What Was Promised (20 page)

Michael doesn’t watch. He sits looking at his hands. He checks his cheek. The bone aches, but the skin is unbroken. He hears the sound of breaking glass, the first report loud, the rest muffled, and when he looks that way again, one of the office windows is staved in, and Norman is gone.

There are stones, he thinks. He could have found a stone or timber. But it was the stick he wanted, to test me, or to bruise me.

No one comes at the sound of the glass (who would come, in this desolate place?), and Michael’s thoughts begin to wander. He thinks of the stick. It is his father’s work, made for him when he was sixteen, when the stroke took him. It’s good work, that horse-head. His father fashioned gold and bronze, now and then, but he was always most at home with silver.

He thinks of the stroke. Why recall that now? But there it is: the smell of oranges. The smell and taste of oranges, cloying at first, then overpowering. When he came to he was lying on his bedroom floor. Hours had passed – the light had gone – and Graeme was there with him, murmuring comforts, lifting him.

He was still half a boy.
A warning from God
, the doctor called it, and what earthly use were such words? And why in God’s name think of it now?

And then the war. Graeme and Christy cheered off with the rest of them. Michael left behind, like the crippled boy in the story who couldn’t keep up with the piper. He hated the war for that, well before the news came back of Christy, missing at Dunkirk, and then his death, and then Graeme gone the same way; gone and dead, not dead and gone.

The war made plain to all and sundry his redundancy. It made him pitiful. How bitter he grew then. And the bitter arguments. His father, telling him to leave the house and never to come in it again, on the day of Graeme’s memorial.

Powerlessness. What else links those times and this, but that? Norman may be broken in mind or spirit, but his body is whole. He could break Michael as easily as he might break the horse-head stick (
More easily than that,
a small voice whispers in his skull.
The stick is sound???
). It is powerlessness that Michael recalls, here, so far from anywhere.

He hears a sound then, a queer cry, and when he looks he sees a light has gone on in an upstairs window. How long it has been there he doesn’t know, and it goes out soon enough. When Norman appears again – stooping out the door – he has a carpet-bag in one hand and the stick in the other. He props the stick by Michael as he gets in beside him, and in the dark it looks to Michael as if the horse’s head is wet.

‘Drive on,’ Norman says, and Michael starts the engine.

*

‘You woke me up,’ Floss says. ‘What are you doing?’

He is bent over the sink, shirtsleeves up past his elbows. His teeth are gritted. He is scrubbing at the stick in his hands, its head under water.

‘Go back to bed,’ he says, and Floss sighs and does. She dreams of silver horses, racing through orchards full of green and blue and apples.

*

Wednesday, dark and early, the last flakes of a night of snow still twirling down as soft as smuts.

Mary hangs clothes, pegs in her mouth, steam-ghosts rising between her hands. Bits of conversation drift across the balconies.

‘What do
you
want?’

‘A stick of wood. I haven’t a bit of fire in the house.’

‘It’s a hundred pound you’ll be wanting next. Look, the sun’s coming up.’

‘Oh, I know, but it’s this cold, it’s gone right into me.’

‘Go on, then. Door’s on the latch.’

‘Ta, love. I owe you one.’

‘
And wipe your feet!
Not half, she don’t. More like all the trees in Essex.’

How hard London is, Mary thinks. All these years after the war, and all it seems to get is harder.

Still, maybe nowhere else is better. Maybe the war was really the end, and none of us knows it yet. No one sees that everywhere is going on the same way, the whole world getting harder and harder, until it just cracks apart and takes us all with it.

Don’t think rot.

At least she has Michael and her girls. And at least they still have their own place, cracks and all, and look – new clothes on the line. It’s like Michael says, when it comes to it: they need to look out for themselves. They’re alright, and that’s what matters.

She hears a sound down in the square. She glances down into its well, and there is Annie, walking away through the snow.

From up high the old woman looks childlike. The view foreshortens her, and her suitcase is too big for her, so that she limps, weighed down like an evacuee.

The square is still in deep shadow. It is all shades of grey; the snow, the depot yard, the car and van, and Annie Platt, hobbling too quickly for comfort towards the far arch: holding her hat and peering to see the street beyond; looking for the brokers who have not yet arrived for her on such a cold morning.

‘It’s been five days,’ Mary murmurs, but then she remembers that it hasn’t: only four. Annie is getting out to Pontefract with a day to spare.

As Annie reaches the arch, Mary almost calls her name, wanting her to wait, needing to go down and . . . what? Urge her back? Take her in? Well, at least to say goodbye, to wish her well up north. Mary is poised to shout; but she holds back. All she does is raise an unseen hand, and then Annie is gone.

Later, Mary tells herself that she did the right thing, after all. How Annie would have hated shouting! Everyone hearing her name. Everyone at their washing lines, looking down at her, there in the snow with her battered case. Mary knows she’s right about that. She tries to find comfort in it, but all she feels is shame.

*

‘I’m going to get a watch. Not a market one, a real one. It’s got Roman numbers.’

‘Wizard.’

‘What are you getting?’

‘I don’t know, really,’ Jem says; and really he doesn’t want to know. What Jem likes best is the not knowing. The best bit is the waiting, the potential of mystery; the perfection of the gift unopened.

‘I shan’t wear it to school,’ Floss says, her voice and torchlight coming back to Jem dimmed by the attics’ clutter. ‘It’s a ladies’ watch. I’ll only wear it on occasion. I should think it’ll last me years and years,’ she says, and sneezes. ‘Gosh, it’s filthy up here! Why didn’t you show me before?’

Jem shrugs, not that Floss can see him: they’ve only his torch between them, and she’s crawled away with it. Its dusty light dithers between beams and tarp-clad heaps of tiles and slates and other, obscurer things.

Why didn’t he show her the attics before? Because they’re his secret place. Only today she’s been so down. That’s why Jem brought her now, but he doesn’t tell her that. It’ll only remind her to be glum again.

Her dad yelled at her at breakfast. Floss told him coming home from school. Jem didn’t tell her he was surprised; not that Floss’s dad would yell at her, but that she should mind so much, because her dad looks like a man who would yell at people all the time.

Except he doesn’t, Jem thinks now. Mr Lockhart looks like a man who never needs to raise his voice to anyone. He cows people just by looking. And Floss is his favourite. She always says so.

I didn’t even do nothing,
Floss told him.
I was just talking. I wasn’t even talking to him! I was telling Iris my dream. It had apples in it, and horses.

‘You should have shown me this ages ago. We could have made up games for it. It’s a bit late now,’ Floss mutters, and Jem squints up into the gloom, jarred out of his contemplation.

‘Why is it late?’

‘Well,’ Floss says, ‘we’ll have new schools soon. We might end up at different ones.’

‘So what? We’ll still be friends,’ Jem says. ‘Won’t we? We’ll still live together.’

‘I suppose. My mum says the Buildings are falling down. We might all have to move away.’

Her voice is some way off now, and moving farther. Jem shivers. He only really likes it up here when there’s daylight coming in. Now it’s dark outside, and he recalls how big the attics are, with crawlspaces and crooked corners he’s never explored.

‘Don’t go too far,’ he calls. ‘The torch might go. Floss?’

‘I’m here,’ she says, though the light is obstructed, or else Floss is saving it. She’s brave if she is, Jem thinks, but then he knew she was. Or maybe she can see in the dark. Maybe Floss eats all her carrots.

‘Jem, how long do you think it’ll last?’

‘Not long. It’s hard getting batteries, it only takes number eights –’

‘No, dopey, I meant my watch.’

‘Oh,’ Jem says, ‘well, you could ask Pond’s dad.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘No. They last a long time, watches.’

‘What will you be when you’re old?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know anything today. You should think about it. You’ll have to decide in a year or two, else someone decides it for you. What do you like doing?’

Being with you
, Jem thinks, but he daren’t say that. ‘Mum says I’ll grow up tall, like Dad. I could be like him.’

‘What, a Banana King?’

‘Why not?’

Pfft
, is all Floss replies.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Jem asks. ‘I like the markets. You do, too.’

‘They’re alright. I’m going to do better. People will talk about me on the wireless and in the papers. You’ll read all about it. Oh!’

‘Floss?’

Stillness. Scuffling. Jem stands up, arms outstretched.

‘Floss?’

‘It’s alright,’ she whispers, close again. ‘I’m here. Look, I found something.’

‘I can’t look, can I? You’ve got the torch,’ Jem grumbles, but Floss is already crawling up beside him, he can perceive her greater darkness, can sense her as she kneels.

‘I was saving it. Here,’ she says, and bathes them in light.

She has a package in her hands, a bundle of yellowed newspaper. As soon as she has handed Jem the torch she sets to unwrapping, impatient as a child at Christmas.

Don’t
, Jem wants to say,
wait, Floss, it might be dangerous
. But it’s too late, she’s already opened it.

‘It’s just rags,’ Floss says. ‘Spit! It’s just a load of old rags.’

She sits, kicks the soiled clothes away, and out of them falls the knife.

It’s a straight razor, the bone handle stained yellow. It looks ancient and fine, like so many things from before the war.

The blade comes cleanly from its fold. There are flowers of rust along its spine, but someone has left it oiled and its troughed flanks are unblemished. It has kept its edge. It nicks and nibbles at the whorled ridges of their fingertips.

Floss hisses. Jem’s eyes go wide.

‘You cut yourself!’

She sucks her finger, peers at it. ‘Look, it’s just a bit of blood,’ she says, and offers Jem the knife. ‘Now you.’

Her face is spectral, uplit. He knows what she wants him to do. ‘I don’t want to,’ he says.

‘Go on. It’s like one of your stories. We found it, so it’s a sign: we’re meant to do it. It’ll be our secret, even if we have to move somewhere else. Go on! It doesn’t hurt.’

Floss takes the torch, Jem the knife. He squeezes his eyes tight. Presses. Blood wells around the blade.

‘Ow!’ he whispers. ‘You liar!’

‘Don’t fuss,’ Floss says, and takes his hand. She presses her finger to his, like a seal to wax. ‘There. That’s a promise.’

Afterwards, when the knife is hidden, after they have climbed out of the attics’ dark, into the cold blue steel of the evening, Floss talks and talks. Jem is glad about the knife, then, seeing how happy it has made her.

‘Making things up,’ she says. ‘That’s what you like doing. You should make up things for people.’

‘Like games.’

‘Or stories, you’re good at those too. I could be a famous writer and you could write my books. Or lies! You could lie for stupid people.’

‘No, I wouldn’t want to do that,’ Jem says.

‘Why? You’d be doing them a favour.’

Only days later, too late, does he think to ask what the promise was.

*

‘Mrs Lockhart,’ says the well-fed man, his hat already in his hands. ‘Sorry to call late. You’re looking well. Is your husband – ?’

‘He might be,’ Mary says.

She has never liked Cyril Noakes. Now – as he runs his eyes over her – she likes him less than ever. She could do without Cyril tonight.

‘Well, if he is, may I – ?’ Cyril asks, and Mary takes the bar of her arm from the door.

Michael is in the kitchen, but she gets him up and puts them in the front room: Cyril is company, and besides, Mary is glad to have space to herself. These last two days Michael has been hard to bear, too grim and so bleak: so grim that the girls have become wide-eyed around him; so bleak that Mary is almost afraid for him.

She can get nothing out of him. It isn’t the business with Annie, that’s all done with now. This is more than that, and there’s less anger in it. Is she to blame herself? And if not her, then who?