Noonday

TEN

Crappit heid. Dear God, fancy being reduced to that after all these years. Fishmonger just now give her a funny look — you’d think it was in his own best interest to be civil, wouldn’t you, but oh, no. Just stood there in his straw hat and his white coat, fag end stuck to his bottom lip, bloody great turd of ash ready to drop—and he was leaning over the fish. “Cod’s head?” he asked. She felt like saying: You want the business or not? Didn’t, of course, just raked about in her purse for the coppers and handed them across. As she walked away, she felt his gaze stitched to her back, though when she turned round she saw he’d already moved on to the next customer, wasn’t watching her at all.

She was sat on a bench in Russell Square on this September afternoon because she didn’t know what the fuck else to do. In prison the only fresh air you got was an hour in the exercise yard every day, and even then all you did was trudge round and round, nothing much to look at except the wobbling backside of the woman in front. Still, on the inside, there were people all round you, you could hear them and see them even if you didn’t talk to them, and then she come out and there was nobody. Oh, she could’ve gone back up north, set herself up again in a small way, people’s front rooms, that type of thing — she didn’t want to go attracting attention to herself. She knew she was going to have to be very, very careful.

So, in the end, she decided she’d make a complete break of it. Plenty of work in London, masses—and it was easy reach of the south coast. That’s where the real money was, the ports, only she didn’t want Gladys and Mrs. Buckle getting their fingers in the pot — bloodsuckers, the pair of ’em — so she told them she was packing it in altogether. “Can’t face it without Howard,” she’d said.

“What about Albert?” Gladys asked.

“What about him?”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Oh, he’ll move on.” Stubborn silence. “You know as well as I do, Gladys, spirit guides do move on.”

Albert hadn’t. He was in and out all the time. Mind you, she hadn’t dared risk the ports, though it was a big temptation, that lot at the Temple paid her a pittance. Absolute bloody disgrace, the amount they gave her. She filled the house — they didn’t. Hence the frigging cod’s head.

Which didn’t half pong. Probably ponged a bit herself, to be honest, in this heat. God, it was hot. She could feel the sweat soaking through her dress shields, and the Vaseline she rubbed into her thighs to stop them chafing had long since melted into a claggy mess. No fun being fat this weather — and totally unfair, too. The amount she ate she should be thin as a rake, ’stead of which she was piling it on. It upset her, sometimes, the size she was. So to cheer herself up she started singing. “Wider still and wider, shall my bounds be set…” She was on stage, now, at the Alhambra, belting it out: “God, who made me mighty, make me mightier yet…” Waving her trident at the audience. “God who made me mighty, MAKE ME MIGHTIER YET!”

She looked around — people always seemed to think it a bit odd when you sang like that — and saw a tall, thin man, with a limp, approaching. Not bad-looking, coat a bit shabby, but his shoes were good and he’d given them a bit of a polish. She noticed the limp, she always picked up on things like that, last war, probably, but it wasn’t just the limp making him wobbly on his pins. Bugger was pissed, had to be. She pursed her lips disapprovingly, thinking of the bottle of gin under her kitchen sink. Never touched a drop of it before six o’clock. Eh, dear me, the state people let themselves get into. She hoped he wasn’t going to sit near her, but, of course, Sod’s law, he did.

He was a funny color, mind. “You all right?”

“Yes, I’m — all right. Went a bit dizzy there for a minute.”

“Be the heat.”

He agreed that yes, very probably, it would be the heat, then lapsed into silence.

Least he spoke. The way some of them went on down here, you couldn’t pass a civil remark without them thinking you were giving them the glad eye or something. Bloody cod’s head wasn’t half stinking the place out, she only hoped he couldn’t smell it, though the way he kept glancing her way she thought he probably could. It reminded her of something, that smell, and she couldn’t quite place it — but then suddenly it dawned on her. And all at once she was back in the big classroom at Castle View Board School — skinny little thing with long black hair — nobody would credit it, but she had once been very thin, even a bit too thin — looking up at tall, angular Miss Brackenbury, who’d been drafted in to deliver her famous domestic science lecture: “Five Ways to Stuff a Cod’s Head for a Penny.” Forty little girls sat on stools and listened; forty little girls who knew their place and never seemed to wonder who was eating the cod’s body while they were stuffing the head. But she did. She wondered.

And before she knew what she was doing she was on her feet and telling Miss Brackenbury exactly how she could stuff the cod’s head — and where.

Six strokes of the cane she got for that. The minute school was out, she ran all the way along the shore to the castle and stood right on the edge of the cliff, clouds whirling around above her head, the sea boiling and churning in the Egyncleugh beneath her feet. One step. One step. She knew there’d be another good hiding when she got home. Nothing more certain. Dad believed in supporting the school. “Don’t you go telling me you did nowt…You must’ve done summat.” And off would come his belt, whipped from round his trousers, fast as a snake.

Eh, dear me. She heaved a sigh and closed her eyes, but then almost immediately opened them again and looked around the square. Amazing how many kids there were. A boy and an older man — dad or granddad — were kicking a ball around the grass. The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, still young enough to be evacuated. Another lot, over there, were even younger, charging around having a whale of a time. Nice seeing them.

The lad playing football was a right little ginger nut. Couldn’t really tell about the father, he didn’t have enough left.

“Nice to see them happy,” she said, with a sidelong glance along the bench. When he didn’t reply, she thought at first: Stuck-up git; but then she looked more closely, and realized he was in a terrible state. She could feel it, she could feel his misery; it was coming off him in waves. And he was looking so intently at the ginger boy and grinding one clenched fist into the palm of his other hand. Didn’t even know he was doing it, you could tell. She wondered for a minute if he wasn’t one of the peculiar fellas you get hanging round school playgrounds, but she didn’t think it was that. There was hunger on his face — or grief, pretty much the same thing, really — but she didn’t think it was that sort of hunger.

“Surprising how many bairns there are.”

She saw him register the word “bairns” and thought his face softened. He was a northerner.

“Have you seen the posters?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“There’s one that shows Hitler whispering in a mother’s ear: Bring the children back.”

“A lot have done.”

“Yes, I know. But there’s nothing for them here, is there? The schools aren’t open, it certainly isn’t safe.”

“No, look at that school. Seventy-three dead.”

“And the rest.”

She looked a question.

“Four or five hundred. I was there.”

“My God, doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?”

“No.” He was watching the boy again. “It doesn’t.”

She looked from the boy to the man on the bench and back again. Now what was all that about? “They’re right, you know, the mothers — bringing them back. It’s bloody bedlam down there, at the minute. You see…” She leaned forward, confidentially. “People think it’s like they were taught, pearly gates and harps and Saint Peter running round with his little list, but it’s not. Charing Cross Station in the rush hour more like, people running round like headless chickens, half of ’em don’t even know they’ve passed. No, I say, stick together and if you’ve got to die, die together. Believe me, you don’t want to let go of a child’s hand in that.”

He was looking at her rather uneasily. Oh, well. Should’ve known, should’ve kept her trap shut, people were frightened, they didn’t want to know. And anyway why should she do it for nothing?

Only the expression on his face as he looked at the boy worried her. After that, they sat in silence, but then, a couple of minutes later, she started to hear something, an all too familiar sound: the peevish muttering the dead go in for, whenever they think they’re not getting enough attention, which of course is most of the time, poor sods. And then she looked past the man, and there he was. Not very clear, but definitely there.

She had to say something. “Who’s the lad?”

“What lad?”

“The one behind you.”

He started to turn round, but checked himself. There was no space behind the bench for anybody who took up space.

“There’s nobody there,” he said.

She went back to watching the children. After a while, she said, “Skinny, white face, freckles, red hair?”

“That’s a description of the boy you’re looking at.” The next words seemed to be dragged out of him. “What does he want?”

She looked, and shrugged. “Gone now.”

At that, he seemed to lose patience; stood up, walked a few paces, then stopped. Every bit of color had drained from his face.

“Here, sit down,” she said. “You’re not well.”

She got a hand under his elbow and helped him to sit down, but he was no sooner down than he was up again. “I think I’ll be better walking it off.”

Couldn’t wait to get away, although, to be fair, he did smile and thank her as he left. He stumbled several times before he reached the end of the path — he certainly wasn’t walking in a straight line — but he kept on going. At the gate he turned and looked back. “You take care now,” she called out, but he was too far away to hear. A second later he disappeared into the press of people rushing past.

She thought: I’ll be seeing you again.

No reason to suppose so, in this vast, overcrowded city, but she knew absolutely — no question at all — that she’d see him again.