The Report (7 page)

Ross cleared his throat. “I wondered if I could be secretary to the inquiry, sir? Instead of messenger?”

Laurie pretended to consider a moment, then agreed.

Ada knew her grief was ugly, bloated. It bulged and spilled out of her. She could tell by the way visitors to the flat looked at her, looked and then looked away. All had been the future—tomorrow, after this raid, after the war. But now, sodden with sorrow, she was changing course. With every ounce of her body, she didn’t want to take each day as it came, but she didn’t seem to have any choice. All she wanted was a path back to the time when Tilly smiled and Emma napped on the pillow beneath the window.

She’d watched friends go through this, thought she had some idea, but she did not. It was painful to talk. The words, even when they sounded right, were slow in her head. She could never have imagined the agony of physical contact, the torture of a hug, except from Tilly, especially from Tilly. Now she knew the best thing to do for someone mourning, the only thing, was to bring food and leave.

At first she wanted to abandon Bethnal Green. Hadn’t the government been trying to get them to the country from the beginning? Well, now she would go. She would banish herself. She could picture standing on the platform at Paddington, Tilly’s hair neat and braided for the trip. She even got as far as pulling out the bag, but then she stalled. She started to cough and cry and ended up on her knees again, clutching Emma’s pillow.

When she looked in the mirror, she saw that she was changing. She had a thin face now, eyes that didn’t settle on anything for long. Days and events still ahead—peacetime, other mothers and daughters—would change her even more. She suspected she’d never get the feeling of March 3 out of her bones. It was like being in a fog and feeling every stinging raindrop. It was not a memory but a physical, altered state. One day the fog might clear, but she knew she’d been marked. She’d been seared. Perhaps one day she wouldn’t even recognize herself.

The shelter orphans stayed at Bethnal Green Hospital for five days after the accident. All were healthy, if just a bit undernourished. “Who isn’t?” Ada cried, shaking the newspaper. She clipped out all the stories she could find about the shelter orphans. The day the
Observer
announced that the babies were going to the orphanage in Shoreditch, Ada got out of bed, dressed, and filled her handbag. She was confused and disorganized with grief—everything took her a long time—but eventually she walked into the kitchen and found Tilly on her tiptoes, trying to tap down a box of salt from the top shelf with a butcher knife. Ada surprised her, and the girl whipped around.

“You’re up,” Tilly said.

“You need a stool,” said Ada.

“This works well, usually.” Tilly put the knife back on the counter.

“What were you doing?”

“Checking the salt.”

Ada walked to the shelf and pulled down the box. “It’s about half-full.”

“It’s open, then. Dad said if it wasn’t we should sell it.”

“Why?”

“He’s out in the shop, and he said it doesn’t matter anymore what we eat.”

“He’s wrong about that.”

“All right.” Tilly didn’t believe her, but she wanted to try.

“Do you want to come with me?” Ada asked. “I’m going to see the babies.”

They waited for the city bus on the Roman Road, just east of St. John’s. The entrance of the shelter, which a constable now guarded, had a new roof and reinforced doors. They didn’t want to look there but couldn’t help it. Several workers were installing an iron handrail down the center of the stairway, and a group of people had gathered to watch.

The bus arrived. A few passengers got off, and when the crowd waiting at the stop tried to step up, Ada and Tilly fell back. There wasn’t room for everyone. Suddenly furious with a woman who squeezed on ahead of them, Ada yelled something about four-by-twos. Frozen with fright, Tilly willed herself to forget the words almost the same moment she heard them. She couldn’t move until Ada held her and said “It’s all right.” But Ada, too, was shaking. Then the girl’s face crumpled. She pushed her sob into her mother’s side, and the bus pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” Ada said.

“What does it mean?” If her mother said something, anything, else, Tilly would believe her.

“Nothing. We’re going to walk.”

“I like walking.”

But Ada was not sure of the way. She had rarely been out of Bethnal Green. She knew from the papers that the Shoreditch orphanage was on the Bethnal Green Road, so if they stuck to it and kept west, she thought they’d be all right. She was glad the babies hadn’t been taken to Kensington, as some had originally said. She never could have walked that far.

A layer of cloud still protected the city, but the noise of the street was too much for Ada, after her solitary days. She took Tilly’s hand. A few streets later, she saw two magpies. “There you go,” she said, giving Tilly a squeeze. “That’s good luck, a pair of magpies.” The birds were tussling over a shiny piece of tin in a garden.

“Do they have to be together?” Tilly asked.

Ada didn’t answer.

“Is it still good luck if you see one and then a little while later you see another?”

“I think so.”

“How long in between?”

“What?”

“Is it bad luck if you see just one?”

“I don’t know, Tilly. Let’s walk now.”

“We are.”

“Quietly, then. I need to think.”

Twenty minutes later, mother and daughter stood before the orphanage. The proprietress—matron? Ada didn’t know what to call her—welcomed them. Tilly only nodded in response to the woman’s greeting. She wanted her mother to be able to think.

Paul arrived early wearing a jacket and dark tie, the most conservative he had. Dunne had been ambiguous on the phone about whether he intended to cooperate, but Paul thought he’d detected a developing curiosity and wanted to make a good impression. He could see Dunne through the front window, asleep in front of the television. He watched him for a time, surprised to feel sorry for the old magistrate. He looked vulnerable, head back, mouth open for air. When Dunne finally answered the door, sleepy but clearly pleased with the business of the day, Paul pretended he had not been waiting on the step for five minutes. He noted that, while he had made an effort to dress up for Dunne, Dunne seemed to have dressed down for him. He was wearing a cardigan and loose trousers over slippers. Once more, they proceeded slowly down the front hall, Paul simultaneously loosening his tie and working hard to avoid stepping on Dunne’s bare heels. When he slowed to the older man’s pace, he noticed that the walls were lined with certificates and awards as well as a heavily textured green and gray quilt.

“Now,” Dunne said when they were sitting, “what will the point of this film be? What will you be trying to prove?”

Paul smiled. “Well, I’ve always been interested in—”

“Hosting a documentary.”

“Not hosting it, sir. I probably won’t appear at all, actually.”

“Interviewing me, then.”

“Someone else might film the interviews.”

This news seemed to please Dunne.

“I’d write the script and direct the whole thing,” Paul said defensively.

“Good for you.”

“Yes, well, it would be, rather. I’ve wanted to make this film for a long time.” Paul took a quiet breath. “Sir Laurence, my parents used to say you were the only one who understood the crowd wasn’t guilty.”

“Barber. It’s a common name.”

Paul thought Dunne meant uncommon for someone who looked like him. He was used to this. He had responses, jokes, a whole range of things he usually said. Now, though, he shrugged and tried to change the subject.

“As you know, the thirtieth anniversary is approaching, and many producers will find it a compelling time to look back.”

“Thirty years.”

“Hard to believe?”

“Why not the twenty-fifth or the fiftieth?”

Paul smiled again. “I see. Well, I suppose there is an arbitrary aspect, but if we wait until the fiftieth—” He stopped.

“Oh, I know I’m not going to live forever. Of course, you always think death might make an exception for you, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence.”

Paul tried to start again. “The report, sir, came at such an interesting historical moment. I wonder if you could tell me—”

“When did you read it?”

“At university. I was twenty-two.”

“So the subject is academic to you.” Laurie frowned. “No, you said you grew up in Bethnal Green.”

“That’s right.” Paul looked down, and when he looked up,
his eyes were wide and innocent. “Sir Laurence, it’s not academic for me.”

“Oh?”

“My family was in the crush.”

Dunne waited.

“I was adopted after the accident.”

The magistrate didn’t flinch. He merely blinked twice, then smoothed his legs with his palms from his hips to his knees. “That’s very interesting,” he said softly. “I thought the name was familiar. Did the family keep a grocery?”

“Yes, for a time. My mum did after my dad left.”

“Ada Barber.”

“That’s right. You remember her?”

“Where is she now?”

“She died a few years ago, I’m afraid.”

“And Tilly?”

Paul was impressed. “She lives in Islington.”

Dunne held his breath, then exhaled loudly. He stood up and switched off the television.

“Ada adopted one of the orphans,” he said, facing away from Paul. “Why?” He turned around quickly. “Do you know?”

“I think our families were friends.” Paul didn’t understand the way Dunne was staring at him. His secret not having gone over the way he expected, he wasn’t sure where they were now. “My understanding is that there was a terrible sense of communal guilt in the area after the accident.”

“Do you know anything about your birth parents?”

“No. My mother said the orphanage kept very spotty records during the war. She had no love for the matron, apparently.”

Dunne looked down. “Your parents said I knew the crowd wasn’t guilty. Did Ada say that?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the opposite of guilty?” Dunne asked.

“Innocent?” Under Dunne’s scrutiny, Paul couldn’t suppress the question mark.

“Well, they weren’t that, either.”

Mrs. Barton-Malow, matron of the Shoreditch Orphanage for Babies and Children, was a heavy woman with a bounce in her step at odds with her large body. Ada didn’t ask for a tour, but this was what Mrs. Barton-Malow assumed she wanted. And Ada, who wasn’t sure what she wanted, found that following Mrs. Barton-Malow up and down the passages was easier than anything else. They looked into the girls’ and boys’ dayrooms, the cafeteria, the classrooms, everything broom clean but dull. Many women worked among the children at the orphanage, older women who seemed to touch the world more bluntly, the ends of their fingers round and soft from work. Their quiet, constant motion implied two things: everything needs care, and you don’t have to be as gentle as you think. Just help. Change a pair of pants. Make a bed. Do what you can. At the end of the tour, Mrs. Barton-Malow showed them the small rear garden, with its buried Anderson shelters, five of them in a row, so that the garden looked as though it had swallowed a serpent.

“We haven’t had a casualty yet,” Mrs. Barton-Malow said proudly. She turned to Tilly. “We’re organized by age. You’d be in the one on the end there, I imagine. What are you? About ten?”

Ada waited for Tilly to correct her.

“Eight,” Ada said, nudging Tilly.

The girl, unmoved, looked out at the shelter on the end.

“What about the babies?” Ada asked Mrs. Barton-Malow.

“Which ones, dear? We have lots.”

Mrs. Barton-Malow began to walk back toward the girls’ dayroom. Ada followed, and Tilly trailed behind her. When Mrs. Barton-Malow opened the door and ushered them in, Ada steered Tilly toward a group of girls playing a game of marbles, then joined Mrs. Barton-Malow back at the doorway. “It’s the shelter orphans I’m curious about,” she said.

“They’re in the nursery now, with all the other babies.”

“Have any been adopted?”

“Not yet, despite all promises to the contrary.” Mrs. Barton-Malow sighed. “We agreed to take them—we were already at capacity, mind you—only because we were promised they’d be adopted in a hurry. Public sympathy running high, they said. Well, not high enough.”

Sudden, wild laughter caught her attention, and Mrs. Barton-Malow turned sharply toward the room. She rapped her knuckles on the door frame, and the children were quiet. Then she took Ada’s arm and moved her a step farther into the passage.

“Anyway, ‘Give it time,’ they said.” Mrs. Barton-Malow scrunched up her nose to show what she thought of that idea. “In my experience, that’s not how time and sympathy work.”

Ada shook her head. She’d never thought to have an opinion on the pair.

“I’ll tell you what time does do,” Mrs. Barton-Malow continued, leaning down to press a piece of broken tile into the floor. “It makes things harder to fix.”

When Mrs. Barton-Malow stood, her cheeks were flushed. “Might have all passed over if they’d kept it out of the papers, but now we have a real mess. I guess that’s what you get when you offer sweets to children.”

“Money,” Ada said.

“What?”

“I thought it was money they offered.” She looked for Tilly, still playing marbles. “That’s what I heard, anyway.”

“The point is, time weakens people. Their sympathy, courage, what have you.”

“What I came about,” Ada said, making an effort to sound friendly, “is the shelter orphans. I’d like to see them, if I could.”

“I don’t know how you expect me to know those babies from all the others, but if you’d like, I’ll take you to the nursery.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Ada turned to get Tilly, but Mrs. Barton-Malow stopped her.

“Older children are not allowed,” she said. “The possibility of contagion is too great.”

Ada’s eyes filled suddenly. “Can’t you make an exception?”

Mrs. Barton-Malow raised her eyebrows.

“We were in the crush!” Ada said. “I had another daughter, who died.”

Mrs. Barton-Malow patted Ada’s hand. “And her sister is taking it very hard and wants to see the babies?”

Ada nodded and, turning, was startled to see that Tilly was standing right behind her.

“Shall we?” said Mrs. Barton-Malow.

It seemed Mrs. Barton-Malow had been disingenuous. In the nursery, a row of seven cribs stood apart from all the others. In fact, they were nearly partitioned off by a wall of boxes overflowing with stuffed animals, clothes, toys, bottles, and tins of milk and food. On every box someone had scrawled
3/3 Orphans.
It was the neatest room they’d seen so far and, though dimly lit, smelled of soap and warmth. Several babies were gently snoring.

“Are any of them Jewish?” Ada asked quietly.

Mrs. Barton-Malow raised an eyebrow. “One of the boys is circumcised, if that’s what you mean.”

Ada passed by each crib. She would have known anyway—there was a strong resemblance to his mother in his lips—but she glanced over at Mrs. Barton-Malow to confirm. Yes, Mrs. Barton-Malow nodded. That was the circumcised boy.

When Ada picked him up, she remembered Emma: a heartbeat, the smell of milk, a hand tucked into hers whenever she permitted it.

Standing next to her mother, her cheek on the baby’s blanket, Tilly remembered Emma’s smile, her blue coat in the snow.

Mrs. Barton-Malow stood by the window. Her only child, a boy, had died in the fire raid the first year. She looked out the window—double hung in here to make the room warmer for the babies, her own design—and saw a pair of dead bumblebees between the panes. They were furry and ancient, bleached white by the sun. Mrs. Barton-Malow opened the inside window, had to shove hard to unstick it, and angrily swept them up in her hand. She was sorry for herself, for Ada, for all the mothers the war had damaged. When she turned back to Ada, she said, “Why are you here?”

Ada’s eyes were full of tears. “I thought it would help.”

“Ah, well. It does help some. Depends what kind of person you are.”