Wives at War (40 page)

Doreen's body had already been removed, a simple procedure, quickly executed. Within an hour of Christy reporting the girl's death to a warden, two mortuary attendants and a doctor from the Procurator Fiscal's office had turned up in an ambulance. Polly had given the Fiscal's representative a brief, not quite accurate statement of what had happened and Doreen's body had been stretchered down from the first-floor corridor, hoisted into the back of the ambulance and driven away.

‘If he's not our responsibility,' Christy said, ‘how come you lied to the guy from the Coroner's office?'

‘Fiscal,' said Polly. ‘We don't have coroners in Scotland.'

‘Whatever,' said Christy. ‘Why did you tell him that Doreen was your cousin on a visit from Belfast? Why didn't you just tell him the truth?'

Polly shook her head. ‘Too complicated.'

‘You could have handed the kid over right there and then.'

‘No,' Polly said.

Christy strapped up the canvas bag and got to his feet. He pulled a Spanish-style beret from his pocket and stuck it on his head. ‘We'll talk about it later, okay? Right now I gotta get down to the docks and start earning my keep. I'm a photographer, in case you've forgotten. This is what I do, Polly.'

‘I'm sure your bosses at Brockway's will be delighted to have yet more photographs of smoking ruins and weeping children.'

‘Polly, this is the news,' he said. ‘Now do I get to borrow the car, or not?'

‘The ignition keys are on the table in the hall.'

‘Does that mean yes?'

‘Yes.'

He kissed her perfunctorily on the cheek while Master Davy tried to clamber up on to the sofa and, failing, fell back on to the carpet with a yelp of annoyance.

Polly said, ‘What am I supposed to do with him?'

‘You've raised kids, haven't you? You should know what to do.'

‘Nanny Patricia raised my two,' Polly said. ‘I only watched from a safe distance. I wonder if he's almost fully weaned.'

‘Well,' Christy said, ‘if he isn't, he soon will be.'

He kissed her again, then went out into the hallway, picked up the keys from the table and left the house.

Master Davy wailed.

Polly picked the toddler up, carried him to the window and together they watched the Wolseley nose down the drive and turn into the Avenue.

Master Davy peered up at her.

‘Ma,' he said, quite distinctly. ‘Ma. Ma. Ma.'

And Polly, all too swiftly, lugged him out into the hallway in the hope that the telephone was working and that she could somehow get through to Babs.

*   *   *

Archie's belief that they would have lots to do turned out to be false. Without a telephone connection the Welfare Centre in Cyprus Street seemed to have slipped right off the production map. Babs spent the remainder of the morning sweeping up piles of broken glass while Archie, ever inventive, glued umpteen cardboard folders together and nailed them, layer by layer, over the shattered windows.

They worked undisturbed for there were no scroungers looking for hand-outs, no homeless waifs in search of accommodations and, to Archie's consternation, no outriders from the Labour Exchange to check on their welfare and deliver the Friday pay packets.

Shortly after noon, a tram car rattled down to the Cross.

Shortly after that the fire engines left the vicinity of the fuel store.

Around one o'clock two army privates parked a lorry outside, sauntered into the office and claimed they were looking for Renfrew, but they were really in search of a hot cup of tea, which Babs was only too pleased to provide. Garrulous souls, the soldiers imparted much information about the state of the roads and the havoc that the air-raid had caused. They stayed for half an hour, ate biscuits, drank tea, smoked two of Archie's cigarettes and left again, heading heaven knew where.

It was just on two o'clock when the telephone in Archie's office chirped.

Babs snatched it up immediately.

‘Thank God, I've reached you,' Bernard said. ‘I thought we might be cut off for days. Are you all right?'

Babs told him that she was.

Archie was standing on his desk trying to repair a damaged light fitting with window tape and string.

Babs looked up. Archie looked down. She mouthed, ‘My stepfather.' Archie nodded and went back to what he was doing.

Tense now, Babs leaned her shoulder against Archie's trousers leg and said to the mouthpiece, ‘Have you seen the kids?'

‘Popped out to Blackstone as soon as I possibly could,' Bernard told her. ‘Everything's fine there. The school's still open. There hasn't been much damage in Breslin, thank heaven. I wish I could say the same about Knightswood.'

‘Mammy, is she—'

‘Bombed out,' Bernard said. ‘The cottages copped a lot of blast from a parachute bomb. I've moved her to Blackstone until the windows are replaced and gas and electricity restored. We could've muddled through, I suppose, but moving out temporarily seemed by far the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances, especially as there may be another raid tonight.'

‘Blackstone's handy for you too.'

‘Very,' Bernard admitted. ‘Has Polly contacted you yet?'

‘Not yet. The office is only just back on line.'

‘She will,' Bernard said. ‘She's all right but the mansion took a fair walloping, I gather – and she has a problem.'

‘What sort of problem?'

‘Look, dearest,' Bernard said, ‘it's a complete madhouse over here. We've inherited an enormous number of bombed-out persons scrambling for safe billets, so I'll have to go.'

‘What's Polly's problem?'

‘I leave her to tell you that herself.'

‘Everyone over there is all right, aren't they?'

‘Right as rain,' Bernard assured her, and hung up.

Babs returned the telephone to the cradle and rested her head as well as her shoulder against Archie's shin.

She blew out her cheeks and sighed.

‘Not bad news, I trust?' said Archie from on high.

‘Nope, not bad news at all,' Babs said as he climbed down and seated himself on the desk beside her. ‘My mother's gone to stay at Blackstone farm with my kids and my sister Polly has a problem, but I don't know what it is.'

‘Call her,' Archie said. ‘Go on, do it now before the powers that be discover we still exist and all hell breaks loose.'

‘I'll pay for the call, of course.'

‘No, no, Mrs H.,' said Archie. ‘Have this one on me.'

*   *   *

Soon after Christy left, Master Davy's wails became too loud to ignore and Polly ventured downstairs into the wreckage of her kitchen. She carried the toddler with her for she was afraid to leave him alone. He was a curious wee beggar and would take off on all fours the instant her back was turned, and with the house full of steep stairs and broken glass, Polly had a horror of some harm coming to him, some injury for which she would be blamed.

So far Davy seemed not to have noticed that his mother was missing and his wailing was occasioned by hunger and discomfort rather than emotional distress, so Polly told herself.

When she carried him into the kitchen he stopped crying at once, though teardrops still clung to his eyelashes and he sobbed deeply from time to time.

‘My goodness me,' said Polly, ‘will you look at all this mess.'

Master Davy peered down at broken dishes, at the dresser toppled across the stove, at the hole in the wall where the window frame had been. He uttered a sound, a variation on ‘Mama-ma', and pointed at the lawn that sloped down towards the wall like a smooth yellow blanket, a chimneypot, absolutely whole, propped in the middle like a garden ornament.

Polly stepped cautiously through the wreckage.

Shattered Italian plates, china jars, pots, saucepans, cutlery and jugs were scattered everywhere. The table was covered in shards and splinters and the chairs were overturned. To her left she could see the larder, her shelter, dark as a cave. The baby bounced in her arms. He wanted down, wanted to explore. She held him as tightly as she dared.

‘Patience, m' lad, patience,' she told him. ‘First we're going to have to find something for you to eat, then we're going to have to find a means of cooking it and something to serve it in.'

Davy studied her with the same sort of concentration that Rosie displayed when lip-reading.

One-handed, Polly righted a chair, cleared space at the table and sat down. For a brief moment she felt overwhelmed by all the things she would have to do just to perform the simplest of tasks, like boiling an egg or making oatmeal. She looked around, detected a pan, a milk pan, and shifting the chair like a hobbyhorse, stooped and slid the object from beneath the dresser. She spotted a jar almost full of sugar, hobbled to it and picked it up.

She placed the items on the table and, rising, moved further into the room, scavenging like a magpie for anything that might prove useful. She retrieved a tin of dried egg powder and, miraculously, a pint bottle of milk still with the cap on, some spoons, a knife and, squashed under a drawer of the dresser, a packet of lard and a box of oatmeal.

Soon she would have to go upstairs. She hadn't been upstairs since the Quinlan girl's body had been taken away. She was afraid of what she would find there, not just blood on the floor but all the detritus of her comfortable life with Dominic scattered or destroyed.

Davy had stopped sobbing. He shifted about in her arms, wriggling not to escape but to see what little piece of treasure would next emerge from the debris.

Five minutes of foraging gave Polly most of what she needed. She wrapped the items in a sheet from the cot in the larder and carried the bundle, and Davy, back upstairs to the parlour.

She put the bundle on the top of the piano where Davy couldn't get at it, then, lifting him again, lugged him into the ground-floor toilet to see if the water had been turned on again, which, to her relief, it had.

The sight of clear cold water trickling thinly from the tap pleased her enormously. She poured a glass of water, gave the baby a sip and drank the rest herself, then, refreshed if not exactly rejuvenated, took a great deep breath and headed upstairs to rummage through the bedrooms in search of towels, clothes, documents and ready cash and, if she could find it, the pushchair that had last been used when Ishbel was a toddler.

Some time later, close on one o'clock, with a fire of broken sticks crackling in the grate and the baby fed, washed, changed and fast asleep in a nest of pillows on Dominic's big black sofa, Polly went out to the hall to telephone Babs once more.

*   *   *

‘Where the devil have you been?' were Polly's first words. ‘I've been trying to reach you all morning. Didn't Bernard tell you?'

‘Nope,' Babs answered. ‘He just told me you had a problem.'

‘A problem.' Polly's voice crackled on the wire. ‘That's putting it mildly. I'm stuck here on my own with that Irish child. He won't leave me alone. You didn't tell me he was mobile. He can row himself about on his bottom like a turtle. I can't turn my back on him for a moment. And the floors are covered in broken glass. And I've no hot water, gas or electricity. I had to cook on a wood fire in the grate in the parlour just to give him something to eat.'

‘Whoa,' said Babs. ‘Calm down. Let me talk to Christy.'

‘Christy,' Polly snapped, ‘has gone out to take photographs.'

‘I see. Did the Belfast girl go with him? Is that the problem?'

‘The Belfast girl's dead…'

‘Dear God! Bernard didn't tell me that.'

‘… and I'm saddled with the kid.'

‘Bomb, was it?'

‘Flying glass. She was caught in the upstairs corridor when the windows were blown in. Killed instantly. The mortuary attendants took her away this morning. Very efficient they were too, I'll give them that.' Polly checked herself and strove to sound more rational and controlled. ‘I take it you're all right.'

‘We're fine,' said Babs. ‘I even made it to work.'

‘Oh good,' said Polly. ‘Good for you. Now how long will it take you to send a man over here to collect the child?'

‘You're joking!'

‘I'm not.'

Archie had strolled into the outer office but was still within earshot and when Babs covered the receiver and called out to him he returned at once. He leaned on the desk and peered enquiringly at her through his bottle-bottom glasses. Babs kept her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, ‘The Belfast girl, Quinlan, was killed last night. My sister wants us to take the baby back. What shall I tell her?'

‘Tell her to hang on to him meanwhile.'

‘I doubt if she'll want to do that.'

‘Try her,' Archie said.

Babs spoke into the telephone. ‘Polly, I don't know if you realise that things are pretty bad everywhere at the moment. I mean, there are hundreds dead an' thousands injured, thousands more without a roof over their heads. Could we possibly ask you to look after—'

‘Oh, for God's sake! I have things to do, Babs. I'm
busy.
'

‘Well, we're all kinda busy, Poll,' Babs said, evenly. ‘It's not as if we know who the kid belongs to now. Far as we can make out the father's unknown, certainly untraceable. We do have an address for an aunt in Belfast but I doubt if we'll be able to get in touch with her immediately an' I doubt if she's gonna come rushing over to take the child away. Fact, I doubt if she'll take him at all.'

‘This isn't good enough,' Polly said.

Archie's eyebrows formed an arch under his hairline. He signalled for the phone and Babs, with some reluctance, yielded it to him.

He straightened, brushed his dusty lapels with his knuckles, then said, ‘Mrs Manone? Archibald Harding here. Now, what's the problem?' He listened, nodding, while Polly went off into another rant. Then, drily, he said, ‘Very well, Mrs Manone, I do believe I have grasped the situation. I sympathise with the inconvenience it has caused you. Most inconsiderate of the mother to get herself killed, I agree. Now, here's what you must do: collect all the personal belongings of the child and deceased mother, including all and any documentation that pertains to identity. Take them and the child along to a police station. The officers on duty will attend to his welfare and you will be absolved of all further responsibility.'