The Report (5 page)

Tea and roll were indistinguishable (both tasted vaguely of potatoes), but Bertram began to feel better with something in his stomach. When he left, the shopkeeper called after him. “There now. I thought you were hungry!”

People want to take care of each other, he thought. Until they can’t.

And when had that been? How close was he to the entrance then? His fear, what he didn’t want to tell Clare, was that he might have been pushing on a dead man. How could he know? Where had the boundary been?

Paul sat a long time over breakfast. After the previous day’s frustration with Dunne, he’d stayed out at the pub too late, had had too much to drink, and now all he wanted was a large glass of orange juice. Mrs. Loudon, however, seemed determined to dispense the fluid in thimblefuls. He’d already asked for three refills of the tiny juice glass, and each time she was decidedly less friendly. “Good, isn’t it?” had become “Precious liquid” and finally, just this last time, “Doesn’t grow on trees, does it?” To Paul she was typical of a woman of her generation, of someone who had lived through rationing, and he felt a true respect for her. He was just very thirsty. How much could orange juice cost?

He was not optimistic about his chances with Dunne. He’d found him frailer than he’d expected and vague in his interest in participating. Paul had watched the way he moved his fingers against his thigh and wondered if Dunne was aware of the tic. It had come and gone all through the morning while he lectured on tennis and reminisced about the war. Interview subjects needed a chance to warm up, Paul knew, and good material might eventually come. But he worried about how much time this might take.

In the corner, an American couple finished their cereal and leaned over their guidebooks. The placement of the tables in Mrs. Loudon’s small breakfast nook forced Paul to face the only other occupant, a gentleman eating alone. They both assiduously avoided eye contact.

Suddenly Mrs. Loudon came swinging through the kitchen door, sloshing a large pitcher of water. She set it down next to Paul’s plate, then banged out again.

It seemed like a good sign. He’d got her to concede that she owned larger vessels! If he could do that, he could get Dunne, he hoped. Imagining just how he might tell Dunne what he hadn’t put in his letter, he began to smile.

Without Emma, Tilly spent most of her time alone. Her mother had gone to bed; her father was running the grocery. Tilly’s only jobs were to attend school, when it was open, and run the errands on the way home.

Since the accident she’d seen reporters in the area—everyone had—but the teachers told the children not to talk to them. Then one afternoon Tilly saw a reporter with sweets. He was talking to a group of her older schoolmates in the park. The girls had short, swingy coats, warmer than Tilly’s. The boys were serious, shaking their heads. Tilly couldn’t see if anyone took the sweets or not.

She sat down on a bench and slouched considerably so that her feet would not dangle. She wanted them solidly on the ground. When the older children walked away, the reporter saw Tilly, and she let him approach. If he knelt or patted her head, she decided, she would leave. If he stood and talked properly, she would listen.

As it happened, the reporter stood, and the sweet he had left was licorice. Emma loved licorice. But when Tilly remembered she couldn’t share it with Emma, she held her breath and tried to leave. Then the reporter made another offer, a surprising offer, and Tilly was intrigued by the idea that something she could say had that much value. So she told him about the stairwell, the large number of dead people she’d seen, the woman who had fallen first; but when he asked if she knew what had started it, she hesitated, then shook her head.

He asked if she’d seen a lot of four-by-twos.

“What?”

“Jews.”

“Oh.” She realized it was the rhyming slang she’d heard on the street and read on walls. She hadn’t known what it meant. “I don’t think so.”

He asked if he could use her name. She shook her head. Could he at least say how old she was?

“Yes, that’s important,” Tilly agreed. “Eight.” Then she stuffed the money he gave her, more than she’d expected, deep into her pocket and walked home. Her mother was asleep, but Tilly pulled out the bills and laid them on her mother’s pillow one by one.

The
Times
broke the story the next day: LONDON SHELTER DISASTER, HUNDREDS CRUSHED TO DEATH, WOMAN FALLS ON STAIRS. Inspired by his source (
an eight-year-old girl who wished to remain anonymous
), the reporter went on to compare the tragedy to the disaster at Victoria Hall on June 16, 1883, when one hundred eighty-three children were crushed to death against a doorway while rushing down from a gallery to obtain toys from Fay, a popular conjurer of the day.

The story humiliated the war-hardened workers of the East End. After all they’d endured, how could they be compared with children running after toys? A hurried, private inquiry by Ernest Gowers, one of the Regional Commissioners, did nothing to help. In a matter of hours, he concluded the incident was the result of a mass panic, case closed. The funerals began, all listed in the
East End Observer,
more than a dozen each day:

On and on, many more women and children than men.

A few days later Dr. Hawkesworth, coroner of Bethnal Green, revealed to the
Daily Herald
a disturbing detail: death was in all cases by asphyxiation. There was only one broken bone, a child’s fibula. “I did not see a single case of fractured ribs,” he said, “which is extraordinary, given the circumstances.”

This, followed by a mealy-mouthed statement from the home secretary—“The appropriate authorities will probe, appropriately, the matter to the utmost”—stoked the tension in Bethnal Green. The East Enders knew what death looked like. Three years of aerial bombardment—the specter of firestorms, collapsed buildings, charred and crushed bodies—had made everyone a coroner, and this quiet compression at Bethnal Green, in which some died and others lived, was, frankly, hard to believe. A gathering of mourners at St. John’s gave up on stoic endurance, which had not earned them much, and marched on the police station. They demanded a public inquiry. The officers watched from the windows until one of the protesters put his foot through a car window. (In general, the people found it difficult to wreck things themselves where the enemy had succeeded so well.) That afternoon Home Secretary Morrison made a concession: the disaster would be classified as an official war accident, and reparations for survivors and victims’ families would not only be granted but expedited.

Bethnal Green was mulling this over when it was discovered that the local council had sent a request to Mr. Ernest Gowers of the Regional Commissioners two years ago for alterations to the shelter entrance. The plan and correspondence, sent by Bertram Lodge, discussed the possibility of just the sort of deadly crush that had occurred.

The request had been ignored, then denied.

When this story broke, there was another mass demonstration for a public inquiry. A house-to-house petition was begun, starting with the bereaved families. The afternoon papers suggested a cover-up, evening demonstrations followed, and the next morning Morrison announced in the Commons that his initial request for an independent inquiry—what he had wanted all along, he claimed—had been granted. He’d already communicated with the popular metropolitan magistrate from Victoria Park, Laurence Dunne.

The MP from Ayrshire asked a question. “If it is found that the rumors are correct and certain persons did shout that they saw bombs falling and encouraged a stampede, will Laurie be given sufficient power to deal with the scoundrels?”

“Yes. Certainly—,” Morrison began.

The MP from Maidenhead interrupted. “And if it is a cause of the rising Jewish problem? It is not clear how many more refugees—”

A mixture of shouts and cheers drowned him out.

“Let us be reasonable and trust to arithmetic rather than wild hearsay or propaganda,” the MP from Ayrshire called out again. “The number of Jews in England is less than one percent of the total population. The Jewish problem is a myth. We do not have too many!”

Morrison raised his voice over the eruption. “Let us see what the inquiry finds! Let us wait and see!” Grunts and hums and other rumbles filled the chamber.

Magistrate Laurence Dunne was home at No. 17 Bonner Road, Victoria Park, London, when he received the request from the home secretary to open an inquiry. The day was March 10, 1943, Ash Wednesday, and many years later Laurie would say that he was glad for the season. With ashes on his forehead, holding Morrison’s note, he felt doubly marked: for Lent and for history. All of London seemed to be watching and waiting, trying to prepare for something better.

Number 17 Bonner Road stood in a line of three-story houses built as a range behind the original manor, Bethnal House, in 1700. In the eighteenth century all had become private homes, and it was this character they retained. Laurie loved Bethnal Green, its noisy community spirit, the children playing in the streets, the adults sitting outside with their tea or carrying a pint from the corner pub in a jug, but he was glad that Bonner Road was quieter. Chestnuts lined both sides of the street, and the front doors stood back from the pavement. The windows were large, two on the ground floor, three on the first, with dormers in the roof, all rarely, if ever, opened. The life of these houses faced not the street but the gardens in back. The residents of Bonner Road all had gardens for entertaining, and when you were in them, it was almost possible to forget you were in London. Living on Bonner Road allowed Laurie to be near the area he served as magistrate yet maintain the life to which he was accustomed.

His wife, Armorel, searched his face as he read. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“That accident. I’m to investigate.”

“Good,” she said, putting down her sewing.

He looked at her.

“Oh, it is good,” she said. “Those poor people. We need to know what happened.”

Laurie shook his head, but he knew it was true. The accident had shaken the city. How could so many people—it looked like the final count would be near two hundred—die on a night when there wasn’t even a raid? The most cursory review would have shown that the people of Bethnal Green were accustomed to heavy antiaircraft fire and bombing. During the worst period of the bombing, absorbing wave after wave of refugees, they amazed the authorities with their exemplary behavior. This was the home of the Bevin Boys, youths who, when selected by ballot for the mines rather than military service, protested and begged to be sent to the front. The request was refused, but all the papers hailed the Bethnal Green spirit.

Why would they panic now? And yet that’s what the Gowers inquiry, in what amounted to no more than a meeting (two hours, five witnesses), concluded. The borough deserved an investigation, Laurie agreed, a proper one. After all the bombs and fires, it was wrong to tell Bethnal Green it had lost its nerve. There had to be another cause.

The government, Morrison’s note said, regretted becoming involved.

Without in any way assuming negligence in any quarter,
he’d written,
we’d like you to assure us, and the public, that any avoidable defect either in the structure and equipment of the shelter, or in the arrangements for its staffing or supervision of those within the shelter, is brought to light so that steps can be taken to minimize the risk of any repetition of this tragedy.

Morrison went on. He was confident that Laurie—as a magistrate with a populist reputation and a home near the neighborhood in question—would do a good job. But to the extent possible, the inquiry was to be conducted in secret.
In conclusion, your inquiry must be thorough and speedy and the results candid and convincing.

After dinner Laurie and Armorel sat in the upstairs drawing room.

“You’re upset,” Armorel said.

“Yes.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head.

“Have you read about the infants?”

“Yes.” Somehow seven infants had survived. All were orphaned, and the papers had christened them the “shelter orphans.”

Laurie raised his book,
Fly-Tying for Salmon: The Whole Art of Tying Salmon-Flies with Details of the Principal Dressings
by Eric Taverner, a signal that he wanted to be left alone. It was a compilation, bound in blue leather, of the best chapters from Mr. Taverner’s monumental volume,
Salmon Fishing,
in the Lonsdale Library, with reproductions of the color plates in that work. Armorel had given it to him for Christmas.

While he pretended to read, he thought about the task before him. His own activity the night of March 3 was beyond reproach yet somehow humiliating. He’d had a bath, a long one, not something he did often. But that evening, after a contentious case before the court and a potato dinner with Armorel, he’d felt worn out and sick. He’d retired to the second floor and had had a long soak. Afterward he’d joined Armorel in the drawing room. When the alert sounded, they decided to use the Morrison shelter, the steel coffee table to which the home secretary had given his name, if they heard any bombs. Armorel moved her sewing away from the windows and Laurie took his book over to the sofa and their evening carried on. After a while they went to bed. Laurie recalled hearing the all clear just before he fell sleep.

Why did Morrison want him to lead the inquiry? His ease
with the working classes, he suspected. He’d always enjoyed popularity across a range of people. It was one reason he’d left the bar in 1936 to become a magistrate. He wanted to interpret the laws of the land firsthand, and the East End was the place to do it.

But Bethnal Green? asked his baffled family and friends. An area known for its madhouses?

They referred to two notorious asylums of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the White House and the Red House. In 1920 all the patients had been moved to Salisbury, so their information was out of date. What they ought to associate with Bethnal Green, he told his friends, was one of the oldest private charitable organizations in the country. In 1678, eight local property owners purchased land around the original estate, Bethnal House, and conveyed it to a trust. Under the terms of the trust, no one could build on the land, and the income from leasing it for grazing and gardening would benefit poor persons in the vicinity. “Poor’s Land,” it became, and for more than two hundred years, the trust had fended off others’ attempts to purchase and build on the site. No doubt the founders of the charity were mainly concerned with preserving the view from their front windows, but nevertheless they had done something noble, and the charity survived. The land today, with only a few building additions (St. John’s church and vicarage in the nineteenth century, the Museum Cinema and the Tube-station entrance in the twentieth), looked much as it might have in the seventeenth century, and the income still supplied the local poor with coal.

But if Laurie defended Bethnal Green and its high-minded history in one breath, he condemned it in the next. He thought the working classes an increasingly troubled lot. He sometimes harshly described the people who appeared in his court, but with an authority informed by experience. He saw them every day; he knew their local and domestic disputes, their confusions and misunderstandings, their habits and obsessions. What did his friends know, when they saw these people only on their occasional forays to the market at Covent Garden? And then did not even deign to make eye contact? As a metropolitan magistrate—part judge, part mediator, part counselor—Laurie wanted to improve the lives of the poor.

Take, for example, a recent dispute before his court at Bow Street, in which a man stood accused of smashing lightbulbs and vandalizing the public surface shelters in his neighborhood. Rather than punishing the man, Laurie asked why he was intent on this damage. Mr. Brimmer explained, rather eloquently, that he thought the government’s standard of protection too low. He was forty-five years old, had fought in the first war, and followed the current one in the papers in great detail.

“Those shelters are safe from a five-hundred pound bomb only if it falls fifty feet away. What’s the use of that?”

Laurie asked him if he could agree to put his argument in a letter to the home secretary, then redirect his energy to clearing bomb sites.

Mr. Brimmer eyed him, then agreed that he could. They shook hands, and Laurie inquired about his work. In good humor, Mr. Brimmer told him the family business was a bakery.

“Brimmer’s Bread and Broken Bulkheads,” Laurie said, knowing the alliteration would be joke enough. And indeed, Brimmer laughed.

Laurie looked across the fire at Armorel, wrapped snugly, stitching. Her skin was dry and red this time of year, symptoms of a mild allergy to wool. “How’s the landscape?” he asked.

Armorel and their daughter, Georgina, were members of a sewing circle preparing a section of a topographical quilt for the Royal Air Force. Folds and folds of material—shades of green and gray—covered the floors of their rooms, and Laurie found bits of thread on everything. The RAF insisted these “flexible landscapes,” as they were known, were invaluable to pilots studying the terrain before bombing missions. Armorel’s circle had been assigned the hills north of Hamburg, and sewing circles all over London had other portions of the map.

“How does a mother save her child in a crush like that? I don’t understand the geometry of it.”

“Armorel,” he said.

“The sewing’s fine. I’ve taken over Elizabeth Fulton’s part.”

“Why?”

“She’s not on it anymore.”

“I see. Had a falling out, did you?”

Armorel stopped sewing and looked at him. “Not at all. Toby’s been killed.”

“Oh, God.”

He was their son’s good friend. Andrew, also in the army, had known him since childhood. Laurie turned to the window and watched several crows balancing on the thin top branches of the plane trees in the park. Against the low sky, the birds seemed huge, ungainly. What was wrong with them? Did they grow larger in winter?

“Might that make her want to sew more?” he said. “For the war effort?”

Armorel wiped her eyes. “Not at the moment. That’s just ridiculous.”

“Where’s Georgina?” He thought he knew but wanted the comfort of saying her name. For two months she’d been working for the Ministry of Information, living with several other girls near Bond Street, but she often came home for a night or two to sew and be under her mother’s care. A series of respiratory illnesses had afflicted her since childhood. “I thought she was staying the night.”

“She is. She’s just gone down to the shops. They have oranges, apparently.”

“Oranges,” Laurie murmured.

Armorel smiled. “If it turns out to be true.”

“I’m very sorry about Toby,” Laurie said.

They looked at each other a moment, both thinking of Andrew.

“He’s going to be fine,” Laurie said. “I believe that.”

“Please find out about the mothers,” Armorel whispered. “And those babies.”

Laurie turned back to his desk. He took out a sheet of writing paper and dashed off a note to the home secretary, agreeing to his request, but on slightly different terms.