy said. ‘When she was living in Holborn with me – when I was little – I get flashes of remembering that house sometimes, and the smell of it, the cakes she baked, all coconut and chocolate and lemon and – well, anyway, she told me the best times were when she had the table covered in fresh cakes and rolls waiting to be delivered to her customers. She could pretend they were her own stores, she told me, and that made her feel better.’
She smiled a little crookedly then. ‘To tell you the truth, Jessie, I think we’re all the same. I get a sort of satisfied feeling when the larder’s well stocked, and I know Goosey does. I used
to think it was a family thing but – ’
‘Never,’ Jessie said firmly. ‘It’s women, ain’t it? Listen, what will you take – here’s margarine. I’ve got another box at the back, here, see? – ’
For the next half hour they wrangled over what Poppy would take as Jessie pressed goods on her, and Poppy demurred; but at last the boxes were filled, with sugar and jam as well as the margarine, and with a great pack of American processed cheese.
‘Give ’em Welsh rabbits,’ Jessie counselled. ‘Put a slice of onion on, for a relish, and they’ll be that happy, you won’t know them. And after that a few biscuits –’ And she dived to the back of the furthest shelf, and pulled out a large tin of rich teas. ‘These aren’t easy to come by no more, they aren’t, McVitie’s hand-packed novelties. These’ll be as fresh as the day they left the factory, believe me. They got nothing to do with Bernie so you can take them with an easy conscience, all right? Now the eggs and then we’ll drag this stuff upstairs – ’
Poppy had given up arguing by now and let Jessie add twelve dozen eggs, small bantam ones, but eggs for all that, to her collection and together they dragged the now weighty boxes along the damp outer corridor, after Jessie had carefully locked up.
On each side the other cellar doors stood closed and each of them, Poppy noticed now, had brand new padlocks on them, and she said to Jessie, ‘Why such big locks?’
Jessie didn’t look at her, keeping her head down over the box she was dragging. ‘I don’t know. They’re the rooms I rent to Bernie.’
Poppy said nothing, but she thought hard. Jessie’s private cellar was capacious and high, and well-shelved; the piles of things she had taken for the canteen had made hardly a dent in the stock; if these other cellars – and she had counted them long ago and knew there were seven – were as well stocked, then the amount of stuff Bernie had down here was enormous. And she bit her lip, hard, needing to keep silent for Jessie’s sake.
‘He’s paying twenty a week rent. I agreed it, okay?’ Jessie said then a little pugnaciously.
Poppy shook her head. ‘Nothing to do with me, Jessie. For my part you can count that as personal income and – ’
‘No,’ Jessie said furiously. ‘No! It goes through the books all
right and proper, income for the business. I won’t hear another word about that. Listen, can you manage this box up the stairs if I take the eggs?’
‘I can manage,’ said Poppy and at last admitted defeat. How could she not? Wasn’t she now as much a conspirator as Jessie in Bernie’s dealings? She felt sick about it, even when the other workers at the canteen clustered round with oohs and aahs of delight when she delivered her hoard; even when that night the firemen and rescue teams showed how delighted they were with the new expanded menu. At least the food was going to the sort of people who ought to be having it, and not to West End types who slept safely in their beds at night and hardly knew what it was like to go without. But still she felt grubby.
It was almost eleven o’clock and the raids were filling the streets with noise and the canteen with clamouring workers in need of refreshment when the phone rang and Poppy, who was nearest at the moment, picked it up. She could hardly hear anything above the general hubbub and stood there with one finger jammed in her ear while she tried to hear the thin voice clacking on the phone.
‘Ma – oh, Ma, thank God I’m through! I’ve been trying for ages, for absolutely ages – it just rang and rang – ’
‘Robin? Robin, what’s the matter?’ Poppy’s voice sharpened with apprehension.
‘It’s all right, darling. Joshy’s fine. He and Lee greeted each other like long lost explorers and Mr and Mrs Gosling were super to him. Told him firmly it wasn’t to happen again but didn’t make him feel miserable. He’s safe in bed – it’s me who’s the problem – ’
‘What problem?’ The line crackled and swooped in Poppy’s ear and she stamped her foot in sheer frustration as she called her daughter’s name over and over again; and then, blessedly, she was there once more, and talking fast.
‘Did you hear that, Ma? I can’t get back till ten tomorrow at the earliest, there’s some sort of trouble on the line down towards – do you understand, Ma? Tennish they say now – could be later – told me to –’ And then the line died for good, and no amount of jiggling on the instrument’s rest brought it back.
Poppy gave up trying to reach the operator and hung up,
feeling a warm glow. Robin had gone to enormous trouble, clearly, to phone her, and she felt a stab of guilt as she remembered how she had complained at her for not calling one morning when she had come off duty exhausted. Clearly her complaint had hit home, for the child had obviously had a most difficult job getting her call through from Norwich. And she stood staring out into the hubbub of the canteen, thinking of Robin and aching to see her soon.
Well, she’ll be back tomorrow, after an appalling journey, she told herself, and she would do all she could to fuss over her and make her comfortable. After all the trouble she had gone to for her family, it was the least her mother could do. And she went back to making fried egg sandwiches for black-faced firemen and exhausted rescue workers with a new energy. Bad as this war was, there were good things about it; and the closeness it gave to family ties was one of them.
Robin woke with a start as the train again pulled to a shuddering halt, and tried to look at her watch. Her arm had gone to sleep, agonizingly, and she could have cried out with the painful tingling of it as she tried to pull herself away from the heavy sailor who was sitting beside her and who had fallen asleep against her almost as soon as he’d got on the train at Ipswich. She managed to peer at her watch at last, trying to make out the time in the thin light thrown from the single blue bulb overhead, and couldn’t. And then stopped trying, because the other people jammed into the compartment were stirring, reaching over each other’s heads for kit bags and coats, while outside in the corridor she could just make out a slow movement of people past the compartment. Had they arrived? She tried to see out of the window, through the lattice work of strips of sticky brown paper that had been fixed over it to stop broken glass fragments from flying around should the train encounter a raid, and at last managed to make out the scene beyond.