What Was Promised (17 page)

‘What are they doing?’ Iris whispers, and Pond peers through the car’s back window. One bailiff is reading the racing edition. The other is watching the Columbia Buildings.

‘They’re waiting, aren’t they?’ Iris says, and when Pond nods, ‘They’re waiting in case Mrs Platt decides to make a run for it. The bloody bastards.’

Pond looks down at her. ‘You shouldn’t say that.’

‘I know,’ Iris says. ‘Sorry. They make me want to spit, though. Rotters. And I don’t see why they need a car. It’s not as if Mrs Platt is going to run. It’s not as if they’ll have to chase her, is it?’

‘No,’ Pond says.

Iris goes up on tiptoes beside him. She inspects the brokers. The thin one tips up his hat and scratches behind his ear. The fat one licks his pencil and turns a page.

‘They look like Laurel and Hardy!’ she hisses. ‘You wouldn’t know they were rotters. They look just like anyone.’

‘Anyone can be rotten,’ Pond says.

‘But if they’re just like anyone, then it’s not right to hate them, is it? I wonder what they’re called? I think the thin one’s Mr Doe, and the fat one’s Mr Dear.’

‘Those are good names,’ Pond says, and smiles.

Iris lets go of the car. She squats. She takes her mittens off. Her hands move furtively.

‘Pond?’ she says. ‘Pond, look here. I think they dropped something. It’s bailiff equipment.’

Pond hunkers down beside her. Iris brings her cupped hands between them. ‘See?’ she whispers, and she opens her thumbs – as if she holds a butterfly – and there is the snow, blue-white, packed and scalloped by her fingers.

‘It’s Mr Doe’s snowball,’ she says, and gulps, looking at Pond in wonderment.

He darts back as she goes for him. She shrieks – she goes to throw – but Pond is too quick for her. He’s away, up and running. Iris races after him.

Already the crowds around them are turning the white back to grey. Pond goes at a dog-trot, feinting to stay clear of Iris, cautious with his footing. The sun is out, bright in his face. In Club Row a lone Sunday cheap-jack is calling out the prices of bird sand and cuttlefish bones. It’s a nice day. Pond is still smiling. Iris is calling after him.

‘Wait . . . Pond, wait for me . . . It’s not fair, your legs are too long . . . Pond, will you
wait
?’

On the corner of ?Wentworth Street he slows. He doesn’t have to, he could run all day in this dazzling light, but he stops anyway. He knows what’s going to happen, but he doesn’t mind, it won’t hurt at all.

Iris comes up panting. She leans on him to catch her breath. She risks a look at him, titters, then crushes Mr Doe’s snowball against his duffle-coated chest. There’s not much left to crush. Her hand is crab-clawed from clutching it.

‘I got you!’
she crows. ‘I
got
you I
got
you!’

They pull themselves together. Iris’s fingertips are turning blue. She puts her mittens back on, but her teeth are chattering, and the sun is going behind the clouds.

‘We could get tea,’ Pond says.

‘I haven’t any money. Have you?’

‘No, but Solly’s pitch is down there.’

Iris puts her hands under her arms. ‘It would be nice,’ she says.

Solly has two customers, and a very important repair to finish, but being busy makes him cheerful, and he gives them a halfpenny each, brushes Pond down and sends them packing. They save one halfpenny for later and share a mug of tea by the seller’s brazier.

‘Why do you still call him Solly? He’s your dad now, isn’t he? You should call him Dad properly.’

‘I know,’ Pond says. ‘I do, sometimes.’

‘He’s a nice man, isn’t he? He sounds so foreign, but he’s alright when you get to know him. You must be glad he’s your dad. I am. You make all the games better,’ Iris says, and blows on the tea. She bathes her face in its steam. ‘I hate feeling cold. It’s the worst thing there is, worse than feeling hungry, even. Don’t you think so?’

Pond thinks about it. ‘Some people, they don’t like being alone.’

‘Oh,’ Iris says, ‘yes, Floss hates that. That would be the worst, for her.’

The tea is finished. They trudge homewards up the Lane, through the wet and the clamour, past Jem’s dad’s pitch and the Pound Note Man and the hot sarsaparilla seller.

‘You must have been cold all the time,’ Iris says, ‘when you lived in Long Debris.’

‘Not always. There were fires. The men make them in the houses.’

‘Weren’t you afraid of them, the men?’

‘Some,’ Pond says, ‘when they were drinking. Mostly I kept away from them. I had my place.’

‘You were alone, then.’

‘No,’ Pond says. ‘I wasn’t never alone.’

They have come up Bishopsgate and back into quieter streets. The snow still lies white in the alleys, virgin on the yard walls. Iris looks at Pond. All of a sudden she is shy again. When she says what she wants to say it all comes out in a halting rush.

‘I know why. I know why you weren’t alone. It’s because you had someone with you always. I do too. I have a friend, a made-up friend. He’s called Semlin. I know he’s made-up, really, but I do so like having him. And you have someone, don’t you?’

Pond doesn’t answer. His face has stilled. His sharp eyes cast one way and the other. He starts to walk faster. Iris jog-hops after him.

‘You don’t have to tell me, I don’t tell people either, but I know you’ve got one, a friend. I saw you whispering to him. You don’t do it as much as I do, only sometimes when we’re playing Troll, or things like that. Pond? You’re going too fast.’

Pond stops. He doesn’t speak. Iris takes his hand.

‘Mine’s still cold,’ she says.

They come up to the Birdcage. Mrs Joel, the publican, is salting her pavements. Iris can see her dad, standing up a little Christmas tree for a lady customer. She lets go of Pond’s hand.

‘I have to go in now,’ she says, and Pond nods. He doesn’t look at her. ‘Call for me later, if you like.’

He shrugs; the old shrug, inarticulate and meaningless. Only as Iris starts off does he look after her. He frowns.

‘What’s he for?’ Pond asks, and Iris turns, with the market’s Christmas picture – trees and holly, wreaths and berries – all behind her.

‘I don’t know. He’s just for playing, or when I’m lonely. What’s yours for?’

For a moment it seems that Pond won’t answer: then he starts, as if woken. ‘He looks out for me,’ Pond says, and Iris smiles, as happy as if her father had praised her.

‘Call for me later, then?’

‘Yes,’ Pond says, and he stands there, hands at his sides, until Iris is gone.

*

Mary is calling through the letterbox.

‘Annie? It’s me, Mary from next door. Are you there?’

She’s trying to call quietly; quietly enough that only Annie will hear. There’s no one on the walk – only two little mites out playing – but someone will be listening, one walk up or down. Someone always is, in the Columbia Buildings.

‘Annie, dear, the men are gone. There’s no one out here but me.’

Right, Mary thinks, that’s it. The letterbox is so cold that her hands feel like they’ll freeze to it. She’s made up her mind when the door opens in her face and there is the old woman, grinning.

‘Har,’ Annie says, ‘har har. Bit fresh for them, was it? Serves them right. Bloodsuckers. I hope their balls drop off.’

‘Can I come in?’ Mary asks, and Annie nods craftily.

‘Oh,
you
can, yes. You come in where it’s warm,’ Annie says, but she looks out both ways as she shuts the door.

It is warm, too. Annie has a fire going. Mary follows her back into the lounge. There’s a battered old suitcase on the settee with a few things in it; stockings, photographs. Annie riddles the coals.

‘There,’ she says, and perches on one of the straightback chairs; all of them, Mary sees in the firelight, painted with the chipped brown gloss of classroom desks or church halls.

‘Are you packing?’ Mary asks. ‘Are you leaving, then?’

‘I told you I would,’ Annie says, and waves at Mary, as if she’s standing in the way of a pictures screen. ‘Sit down, won’t you? Sit down on that nice armchair there.’

Mary sits. She watches Annie rise and fold more clothes into the case. There is a flush in her cheeks that wasn’t there yesterday. She looks well. She looks so well that Mary wonders if it can be healthy.

‘Where are you going to go?’

‘Pontefract,’ Annie says promptly. ‘I’ve a nephew there.’

‘But what about your things? All your things?’

Annie waves an arm at her again. ‘Oh, things!’ she says, and her voice drops to a mutter. ‘I don’t give that about things. You can take them or leave them, can’t you? That’s what makes them just things, they don’t matter. I don’t hold that against those men, not when it comes to it. Let them take what the landlord’s due. It’s just that I won’t be made an exhibition. If there’s anything left when they’ve finished, well, you might send it after me.’

‘But you don’t have to go,’ Mary says, ‘do you? Your nephew, couldn’t he pay them off?’

‘I won’t be made an exhibition,’ Annie says again. ‘I wouldn’t ask. I wouldn’t want him fussing.’

Mary takes out the notes. They’re in an envelope, with a few half crowns. The housekeeping, and a bit she’s saved in the years they’ve been in London.

‘What’s that there?’ Annie asks sharply, before Mary has put the envelope down, even, and she knows it’s useless. Annie stands over her, the fire behind her, a pinny in her hands. ‘I don’t want your money. Put it away,’ she says.

‘But you could pay them, Annie! You could stay.’

Annie cackles. ‘Put it away, girl. I don’t suppose that’ll keep me anywhere. I’ve eight months’ owing. Besides, I won’t take charity.’

She goes to the mantlepiece. She picks up the china shepherdess and brings it over to Mary. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘I want you to have this.’

‘Oh, no –’

‘You want to do something for me, you’ll take that. I’ll be cheerfuller, knowing you’ve got it and they don’t.’

Mary is still frowning at the figure when Annie kisses her. A whiff of Ponds and powder. ‘Anyway,’ Annie whispers, ‘I owe you for all them biscuits. Now off you go. I’ve a lot to do. I’m tired already, and I’ve things to do.’

When she lets Mary out she locks and chains the door behind her.

*

Edinburgh, Nov.30th 1948

Dear Mrs Lazarus,

I am very sorry that I cannot tell you any more than that which follows. It seems to me no better or it might be worse than nothing but I am conscious of your being waiting. It would be better all round if I could have got down to see you but it is now more than eight months since we spoke in the Bird Cage and though we dock in Edinburgh six hours hence and in Liverpool thereafter there will be no time ashore for me to do more than send you this letter. Then it is the Argentine for us and no shore leave on home soil till Christmas when I will be needed at home by my mother who is not in the best of health. Therefore I am writing to you.

In Gdansk (Danzig) I spent a day ashore in April and a second in May. I hoped to return there this winter but with things the way they are, the Russians more and more our enemies, I do not think I shall be able. It seems I might have writ to you sooner and for that my apologies. I had hoped to find out more and something more definite by which you might put your mind at rest at last.

Be that as it may I did what it was you asked of me viz. looking for your family and asking of them and showing the people your photographs to as it were “jog” their memories. On my first leave it seemed to me I would be no earthly use at all for the language is a trouble and the people too are not much inclined to helpfulness. Their own lives are on the whole pretty grim and the city casts London in a fair light being in a terrible way itself as you may know first from the Germans but in the main from the Red Army who drove out the Hun with poundings day and night.

On this first leave I did find the street you wrote of by way of the church you said to look out for but no one in the houses would speak with me at all and the street and the church were both in a sorry state with the great church floor all broke up by soldiers turned grave robbers and its roof all burned away and the tower like to fall with bricks all melted together from the fierceness of the fire that took it. Jopengasse was not much better but the house of your family still stands all excepting the top floor and the wash house by the courtyard.

On this visit I did speak to a lady at the City Hall whose name if you should wish to write is Mrs. A. Belova though she is not the most friendly of women. Mrs. Belova is Russian. She does however have some English. She told me that there were still Jewish people getting out of Gdansk up until she reckons the winter of 1941 at which time the Germans locked the doors. What happened after that she says there is no record of but the Russians are all for making the most of the evils of the Germans as they do now of our sins whatever they may be. From Mrs. Belova I did ascertain that there is no one in Gdansk now who goes by the family name Rosen.