Part of the Furniture (6 page)

Juno said, ‘Oh God!’

‘You get in touch with him then, or the Greek tart. It was Greek, you said? Next. Yes, sir?’

‘It is unwise to hurry them,’ a man who had been standing behind Juno muttered from the corner of his mouth as he took her place. ‘I am trying to get a passage to Canada for my wife,’ he said to the man who was conscious that there was a war on. ‘I don’t suppose there is much that you can do to help me, but—’

Juno stood back. Why can’t I speak like that? she wondered as she listened to the mix of friendliness and authority. He speaks like Jonty’s and Francis’s fathers. He knows perfectly well there is a passage, he has been listening; there is a passage, mine. He is pandering to the man’s power and frightening him at the same time. How does he manage without being ingratiating, irritating or humble? As she turned to go the man behind the desk was smiling at the man who had taken her place, looking positively anxious to tackle his dilemma even, she suspected, saying, ‘Let’s see what we can do,’ though she was by now out of earshot. She was startled when he called out loudly, ‘Miss!’

‘Yes?’ She turned back.

‘Left your passport and identity card.’ He handed them to her. ‘You should be careful of those, got your ration book?’

Juno said, ‘Of course. Thanks,’ as she ungratefully thrust the passport and identity card into her bag.

The man said, ‘See you Thursday, then,’ and smiled complicitly at the man who wanted to get his wife to Canada. ‘Where were we, sir?’

In the street Juno checked her bag to see whether she actually did have her ration book. She did; it nestled against the envelope Evelyn Copplestone had given her. His arm lying across her body had been cold, she imagined, though through his sleeve she had not exactly felt it so and now, thanks to the coat, she was warm and must keep warm until Thursday. She would go to the cinema, it was cheap and would be heated. They were showing Laurel and Hardy; she had seen the film, sitting between Jonty and Francis. They had laughed a lot but not as hysterically as at the Marx brothers, who were their favourites. She bought the cheapest ticket and went in. The film was halfway through; she watched it to the end and then watched the News, which showed the bomb damage in London and the king and queen walking about in the rubble, being caring and at the same time not stopping people getting on with their jobs. They obviously had the right touch, as had the man who had stood behind her in the queue.

‘I bet he gets a passage before Thursday,’ she shouted out loud.

Several people said, ‘Shush,’ and the woman next to her said, ‘Shut up,’ but Juno felt a bit better and sufficiently relaxed to sleep through Laurel and Hardy when they came round again, and on through the News for the second time. She was still asleep when they played ‘God Save the King’ and the cinema emptied. An attendant woke her and she found herself back in the street.

She returned to the station where she ate a horrible but filling bun in the buffet and drank some wishy-washy tea, which was so hot it burned her mouth. Then, finding an empty seat at a table, she sat down to watch people come and go.

There seemed to be an awful lot of hanging about and humping of luggage. When a train came in, people rushed to get seats before those who were getting out had a chance to reach the platform. The windows of the buffet steamed up, but she rubbed a space free to look through. By this time the passengers were mostly soldiers, sailors and airmen carrying sausage-shaped kitbags so tightly packed they looked about to burst. Juno kept her small suitcase by her feet, even though she knew it would be more sensible to leave it in the left-luggage office.

The buffet was relatively warm. It reeked of humanity, buns and tobacco; from time to time she went out onto the platform to gulp fresh air and read the notices, which said, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, and, more humorously, ‘Be Like Dad, Keep Mum’. In the freezing air she congratulated herself on the acquisition of the coat, which was snug and intimate. It did not smell of Francis’s and Jonty’s mothers; if it had, she would have torn it off and cast it under the wheels of an oncoming train. Instead, as it warmed to her body, it let off comforting whiffs of lanolin and leather.

Back in the buffet she dozed fitfully through the night, waking once to find a group of soldiers sitting round her playing cards while they waited for their transport. Seeing her blink, one of them invited her to join in. She won three shillings, which they insisted she keep. She felt quite sad when they left to clamber onto their train, ‘Gotta get back to fucking camp, love, bye.’

Later their places were taken by blue-jackets, who were partially drunk and made remarks she did not understand or respond to, which irritated them so that they pressed her harder and took offence as she withdrew into the folds of her coat. One of them was raising his voice and had become quite threatening, when the buffet doors opened and a pair of military policemen looked in. Their eyes swivelled from right to left, then left to right. The sailors got up and went onto the platform, muttering, ‘Bloody Pongos.’ Juno was glad to see them board the next train and dozed off again from exhaustion.

When she woke next, there was a young woman sitting opposite her with a baby on her lap. With one hand she drank tea from a thick railway cup and with the other she both joggled the baby and pushed a bottle of feed into its mouth. Juno wished there was a third hand to wipe the baby’s nose, which exuded snot like a slug creeping down its lip to join the milk in the aperture which would some day become a human mouth. There was now added to the smell from the buffet of tobacco, buns and humanity, the taint of urine and milk. The baby’s mother smiled. ‘Woke up, didyer?’

Juno nodded and caught the baby’s eye; it was angry and anxious. Expecting it to belch, when it did she was pleased for she had got something right, expected the belch and it had come. She said, ‘Bang on cue!’

The child’s mother said, ‘What?’

Juno said, ‘He looks like you.’

‘No, she don’t, she looks like her dad. She’s a she, can’t you tell?’

Juno said, ‘Not really, sorry.’

The young woman said, ‘I sat on this when I came in, it’s yours, innit?’ She handed Juno a black woollen cap. ‘Been seeing your boyfriend off, ain’t you? Got a boyfriend in the Navy? He gave it you, I see, real act of love, that. My sister’s boyfriend’s a sailor, but he wouldn’t give her his cap, said it was special issue. She begged him, but no, he said no. Your bloke must be real fond. Look at it, new, brand new.’

Juno turned the woolly cap over in her hands; it was coarse, hard-wearing, still creased where it had come out of its pack. The woman said, ‘Put it on. Keep your ’ead warm, that, look nice with that funny coat.’

To please her, Juno put the cap on.

The woman said, ‘Lovely.’

Juno felt that to undeceive her would lack tact and later, when she caught sight of her reflection in the buffet door, decided to keep it, for the woman was right, the cap looked fine with the coat and was blessedly warm, but at the time she said, ‘Manna from heaven.’

The woman said, ‘Haven’t seen that one, there’s no time for the flicks when you ’ave a baby. Would you like to hold her while I get another cuppa? You want one?’

Hastily Juno said, ‘No, no thank you. I’ll get you one.’ Getting to her feet, she said, ‘Do you like milk and sugar?’

The woman, no fool, said, ‘You’re afraid she’d be sick on yer coat. I’ll get it meself, you toffee-nosed bitch,’ and walked off, carrying the baby, hardly heeding Juno’s cry of, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’ (which of course she had, for nothing ponged worse than sick, and she did not want the coat ruined). ‘I just don’t know anything about babies.’

The young woman shouted, ‘Then lucky you!’ and then, when she had got her tea, sat at another table with her back turned away, making Juno feel humble and remorseful and at the same time enraged.

At some time during the second day she was asked by a railway official whether she was all right, or was she in trouble? She had been hanging about the station for a long time. She told him she was all right and thanked him, said she was just waiting for a friend. She smiled at him before resuming her watch on the crowd of people, which swelled and shrank according to whether a train was expected.

Conscious of the official’s interest she pulled the cap low down her forehead to add dignity and age, telling herself that she must learn the confidence of the man who had taken her place in the queue at the travel office; she must try to look as though Francis and Jonty would spring from the next train, arriving on leave expecting to be met by herself in the guise of a girl approved by their mothers, sexy, suitable and rich. But none of the men in khaki and blue looked like Francis, with his thatch of fair hair and eyes so pale they looked like water; nor did they have Jonty’s gypsy eyes and springy dark hair. Only occasionally was there anyone as tall as either. When the railway official walked past her for the third time, she got up and left the station to wander about the town until the cinema opened and she could be lulled to sleep by Laurel and Hardy, forget she was hungry.

Being hungry led to thoughts of her father, whom she barely remembered and had not much liked, and the recollection that somebody, when she was small, most probably Aunt Violet, had remarked in her hearing, in derogatory and scoffing accents, something about ‘his ridiculous and show-off hunger strikes’. She had not known what hunger strikes meant but now, years later, she discovered untapped sympathy and admiration. She half wished that she too could be, as he had been, force-fed, but this now became confused with a gruesome description once given by Jonty of the force-feeding of geese to make
pâté de foie gras.

Turned out of the cinema when it closed, she counted her money and found there was just enough for another bun and cup of tea. Back at the station, however, the buffet was shut and there was nowhere to sit but the ladies’ waiting-room, which was cold, stuffy, and smelled depressing, an atmosphere which, combined with her hunger, sapped what confidence she still had.

Sometime in the early hours the station official, who had been off duty but come on again, woke her. He was accompanied by a policewoman. She told them that what she was doing, since they asked, was waiting for the rebate on a passage to Canada and that, until she got it, she had no money but the man in the office had said, ‘Come back Thursday.’ When Thursday came she would get the money and be all right. Saying this, she pulled the wool cap straight on her head and wrapped the sheepskin coat closer round her knees, which did not prevent the policewoman asking to see her identity card.

Juno said, ‘Gosh, I didn’t know anyone really had to show them. I thought that was all for Nazi and Fascist countries,’ and fished the card from her bag. The policewoman looked at it, handed it back and, without sparing a smile, went off to harass a party of inebriated soldiers who were bothering some superior-looking Wrens.

The station official now remarked that he was the father of a young daughter, that it was Thursday and the travel office would be open presently, but meanwhile if Juno came to his office there was a fire in there and he would give her a cup of tea, please follow. Juno followed.

In the official’s office she sat on a hard chair by a coal fire, drank scalding tea and ate a spam sandwich so liberally spread with mustard it brought tears to her eyes, which, until she said ‘Mustard,’ the official affected not to notice. Then the official enquired where, when she got the rebate for the passage to Canada, Juno intended to travel.

She, to stop him prying, handed him the envelope given her by Evelyn Copplestone addressed to his father which reposed in her bag, and immediately the station official said he would work out a route for her. She would have to change trains twice to get on that branch line. It was eight-forty now, and the travel office would be open by the time she got there; when she got back he would have her ticket ready, put her on the nine-fifty going west. And what about another sandwich?

So she ate a second sandwich, which again made her spurt tears, and set off through the town to the travel agent. There it seemed quite natural for the surly man to smile as he handed her the rebate on her passage to Canada, and for the waiting to be over.

Back once more at the station, she paid for the ticket the railway official had obtained for her, and to please him—for what else could she have done?—got into the train he told her to and began a journey she had not planned to a destination she did not know.

‘H
E’S IN LONDON, ME
dear, but you’d better come in.’ The woman opened the door wider. ‘Come in,’ she said, ‘’tis cold. A letter, you said?’

‘Yes.’ Juno repeated what she had said on the doorstep, a simple variation of the sentences she had composed on the long journey. There had been three or more trains, two changes, two lengthy waits for connections, the unscheduled scramble along the track in open country, looping through soggy fields to regain the rail track beyond the place where a random bomb had scored a direct hit, so that she and the other passengers could climb into another train which had been shunted down the line to collect them from the opposite direction. Nobody had talked much. People had been patient, had not complained or displayed animosity; mostly they had minded wet feet from the tramp through the long grass beside the line. The bomb was a solo, explained an anonymous know-all.

‘Must have been chased by a night fighter on his way back to Germany from bombing Bristol, or maybe Liverpool, I’d say it was Bristol. He’d want to get away so he’d lighten his load. That’s what they do when they are being chased. It wouldn’t have been dropped to annoy. Heard of one which hit a cow, it’s open country so it don’t make sense.’

A voice sneered, ‘Sense!’ but otherwise the explanation was accepted without comment; they were all too busy, too intent on not losing their luggage, though some servicemen, already overloaded, were cheerfully helpful.

Juno’s destination was the eventual end of a branch line; terminus would be too grand a word. The station appeared to be in open country, though it was night by now, too dark to see much. The engine let off steam with a satisfied hiss; she got out and surrendered her ticket.