Beowulf Page 8

  That placid, overfat plaster jowl was simply sneering at her. It was ridiculous to get as nervous as this; perhaps she had better go and make herself a cup of herb tea. Life—and she did not care whether the Vicar approved of it or not—life was simply unendurable.

  5

  IT WAS COLD. Ruby stamped her feet, waiting for the bus. She hoped that there was not going to be an alert. Whatever Ed might say, she was not going to spend another night in the shelter. It looked and smelled like a tomb. She would much rather lie under the kitchen table beside the fire than have her wrists knotted up with rheumatism before she was fifty. Yes, it felt as if it were going to snow and her bag pulled heavily at her arm. “Here’s a nice bit of fish for you,” old Tippett had said, trotting in just as she was slipping on her coat to leave, “and don’t forget to take some of the stale bread for your cat.” That was the advantage of the Warming Pan; they fed her well at midday and there were plenty of scraps but there was too much supervision, too much Selina following her around and saying, “We want to wash well underneath the shelves, don’t we,” or “Have you dusted the plates,” when they would have to be wiped off, anyhow, before they could be used.

  How much time had she spent, Ruby wondered, waiting for a bus? Once inside it there was warmth; you picked up bits of talk, noticed shop windows and the way buildings changed, but standing … she could have lived her life twice over with the minutes and minutes that she had lost on street corners. Waiting for a bus, waiting for a bus; somebody ought to write a song about it, probably they had; what Timothy called a “swingy tune” just evaded her ears. The wind cut round her legs and she glanced back to see if there were many in the queue. All people at a bus stop were potential enemies. They might crowd in front of her, be among the “standing room for two only,” and shove her back to wait an extra quarter of an hour. Today, however, she was early and the rush hour, or what had become, since the raids started, the “rush stampede,” had not yet begun. If only the sirens did not go before she got home. She was a week behind with the wash, but when the kitchen was the only room where she was absolutely certain of the blackout, she could not clutter it up with damp sheets as long as they had to sleep there. She would soon forget what her bedroom was like; and Ed had done it up, new paper and all, only last summer.

  The heaviest buildings had a fragile air as if children had cut them out of coloured paper and stuck them up in school with cardboard supports. If you poked a brick you were surprised that it did not crumple like a balloon. Even the bus seemed to have lost its authority; it came tearing down the empty road at the pace of a little car.

  Ruby was the first to get on as it stopped. She pushed her way forward, for her favourite place was vacant, behind the driver. As she sat down, another woman in the next row looked up, greeted her, and came over to sit beside her in the neighbouring seat.

  “Why, Mrs. Gates,” Ruby said joyfully, “I ’aven’t seen you for weeks! ’Ow are things your way, quiet?”

  Mrs. Gates was as plump as Ruby was thin. She clasped her umbrella as if it were a steering wheel. The black fur circlet on her collar was thin and almost rubbed bare at the neckline.

  “We didn’t ’ave no bombs, but we ’ad some gunfires. It’s a wonder we’re any of us alive.”

  “It is!” Ruby spoke feelingly, groping for her coppers as the conductor came along. “Last week, it must ’ave been about seven. No, I mustn’t tell stories, it was not much after six. Anyway, Ed had come in but I was sitting on the floor under the table, for the noise was something terrible, when I ’eard a commotion. I wondered what they were ’ip ’ip ’ooraying about and I says to mee ’usband, somebody’s shouting at us. Go on, Mate, ’ee says, you’re getting nervous. I’m not, I says, there’s someone at the door. After a while ’ee gets up and opens it and there’s a bobby. ‘Pack up,’ the bobby says, quickly, ‘there’s a bomb in the next garden. ‘Urry and I’ll take you down to the Centre.’”

  Mrs. Gates swayed her umbrella to and fro. “A bomb, Mrs. Clark, ’ow awful!”

  “Yes, mee ’usband says, but what about mee tea? I’m not moving till I’ve ’ad a bite to eat. Mee ’usband’s not brave but ’ee’s not nervous like, being in the Navy the last war.”

  “You didn’t wait, did you?”

  “Yes, but the bobby didn’t. I’d got Ed a nice bit of cod, and ’ee ’ad that and two cups of tea. Come along, mee girl, ’ee says then, we’d better ’op it, but we didn’t go up to the Centre, we went to Middleton’s shelter at the top of the road.”

  “And did the bomb explode?”

  “No, we was lucky. They moved it the next day. Maybe it was the rain; it poured all night, for I kept waking up and ’earing it, though they do say water make century bombs worse.”

  “Centuries?”

  “Yes, them fire bombs.” They were both nearly jolted from their seats as the bus pulled up suddenly. “Got a new driver on the route today. Suppose they took the young ones for the Army?”

  “They don’t care what they do to you, these days. Seems as if we none of us ’ad any rights. I’ve ’ad a bit of trouble meeself since I saw you last.” Mrs. Gates leaned back luxuriously, visibly happy to have found an audience on so long a trip.

  “Oh, dear, nothing bad, I ’ope.” Ruby, having got her own story over, wedged her bag at the side and settled down to listen. She liked to have a bit of gossip to tell Ed over supper in the evening.

  “I ’ad a slight operation like, at the ’ospital.”

  “And you was looking so well in the summer!” There it was, Ruby thought, what was to happen, happened; you could not dodge your fate. The pillars on the houses they were passing looked like the pipes you saw, piled up for road repairs, and the steps reminded her of soap. There was something spiritless about this terrace that had once been wealthy and now belonged to the empire of converted flats. They were without the conveniences of modern buildings and lacked the cheerful warmth of her own kitchen. She looked up at Mrs. Gates.

  “The doctor said it was them oats.”

  “Oats!” Ruby was genuinely surprised. “I never ’eard before as they did anyone any ’arm.”

  “I ’ad pains.” Her companion’s voice was flat and final. “’Orrible pains. But you know what I’m like, I don’t want to make no fuss nor push meeself forward. I’d rest and rest but it didn’t seem to make no difference. My gentleman’s away so I could put mee feet up too of an h’afternoon.”

  “Called up, is ’ee?”

  “Same as; ’ee’s in one of them Ministry places as ’as been h’evacuated. But resting didn’t seem to ’elp so at last I went and saw mee doctor. ’Ee says to me, ‘Why, Mrs. Gates, ’owever did you get yerself into such a state? ’Ow …” the bus jolted again to another sudden stop and the handle of her umbrella flew forward against the window. “… ’e’s a learner, ’e is. Can’t ever ’ave got ’is licence.”

  “Debridge,” said Ruby, rising to her feet and inspecting the roadway in front of them. “In a way, they clear it up quicker than you’d think.”

  “Well, mee doctor, ’ee’s a nice young feller, no, you couldn’t call ’im young exactly, ’ee’s middle-aged like, ’ee says, ‘I’ll call up the ’ospital at once, Miss Gates. It’s deep inside and it’s pricked mee finger but I can’t get at it.’”

  “My dear, whatever was it?”

  “I says, ‘Well I don’t want you to think I came to you for nothing, I thought I could cure meeself with care and suchlike, but it didn’t seem no use.’”

  “There’s things you can’t do for yerself.”

  “So up I went to the ’ospital and they put me under the h’eether, and let me tell you, Mrs. Clark, science is beautiful. Yes, in the old days they’d ’ave ’ad to ’ave cut me, but today they used a sort of tube, well, it was a magnet like, and they drew it out.”

  “Drew what out?”

  “A tooth.”

  “A tooth, Mrs. Gates, but I didn’t know you ’ad any. I thought you ’ad yours done when I
had mine h’out?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t a tooth from me ’ead but a steel one from a comb. The doctor said, ‘You must ’ave swallowed it with your oatmeal. I’d give it a miss for a bit,’ ’ee says, ‘and try something with more nourishment.’ It’s funny what you find in them oats.”

  “Sweepings,” Ruby nodded portentously, “it’s what ’appens to us working class. Not that I know h’anything of politics meeself,” she added hastily, “it’s what mee ’usband says.”

  “’Ee’s right, whatever ’appens we suffer.”

  Ruby was silent for a moment, for they were approaching the bridge; it was the bit of the journey that she enjoyed the most. She liked looking back over Chelsea, especially in spring when the lilacs were out, with here and there a flowering chestnut. Lambs, she would say, remembering her country childhood and egg hunts in the neighbour’s meadow. She had never wanted to return to her village, people were too inquisitive, too credulous, always “nosing into one” as she complained to Ed, but she often wished that they lived nearer to a common. Then the river itself was a broad silver road leading to the sea. It gave her a feeling of safety and pride, her father having been a sailor. He had never been away long enough for her to forget him because he was usually on a coaster, but his visits home had been infrequent and marked by pennies to be spent unexpectedly in the village shop. She had always felt herself apart from the other families of ploughmen and bricklayers and it had made her restless; the same urge that had driven her father to sea had led her to throw up that good place at the Manor and try her luck in London. “Somehow,” she said, pushing a little, for Mrs. Gates had taken advantage of the bus’s swaying to grab more than her fair share of the seat, “I feel nothing can ’appen as long as the sea is round us.” She looked out with satisfaction on a tug and a couple of coal-smeared barges floating on water that was the exact grey of their smoke.

  “You’re right, there,” Mrs. Gates snorted, “not, mind you, that I’m against them foreigners but it stands to reason they can’t be as ’andy as we are, never ’aving no sea to be on.” A couple of gulls swooped from the parapet up into the misty sky. The next bridge, which they could just see through the diamond opening of the splinter netting, seemed almost silver.

  “Ed says, ’ee don’t think the German workers want war any more than we do; it’s all That Man.”

  “For meeself,” Mrs. Gates gripped her umbrella ominously, “there’s only one thing to do with a Jerry and that’s shoot ’im. Pity there couldn’t be an h’earthquake to settle them once for all.”

  “Yet I worked for a German lady once and she was that quiet you wouldn’t ’ave thought she was different from ourselves.”

  “Sly! That’s what they are, and ’ow do you know what she was thinking? It’s not my business, of course, but an English family’s good enough for me. Still,” Mrs. Gates continued affably, “times ’ave bin ’ard, I know; you can’t pick and choose.”

  They had left the Thames and come to Battersea Park. It was empty but reassuring, for the trees stood, unlike the houses, with hardly a twig disarranged. There was even a glimpse of a circular flower bed, neatly dug up to wait for winter frosts.

  “I see you’re in black,” Mrs. Gates went on. “I ’ope nothing’s ’appened?”

  “It’s for Connie. She ’ad that shop at the corner of Station Road, where they got it so badly last night. Ed, ’ee’s thoughtful like that, came all the way back to tell me. ’Ee didn’t want me to see it, though of course they turned the traffic off, but I got out and walked along as far as the ropes. There’s just a ’ole where the shop used to be; it’s all stones and dust.”

  “They’re not men, those Germans, they’re fiends. Sometimes I think, though, we brought it on ourselves. There’s no reverence in the young nowadays, they don’t know what work means.”

  “Yes, the ’ussies, waggling about with their little caps and their perms. They don’t get down to no scrubbing of floors like we ’ave to do. And what about our ’usbands? There’ll be ’omes broken up in this war, Mrs. Gates, and it’s these minxes as is responsible.” Ruby had caught Ed’s glance of admiration for a thing in khaki, with more money than manners, only the Saturday before; and Mrs. Gates nodded in solemn agreement.

  “Now, Connie she was well off though I wouldn’t say but what she’s ’ad a ’ard life sometimes. Got into trouble and got out of it. She ’ad a good place with ’omely folk where she sat down to dinner; but her sister Vi was different, she worked at the kaff. That’s where the girls met Alec. ’Ee’s Connie’s ’usband. It was Alec’s friend who was going out with Vi. Posh boys they was, both of ’em, and Vi told ’em she was living at ’ome. Now, Vi loved her night out, but Connie was quiet like and when the boy found out that Vi was at the kaff, ’ee wouldn’t ’ave no more to do with ’er. Called ’er awful names, ’ee did, that’s what comes of telling stories. I couldn’t tell a lie meeself, could you?”

  “Sooner or later, we reap what we ’ave sown.”

  “Sometimes it’s pretty late. I know a fishmonger who made ’is money in the last war but ’is misdeeds don’t seem to have caught up with ’im. ’Ee’s simply using ’is experience all over again.”

  “We must leave h’everything to Providence, and believe me,” Mrs. Gates looked intently at her companion, “we shall not be disappointed in our trust.”

  “I ’ope not,” Ruby said hastily, she had no wish to get into an argument, with poor Connie so much on her mind. “Well, Alec, ’ee married Connie and ’ee was a good ’usband to her, I will say that for ’im. Six or seven years ago the boiler h’exploded and it scalded ’er face, she ’ad a great scar down the side. But Alec was a fine man and ’ee stuck to ’er. Of course,” and Ruby almost licked her lips, “she was a wonderful cook. I never tasted such eel pies.”

  The air began to fill with the smell of wet dust and burnt brick that was peculiar to a badly bombed district. It was a new smell for London, unlike either the musty odour of the plague pits or the charcoal rawness of a fire. This had a touch of explosive about it; subterranean gases seemed to have driven the ordinary, human atmosphere away. The houses looked shaky and desolate as if (and it was what all their occupants were thinking) they could not understand why the foundations still held. People were standing on chairs and ladders to tack wood or bits of canvas over the broken, empty windows.

  “Connie never wanted to go out afterwards; I suppose she minded that scar.”

  “She had newsa-senior, I expect,” Mrs. Gates pronounced the words slowly and carefully, “same as the soldiers.”

  “I keep thinking about Alec. ’Ee went back to the Navy in the spring. I ’ope somebody’ll let ’im know. Think if ’ee came back ’ome and just saw the ’ole!”

  “They’ll give ’im bad news quick enough,” Mrs. Gates sniffed. “’Ere’s your stop coming. It’s bin a real pleasure seeing you h’after all this time. Drop in, if you come my way, and ’ave a cup of tea.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Gates, that’s very kind of you.” Ruby picked up her bag and gripped the next seat as they lurched. “I ’ope you ’ave a quiet night and no warnings.” She had to hurry, for there were few passengers and the conductor waited impatiently for her to get off. There was still a crowd by the ropes, sightseers mostly, staring at the ruins. The street was ankle deep in glass; it lay over road and pavement, in sheets, in broad jagged splinters and heaps of brittle crumbs. An old man was making a halfhearted attempt to sweep it into the gutter. Further up there were more officials. A lamp post lay sprawled across the ground, and somebody had hung his cap upon the solitary survivor of a group of railings.

  Ruby edged her way cautiously towards the ropes. A paving stone had cracked, but instead of splinters it had bubbled up like dough. She could not get Connie out of her mind. This was a street that she had walked up a hundred times on Saturdays; the crossing was awkward, but once in the shop you were warm and you always felt the better, somehow, for seeing Connie. Not that there was much gossip, “It’s
best to know nothing in my business” was Connie’s favourite remark, but she would listen to your troubles and tell you about her own whilst keeping quiet about the other customers. It gave you a feeling of confidence. How impossible it was that she should be there, underneath all that masonry! Instead of past and present running into each other like the river, Ruby looked at an experience that wasn’t Nature, that was almost, she groped for a word … ghostlike … and even that didn’t describe it.

  “Good afternoon. So you’ve come up too?” Ruby recognized the speaker as a neighbour who was also “partial to eels.”

  “It seemed the least I could do.” She unfastened a coat button in spite of the cold to show her black.

  “Her poor husband! He is at sea, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, it’s a funny world. Fancy coming back to this.”

  “I thought our end had come last night. I put a blanket over my head and stood under the stairs. It makes you go all taut like.”

  “Yes, now I lie down. I keeps mee clothes on, all but mee shoes, but I’ve made a bed up, under the kitchen table. Not that I sleep much,” Ruby added truthfully, “for if you do drop off for a second the all-clear wakes you up again. Still, you can stretch out and it’s warm.”

  “It’s hard to realize that she’s gone.” Onlookers kept straggling up to stare at the mound where the houses had been. Now and then an official ordered them to move on, angrily.

  “Look at all the people, blacking their noses. You’d think they’d ’ave something to do!”

  “Perhaps they’re Connie’s friends, like ourselves.”

  “Admitted. But there’s no call for them to be noisy,” Ruby glared at a small boy who was kicking the glass in the gutter, “they could stand quiet.” The disorder made her feel murderous, and if that child didn’t stop he’d cut his boots to pieces and how would his poor mother pay for another pair? Men never seemed to grow up; it was like Ed, who would wear the heels of his socks right out before he thought of tossing them to her to be mended.