A Place for Us (31 page)

Florence sat back, and said very softly, “Look, it’s true, Lucy. I used to think I was happy. Used to think that it didn’t matter I didn’t fit in, that I had my dad to talk to, and that our home was a safe place, and now I see that was all a lie.”

“It was a safe place. It still is.”

“It’s not. We’ve all gone our own ways, and why? Ask yourself that. Look, I just thought you might want to help me. If you can have a word with someone on the newspaper, get them to write an article if you won’t . . .” Florence stood up, stuffing sheets of writing and newspaper cuttings into a battered red folder as Lucy sat back in her chair, her head spinning. She felt dizzy. “Does that make sense? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, I heard you, Flo. I just don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I do. Oh, Flo, I wish you’d talk to Gran about it.”

“I’ve tried to, but she’s like a brick wall.” Florence’s mouth creased into an awful rictus smile, and she gave a great heaving sob. “Lucy, I’ve tried. If Pa were around, maybe, but—I can’t get through to her. I’ve realized that it’s easier not to try, at the moment.”

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. “She needs you.” Her heart ached for Flo, for Gran. “Oh, Flo, you know you’re still one of—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say ‘one of us,’ Lucy, I swear, I’ll—just don’t say that.” Florence put the folder under her arm and cleared her throat. “So you won’t help me.”

“Write an article saying you were adopted? Just to get you some good PR? Absolutely not, Flo—come on, can’t you see it’s a terrible idea? You’re just—you’re just terribly upset, you’re not thinking.”

It was all wrong, talking to your aunt like this. Florence’s mouth was pursed, her expression pinched. Lucy frowned.
How can we not be related? She’s just like Dad.
Her mind was still whirring; the idea of these various shards of family china that lay shattered on the floor was overwhelming, and she felt she was the only one of them who wanted to start to put the pieces back together.

“I’ve had enough of this,” Florence said. “I told myself, you see, it actually makes everything easier, now I can get on with my life. Without all of you.” She pulled some money out of her coat pocket, scattering receipts and coins on the floor, and threw a couple of notes onto the table. “Bye, Lucy.”

“Flo—don’t go.”

Florence strode out of the restaurant, knocking a chair across the floor. Lucy sat still, not knowing what to do. A waiter came over
apologetically and gave her the bill, then started cleaning up the mess Florence had made.

I’ve got this all wrong,
Lucy kept thinking.
This idea I had of this perfect family that Gran fed me over the years, it was obviously not true. Because these terrible things have happened to us all and we can’t seem to help each other. We fold like a pack of cards.

The waiter brought her change, and as it clunked into the bowl beside her, Lucy stared out the window at the pale blue sky, the faint roar of London buzzing outside. She wished someone would pick her up, pull her out of the city, put her in her bright, warm room at Winterfold, with the sound of Martha singing below and Southpaw chatting about something, the radio on, dog barking . . . people talking . . . But that world was gone forever, and Florence was right. Lucy picked up her change and lumbered slowly down the stairs, out into the warmth of the London spring sunshine.

David

June 1947

T
HE PREVIOUS DAY
he had been drawing in Limehouse, where he’d watched four children wrestling over a doll. China face, pink blush dots on her cheeks. Nose smashed off, cracked inside her head so she rattled as they tugged at her and wrestled in the cobbled street.

“Givithere, you little sod, it’s
mine
.”

“Won’t, so fuck off.”

“I’m gon’ tell your mum how you’re speaking to me, Jim.”

“Don’t care.”

The doll was from a bombed-out house at the end of a short road, a Victorian terrace. They had gone in and excavated—not much, though. No one had survived, he knew that much from the Public Record Office. He’d tried to forget their names. Who knew what was still there? That doll had belonged to someone. A little girl had received it, maybe last Christmas, never thinking it would belong to someone else soon.

David hadn’t been able to bear it then. He’d made drawings he’d never show anyone. He’d seen things, noticed details too many had overlooked. Like there were bits of people still, everywhere. He’d found a finger once, in a cave of rubble, right by where the children were playing. An old person’s finger, he thought, knobbled at the joint, the skin wrinkled.

Now he and his dad and Cassie were waiting, like so many others, for the housing that was supposed to come after the war. They were building along the City Road and behind the market, and then, David supposed, then they’d have their new family home. What a joke. The idea that they were family.

Aunt Jem and Uncle Sid had moved out to Walthamstow. Aunt Jem came for her tea sometimes, to see little Cassie, she said. Make sure she
was being looked after properly. But she never stayed more than an hour; other than that, they never came back to Islington. Too many bad memories. They’d seen Angel bombed, seen the looting, the way people changed. Uncle Sid had a cousin thrown in jail for stealing lead after a raid. They said it was too hard, coming back. But David knew it was also because they didn’t want to see Tom Doolan. They sent Cassie little presents, knitted cardigans, a ribbon for her hair, that kind of thing, but they didn’t send David anything. He was nearly seventeen now. He’d be all right, he was going to that posh art school near them in Bloomsbury, wasn’t he? Mr. Wilson, the art teacher at school, had written to the art institute, and they’d asked to see Davy and his work, and offered him a full scholarship. Aunt Jem was alternately proud and bewildered at the idea of a nephew who didn’t do anything . . . just drew. “Emily’d be so proud of you if she knew,” she’d said. “You’d have made her so happy, love.”

•   •   •

The hottest Saturday so far in the year, she came for her tea. They didn’t have anything to give her beyond tea from day-old tea leaves, briny and bitter, and she brought some shortbread a neighbor had given in exchange for some curtains she’d made. David and his aunt sat on the floor either side of the old chest that served as a table in the first room of the flat, while Cassie crouched next to them playing with the doll she always had by her side. Her mother had made it for her, the winter before she died, a patchwork girl carefully sewn from the tiniest scraps of discarded material.

Though a bright blue sky could be seen at the far corner of the small window, the flat was dark. It never really grew light no matter how much sun there was outside. Bluebottles buzzed loudly, crashing at the windows, hovering above the little tea party.

Aunt Jem was uneasy, rushing through the meal, starting at every sound on the street. “You get paid to go to them classes, sit there and draw?” she asked, dotting her fingers with shortbread crumbs from the floor, licking them off, as if nervous of leaving a trace behind.

“Don’t get paid, do I? I got a scholarship that covers tuition and all that. Everything else I got to pay for. They say sundry expenses. That means shoes and that.” David looked hopefully at his aunt. “I need a job, Aunt Jem.” Uncle Sid’s other brother, Clive (not the one that was in
prison), had a fishmonger’s off the Cally Road. Before the war David’s mother used to take him there, let him pick a piece of fish for tea, when times were good. Clive’d give him a bucket of eels to play with. David thought it was the best thing ever, sticking his hand in a bucket of shiny, slippery, snakelike creatures the color of tar. “Is Clive looking for anyone, you know?”

Jem shook her head. “No, love, he ain’t, and if you want my advice you won’t ask him.”

“Why?”

“Just the way it is, love,” she’d said, and she’d leaned forward and stroked his cheek.

“Aunt Jem?” Cassie looked up at her aunt. “Can I come and stay with you?” She fingered her aunt’s shawl.

Jem laughed, and glanced at the door again. “Me? Oh . . . we’ll see. That’d be nice.” She said it in the vague way that adults had of saying no without you noticing.

“But I don’t like it here anymore.”

“Why not, little Cass?” Jem said, feigning surprise, and David wanted to slap his aunt’s face or punch her on the arm.
You know why. We live with our dad and he’s a monster.

“Dad’s horrible,” Cass said quietly, looking around. “Smacked me on the head for noise.”

Jem’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, love, no.”

“He hits Davy and he shouts.”

“Just—hitting?” Jem leaned forward, took her young niece’s wrists. “He don’t . . . try anything else on, does he?”

But Cassie looked at her blankly. “What’s it?”

She’d say that all the time to David.
What’s it?
Like there was all these things she didn’t understand. He hated the fact that they were bad things and he didn’t know how to explain them, like Dad smacking them, or the flies everywhere, or the old man who’d died in the street outside that last freezing winter, or the women you saw crying to themselves as they walked through the market.
What’s it?

“It’s fine,” David said, cutting across them. “No, he don’t. Don’t put disgusting ideas like that in her head. Don’t ask her things like that.” He stood up. “You’d better be off if you’re to catch your train, Jem. Thanks a lot for coming. It’s been a real tonic.”

His aunt scrambled to her feet and pulled on her hat, then gripped his shoulders. “Oh, Davy.” He stepped away from her. “I don’t like to leave you.”

He hated her guilt; it was fake. She didn’t mean any of it. “Thanks again, Aunt Jem.”

“I ain’t done right by you. Neither of you. It’s just Sid’s so funny about it. He don’t like me having anything to do with . . . with your father. He thinks I’m well out of it now we’ve left the Angel. I wish I could . . . If I think about Emily—oh dear.” The tears came to her eyes again. “The state he’d leave her in sometimes.” She gave a big sniff. “God, I wish things was different. You don’t think he’d . . . proper hurt you, either of you?”

He was going to say it, tell her what she wanted to hear:
Yeah, course. We’re fine, me and Cassie! Don’t you worry about . . .

But something stopped him. The stifling heat, the buzzing flies, Cassie’s bruised face. How quiet she was these days. “Not sure anymore,” he said flatly. “He’s . . . he’s drinking all the time. He don’t care if it’s day or night. He hit Cassie so hard she couldn’t hear the rest of the day. Still can’t sometimes. I . . . I don’t know.”

“What you mean, you don’t know?” Jem said, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, cold fear in her eyes.

David said, staring at the floor, “He knocked out two of her baby teeth. It’s not . . . it’s not right, Jem.”

“Oh, God. Oh, no,” Jem muttered.

Every old street had a dad like that. Since the war, every house had someone affected by what had happened. A daughter killed in a raid. A son missing somewhere in Burma or France. A father in the slammer for bashing his kids. A mother on trial for stealing from a bombed-out house. The war had changed everyone. You walked past a dead dog on the street and you kept on walking now. Perhaps they’d get back to like it had been . . . only David couldn’t remember life before the war. More and more he couldn’t remember his mother, only the feeling of her hair as she sat next to him at the piano and the sound of her voice when she’d sing to him at night. She’d loved Gilbert and Sullivan.

Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy;

We’re very wide awake,

The moon and I.

He was trying not to think about his mother, trying not to remember what she’d been like, when there came the sound of shouting in the street, and someone swearing, a woman calling.

“Damn you, damn you to hell, Tommy Doolan! You—”

“He’s back,” Cassie whispered, sitting up ramrod straight on the floor, her eyes like saucers. “He’s comin’ back now.”

And Aunt Jem swallowed and breathed in. She muttered something to herself; David heard his mother’s name. Then Jem’s nostrils flared, and she stood up. “Listen to me, Davy, you hear? You get out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Clear out.” She put her hands on his neck, held his head steady. “I can’t take you both. I’m sorry, I can’t. You understand?”

He didn’t understand, but he nodded. Now that she had made up her mind, Jem seemed more resolute.

She said quickly, “Sid won’t go for it. Lord knows how I’ll get Cassie past him, but I’ll do it. He’ll have to like it, he’ll come round to her. But if I turn up with both of you, he’ll kick me out, sure as eggs are eggs. Oh, Emmy, darling. I’m sorry.” She glanced up, gave a little sob, and patted Cassie on the shoulder. “Come on, Cassie, sweetheart. We’re going.”

Cassie stared up at her. “What’s it?”

“I’m taking you home. To my home. Only we got to move quickly and be quiet. I don’t want your dad hearing us.” She crouched down on the ground. “Fancy coming to live with your aunt and uncle?”

Cassie looked at him. “What about Davy?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m going to college, aren’t I? I’m not going to be here much longer.”

Tom Doolan had stopped in the street to argue with someone. David could see him, swinging on some railings, his punching arm flailing, like a sheet in the wind.
I’m going to get that if someone else doesn’t,
he thought.

Cassie crossed her arms and turned to her aunt. Her gray eyes were steady. “Want to stay here with Davy.”

“No, Cassie, love,” Jem said weakly. “You gotta get out of here. It’s time to leave, all right?”

“Cassie,” David interrupted, “I’m off to college soon. I got plans. I don’t need you, you got that?”

She stared at him and put her hands in her pockets, a sign she meant business. “I don’t want to go.” Her lip trembled. “I want to stay here with you, ’cos you said we’re together, you and me, you said you and me ’gainst everyone else. You said it.”

He’d say that to her all the time: when the bombs fell, when the looters came, when Dad rolled back late and they hid in the passage where David’s bed was, when they didn’t have enough food, when they were scared and cold and lonely. He said it all the time.

David shut his eyes tightly. He told himself it’d be easier just looking after himself, so he’d believe it. Repeated it in his head a few times. Then he gripped her wrist.

“Listen, Cassie. I don’t want you around no more. I’m sick of you. Best you piss off and live with Aunt Jem. They’ll look after you.”

Her small hands caught his ragged shirt, and her thin face was blank with confusion. “But you said we was our family, Davy.”

“Well, I didn’t mean it. It’s okay, so off you go.” He stretched one arm nonchalantly and touched the soft curls that bobbed around her head. Just one more time.
We were our family.

She stared at him, her small face pinched with misery, then turned away. “Let’s go, Aunt Jem.”

“How’ll we get out?” Jem said softly, urgency in her voice. “He’ll be here any minute.”

David flung open the door, avoiding his sister’s gaze. He didn’t think he could bear even to catch a glance of her. “Come with me.”

“Clothes for nighttime?” Cassie said. She looked around the sparse, mildewed room that had been their home these past two years.

“No time, sweetheart,” Jem said. “We’ll get you new things. It’s all right.”

Cassie bent down. “I take Flo,” she said, and picking up her patchwork rag doll, she hugged it tight to her small body.

“Yes, take Flo.” David scuttled along the corridor and banged on the last door. “Joan?” He hammered frantically. “Joan, let me in, he’s back again.”

An old lady, hair tied up in rags, neat silk scarf snug over her head, opened the door cautiously. “Oh, look at you, little one,” she exclaimed, pinching Cassie’s cheek. “It’s all right. Come in with me till
he gets over it. He don’t mean it. He’s just angry. Oh, hello, Jem. What you want?”

“Let them in, Joan.” Footsteps sounded on the staircase behind them. “Show Jem the fire escape. Bye, then.” He squeezed Jem’s arm. “It’s the right thing, Aunt Jem, you know it is.”

His aunt pushed Cassie through the door, but she lingered on the threshold for a moment. “You’re a good boy, Davy. Come and see us, all right?”

His sister’s face appeared under Joan’s armpit. “Davy?” Tears ran down her cheeks. “Want Davy.”

David tried to keep calm. He swallowed. He could hear his father, boots tramping loudly on the cracked old boards. Swearing. “Where’s that little streak of shit, that fucking boy? Why the hell don’t he come when I tells him to? Some git trunna swindle his dad and he don’t even fucking give a toss. He don’t even wan hear it, I’m going to—I swear. . . .”

David crouched down. “Listen to me, Cassie,” he hissed. “You gotta go with Jem. You can come back here when you’re older, when Dad’s not here. But you’ll have a better life away from him. All right? If you ever need me, you just come back here, and you ask for me at the pub or down the market, someone’ll find me. I promise. I’ll always be there if you need me.”

He gripped her thin shoulders. “You understand that? Promise?” She nodded. “But that’s for when you’re older,” he said, and swallowed. “Anyway. You’d better fuck off now, I ain’t got time.”

The serious gray eyes fixed on him for a clear second, and he felt like his heart was being cut right in two. Then she nodded again. “Yes.” And she turned and disappeared, Flo clutched under her arm. The smell of Joan’s armpit flowered under David’s nose. He stood up.