Authors: Jessica Francis Kane
Laurie recalled Clare Newbury. She had medical training and had helped with the casualties in the booking hall the whole of the night in question, so he thought he would talk to her again.
“Everything all right?” he asked as she arranged herself in the chair.
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing changed since the last time we talked?”
She hesitated but then shook her head. “No, sir.”
“I’d like to make sense of one thing, if I could. How did some people survive at the bottom of the crush while others did not? I think it’s the reason the accident is so troubling.”
“Among many, I’d say.” She spoke sharply.
“Indeed.”
“I’m sorry. It has been a bit of a strain to get everything back to normal.”
“I understand. No apology necessary. For example, these babies that people handed out of the stairway. In your opinion, could it have been a mother’s strength that kept them safe? Something about the architecture of her body?”
“Not all mothers saved their children that night, Mr. Dunne.”
“Yes, but …”
“So why propagate such a story?”
“Are you a mother?” he asked.
“I have certainly seen how this tragedy has affected people.”
He almost asked her how it was possible, then, to not search for a story. The crush had not filled the landing. The people had been crushed only against themselves.
“Perhaps I can’t explain it,” he said, defeated. “Let me ask you something else. You have a lot of experience in this shelter. Do you have anything to say about the stairs?”
“They were very dark.”
“I understand there was a light.”
“Yes, but it was dim, when it was there.”
“When it was there?”
“It got smashed sometimes, and, you know, I think some of the wardens were tired of replacing it.”
“I see. All right. Thank you very much for coming back.”
“Sir, before I go. I think you’ve spoken to Bertram Lodge, one of the town hall clerks?”
“I remember him.”
“He’s having a great deal of trouble.”
“Is he?”
“He feels awful about being in the crowd that night.”
“I seem to remember he had some difficult work to do after the accident, as well.”
“Yes. Is there anything else he could do? Is there some way you could use him?”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“Did you have difficulty breathing where you were?” Laurie asked.
“No.”
“Try and think back. When the rocket gun or whatever it was went off—”
“Yes.”
“—were you pushed forward?”
“I was pushed into a mass of people; it was something solid.”
“In other words, it seems to you that the block in front that caused the people to stop had occurred before the rocket gun went off?”
“It’s hard to say, sir.”
After the memorial service, which cheered her, Sarah Low invited Clare and Bertram to come round for tea. She planned a cold-weather menu, pork chops and potatoes. She also tried scones with potato flour, but they came out of the oven heavy and small. Nevertheless, she put them on a rack to cool and hoped they might taste sweeter than they looked. She didn’t mind. She had lots of energy, now that James had agreed to her plan.
She plumped the sofa and folded up the rug so that the chairs would sit evenly around the table. She lifted the drop leaves and secured them with two pieces of lumber James had cut for the purpose. She took out her lace cloth. Bertram and Clare would sit at the ends, she decided; she and James would sit side by side, facing the wall. That was best. It would give their guests a view of the room.
Sarah was setting out the candles when James came in from the garden. He looked tired. “Isn’t it a little early for vegetables?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She’d hoped for a denial. She thought he might tell her something about gardening she didn’t know, and it worried her that this was not the case.
“I think a late frost is the least of our problems,” he said.
She shook her head. She would not acknowledge that everything was as bad as he said. “Go and get changed.”
He turned to go but then stopped. “It looks nice, Sarah. You’re a fine hostess.”
She smiled and waved him into the bedroom.
Clare and Bertram arrived on time with a small bouquet. Clare was wearing a fashionable green dress tied at the waist. She’d heard Sarah’s news at the canteen and gave her a meaningful hug. James breathed, “Bertram,” and clapped the sad and pale boy to him. As they turned into the room, Sarah tried to make a joke about the trouble they must have been put to in carrying the flowers any distance, Morrison likely to expand his ban any day to all forms of flower transport, even walking.
They all smiled, but not as widely as they might have. Nothing seemed out of the realm of possibility.
The pork chops were good, the potatoes bland. Bertram and Clare refused seconds. Sarah told them not to worry—this was a special occasion, the Potato Plan be damned—but they declined again. Conversation veered from food to flowers to the recent rally at Trafalgar Square for a new European front. They’d all gone to see the Lancaster bomber there, which was drawing the biggest crowds since the coronation.
After the meal, Sarah cleared the table and put on the kettle. Clare stacked the scones on a plate. There was nowhere to withdraw to, so when everyone was once again seated around the table, chairs pulled up, laps and napkins smoothed, Clare cleared her throat and said, “James? Have you and Bertram had a chance to talk about the shelter?”
Both men shook their heads. Then Bertram said, “I had to do an inventory.” Outside, a woman called and another woman answered. Sarah poured more tea.
“Of all the items in the victims’ pockets,” Clare explained. “Do you think they were looking for something?”
James shook his head. He didn’t know.
“Have you been back to the shelter?” Bertram asked him.
“No,” he said slowly, not adding that he was pretty sure he’d never walk to the shelter again. Tragedy pockmarked the neighborhood as badly as the bombs: the corner where he’d seen a woman step in front of a car driven without headlights in the blackout; the garden where a man was impaled on a fence by a bomb; the pile of rubble where he and Sarah had heard the baby crying. And now the shelter. But every person in war had an archive like this. You just left people alone with it. There was nothing else to do.
Bertram said he had not been back, either. “What happened?” he asked, and the room went still.
“I changed the lightbulb, if that’s what you mean,” James said.
“You did?”
“Yes, God damn it!”
“James!” Sarah said. She turned to Bertram. “I’m sorry.”
The two women’s voices outside settled beneath the front window, and their conversation, about kitchen paint, suddenly filled the room. When they’d moved on, Sarah said, “I don’t think Bertram means anything, James. He’s as confused as the rest of us.”
“I wasn’t very close to the entrance,” Bertram said. “I mean, I was back in the crowd. I don’t know how far back. I think about it a lot, actually, where I was.” He looked down.
James stared. “Why? Did you push? Just like the rest of them?”
“James! Stop it!” Sarah stood up, her face pale. She flapped her hands in front of her. “Clare, will you help me clear? I’m sorry.”
“Of course.”
When the women were in the kitchen, Bertram spoke quietly. “I tried not to.”
James looked horrified. “I’m sorry, Bert. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Sarah and Clare came back into the room, Sarah’s face stern. “You are both asking yourselves questions that needn’t be asked,” she said. She looked at James, then turned to Bertram. “There are horrors enough in this war without imagining more. You were in a crowd of hundreds.”
Bertram nodded, then stood. “Let me show you,” he said.
Clare put her head in her hands. “His list,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
Bertram brought back the frayed and dirty notebook. He turned the pages, and at first everyone read silently; then Sarah pointed to a name she recognized and laughed at the thought of one particular woman with a packet of seeds in her pocket. “But she hated gardening!”
James smiled. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”
The mood in the room eased a bit, and Sarah, enormously relieved, went to the kitchen to pour out some brandy.
When Clare and Bertram had gone, Sarah settled James on the couch. She made him a cup of tea, but when he didn’t sip it, she said, “Would you like to go to the pub? You haven’t been in a while.”
He looked at her as if from a distance, then shook his head.
She picked up her mending. “Don’t think about it anymore. It’ll be all right. Clare and Bertram know you.”
He nodded.
Her hands dropped to her lap. “What about our plan?” She tried not to sound too eager. “Shall we go to the orphanage tomorrow?”
It meant everything to her when he smiled. “Yes. That will help, won’t it?”
She could not help grinning. “Oh, I think so. A baby is just what we need. You’ll see.”
In the corner grocery Paul couldn’t find the orange juice. It was some time before he realized this was because he was standing in the freezer section. He moved down the aisle to the relatively colder area of open refrigeration, and there they were, the juices. So pleased was he with the progress of his day, his interview with Dunne, that he bought two bottles, in spite of the astonishing price. It seemed Mrs. Loudon was right. Nearly four quid. He also bought a box of tea and a Cadbury’s bar and asked the clerk at the counter to wrap all of it in a nice bag. He felt kind, magnanimous, happy to celebrate the fact that he seemed to be drawing Dunne out.
“What? We haven’t got those.”
“Bags?”
“Not good ones.”
“What about ribbon?” Paul asked.
The clerk showed him a ball of twine.
When he got back to the B and B, Paul used the piece of twine the clerk had grumpily handed over to tie a bow around the bag. He wrote
Thank You
on the side and left the whole package on the counter for Mrs. Loudon, who was out. He took his other groceries, some beers and a bag of crisps, and went upstairs to his room.
The first thing to do was call Tilly. He didn’t want the Bethnal Green project to go much further without talking to her, but they were not particularly close. She hadn’t been very interested in him when they were growing up, though he’d always had the sense that she was looking out for him, protecting him, from—among other things—their unhappy parents.
She answered, whispering.
“The boys asleep?” Paul asked.
“Just. Owen’s got an ear infection.”
This was the way Tilly had once explained to Paul what had happened during the war: by sharing something that was in short supply, the truth, she’d gained something else in short supply, a sibling. It didn’t make any sense in peacetime, she’d said when he asked her to be more specific, but she was very glad to have a brother. She’d been married, briefly, to a city engineer and had two sons: five-year-old Owen and two-year-old Michael.
She was quiet when Paul told her about the film. “Tilly?” he said. “You there?”
“How long have you been working on this?”
“I don’t know, a few years.”
“Have you talked to Laurie Dunne?”
“In fact, I’m calling from Stockbridge. He’s agreed to participate.” Paul waited for a response. “Hello, hello?”
“I’m here.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I wish you could do a film about something else.”
“I’m pretty committed, Tilly. What do you remember about Dunne? He interviewed you, right?”
“Oh, it was such a long time ago.”
“But you must remember something.”
“The room was hot and smelly. There were cobwebs in the windowsill. I think I sat up there; I have no idea why now.”
“Was Mum there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was Mum there when he interviewed you? It would have been pretty scary for an eight-year-old alone.”
“I’m always surprised by what other people assume is scary. No. I was on my own.”
Paul nodded. That was the Tilly he knew, almost always on her own. He pictured her in Islington, quietly organized, dressed simply, probably in jeans. She wore her hair, against the fashion of the day, cut short, and her skin, ruined by poor nutrition during the war years, was always rough and red over her cheeks.
When he told her that Dunne had given him a new piece of information, she said sharply, “What is it?”
Warden Low’s suicide made her gasp.
“Dunne covered it up,” he said. “It was reported as a stroke.”
“I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Wait. Why?”
She said suddenly, “You want to know our big secret, then? I’m the child who spoke to the newspaper reporter. I told him a woman fell. I broke the story.”
“I didn’t know that.” He could hear her sniffing and wiping at tears.
“The money was nice. Mum used it to pay the orphanage for you.”
“You were bribed?” Paul asked.
“I don’t remember how much. I have to go.”
“Wait. You saw the first woman? Did you know she was a refugee?”
“No.”
“That’s what Dunne told me today. He covered that up, too.”
“Has he told you anything else?”
“Not yet,” Paul said.
Tilly was crying. “Are you going to talk to him again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Then I have a message for him.” He could hear her trying to catch her breath. “Tell him I say hello. Tell him I wish him well. Will you do that? Will you see if he remembers me? Tell him I have never discussed it and I don’t think he should, either.” Despite her efforts, she was sobbing.
Paul sat on the edge of his bed, completely still. He’d rarely heard her cry. “Of course. All right. Tilly, please don’t cry. I’m sorry. What have you never discussed?”
By the time Ross brought Tilly, the room was fast losing light. Outside, the sound of starlings echoed in the street like glass breaking and falling, a flock filling the trees along the lane.
“Mrs. Barber,” Ross said. “You have to come with me now.”
“Why?” Ada grabbed Tilly’s hand and raised her chin at Laurie. “He said I could stay.”
The girl spoke before Laurie could. “It’s all right, Mum.”
Ada searched the girl’s face, evidently relieved to hear her voice. “Really? It is?” She held her at arm’s length, then hugged her. When she held her at arm’s length again and the girl nodded, Ada wiped her tears and went out.
Laurie smiled at Tilly. She had a sweet chin-length bob and dark brown eyes. “Well,” he started. “Your name is Tilly Barber?”
She nodded.
“And you live at Three Jersey Street with your mother and father? I think it’s your mother I’ve just been speaking to.”
“That’s right. Can I sit in the windowsill?”
Laurie agreed, and after the girl had jumped up there, he turned his chair slightly toward her.
“Right.” He abandoned his plans to begin with a question about school or her favorite films. Still, she was a child, and something in him needed to explain. “This is an inquiry, as you know, into the events of the Tube-shelter disaster on March third. Your mother has told us that she was on the stairs that night with you. Could you tell me in your words what happened?”
Tilly blew on a small spiderweb, first gently, then harder, sending the spider hopping.
“You and your mother were two of the last ones out of the stairwell,” Laurie said. “You must have been very brave.”
Tilly looked up and frowned. “Did you know Mrs. W.?” she asked.
“Mrs. Wigdorowicz?”
The girl nodded, and Laurie took a chance. “A little.”
“She was nice.”
“Yes.”
Tilly nodded and seemed to decide something. “She was in front of us.”
“All right.”
Then Tilly raised her hands to indicate just where Mrs. W. had stood. Directly in front of them. So close they could touch her. After a moment Tilly straightened her arms hard in a pantomime of what happened next. The movement was forceful and abrupt and pulled her off the windowsill. Confused and embarrassed, her eyes burning from not blinking, she waited and stared straight ahead.
“Others have said it was too dark to see anything,” Laurie said.
Tilly didn’t move.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “We could see. The stairs are dark, but there are always one or two people with torches.”
Tilly turned back to the web, this time blowing so hard, it came unmoored. The spider scurried up the window to the ceiling.
Laurie rubbed his face. Was it possible? Was this what had turned the crowd that night? He’d hoped to find something, but it never occurred to him it would be this. One woman pushing another, a Jew, on the stairs.
“What happened next? What happened to Mrs. W.?”
She shook her head. Laurie wasn’t sure if she didn’t know or didn’t want to speak anymore.
“Tell me, Tilly, until just that moment, had you heard any loud noises or bangs? Anything unusual that you hadn’t heard before?”
She shook her head. “That came after. I think. I’m not sure about that.”
“All right. Thank you. We’ll look into this further.”
The child nodded gravely, and after she’d gone, Laurie shared with Ross his opinion about the reliability of children as witnesses. Ross agreed.
The final witness shook but didn’t cry.
“I heard a man say ‘I can’t breathe.’ I don’t know where he was. I couldn’t talk by then. I could hear other voices, but they seemed far away. I had my little boy with me. I was holding his hand, and he was next to me on the stairs—he was only three—but when we started falling, I must have pulled him in front of me. I don’t know how. He was beneath me. I tried to give him room. I thought if he would just turn his head …
“After the all clear sounded, we still couldn’t move for a long time. Then we were out of it. They were laying out the bodies in the station, and I found him there. He’d lost a shoe.”