The Wayward Wife (31 page)

She'd said nothing about the bombed-out flat or the loss of her possessions. She had enough savings to buy underwear and make-up and, when the weekend came, would decide whether to move into the Lansdowne with Bob or, if that arrangement didn't suit, impose herself on Basil and Vivian until she could find an affordable place of her own. Meantime, she would eat, sleep and work here in Broadcasting House and try to put thoughts of Ronnie out of mind.

The explosion was so violent that every stick of furniture in Basil's office leaped inches off the floor.

The telephone lost its receiver which lay vibrating on the desk. Susan's typewriter was too heavy to shift but the carriage-turn bell
tinged
twice and several keys on the keyboard bobbed down as if invisible fingers were trying to tap out a message. Bob's chair tipped backwards and clattered to the floor. Only an acrobatic reaction prevented Bob from going with it, an involuntary half-somersault that shot him upright, the whisky bottle still pressed to his chest.

‘Bloody hell!' said Basil. ‘It
is
time to go.'

‘What the hell was that?' Bob said, then answered his own question. ‘Five-hundred-pounder by the sound of it, too damned close for comfort. Wonder what took the hit? The Round Church or the Langham Hotel maybe?'

‘We don't have anyone staying in the Langham, do we, Susan?' Basil asked. ‘I mean, we don't have any guest speakers lodged there? Susan? Are you all right, Susan?'

Basil's voice was filtered through thick flannel. She could still make out the
pop-pop-pop
of ack-ack guns in the distance, though, and a soft, slow rumble, like distant thunder and yelling in the corridors close at hand.

‘Susan? Susan? Are you all right?'

She felt remarkably calm, a brittle sort of calm. Only when Bob touched her did she realise that she was trembling: hands, arms, legs all trembling.

Bob held the bottle to her lips. ‘Here, take a sip of this.'

She felt her teeth click against the glass. Her mouth was full of whisky. She was choking. She couldn't breathe. Bob slapped her, one cheek then the other, quite hard. She felt her head snap back and whisky trickle out of her mouth and air rush back into her lungs.

Shaking uncontrollably, she said, ‘I want my brother. I want our Ronnie,' and, with a huge, tearing sigh, stared up at the American as if she had never seen him before. ‘What's happening? Tell me what's happening?'

‘You're in shock,' Bob told her, ‘which isn't surprising,' then, leaving Basil to look after her, dashed off to find a nurse.

There were worse places to endure another night of bombing than the crypt of the Church of St Veronica, a fact that hadn't escaped the attention of what seemed like half the inhabitants of Shadwell's battered slums.

Father Joseph, two nuns, three wardens, four WVS ladies and a one-legged crane driver, as Matt Hooper now styled himself, provided a welcoming committee for any man, woman or child who came running out of the half-dark to be ushered down the steps into the crypt where a less than merry throng was already fighting for possession of the bunks.

Some idiot with a harmonica tried to strike up a round of community singing by playing the opening bars of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown' over and over again until old Father Grogan, with great dignity, sailed through the unruly crowd, plucked the harmonica from the would-be entertainer's lips and secreted it in the folds of his cassock.

‘Not now, Ernest,' he said. ‘Later, perhaps, but not now.'

Seated on a bunk bed with Billy on her knee and Nora by her side, Breda listlessly watched the little charade without cracking so much as a smile.

One of the voluntary organisations had ferried in several big pots of soup that Danny and other strong lads had carried downstairs and set out on a long oak table that Father Joe told them had once belonged to Henry VIII, a fact that no one had the energy to dispute.

There were jugs of cocoa, too, and a baker's tray with bread cut into slices and a crate of milk for the children. In the interests of safety, however, no fires or stoves had been lighted and the soup and cocoa were lukewarm, much to the disgust of some of Shadwell's less stoical strays who muttered darkly about Catholic conspiracies while selfishly stuffing their faces.

Breda had fed Billy pinches of bread soaked in cocoa and had given him one of the tablets that Danny had brought back from the Princess which was the least she could do for her poor, sick son now his future had been stolen from him by some black-hearted looter who hadn't even had the decency to leave a thank you note.

It crossed Breda's mind that the cash might have been handed into a police station and was at this moment lying in a safe waiting for her to claim it. Even if that was the case – a pretty far-fetched case – how could she possibly prove the money was hers and explain where such a vast sum had come from without shopping her dad who, of course, she'd shopped once already and who was most probably dead because of it.

Salvage crews were made up of rough, tough men, dockers, miners and labourers, brave men doing a nasty job but without a scruple among the lot of them when it came to finding a large sum of money which they'd probably divvied up on the spot, which, Breda reckoned, was why the box had been left behind. She looked out on the milling crowd of folk who with food in their bellies and a roof over their heads were already settling down for the night, as if having their houses smashed to smithereens and losing everything was nothing but another of the minor inconveniences that society had piled upon them throughout the years.

The four low-wattage light bulbs that one of Father Joe's more talented parishioners had strung out on cord cables between the arches of the roof flickered and dimmed. Apart from the mewing of a few infants, a sudden silence descended on the unruly flock.

Slumped on Breda's lap, Billy opened his eyes and looked up at the roof. There was fear in his eyes now, a fear that had not been there before, as if the terrible experience of being buried underground had made him aware of his own mortality.

Bombs were thumping somewhere not far off but the sound was smothered by the thick stone walls and here, deep in the crypt of St Vee's, bombs seemed less threatening than the darkness that might descend at any moment.

The bulbs flickered once more, swayed a little on their trailing cords and then, miraculously, flared brightly and steadied.

Cheers went up. Some wag shouted, ‘Need another shillin' for the meter, Father?' and there was laughter, nervy laughter. Breda saw Matt over by the staircase, laughing too, and Danny, a grin on his face, picking his way carefully through a minefield of babies, baskets and blankets with a mug of soup in each hand.

‘Here.' He handed her one of the mugs and gave the other to Nora. ‘You'd better eat somethin', Breda.'

She held the mug in both hands and looked up.

You could never say he was handsome, not as handsome as Ronnie, but the new glasses gave him a professorial air and added a kind of gravity that hadn't been there when he first came to lodge in her mother's house all those years ago.

‘What is it?' she said.

‘Leek an' potato, I think.'

‘Ooo, lovely,' said Breda, and smiled.

Danny seated himself on the bed beside her and watched her sup soup from the mug while Billy, eyes wide open, lay back against her breast, saying nothing.

Danny said, ‘It's goin' tae be a tight squeeze, Breda.'

‘What is?'

‘The three of you in that wee bed.'

‘We'll manage,' Nora said. ‘Won't we, dear?'

‘No bleedin' option, 'ave we?' Breda said. ‘Have you an' the old man found a place to lie down?'

‘His foot's hurting,' Nora said. ‘He won't sleep much.'

‘Well, 'e won't be on the dock tomorrow, that's for sure,' said Breda. ‘He won't be on the dock for a long time.' She supped another mouthful of soup. ‘What are we gonna do, Danny? Where are we gonna go?'

‘Limerick,' Nora said.

Danny, Breda and even Billy stared at her.

‘Pardon?'

‘Sure an' we could all go to Limerick where there's no war,' Nora said. ‘I was a girl there an' me aunts would take us in.'

‘Your aunts are about a hundred years old,' said Breda. ‘Anyhow, what would we do for money?'

‘There's always work on the harbour.'

‘Yeah, guttin' fish,' said Breda. ‘No, Ma, you're not draggin' me over to Ireland.'

‘I could take Billy then.'

‘Over my dead—' Breda began, then bit her lip.

Danny said, ‘Do you really have relatives in Ireland, Nora?'

‘Sure an' I do.'

Danny said, ‘There's not much left for you here, Breda. It would certainly be better for Billy if you got him out of London for a while.'

She finished the soup, put the mug on the floor and wrapped an arm possessively about her son. ‘Nobody's takin' Billy anywhere. Where 'e goes, I go. An' I ain't goin' to no Limerick, not even for you, Ma.'

‘Is Daddy fightin' the Germans in Limerick?' Billy asked.

‘I told you, Danny,' Breda said. ‘Told you it was a mistake.'

‘No, dear, there's no Germans in Ireland. You'd go with Gran on a big boat,' said Nora. ‘It's lovely there. There's horses an' cows an'—'

‘I want to stay 'ere,' said Billy, ‘where Dad can find us.'

‘See,' said Breda. ‘See what you've done.'

‘We could take Granddad with us,' Nora said a little desperately. ‘You could play in the sand an' ride on a donkey.'

‘No,' Billy said and buried his face in Breda's bosom.

‘It's the best thing, Breda,' said Danny quietly. ‘I don't mean Ireland, I mean puttin' off the evil day until he's old enough to understand.'

‘The evil day?' said Breda. ‘They're all evil days.'

‘Not in Ireland,' said Nora.

‘Oh, for God's sake, Ma, shut up.'

‘You're just being selfish,' said Nora. ‘You know I can't go an' leave you here without anyone to look out for you.'

‘I can look out for myself,' Breda said. ‘Fact is, I been lookin' out for
you
for years, though you're too stupid to notice.' She opened her mouth to continue then closed it again and said very softly, ‘Oh, Ma, I'm sorry. After what you done for Billy, after what you been through, I don't know what I'm sayin'.'

Danny put an arm round her. Billy, a good little soldier, sat up and patted her cheek just as Matt, swinging the grey-white boot before him, appeared out of the gloom.

‘What's wrong with 'er?' he asked.

‘What do you think's wrong with her?' Danny answered.

‘You was talkin' about Ronnie, wasn't you?' said Matt.

‘No, we was talking about Ireland,' said Nora.

‘Ireland? What's Ireland got to do with us?'

‘Ma wants us to go there till the war's over.'

‘All of us? Me included?'

‘Yes,' Nora said. ‘You an' your gammy leg included.'

‘Here,' Matt Hooper said, ‘that's no bad idea, no bad idea at all. We could stay with your aunties, couldn't we?'

‘How would we get there, tell me that?' said Breda.

‘There's boats,' Matt said.

‘Yeah, an' submarines,' said Breda.

‘Liverpool,' said Matt. ‘The boats leave from Liverpool. If it came to it, I could probably fix us up on a coaster. Once my foot's healed up I'll get work on the docks. They got docks in Limerick, don't they?'

‘You're English born an' bleedin' bred,' Breda said. ‘How can you think of leavin' England in the lurch?'

‘I give England enough,' Matt Hooper said bitterly. ‘I give England my boy's life. What more does England want from me? My life? Susie's life? Nah, if there's a way out for me an' Nora then I'll take it. It's what Ron would 'ave wanted.' He tapped Nora lightly on the knee with his stick. ‘You write your auntie, see if she'll take us. I'll find out about boat times an' ticket prices.'

‘What about us? What about Billy?' said Breda.

‘You can come, or you can stay,' Matt Hooper told her. ‘If you was sensible, you'd at least let us take Billy with us.'

‘Never,' Breda said. ‘Never.'

Matt leaned closer, his face twisted with rage. ‘I suppose you won't be 'appy till you see 'im dead too,' he hissed, ‘till you see us all dead for the sake of bloody England.'

Shocked by his callousness, Breda let out a yelp of anger and frustration and, dumping Billy on to Nora's lap and leaping to her feet, stalked off into the depths of the crypt to find a quiet corner in which to have a real good cry.

‘Now see what you've done,' said Nora as Billy, baffled by the argument, began to whimper and squirm in her arms.

‘Here, give him here,' Danny said and, detaching Billy from Nora's grasp, hoisted the boy into his arms and carried him out of earshot of his grandparents' sour squabbling.

He took him to the trestle and put him down.

‘Does your head hurt, Billy?'

‘Yus, a bit.'

‘Are you hungry?'

‘Yus.'

‘Would a piece of bread an' jam help?'

Billy nodded and watched while Danny negotiated with Father Joe for a thick slice of bread spread, quite liberally, with blackcurrant jelly. He gave Billy the bread and poured a cup of milk which he held in readiness.

The noise in the crypt was so loud now that it all but drowned out the sounds from upstairs.

‘Limerick,' Billy said, through a mouthful of bread and jelly. He tried the word again, experimentally. ‘Limerick,' then added, ‘Gran comes from Limerick, don't she?'

‘She does.'

‘If we go to Limerick will you come with us?'

‘Nope,' Danny said. ‘I have to get back to work.'