Crooked Heart (20 page)

Upstairs, the beds had been stripped, and the contents of the wardrobes folded into boxes. There was nothing left on Mattie's bedside table: her binoculars (for spotting birds), her copy of Fuller's
Worthies of England
, the little glass pot in which she kept her hairpins – all had been put away. The only trace of the
previous clutter was a series of sticky rings that marked where she had placed her nightly sherry. He touched one with a licked finger and rubbed it across his tongue: dust and Harvey's Bristol Cream.

He started to hunt, then, for other tangible traces of the old Mattie. He found one of her slippers under the bed, the back trodden flat, a squashed moth on the sole (‘Cheaper than using mothballs and twice the fun'). He found her toothbrush still in its pot in the bathroom, the bristles splayed out by the vigour with which she'd brushed. Her comb was on the windowsill in the same room; Noel raked it across his scalp, looked at himself in the mirror and saw a long white hair looped amongst his own short brown ones.

He pieced together an old shopping list of hers that had been cut up and rolled for spills and stuffed in a vase beside the drawing-room fire (
apples, spuds, chelsea buns, joint of beef, shilling each way on Finuken, 4.20 Epsom
). He discovered her gardening coat hanging on the back of the scullery door, a lozenge-shaped tin of her favourite extra-strong mints in one pocket, a pair of secateurs in the other. He ate a mint and felt the familiar scorching wind roar through his sinuses.

Best of all was the two-year-old copy of
The Times
that he found in the glass-roofed lean-to at the rear of the house. He sat in the armchair, with the yew tree scraping the window, and read the scathing pencilled comments in the margins (
‘Rot rot rot', ‘the Abyssinia question NEVER SETTLED', ‘Yet more humbug!!!'
). It was like having the old Mattie right beside him.

The feeling dwindled, flattened by hunger. Noel ate the rest of the mints and searched the larder, finding nothing but a tin of limp, blue-tinged cream crackers, and an almost empty bread crock. The oddly shaped cloth-wrapped bundle at the bottom of it turned out to contain his godmother's jewellery. He glanced at the knotted jumble of beads and brooches and then quickly replaced it and shoved the crock right to the back of the
larder, but it was already too late: the discovery had let the other Mattie back into his head, the later one, with her terror of imaginary robbers, her random hiding places, her wild accusations. The house felt precarious again, no longer like his home.

He stared at the sodden garden through the kitchen window, and wondered why the word ‘home' seemed to linger in his head, in large, neat capitals. ‘THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME', to be precise, picked out in maroon beads on a yellow pincushion; for a minute or more he couldn't fathom where he'd seen such a thing, though he could clearly remember pulling off the beads and dropping them one by one behind a sideboard. Then, like a coin into a gas-meter, the memory dropped into place: it had been in the flat above the scrap-metal yard, where he'd first lived with Vee. With Vera. With Mrs Sedge. He still didn't have a comfortable term for her; she wasn't a comfortable person.

For the first time, he wondered what she'd thought when he hadn't come home from school. Perhaps he should have left her a note; after all, she'd given him her egg ration, once.

He stood and watched the rain. The grey afternoon grew gradually darker, and when he could no longer see the back fence, he roused himself and hunted fruitlessly for candles and matches. Later, when the guns started, he left.

The baby in the shelter carried on grizzling for so long that the noise ceased to sound human and became just another part of the raid, intermingling with sneezes and bombs and the rasping snore of a drunk. Despite her warning, the woman next to Noel gave him a second potato, followed by a Bovril sandwich, after which he dozed briefly, opened his eyes and saw Ray McIver.

‘What's wrong?' asked the woman.

‘Nothing.' His whole body was trembling; he stood up to see better.

‘If you want the WC, it's in the corner. Just follow your nose.'

He nodded, absently, his feet taking him in the other direction, towards the little desk where the shelter warden sat knitting. Ray McIver was standing beside her, unbuttoning his greatcoat; he had brought the night air into the shelter with him – Noel could smell cordite, could feel a cold current ruffle past.

‘We could prob'ly take another ten or fifteen if the kiddies sit on their mums' laps,' said the shelter warden. ‘What's the problem with Bell Street, then?'

‘Fractured water main – they're up to their knees. Got a match?'

McIver bent to light his cigarette.

‘Busy night out there?' asked the knitter.

‘Seen worse. Nothing in our sector so far, it's all down by the river tonight. Did you hear about Eddy Burden?'

‘No.'

‘He was going past an alley in the middle of a raid and he saw a tart in a white dress leaning against the wall.'

‘Tipsy?'

‘That's what he thought. He got a bit nearer and saw it was a landmine, with the parachute all wrapped around.'

‘
No!
'

‘It's true. Plenty of strange things going on out there in the dark.' He leaned against the wall, in no apparent hurry to leave, smoke trickling from his mouth. He looked untroubled, his eyes sharp and his body loose. No one who mattered was ever going to hold him to account, thought Noel; London was too full of public danger for McIver's small, private cruelties to be chased. The only people who'd ever care were the ones he'd stolen from and the ones he'd steal from next.

Noel took a step nearer and McIver glanced over at him.

‘I know you, don't I?' he asked, mildly.

Noel nodded. There was no plan in his head, but he knew
that he was getting ready to do something. His heart whirred like a clockwork toy.

‘So when are we getting all these extra people?' asked the shelter warden.

McIver ignored her. ‘You had a collection box,' he said. ‘You and that skinny piece.'

Noel nodded again. He could feel McIver's gaze, like a finger pressing against his forehead.

‘Yes, I remember,' said McIver. He flicked the ash off his fag and seemed to relax again. ‘They'll be round any minute,' he said to the knitter.

Noel took another, deliberate, step forward.

‘You still here?' asked McIver, casually.

‘Yes,' said Noel. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see heads shifting; the nearest row had started to realize that something was happening. He turned and saw an old man, a gangling girl, a woman with a baby.

‘Anything the matter, love?' asked the woman.

‘That warden over there is a thief,' said Noel. Her eyes widened in shock; the row of heads swung round to look at McIver. ‘That warden,' said Noel, more loudly, addressing the whole shelter, ‘is called Ray McIver and he's a
thief
. He stole money and jewellery from an old lady's room when she was bombed out and he's done it before and if—'

McIver was trying to say something, his face all rage and disbelief, but Noel's voice was speeding up and climbing to a shout; people were standing to see what was going on, people were gaping.

‘—and if you get back after a raid and you've had something stolen it's most likely
him
who did it, it's most likely Ray McIver, and he's an air-raid warden at Post D in Solomon Road and he's arottenstinkingdirtyTHIEF.' Like a full stop, the door smacked open and a stream of people entered the shelter, wet shoes puddling on the floor, blankets steaming, and Noel
ducked down and wormed between the elbows, following the draught outwards.

The guns were pounding and the sky was latticed with searchlights. He felt reborn, rinsed clean. He started walking, not knowing or caring in the slightest where he was headed, navigating from one white-painted lamp-post to the next, certain that tonight he was invulnerable, shielded by rectitude. ‘You can't get me!' he shouted, when an engine whined overhead.

He felt utterly magnificent.

When a flare dropped, and he found himself in lurid daylight, he kept walking, his shadow marching triumphantly ahead of him.

I
t was the ears; Vee would have known them anywhere. She'd been fumbling along the road, cursing every sandbag, when the world was suddenly flooded with ghastly light and she found herself gazing at a film show taking place on the gable end of a house ahead of her: two shadows crisply silhouetted on the brick screen, one small, with a domed head, and one larger, with a bouncing gait and ears that seemed familiar.

She spun round and saw two yellow figures advancing along a yellow street – the illusion reversed, so that it was the more distant of the two who was actually taller, a full-grown man in warden's uniform, while the maker of the other shadow was only small, a small boy—

‘Noel!!!'

She ran towards him. She saw Noel's mouth drop open, she saw the warden check his stride, she saw the man's face – furious, thwarted – as he turned away, and then a line of tracer bullets rose gracefully above the rooftops and the flare was shattered with the noise of dropped crockery. The darkness was instant.

‘Noel.
Noel!
'

‘I'm here.'

He was just in front of her, and she reached out and grabbed him by an arm and a shoulder and then by a cheek and an ear, and pulled his face towards her coat.

‘Ow,' said Noel, a button digging into his lip. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘What do you think I'm doing? Looking for you, you silly beggar, outside in the middle of a raid and that man following you.'

‘What man?'

‘McIver.'

‘Where?'

Her eyes had adjusted now, and she could see his pale face, struggling to look round. Beyond him, the empty road spooled into the night.

‘He's gone now,' she said.

Noel pulled free. ‘I was all right. I'd done it. I told everyone in the whole shelter that he was a dirty, rotten thief – I got my revenge.'

‘And he bloody nearly got his! He was following you in the dark, you little fool. What were you
thinking
? No, never mind—' He was starting on one of his explanations, and she wasn't in the mood for polysyllables. ‘Thank God I found you. I'd been doing some praying so maybe it works sometimes. Now, which way should we go?'

Noel shrugged, sulkily, the glory of five minutes ago already muddied.

‘I don't know where we are,' he muttered. ‘I left my torch in the shelter.'

‘And I broke mine. Fine pair, aren't we?'

For a moment both were silent; from somewhere to their left, quite far away, came the long, shrill whistle of a falling bomb, and the phlegmy rumble of its impact.

‘Come on,' said Vee, taking Noel's arm and giving it a little tug. They started to walk, following the pale line of the kerb.

Seconds passed. From exactly the same direction as before came exactly the same sequence of sounds. But louder, this time; nearer.

They broke into a trot; Vee pressed a hand to her chest, the scald of heartburn beneath her fingers.

The third bomb in the stick came down not with a whistle but with a wicked swish; it was still streets away, but the explosion shook the road. Window glass showered the pavements.

‘
Run!
' shouted Vee.

The engine of the bomber was audible now, stammering above them and Noel could hear himself sobbing, could hear Vee calling on God, but he knew the whole thing was luck, all luck; it was like a boulder tumbling down a mountain, bouncing between impacts, randomly crushing or sparing. He heard the fourth bomb falling – a colossal splintering scream, like the sky being split in half – and the street lifted as if it were a sheet of plywood, and slammed down again.

Vee's neck seemed to expand and contract like a telescope; she lost her grip on Noel and fell to her knees. In an instant the world was swallowed by utter blackness, the air suddenly as thick as soup, peppery on the back of the throat so that she coughed, and coughed again, and swiped at her eyes with fingers that were instantly gritty, so that she knew that at least she wasn't blind, only blindfolded, and the thought was a drop of relief in a great basin of terror. The guns were hammering away, but distantly, as if swathed in blankets.

She climbed to her feet and flailed in the darkness and her fingertips brushed Noel's face. This time he flung himself at her, arms locked around her waist, and she clasped his head and waited, trying to see something,
anything
, that might give her some clue as to what they should do. They might be standing on the edge of a crater, for all she knew, there could be a corpse lying a yard away. Or a pile of them.

‘Don't fret,' she found herself saying, mechanically. ‘There, there.'

The growl of a motor car came from somewhere nearby, and
then a series of shouts. For a second or two a beam of light poked a foggy red hole through the darkness. ‘Help!' she called, and then closed her mouth again, her tongue crusted with grit. Red grit, she thought; brick dust. This fog had been a house.

The glimpse of light somehow made the blindness even worse, and she started to inch forward, desperate to find an end to it. Noel moved crab-wise, still hanging on to her. There was more shouting, nearer now, and the crunch of a handbrake. Another torch-beam, swiping diagonally, briefly outlined a huge dark shape just ahead of her and she reached out and felt a metal surface, warm beneath her fingers – the bonnet of a parked van.

‘Anyone there?' The dust seemed to soak up her words; it was like speaking into a cushion. Close by, she heard a sharp click.

There was no other warning, She turned her head and something wide and hard smacked her face and flung her into nowhere.