Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (4 page)

That night we spend at Nan's, back at Canada Buildings. Mum is in hospital, and the cozzers are waiting to talk to her.

Vera is in heaven. No one tells us why or what happened. Whenever I think of it, of what they were all trying to hide from us—we kept getting shooed back outside, onto the street, like we were chickens—I remember the kettle, and the fire in the grate, and then I have a funny surprise: Mum lit a fire? Mum got some coal from somewhere? Then I picture the kettle on its side, lying on the floor with no whistle in it, and remember there was water everywhere, as if it had been dropped from a long way. Mum's mattress was on the floor in the front room where she always sleeps in the day and I saw that the bed was wet. Did she drop boiling water on Vera? Would that be enough to kill a baby? Vera did look terrible, her head a blackened red color—that was all I saw.

But no one tells us. That night we sleep high up in Nan's big bed, in her bedroom, the bed with the great black snaky springs, bursting through one little hole in the mattress at the bottom sometimes to poke at your foot. I usually loved Nan's candlewick spread with the patterns to pluck at, and the tickly tassels that Bobby likes hiding under, and chewing. But I hardly sleep at all, because every time I close my eyes Vera rolls up, and she's crying, and scolding me, and won't stop.

The next morning Nan says the welfare lady is coming to talk to us because Mum is going to be in a special hospital for a while and that we should be glad because it could be worse. We wonder how it could be worse.

“Your dad'll have to be told . . . and there'll have to be a bleedin' funeral for poor little Vera . . . and that ain't no place for you nippers,” Nan says, eyes wet. The old tortoise seems older than ever—she hasn't even done her hair, which bounces out from her ears like tufts of cotton wool now that it isn't caught in a net, and I stare into her old blue eyes thinking: how many times has her face folded up that way, like a nice clean handkerchief, crumpled and crumpled in your hand? The welfare lady wants to send us to Elephant and Castle to be with a foster family, Nan says, but she—Nan—has a better idea and will do her “bleedin' best” for us. Nan's legs are gnarly like a tree with veins and don't work so well, and the dirt at our house is too much these days, even for her, she says, and she'd love to keep us, but she knows they'd never let her. If she makes a fuss they might send us to a home. I can't believe those legs can hold her up at all, let alone take her up the flights of stairs she has to climb to get to her flat: they look so spindly, like twigs, so I know she's telling the truth.

Nan has been listening to the wireless and since May the government has been warning parents about something, about the “biggest sacrifice of all”: sending their children to the country. Sounds quite nice to me.

She smiles a bit, ducking her head to look really closely at me and Bobby. There's a huge creaky noise as she bends down to whisper in my ear, and a whiff of her, the perfume smell of parma-violet sweets: “And I'm telling you, at least you'll get a bleedin' wash there, and fed, too, and you can't do any worse than Moll now, can you?” It sounds like a holiday, a trip to the country, Bobby says. He can't wait.

That night in Nan's parma-violet-scented bed I have another horrible dream. Little Vera is an angel in heaven but she's unhappy. She's crying and waving her red arms—really in pain. In my hand I'm clutching a bottle of milk and I'm holding it out towards Bobby, and Vera is howling. Give me the milk! I'm the baby! What about me
? Look what you've done.

It's my fault, I think. I'm the cleverest: I can see things differently from Bobby and Mum, and Nan. I'm more like Dad, I'm the one who
does
things. I'm the only one who can make things happen like he can: like he made a car appear from nowhere, and that's my job, too.

Waking up I remember something. “Like taking sweets from a baby.” I don't know where I first heard that, but I picture the milk on the doorstep. How easy it was to nick it. And then more from that boring vicar, Proverbs again: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.” Yes. Bold as a lion—that's me. Lying in the bed with Nan snoring beside me, a hot lump like a meat pie cooking, and Bobby's elbow sticking in me on the other side, I think: I must take care of Bobby. And next time, when Mum is there, I'll bring the milk home. If only I'd done it this time, I would have saved Vera. Next time
I'll bring home the bacon.
Another funny sentence, heard somewhere, all mixing up. I want my mum, I'm thinking. I remember trying to hug her, at the house, trying to wrap my arms around her legs while they were taking her, and how she was being led by Mr. Barry, and how she stumbled against me and didn't seem to see me and trod on my foot, and it hurt. I want Mum, I'm saying, into my pillow. Where is she? I don't understand. Bad as Nan says you are, Mum,
I want you.

2

A Trip to the Country

S
o then it's Saturday early in September, and Bobby and me are in the playground of Lauriston School, with all the other children, all wearing our gas masks on strings round our necks, and a great big label with our names in black ink. (I've written Bobby's label for him. All the children asked me to write their names for them, and to tie their shoelaces. I can't understand why they can't do this themselves. They say how come a six-year-old like me can remember all the identity card numbers? I only have to glance at them once, that's it, and the number has gone in and stuck there, and even Mr. Hitler himself would never unwedge it.) We're finally going to the country.

We've already had a go at trying on the gas masks, fiddling with the straps at the back so they're tied snug under the chin. I put Bobby's on him and the eyepiece steams up straightaway so that he looks funny. Like a weird bug. He pushes it off.

“It's stinky!”

“It's just the rubber, silly . . .”

But then he finds that if you blow hard, this nose bit, the duck's beak, flaps around and makes farting noises. He looks for his friend Archie Markham to show him and they make the noise together. That cheers him up.

It made me feel panicky, too, the first time I put it on, like I couldn't breathe. And the smell was rubber and chemicals, bleach. I threw it down, and Nan was there, watching me. She'd been sewing something. When I did that, she got up.

“Look what I made your little rabbit, gel. Look see what I been and made Bunny. Because we all got to wear one, even him, you know . . .”

Nan showed me what she'd made: a black-material gas mask, a tiny one, with ribbon at the back, to tie on my rabbit. I tied it on him; Nan winked at me. She didn't make anything like that for Bobby, even though he's the youngest. It's our secret, something just for me. Bunny is safely in my bag now. Miss Clarkson's watching us, and we're in line with all the other children and she's checking that we're standing straight and not poking the person in front.

“
These are the actions I must do: salute to the king and bow to the queen, and turn around to the boys in green
,” Peggy Burchwell sings, under her breath.

I wonder if Peggy remembered her skipping rope. I haven't got one. I use Nan's washing line.

“Rub some soap on your finger, and run it along the mask, that'll stop it misting up,” Miss Clarkson says to Archie, who is putting his mask away.

“I ain't got any soap, miss . . .” Archie says, but she's already way down the line, clicking and snapping at Peggy Burchwell.

“
Mabel, Mabel, set the table. Do it as fast as you are able
. . .” Peggy sings. Peggy is the best skipper. “
Salt mustard vinegar pepper . . .”

“Has Mum got a mask?” Bobby asks now. “What if she gets gassed, in hospital?”

“Yeah . . . oh, I don't blinkin' know . . .”

Does
Mum have one? What about Nan? We were given ours in the schoolyard a week ago, but I don't know where Mum is, and I haven't seen her since the day Vera went to heaven. All I knew is what Nan said to me that morning: “You look after Bobby now, gel. You're the smartest, you know he's a few currants short of a teacake. And he's only little. Stick together and don't let anyone split you two up,
ever
, you hear?”

Last night was the first night of the blackout. Nan did it, she drew her curtains and taped up the brown paper, in case the glass all shattered. But later that evening we went outside, me and Bobby, and the streetlights were on, so we could play Knock Down Ginger. Then everything went black. I stood still and looked around me. I put my hand out. There was a sooty blackness and I didn't dare to step into it. I heard Bobby—he'd been running, and now his footsteps skittered up beside me. If only I'd been quick! I could have pinched something. I didn't know what, but we were hungry again and Nan had only given us bread and drip for tea. There would have been milk bottles, but I was like a blind man. (I'd have got better at it though.) We stumbled towards Nan's flat. The darkness was a different kind of dark, and Bobby was scared of it.

He told me he thought he saw Vera's little head, floating in the stairwell like a pumpkin. We both ran up the stairs howling.

Nan didn't sleep well last night—I felt her huff and puff in the bed beside me, and at one point she climbed out, and I heard her pick herself a paregoric sweet from a packet she has hidden in the bottom of her drawers, amongst her bloomers, all so big they can “Keep the sun out of her eyes,” she says, and then laughs, and I know it makes no sense but it is funny.

I heard her climb back into bed, putting her dentures—in a glass by the bed—back in her mouth, so that she could rattle the cough sweet against them. I smelled its vinegary nurse-and-hospital kind of smell. Nan lay there for a long time, her nose in the darkness pointing towards the ceiling.

Before we leave she kisses us both, and pulls up Bobby's socks, tucking a grey handkerchief into them. I rub my cheek, thinking of the crinkly feel of Nan's papery skin. She gives us our bags with all our things in them, and tells us that the country is a good place, and we're to take care of one another and not get separated. And then she repeats the thing that seems to have been worrying her the most, which is about this list the teachers gave us, of things to bring with us. “Mackintosh! Petticoat! Two pairs of bleedin' stockings! Who the bejabas am I meant to get them off of?” She doesn't come to school with us, she puts us on the bus that drops us at the school playground and she doesn't see us off.

N
ow that we're all in the coach leaving the school, I look again for her, or for Mum, but there's only one person running along the Lauriston Road beside the coach: it's Martin Jacobs's mum, carrying a toddler—a baby about the same age as Vera—and his mum is pretty and young and she's got a perky little red hat and a navy coat and she's smiling and lifting the baby's arm and waggling it, as if the baby's a doll.

Miss Clarkson tuts as the bus stops at the roundabout and the woman's face is at the window for a second.

“Mrs. Jacobs. We nearly left without you.”

Martin Jacobs is embarrassed. He's the only one whose mum and sister are coming, too. It's because his sister is a baby. Vera would have come, too, if we still needed to keep her safe. The bus is all hubbub, chatter. There is a paper packet going around; we're each grabbing it and then screaming. It's sweets so we don't get sick. Bobby's on the seat beside me, sucking on the barley sugar, waggling his big ears. He's never had barley sugar before. His eyes are wide, thinking. You can see from the shape his mouth is making that the crispy golden stick is splintering in there, spreading sweetness all over his tongue.

I press my face to the glass. Where's Mum? Does she even know we're going away, going to the country, like Dad? Perhaps we'll be nearer to him . . . maybe we'll even see him there?

Is this how Dad felt, being taken away from everyone? And not knowing where he was going, like us? (It's a secret; it would help Mr. Hitler if we all knew where we were being sent, so we're not to know and Nan isn't told either.)

I remember Dad then, that day in our house, his hands behind his back, being handcuffed. I remember the way he stood, his legs apart, his head up. His chin was trembling, but it was lifted, hoisted high. Chin up. His eyes moved to the window; he didn't turn his head but he saw them driving away his lovely ice-cream Chrysler, slamming the door, using his own key, that they'd made him give them. But Dad even grinned, a cheeky grin for the copper doing the handcuffing.

That's how I'm going to be. Like Dad, not Mum. Look after my little brother like Nan told me to. Chin up, and proud.

The train station . . . I've never been to a train station. I've never seen the bookstalls with their rainbow stacks of magazines and the little shops with all that mouthwatering fruit and the porters with their peaked caps rushing by, their trolleys of mailbags and luggage, smiling and elbowing each other, nodding at Miss Clarkson, who sniffs and looks away. Best of all: penny bars of Nestles from a machine. Of course we don't have a penny. Bobby kicks the machine when Miss isn't looking.

We're told again to form lines and wait. Then we're told to “march!” and we rush onto the train making a noise like bees. We fling our bags and gas masks on the racks above our seats and fight for the best places.

“Bobby, you can have the rest of my barley sugar, if you let me sit next to the window,” I shout.

He nods, and I take the tiny pointed stick—it looks like a glass tooth—from my mouth and pop it in Bobby's. Archie leans over the seat and bats Bobby on the head with his gas mask. Bobby sucks hard on the sweet.

So again, I press my face to the scratched glass. As the train pulls out there are women on the station who wave their hankies at us, and blow us kisses, and shout, “Good luck, me darlings!” and, “Be good now!” and we don't even know them. Peggy and Patricia rush to the window, holding their bald, stupid-looking dolls, taking their hats off their heads to wave back. I cross my arms over my chest. I don't have a doll and Bunny is packed away in my canvas bag, on the rack. Anyhow, I don't want to lose my seat by getting up to stand at the window. I mean, lots of the others just have to sit in the corridors and we might be on this train for hours.

One of the porters on the station, an old man with whiskers on his chin, rubs his eyes, and waves.

I've never seen a man crying. A grown-up man as old as Dad. And we're not even his children.

W
e all jump up again, crowding round the window and doors; the train is stopping. Is this where we're staying? We already had a False Alarm, Miss Clarkson called it, where we stopped on a station a while back (with its sign blacked out so no one could know where it was) and there were ladies in flowered aprons giving us sandwiches and half-pint bottles of milk, and patting our heads and some of them crying again. Funny how the grown-ups keep crying.

Bobby keeps going on about these funny lavatories they make us use. All the children are lined up beside these canvas curtains with flaps in them, and behind them is a tin bucket, and as Bobby pees, laughing, you can hear him trying to hit the side of the bucket and make that louder noise, the tinny sloshing sound . . . and his friend Archie competing with him in the bucket beside him and the pair of them giggling away.

Then it's back on the train again, but this time, the train is slower; we see water, boats, a bridge, a thin line of geese flying together making shapes like letters M and V. I stare at them for ages. They look like they're writing something in the sky—the geese I mean—and I wonder for a moment if they are, but maybe it's in a different language out here in the country, one that girls from Lauriston can't read. The train is slowing down and in the distance is a big, big church, dark and high-up and frightening, with two sticking-up towers, one big and one smaller, that make me think of a snail and its hump, or a castle.

“Look, Miss! A castle!” Pat Beveridge says.

“It's Ely Cathedral,” Miss Clarkson says, and then quickly presses a hand to her mouth, to push the words back in. We're not meant to know where we're going: this station sign has paper pasted over it.

“My dad made that,” Bobby says, looking at the cathedral. I know what he means but Martin Jacobs thumps him and says, “He did not!”

“Did too. We got one in our front room. Ship of the Fens. He made it out of matchsticks.”

Miss Clarkson gets all the children from Lauriston School and claps her hands and blows a whistle to tell us to get off the train and onto the platform. Guards open doors for us and put their arms out to help the girls, and hold the hands of the littlest ones. Some people in uniforms are watching us and they step forward and talk to Miss Clarkson and they are all looking at us and we hear for the first time these new words “billeting” and “billet officer,” and then we're told to form another line, and we have to set off, across the road and up a hill, with our bags and gas masks strapped on again, towards the giant church.

There are children pouring out of other carriages, from other schools. Jewish children, dark-haired girls, tall, in their posh coats and shined shoes. They stand away from us, with their smart teacher, who is patting their heads and crying. I look round for Miss Clarkson.

She's powdering her cheeks from a little compact, and snapping it shut, into her bag, and now she's patting one of the younger children on the head, but not looking at him, or any of us. Now she's saying something to the guard, and now turning away from us. Her navy coat and clicky shoes disappear down a tunnel towards another platform. She doesn't look back, and she doesn't say goodbye or good luck. Her hat bounces with every step. She looks like she's in a hurry.

I hold Bobby's hand and tear off my paper name label, which keeps getting caught in the string of my gas mask. Then I step on it, and the heel of my shoe makes a giant black print on it. That's my old name. Here I'm somebody else and I'm going to have a new one.

Queenie Queenie, who's got the ball?

Is she short or is she tall?

Is she hairy or is she bald?

You don't know cos you ain't got the ball!

That's what we play in the playground. I'm brilliant at it. I'm always Queenie, and I always do know who's got the ball. I can read their faces, their shifting about, their shuffling. Queenie. That's me. A lovely name, I like it much better than my own; why shouldn't I have it? Marching in a long crocodile towards the biggest blinkin' building I've ever seen, that Ship of the Fens, built for a queen, too, Miss says. Queen Etheldreda: Ely Cathedral.