Part of the Furniture
Read Part of the Furniture Online
Authors: Mary Wesley
A Novel
Mary Wesley
For my granddaughter Katherine and Prisoners of Conscience
A
FULL MOON LIT
the street stretching ahead; it was a long street and empty. The houses had blinded windows and secret shadowed doorways; only an occasional polished door-knocker or the radiator of a car parked by the pavement reflected the moon.
There was no sound of traffic and, although the air-raid siren had wailed its alarm an hour before, she could hear no planes.
‘You’ll be all right?’ they had questioned. ‘Find your way across to Paddington? Better take a taxi.’ Their minds were already ahead on their journey.
They kissed her goodbye, fumbled hurriedly with last-minute inspiration into inside pockets, ‘There, take this, pay for the taxi, take care of yourself.’ They humped their luggage into the train, forcing their way into its crowded corridor, merging without backward glance into the crowd of khaki and blue, the smell of tobacco, damp uniforms and sweat. The notes now held between freezing fingers had been warm from their bodies; she pushed the crinkled paper into her bag and snapped it shut. There had been no taxi.
‘If there’s a raid,’ one of them had said, ‘take cover, go to a shelter or take the tube. You’ll be all right in the tube.’
Aware of the cold, she thrust her hands into her pockets and doing so found her gloves, stood still as she put them on and, looking up at the moon, tried to see past its brilliance to the stars.
‘London looks wonderful by moonlight,’ one of them had said, ‘an austere mix of charcoals and greys, secret, mysterious—’
Already the memory of their voices was fading.
There was the distant crump of guns and simultaneously the sound of bombers droning up the Thames, guided to their target by the treacherous moon. Shivering, she turned up the collar of her coat.
New shoes pinched her toes; she had been on her feet all day and was unused to hard pavements. Taking them off, she stood in her stockings. The pavement was smooth and ice cold; the warmth of her feet melted the frost and wet her feet. As she moved on, the street seemed endless.
In the distance a group of hurrying figures rounded a corner to vanish into a house, letting a slice of light flash out as they opened and closed a door. Perhaps if she reached the turning where these people had appeared she would find her bearings, see where she was. There might even be a taxi, or better still a tube station? To have decided to walk so that nobody would see her tears did now seem pretty stupid.
Suddenly the bombers were immediately overhead and from close by a battery of guns fired and a man’s voice yelled, ‘Bloody fucking moon!’, whooping up the scale, infecting her with his fear.
Walking was a lot easier without shoes; try not to think of the bombers.
Their train would be free of the city by now. They would be clear of the suburbs, chugging fast through open country. She began to hurry and, almost running, pretended, as they had taught her all those years ago when she was a child and gullible, that she could catch her shadow. (‘Hold your breath, keep quiet, run as fast as you can, see, I have caught his, you can catch yours, it’s easy, easy.’) They had played the game, the last week of August, running and leaping by the light of the harvest moon among the corn stooks, before the declaration of war, both over six feet, their shadows weird and wonderful beside hers so puny. They had seemed even taller tonight boarding the train, bending briefly to hug her goodbye, their minds elsewhere but minding their manners. ‘Take care of yourself.’ ‘Mind you take a taxi.’ ‘Better go by tube.’
When the stick of bombs fell she cowered by the railings, holding her shoes and bag by her ears. When the last bomb dropped, she began to run; she must reach the end of the street. Running, she avoided the cracks in the pavement, shortening and lengthening her stride like a wounded bird. When the man caught her by the elbow and jerked her up steps into a house, she yelped with a mix of terror and indignation. She caught her breath to protest as he slammed the door shut.
‘You will find it healthier in here,’ he said, letting go of her arm, ‘and warmer. Have you far to go?’ he asked when, after her initial protest, she stayed mute. He was divesting himself of an overcoat, letting it fall onto a chair.
She said, ‘I am on my way to Paddington.’
He said, ‘You would have been safer travelling by tube. What’s your name?’
‘Juno.’
He did not laugh, which was the usual reaction, or remark that she had a long way to go to grow into the part, but said, ‘Nice. And your surname?’
‘Marlowe.’
‘Fine combination.’ He was tall but bent and frail, with hair faded almost white. He breathed hard, gasping and catching his breath with evident effort. ‘This will go on all night,’ he said as another stick of bombs began to fall. ‘That lot sounds near Wigmore Street.’ He watched her wince. ‘They sound as though some giant was ripping up sails or sheets—Oh, there goes the best linen! Joke? Not very funny? Do you always carry your shoes?’
She said, ‘They pinch my toes. It’s easier to run.’ She wanted to ask his name, having given him hers, but did not.
He said, ‘Sensible. You had better stay here until the raid is over. Do you want to tell anyone where you are? Telephone?’
She said, no, thank you, she did not need to telephone.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘let us check who else we have in the house, they will be in the basement. There is a stout table in the kitchen which seems to inspire confidence, though personally I have a phobia about getting trapped underground and buried alive. I spend these nights on a bed I’ve had moved into the drawing-room, but you are welcome to the basement if that’s your preference.’
She was impressed by his courtesy. He looked ill by the muted light in the hallway. She raised her voice above the thump of guns to shout that she too feared being below street level. This was not the moment to tell him that this was her first experience of an air raid.
He said, ‘Right then, upstairs it shall be. I don’t undress,’ he said, leading the way to the basement stair. ‘There is something undignified about being dug out of the debris in one’s pyjamas. But first let’s just see who is here, what the congregation is tonight.’
The people in the kitchen lolled round a table. A man in naval uniform dozed with his head on his arms. Two women sat knitting on upright chairs and a broad-beamed lady stood by the stove, stirring the contents of a saucepan. There were two girls in party dress and their escorts in Guards’ uniform sipping wine, grouped close and vulnerable. The woman by the stove said, ‘Hullo, you’re very late, we thought you might have got stuck. Soup?’
‘No thanks.’ He shook his head. ‘But you, Juno?’
Juno said, ‘No, no, thank you.’
‘What’s that you’re drinking?’ he asked.
One of the girls said, ‘Wine. Want some?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve got whisky upstairs, I’ll have that. That sounds near the Zoo,’ as another stick of bombs dropped.
The girl who had not yet spoken said, ‘I wonder where they have evacuated the penguins?’
Her Guardsman shouted, ‘Whipsnade?’ hurling his answer above the sound of guns. ‘Must be Whipsnade.’
In a corner of the room a man sneezed, blew his nose, said, ‘I have the most God-awful cold, I shall give it to all of you, I apologize for the infection in advance.’
With apparent prescience the second Guardsman remarked, laughing, ‘That will hardly matter if we get killed in this.’
His girl exclaimed, ‘Oh, Nigel, honestly! We were on our way to the Café de Paris, we want to dance. It’s Jonathan’s last night on leave,’ she explained. ‘We’ve only popped in here until it eases off.’
Her voice had a whining note which grated on the ear but it was blotted out by another bomb.
The woman stirring soup said, ‘That was close.’
But the man with the cold blew his nose and said, ‘I think it was farther away. What do you think, Evelyn?’ and they all turned to look at Juno and the man who had brought her into the house.
Juno thought, Evelyn, what a nice name, I’ve never met anyone called Evelyn. So that’s his name.
Evelyn said, ‘Hard to judge. Come on, Juno, let’s get ourselves some whisky.’ As they turned to go upstairs he called over his shoulder, ‘The Café de Paris has a glass roof, I suppose you know?’
Everybody laughed, even the man who had supposedly been asleep, and one of the Guardsmen shouted, ‘You are pulling our legs, the Café de Paris is underground.’
Evelyn muttered, ‘Even so,’ leading the way upstairs into the hall and on up to the first floor, pulling himself up by the banister rail, walking slowly into his drawing-room to sit heavily in an armchair, breathing wheezily, chasing each breath. She noticed that he was deathly pale.
He said, ‘Well, it’s better here. Could you pour me a drink? The decanter’s on that table, there should be glasses. Pour one for yourself, it will do you good.’
Juno poured a finger of whisky into each glass and gave Evelyn his. He swallowed a mouthful and thanked her, leaning back and stretching his legs. Balancing the glass on the arm of his chair, he said, ‘It’s very cold, don’t you feel it? Could you turn on the fire?’
She knelt to light a gas fire which popped and gurgled among imitation coals.
He said, ‘There’s a lavatory across the landing, should you need it. Do you think you could ease off my shoes?’
He looked exhausted, she thought, glancing up as she unlaced his shoes.
He said, ‘Thank you, Juno. All those people are my neighbours, they like sheltering in my kitchen.’
‘Not your family?’
‘No, no, they come to comfort me.’
‘I had an impression of fear,’ she said.
‘Of course, but crowding together helps. I have plenty of booze and the neighbour with the soup brings it with her, it gives her right of entry. You should have had some, it’s excellent soup.’
‘I was too frightened.’ And too miserable, she thought, and looked at the beautifully coloured whisky in her glass.
Watching her, Evelyn said, ‘Then drink your whisky, courage is not confined to the Dutch. Go on, lap it up.’
She swallowed obediently, tried not to show surprise; she had never tasted whisky, though she knew its smell. As the spirit burned her throat and ballooned into her head, she looked for a chair, but there was only one by the fire and he was in it, so she crouched and sat cross-legged on the floor with her back to him.
Evelyn said, ‘Presently, when I have caught my breath, I shall get onto my bed over there and you shall lie beside me, listen to the bombs and tell me the story of your life.’
Juno did not answer but watched the fire glowing as red as the whisky glowed in her chest.
He said, ‘So where were you running from on your way to Paddington, pursued by demons?’
‘Euston.’
‘What were you doing at Euston?’ He smiled, realizing why her gait had been so curious when running towards him; she had been avoiding the lines between the paving-stones. ‘How old are you?’