* * *

Bernard became almost animated talking with the next-door neighbour, Mr Todd. ‘They’d be happier among their own kind,’ he said. The two of them, arms folded, heads practically touching and shaking sombrely. ‘Putting them here really isn’t doing anyone any good.’ I thought it must be Hitler outside our door. Or perhaps the entire Third Reich was moving in down our street. There was such a rumpus. Curtains were lifted to look, some stood in their front doors, windows were opened, endless disapproval was being tutted. But it wasn’t an invasion – it was a sadder sight than that. It was a family. A mother wearing a brown coat with one sleeve hanging off, carrying a baby wrapped in a shawl made of an old sheet. Her face not so much blank but unreadable as a corpse. And straggling behind her were four kids. Filthy, grimy mudlarks – sootier than any miners ever got. Their hair matted to string and flying this way and that. And they’re all staring around, looking up one minute at the houses, mouths gaping enchanted. Then in the next moment, feeling the tutting grown-ups watching them, they’re looking down at their feet. One of the children – could have been a boy or a girl it was that hard to tell – was pushing a pram. One wheel was buckled, and it wobbled so much another child stretched up trying to hold a couple of shabby boxes on to it. Then there were two little mites who were holding hands – one, a girl, carried a gas-mask box, the other, a boy, a little stuffed toy. The boy was wearing trousers too big for him – short trousers that were tied at the waist with string and came down to well below his ankles. And these two little ones were trying to keep up with the pram. And the pram was trying to keep up with the mother. And the mother was trying to keep pace with a rather smart woman dressed in a wool suit with a fake rose in the lapel, who was marching resolutely forward.

They were not the first such family, so Mr Todd told all the other neighbours. This was the third lot he’d seen and he hoped there would be no more. They’d been bombed out round Rotherhithe and someone high up in some ministry had decided they should be rehoused in the empty rooms down our street. Mrs Newman at number thirty was taking this lot.

‘I don’t want to,’ she told anyone who’d listen. ‘I’ve been made to. And, let me tell you, there are many people in this street that have more room than me.’

‘Is every waif and stray to end up here?’ Mr Todd asked. ‘I mean, we’ve got enough Poles living here to start their country anew. Now these Cockneys. I ask you.’

We weren’t getting that much bombing, not like in the East End. Some clown in the butcher’s said it was because if Hitler invaded he’d want somewhere nice to live. ‘Treasonous,’ that’s what Bernard said about that comment.

The little boy in the giant trousers tripped over the hem. He looked like a sack all splayed out on the pavement. He didn’t cry. Got picked up by his sister and carried on. I don’t know if he realised he’d dropped his stuffed toy. He looked back for a second but then had to rush to keep up. It lay there in the road, and got run over by a car, becoming camouflaged in muck. I picked it up. It was a soggy, wet, filthy little dog or horse made out of someone’s old sock with eyes sewn on in black wool.

‘What on earth are you doing with that?’ Bernard asked me, when I’d washed it and pegged it out on the line by its spindly legs that looked to be cut from an old glove. It came up quite well – made fluffy by the breeze. One of its legs needed a repair where it had started to unravel and I put a bow at its neck to make it look a little less forlorn.

I swear the attic room Mrs Newman had that family in was no bigger than our Anderson shelter. She looked to be storing them in a cupboard, not giving them somewhere to live. The mother had to push the little boy forward to take the toy from me. He didn’t recognise it. ‘It’s yours,’ I told him. ‘You dropped it.’

He turned it round in the air, then his face opened like a shiny present. ‘It’s Neddy,’ he said.

He showed it to his mum who said, ‘Say thank you to the lady, Albert.’

But he couldn’t quite manage it even when his sister hit him round the head and his mum said ‘Oi, you, stop that – if there’s any hitting to do, I’ll do it.’

Mrs Newman complained to me as I left that she couldn’t let the family in the bathroom because they smelt and were too filthy. ‘Well, what do you expect, if you won’t let them at a bath?’ I said. And she said, ‘I know you have plenty of rooms in your house, Mrs Bligh. You take them instead if you think you would do better.’

He’d got stubble on his chin, Bernard, almost a beard. Hadn’t been in the house long enough to get a shave. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair ungreased and ruffled, skin pale as a potato root. I probably looked as bad. I’d been in the same clothes for days, my hair only combed with a quick flick from my fingers. We’d spent every night in that blinking shelter for what felt like for ever. Sleep? Wasn’t that something we used to do during a peaceful night?

When they’re close, bombs whistle. Their melody is a sharp descending note that only sounds right when it ends with a bang. Then everything you thought was solidly fixed to this earth suddenly takes flight, for just a second, and then is put back down – if you’re lucky in the same place. Breath is ripped from your lungs, your eyes bulge, your stomach squeezes its contents up or out, and your heart races so unfamiliar you think it a clockwork toy. I remember fairgrounds – the helter skelter, the switchback – paying good money to make my face blanch, my knuckles whiten. In those days, before the war, I thought it fun to be scared witless.

I knew it would be close by the whistle – clear as the kettle on my stove. Bernard turned the page of his paper, lifting his chin to read something at the top, his lips involuntarily parting with the effort. I couldn’t say I heard the bang, I was just weightless for a moment, my arms swimming in air. He was still reading when I landed back down. Still concentrating on the news when everything that used to stand silent around us burst with clatter. Shrapnel and who-knows-what pelting the shelter like hail. Only his upper lip stood firm. And I swallowed back the sick that came up into my mouth.

When his newspaper started to rustle I looked round for the source of the breeze. When it began flapping, as if it was trying to bring a fire to life, I realised Bernard was trembling. His fists, tight as a baby’s, were gripping the pages, screwing up the words so they were unreadable.

‘Are you all right, Bernard?’ I was expecting no more than a grunt in reply.

‘Queenie,’ he said, softly. ‘That’s the house.’ He gulped then, and grabbed for another breath that wasn’t there. ‘Father . . . Father . . . Father in the house . . . That’s the house . . . gone . . . Queenie . . . Queenie . . . Father . . . in the house . . .’

A drowning man could breathe easier. I went to take the paper from him but his grip was so tight I had to rip it from his hands. And he was left with fists still clenching bits of torn paper. ‘Calm down, Bernard.’

He was gasping now, his chest jumping hiccups, ‘We’re going to die . . . die . . . here . . . Father . . . that was the house . . .’

‘Bernard, listen, calm down. It’s not our house. It wasn’t that close. Listen, let me have a look,’ I said.

I was on my knees and only turned round to open the curtain at the entrance when he howled a mighty, red-blooded, full-bodied ‘No!’ He lunged for me, flinging his arms round my waist to drag me back, then he swaddled me in his arms popping any last breath out of me.

‘No . . . no . . . not you . . . no, never . . .’ He buried his head in my neck, shuffled his knees up round me until I was totally captured by him. And I could see the house as he held me there. A hulking black mount against the sky. Intact. I ran my eye over all its corners – every one present and correct. Arthur was under the bed – probably dirty, scared, but all right.