Fireweed (11 page)

The third evening I remember, I started myself, by bringing home a copy of the evening paper so that we could do the crossword after supper. I read the headline, but it didn't mean anything special to me. It said CITY OF BENARES SUNK – ALL FEARED LOST. But when Julie saw it she went as pale as paper, and just stood staring at it.

‘Whatever's the matter, Ju?' I asked.

‘That ship,' she said. ‘It's the one I should have been on. It's sunk.'

I looked over her shoulder at the paper. The
City of Benares
had been carrying English evacuee children to Canada.

‘Well, thank God you aren't on it,' I said. ‘Thank God you ran away!'

‘Don't you see?' she said wildly, looking at me with eyes brimming with tears. ‘They think I am on it. Oh, my poor mother, she thinks …' The tears ran freely down her cheeks. ‘Bill,' she said, ‘I'll have to tell her, I'll have to go home now, I can't let them think …' She stopped. She saw the look on my face, and turned away. With her back to me, she said, ‘Don't you think I should, Bill?'

I didn't answer. ‘Bill, I must, musn't I?' she said, pleading.

‘You have to make up your own mind about that,' I said, icily.

‘No,' she said, turning to me, flushed, tear-stained, eyes unnaturally bright. ‘No, you help me.'

‘If you want to go, you damn well go!' I said. ‘But don't expect me to say it's all right by me!'

She walked up and down the room, screwing handfuls of her skirt in her hands. Cruel and cold, I picked up my book, and pretended to read. In a little while she stopped opposite my chair, and said, ‘Perhaps I could telephone, and just say I'm all right, and not say where I am at all …' Then her voice dropped, and she said, ‘I suppose they'd start to look for me. They'd get the police in. They'd trace the call. They'd find us anyway …' I didn't look up from my book.

She began to pace the room again. Frozen behind my book, I was suffering hell. It was terrible to see her unhappy, to see her cry. Time and again I nearly said, all right, you go, tell them, I'll be all right … But I would not be all right. I wasn't unselfish enough to let her go. I stayed frozen behind my book. Later I remembered this, remembered that I could have let her go. I thought I had been punished for my selfishness.

She took most of the evening walking and crying. At last, very late, she came up to me, and pushed my book aside from my face.

‘I shouldn't have let you do it,' she said, quietly. ‘When you let your father go because of me, I didn't understand. I didn't realize how much it must have cost you. But since I let you do it for me, I have to do it for you.'

And I was so glad she would stay, so relieved, that I didn't really listen to exactly what she said, only to what it meant to me. And our supper was burnt and cold, and so nasty that we could only eat it at all by laughing over it.

The next day was the day we found Dickie. And in spite of all the bother he caused, it was just as well really, because it gave her something to think about, and me too, when I saw the expression in her eyes. There was always a certain expression in her eyes after that evening. It made me angry in a way; I was sure I hadn't carried on like that about my Dad.

We saw Dickie first when we left early one morning to go and look at the broken cart. I thought I might be able to make a new axle out of a piece of the banister-rail from upstairs, and we went together to have a look at it. There had been a raid the night before, behind the square, in a warren of poorer streets. And as we left, we saw a child, curled up on the pavement, sleeping against the railings of the square garden. We took no notice at all.

The cart had a broken handle as well as a broken axle; we found that as soon as we tried to move it. But the thickness of the banister was about right for the axle. It was a real old-fashioned job, just like a farm-cart, with the wheels fixed on with wooden wedges; and I thought I could manage to fix it, even though I wasn't exactly a handyman. Julie was keen to paint it, and put bunting on it, and make it look gay. She said people were so grateful for a bit of something cheerful to look at that they would come to us in hordes if we brightened it up a bit.

‘Look, Bill,' she said, brushing at the sides. ‘It had blue and yellow triangles on it once. We could touch them up again.'

‘We have to get it mended first,' I said, protesting.

And when we got back after having lunch at a British War Restaurant, the kid was still there. He wasn't asleep any more, he was tottering about on the pavement, crying, and he looked as if he'd been doing that for a long time. As we passed him, an old lady came by, and she stopped.

‘What's the matter, dearie?' she said to him.

‘I want my Mum!' he said.

‘Shall we go and look for her?' said the old lady.

‘No,' he said, sobbing. ‘She said wait here!'

‘Well, then, that's what you must do, my dear,' she was saying, ‘I expect she'll come back for you soon.' We closed our door behind us.

‘Well, that kid's mother jolly well oughtn't to leave him waiting for her all that time!' said Julie indignantly. ‘He's been there simply ages.'

And when I came out again, to go and buy tools and glue for the cart, he was still there, just leaning against the rails. It was beginning to rain. I bought the tools, and I went home, and I passed him yet again outside.

‘That kid's still there,' I told Julie.

‘Someone ought to take him somewhere,' she said. ‘His mother obviously isn't coming back. She must have abandoned him.'

‘Anything might have happened to her,' I said.

‘He ought to be taken to the Child Welfare, or somewhere like that,' she said.

‘Well, we can't do it,' I pointed out. ‘A child welfare department is the last place on earth we want to be seen at. What if they asked about us?'

‘Couldn't we tell fibs?'

‘Surely someone else will take him soon.'

‘There aren't very many people coming by here, this side of the square, Bill, now that all the houses in the row are bombed.'

We sat down by our fire, and I began to shave the end of my treasured piece of banister, to fit the wheel-socket on the cart. But we could hear the rain dripping through the ceiling next door, and pattering on the shutters, and after a bit we couldn't bear it. So I got up, and went out, and crossed the road, and picked up the kid in my arms, and carried him in.

He was soaked to the skin, and shivering. Julie took all his clothes off, and wrapped him up in her blanket, while she dried them on the clothes-horse.

‘What's your name?' she said to him softly, very gently, ‘What's your name?'

‘Dee … kee …' he said. So we called him Dickie. But ‘Dee … kee …' was what he said to anything, any time – to us. He never talked to us as we had heard him talk to the woman on the pavement. There seemed to be something wrong with him.

At first, I think, he was just scared. He jumped every time we moved, or even put a cup down. When night fell he stirred in his sleep every time a bomb fell, and I stirred too, uneasily aware of the extra person in the room, and the extra problem he gave us. Julie had made a bed for him by pushing a chair up beside the window seat, to stop him rolling off, and laying him there on the dusty cushions, covered with my jacket and her mac.

In the morning we talked about him again. ‘We've got to think of a good way of handing him over to someone,' I said.

‘All right,' she said, challenging me. ‘How shall we do it?'

‘Well, we could take him somewhere, and leave him for someone to find.'

‘Oh, Bill, really! He was left for more than a day for people to find, when we found him. Fat lot of good that did!'

‘Oh, well, I suppose that would be a bit callous. Then we must take him ourselves. We take him to the Welfare, or a warden's post, or the police station, and just say we found him on our way to the shops. And we give them phoney names and addresses if they ask. Just the number of any bombed house will do. That would cover our tracks nicely.'

‘And what happens to him then?'

She startled me. The only snag I foresaw in my suggestion was the chance that something would happen to
us
. ‘Well,
I
don't know,' I said. ‘I'm not an expert, am I? They'll see to him. It won't be any business of ours, anyway.'

She just looked at me, coldly. I felt myself flinching under her coldness.

‘Hell, Ju,' I said, ‘I'm sorry for the poor little blighter too, but he'll be all right. They'll put him in an orphanage, or somewhere.'

‘Yes,' she said, icily. ‘I dare say they will.'

‘Well …' I muttered, helplessly.

‘Well, how would you like being stuck in an orphanage?'

‘I don't
know
!' I said. ‘I suppose they're all right.'

‘You brute,' she said.

She made me remember something. Something hidden a long way down. A time when we first moved in with my aunt, and I used to creep out of bed at night, and sit at the top of the stairs to watch the pattern of light made on the frosted glass on the landing window when cars passed by outside. I heard voices downstairs, my father and my aunt talking with voices raised.

‘You are too hard on him, Meg … He's got to have somewhere to play. He didn't make much mess, really.'

‘You should try clearing it up!' said my aunt.

‘I do what I can,' said my father, ‘but I'm not here all day.'

‘Look here, John,' said my aunt, much more softly, in a weary sort of voice. I had to lean my head down, towards the hall, pressing my face against the banisters, to hear her still.

‘If I hadn't taken you both in, he'd be in a Home. He would be made to toe the line all right, in there. I may not be all you'd want, but I'm better than a Home. You just remember that when you're finding fault with me.'

My father said, ‘God knows. I'm grateful to you, Meg …' Obscurely frightened, I had crept back to bed,

‘They can't
all
be so awful!' I cried.

‘I've got a friend at school who was in one till the better-off side of her family heard about it. They came driving up, late at night, and her cousin's mother was
crying
, she was so sorry to have let it happen, and they took her away right then, and looked after her.'

I felt very tired. A great weight of worry, worse than ever, seemed to have been laid on my shoulders.

‘I'm sorry for him, Ju,' I said. ‘Honestly I am. But we can't look after him here. We just can't. We haven't the money for another person. We haven't the coupons. We haven't the strength. We can only just keep going ourselves. And it isn't our fault what's happened to him. ‘It's just his bad luck.'

She didn't answer that at all. She turned away, and wiped his nose for him.

After a bit I said, ‘So what do you suggest, anyway?'

‘I think we should look after him here, until he trusts us, and remembers how to talk. Then we can find out where his mother is.'

‘But it might take ages. He might never remember. And if he does, don't you see that she's probably no good to him now?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘She's probably dead!'

‘We could wait and see. His whole family can't be dead.'

‘I'm sorry, but we can't. We can't manage. I'd keep him out of an orphanage, just like you would, if we could, but we can't, and that's all there is to it.'

‘No it's not,' she said, facing me squarely. ‘Because we
can
keep him out. We could telephone my aunt, and she would find my mother, and they would help him. It's all very well, managing by ourselves; but I don't call it managing if it makes us do hateful things that we wouldn't have to do otherwise!'

The pit of my stomach lurched, and tightened. The ground seemed to drop away from under my feet. I just about managed to steady my voice, or thought I had, but it came out very odd sounding. ‘Is that what you want to do?'

She said, ‘Look, Bill, I know how much you want us to stay here. I'm ready to stay with you. But I won't have anyone else, like Dickie, suffer for it. We have to manage as well by ourselves as we would with the grown-ups, otherwise we ought to stop.'

I went and sat down in my armchair, and put my head in my hands. That child had been listening to every word we said, though I don't suppose he understood. He was an odd-looking little beggar, about three feet high, with dark red hair, a bit curly, and brown eyes. They looked sad, and rather vacant, like cow's eyes.

In the end I said, ‘Well, I think we could support Dickie too if we make the barrow scheme work. If it's still odd-jobbing, and with you always at home to look after him, we won't be able to manage. We'll try. If the barrow doesn't work, we'll give in.'

She said, to comfort me, ‘We wouldn't have to give in at once. We could spend the rest of my money first.'

I didn't reckon we could. If she was going back to her parents, I reckoned we ought to have as much as possible of their fifty quid to return to them, otherwise I might find myself in really nasty trouble.

The barrow was our only hope. It was the best hope for Dickie too, come to that, because I didn't feel as sure as Julie seemed to do that her mother and aunt would jump to the rescue of a totally strange waif and stray. But I felt a long stab of regret about it all. I hadn't imagined myself being a green-grocer. I had wanted to be an engineer.

It took me the whole of the next day to finish tapering the ends of the wooden axle. The banister-post I was working on was oak; that made it hard to work on, but I thought it would also make it strong enough for the job. Dickie liked the chips and shavings that came off; he sat around on the floor and played with them. At lunchtime I went out and bought fish and chips for us; I didn't say anything, but with a sinking heart I had foreseen another snag to Dickie; we wouldn't be able to take him into cafés without attracting attention, and one ration book wasn't going to feed three of us with homecooked food. Perhaps at British Restaurants, where families ate together very often, we would be able to take Dickie with us without being noticed.