The Past and Other Lies (36 page)

And then quite suddenly, just before Christmas, they had gone. Of course, William Davenport had been dead two years by then.

Had Kitty gone ahead and married the corporal from Vermont? They had been such friends once, she and Kitty. All through school, and afterwards. It seemed incredible not to know. Had it been Vermont, or had it been Virginia? She couldn’t even recall the man’s name.

And two weeks after the Davenports had gone, a V-2 had landed on Nelson Avenue destroying six houses in one go. The explosion had damaged every other house in the avenue and sent debris into every street that bordered it, shattering glass as far away as High Street and the railway station. After that no one thought about the Davenports. And no one stopped to think of little William Davenport who had been born in the upstairs front room of number twenty-eight and who had once fallen from the wall of the gasworks and spent a night in the hospital with concussion and who had stood under a streetlamp—this very streetlamp—and asked a girl to marry him. William, who had been dead these two years past.

The V-2s were falling heavily again now after it had seemed in December they were over. The first one had fallen in Chiswick last September. They’d been sitting down to dinner and just as Mum had been serving out a rabbit stew all the windows had rattled. They’d all stopped and looked at each other but no one had spoken.

The rockets tended to come at night now. This was better as there seemed to be fewer casualties at night and the bombs fell mostly south of the river or in Kent and Essex and Surrey, which made you glad but then made you feel guilty for wishing it on someone else. Croydon in particular was getting it bad, she had heard from a girl in Red shift whose family lived out that way. The V-1s seemed to have petered out altogether, or at least very few were getting through. That was a relief. That horrid droning sound and the sickening, breathless wait to see if it would cut out right over your head or continue on its way was enough to snap your nerves.

The V-2s made no sound, which ought to have been more terrifying but somehow wasn’t. The first you knew about it, they said, was when your house collapsed around you.

And William was dead and had been for over two years, long before the first V-1 had fallen, before the Germans had retreated from Russia or Mussolini had been overthrown or Rome liberated. Before D-day. He’d missed so much, there was so much to tell him. And now she couldn’t remember what he looked like.

Ahead, number fifteen was in blackout still, as was most of the street. She ought not to have lit her cigarette. It was all but gone now anyway and she paused at the garden gate to light a second from the embers of the first, tossing away the finished butt and drawing on the second one.

Once, a very long time ago it seemed now, she would stand on the corner of Oakton Way hastily taking a few last drags on her cigarette then stuffing a mint in her mouth before going into the house, hiding her cigarettes beneath her bed and her matches at the bottom of her bag. This elaborate charade was for Dad’s benefit as Dad did not approve of women smoking. It was ‘common’. But now they had all survived five years of war. Now Caroline was nineteen, she worked nightshift in an aircraft factory operating a lathe and, somehow, whether you smoked or not didn’t seem to matter. Somehow a lot of things no longer seemed to matter.

She opened the little gate and let it bang shut behind her, walked up the path to the house and pushed open the front door. She could smell coffee, or some hideous wartime version of it, brewing in the kitchen, fat frying in the pan and carbolic soap where Mum had been washing down the walls in the hallway to remove some of the dust from the Nelson Avenue rocket. But mostly she could smell iron filings and hot metal and cigarettes and that didn’t come from the house, it came from her.

‘Poo, you stink!’ announced Deirdre, as she did every morning when Caroline walked into the kitchen.

‘Deirdre! Don’t be so rude,’ replied Mum, her stock response and Caroline ignored them both and went out the back to wash.

‘Mornin’, love,’ said Dad, not looking up from his paper.

‘Good shift, dear?’ called Mum over the sound of running water, the hiss of fat from the frying pan and the voice of the BBC newsreader who kept up a low but perfectly enunciated commentary in the background.

‘How many aeroplanes did you build last night?’ demanded Deirdre.

Through the doorway Caroline could see Mum in her floral apron, her grey hair in a net, one hand on the handle of the frying pan, one swirling the coffee dregs in the pot to make it go further, and Deirdre in her school uniform, grey socks pulled up high at her knees, kneeling on the kitchen chair, spreading margarine on her bread, the tip of her tongue poking out, all her concentration focused on making the meagre scrape reach each corner equally. And Dad, sitting with his usual silent frown, listening to the radio announcer, half reading the morning paper, half observing his family as though he was not sure how they—or perhaps he—had come to be here.

‘Croydon got it bad again last night,’ he announced. ‘Hear that, Clive?’

And, as Caroline emerged from her wash, Uncle Clive appeared in the doorway in his slippers and a faded silk burgundy dressing-gown, a matching silk scarf tucked inside the gown. He smiled broadly as though he were on holiday.

‘Just as well we don’t live in Croydon, then, in’t it, Matthew, old boy?’ he said brightly, looking at each face in turn so as not to miss the little laugh or the admiring look this comment obviously warranted. No one laughed or looked admiringly at him. Unperturbed he pulled up a chair, sat down and reached for Dad’s paper. Dad bristled visibly but Uncle Clive seemed not to notice and settled back in his chair to await his breakfast.

On the first of November last year, a V-2 had landed in Camberwell, killing and seriously injuring over forty people, causing widespread damage and destroying a number of buildings, including the Boar’s Head public house in the high street. Uncle Clive, who had been the landlord of the Boar’s Head at Camberwell, now lived with the Lakes in Oakton Way.

‘There was an egg, love,’ said Mum, turning to Caroline, ‘but I gave it to your dad.’ Mum stood at the sink and looked at Dad to confirm that there had indeed been an egg and that he had been the lucky recipient of it. But Dad was concentrating on the BBC news and offered neither confirmation nor denial.

‘Quite right, Berty, old gal. The workers ’ave gotta be fed!’ observed Uncle Clive. ‘Ain’t that right, girls?’ And he looked from Deirdre to Caroline. Deirdre wrinkled her nose as though to avoid an unpleasant smell. Caroline looked at his little military moustache and remembered with a slight shudder how it tickled when he kissed you.

Uncle Clive wasn’t really an uncle. He was one of those vague uncles-by-marriage of whom no one had even heard, or at least, Caroline and Deirdre and Dad had never heard, until he had inexplicably turned up on the doorstep on a frozen, foggy morning in the second week of November, wearing a grimy trenchcoat and carrying two paper bags of clothes he’d received at the emergency rest centre, waving his replacement ration book triumphantly. He had given a hearty, ‘Here I am then!’ as though they all knew who he was and had been eagerly awaiting his arrival.

Mum had known who he was: some relative-by-marriage of her dead sister.

So Uncle Clive had moved in and, though it was intended to be a Temporary Arrangement and Dad had made it very clear that giving up the parlour so Clive could have a temporary bedroom was not a long-term solution to anything, it was now the first week in February and Uncle Clive, as he sat at the kitchen table humming to himself and putting down his coffee cup in order to turn the page of the paper, looked in no hurry to depart.

‘Delightful drop, Bertha,’ he remarked in a pleased voice, nodding towards his cup then looking up and smiling approval.

Mum frowned darkly and attacked the frying pan with a scrubbing brush.

‘
Ahem
,’ said Dad sternly, reaching over the table and reclaiming the morning paper, which Clive had momentarily put down on the table.

‘Why don’t
you
ever make the tea, Uncle Clive?’ said Deirdre, looking up from her plate.

‘Deirdre, don’t be rude,’ said Mum, not raising her head. She had spoken mildly enough but the scrubbing increased in ferocity to almost manic speed.

‘Ha!’ said Dad, shaking out the paper. ‘I expect Uncle Clive is far too occupied finding work and a place to live,’ but rather than appear abashed, Uncle Clive looked up in surprise and the light from the weak electric light bulb overhead bounced off his Brylcreemed hair.

‘Not me. I’m consolidatin’,’ he declared, and then he looked up at Caroline, who was standing in the kitchen doorway, and he winked at her.

Caroline pulled out a cigarette and ignored him.

The frying pan banged against the enamel of the kitchen sink with a loud and jarring clang.

‘For God’s
sake!
’ snapped Dad.

The scouring abruptly ceased and Mum stood perfectly still at the sink, her arms up to the elbows in soapy water, a sheen of moisture on her upper lip.

What was the matter with her?

‘
Surrey and parts of Kent again came under heavy enemy fire last night
,’ reported the man on the BBC news, ‘
causing damage to a number of residential and commercial buildings, though casualties are reported to be light. Mr Churchill announced that heavy bombing raids by the RAF over Dresden continued to cause substantial—
’

Dad scraped back his chair and turned off the radio, as he always did when he was leaving, as if no one else would be interested in listening to the news.

And perhaps he was right, thought Caroline, sitting down in the vacated chair and pouring herself a cup of grey-looking coffee. Deirdre was only interested in what was playing at the pictures and that morning’s hastily completed homework which she was invariably finishing off at the breakfast table. And Mum seemed unaware there was a War on at all—the absence of eggs, meat, clothes, sugar appeared to come as a complete surprise to her every time she attempted to purchase something. And Clive, who, of them all, had the most reason to be wary of the war, seemed the least interested in its progress. His daily perusal of the morning paper was purely concerned with rationing and coupons and what the shops in Bond Street had on sale. How he filled his day, one could only wonder—he certainly hadn’t found a job and the only time you saw him out and about was when he was coming out of one pub and going into another. Perhaps he was doing research—after all, he had been a publican for more than twenty years. But somehow you knew that what he was doing was having a drink and playing a game of darts.

‘Right, duty calls,’ Dad announced, standing in the centre of the room, placing his hat on his head and waiting for everyone to wish him a good day at work.

‘Well, I can’t hear it,’ replied Deirdre facetiously. She tucked her thin, schoolgirl legs beneath her on the chair.

Mum carefully laid the frying pan on the draining board and dutifully went over and stood before Dad, wiping her hands on her apron and looking as though she would have liked to kiss him goodbye, or at least as if she felt she
ought
to kiss him goodbye. Instead, Dad, as he did every morning—and especially so since being made postmaster—frowned and stiffened and said, ‘Mind that doesn’t boil over, Bertha,’ and Caroline assumed he was referring to the hot water in the kettle rather than Mum’s affection for him.

‘You enjoy yerself with all them parcels and telegrams, Matthew,’ said Uncle Clive, reaching for the paper. He pushed his cup into the middle of the table. ‘Fill ’er up, Deirdre,’ he said.

Deirdre pulled a face behind her homework and grudgingly pushed the teapot in his direction with the tip of her pencil.

Dad, having fulfilled his role as head of the household, stood already forgotten in the doorway, a frown on his face as though he was trying to remember something.

As she watched him, Caroline caught his eye, or thought she did. Then she realised it was Mum he was watching as she picked up the frying pan and began furiously scrubbing it once more. Dad seemed on the verge of saying something and Caroline waited for her stomach muscles to tense the way they always did when Dad was about to get angry. But they didn’t. In fact, she realised, they hadn’t for a while now, and not because Dad had stopped getting angry—he hadn’t—but just because it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Instead Dad turned on his heel and stomped loudly down the hallway and after a moment the front door closed with a bang.

Deirdre looked up from her homework, chewed her pencil thoughtfully, then looked at Caroline and wrinkled her nose.

‘You still stink,’ she said.

William was laughing. Balancing on one hand, his legs straight up in the air, feet rigid, his toes pointing to the sky. His old corduroy cap had fallen onto the pavement and his shirt tails fell forward over his head. He held the pose for one second, two, three, then he collapsed and fell with a crash, half onto the roadside, half into Mrs Fielding’s privet hedge at number twenty-six. He lay like that, still laughing, but as Caroline held out a hand to help him he jumped nimbly to his feet, scooped his cap off the ground and stuck it on his head—only now, Caroline saw, the cap had become his grey RAF forage cap.