by Graeme K. Talboys
Flickering sapphire light fluttered through the cabin and was gone. Metallic creaking sang counterpoint to the howl of the wind as the great frame of the airship torqued in the storm. In the shuddering darkness she could smell roses and sandalwood.
“Mum?”
But the only voices to be heard, drowning in the tempest, spoke words she seemed to know yet could not understand.
She called again. “Mum?”
Slipping across the dark space to the door, wondering why she was dressed, she stood and listened. The voices seemed further off, almost lost in the slow, scraping grind. Turning the handle she stepped out of the cupboard into the ruined house, a breeze cold on her face.
On the landing stood a tired looking young man. He smiled and set off down the stairs in clumsy fashion, smiled at her and set off downstairs, smiled at her. She smiled back and he set off downstairs, going clumsily with his makeshift crutch.
“Don’t go,” she tried to say, but her voice failed in her throat.
He smiled at her and set off downstairs.
Reluctant, she crept into a room off the landing and watched through the gaping space that was once a window as he hobbled along the front path of the house, across the pavement, and out into the road.
Peeling wallpaper flapped and rustled in the breeze. Floorboards creaked. A mistiness like the ragged tops of wind torn clouds threw her vision in and out of focus.
For a moment she thought she saw Ronnie Ollis down there on the road, but it was someone else, strutting and ranting miles below, so small, so close. And then the one-legged soldier smiled with such sadness in his eyes, just before the gun went off with a crack. She saw Thomas fall; saw Ronnie Ollis lying in the street.
Charlie woke. In the darkness where she lay, her eyes focussed on the pale patch by the vaulted ceiling. She tried to match it with the shape of her bedroom window but failed. In the darkness where she lay, she realised she must deal with the horrors of the nightmare alone.
Light flickered from the ripples on the lake, dancing diamond bright. Vegetable sellers’ boats moved silently through the last of the morning mist. The oars left swirling rings in the surface of the water, interlinked with the smaller ripples as droplets fell from the wooden blades.
Goats wandered past along their track, followed by a grinning boy. Sandalwood smoke hung in the air; sweet scent from the roses growing by the door of the bungalow; a hint of the clean empty smell of snow, blown in on a gentle, errant breeze from the high mountains.
Accompanied by the growl of distant thunder a woman moved, distraught. She searched each room of the small bungalow with increasing desperation, a silver form flashing in the storm light as it swung wildly from the end of the chain wrapped round her hand. Tears streaked her pale, drawn face.
“Mum?”
These visions circled her to morning’s shore, where she was stranded on waking, nursing a deep, inner emptiness. Holding the corner of the pillow in her clenched fist, she cried herself to sleep once more. When she woke again, bright daylight filled the small, high window.
After playing watch the spider in the small toilet across the passage, she ran back into her room and had a thorough wash, head to toes. She sorted out some fresh clothes and squeezed into them, conscious of her bony wrists beyond the end of her sleeves. Something really would need to be done about that soon.
Over a bowl of watery porridge, she looked at the box that Alice had given her the evening before. Shaped like a flat egg, it fit snugly into the palm of her hand. It was made of silver, now tarnished almost black where it showed, and was coated with a rich, green enamel. On one edge was a tiny hinge and on the other a small notch, like Mr Carberry’s pocket watch.
With the washing-up out of the way, she tidied the room, glancing at the box on the table every time she passed. She was determined to leave it unopened. After all, there might be nothing inside, although something clicked when it was shaken. Perhaps, she decided, she would polish it before she went out.
Mixing a small pinch of salt with a few drops of the vinegar she had rescued on one of her journeys back to Nan’s, she made a paste. Using one of the rags discovered in the cupboard when she first arrived, she began, with care, to rub the little box. It rattled in sly invitation.
The tarnish faded to leave the silver casing bright and smooth. There was also a delicate tracery of silver in the enamel that had not been visible before. Charlie held it up to the light and admired the beautiful gift, resolving to go back to the warehouse to thank Alice and ask her just who it was who said she should have such a beautiful thing.
Using the blade of Thomas’s penknife, she pried it open. The hinges were stiff with disuse, so it would not open very far. Just enough for two objects to fall out onto the table top. One dropped with a click. The other rolled slowly and with a wobble to the edge from where it fell to the tiled floor with a metallic clatter.
She slid off the backless chair and squatted down to peer under the table. In the gloom, she could just make out what seemed to be a coin. She reached under and gingerly flipped it out into the open with the tip of a finger. Picking it up, she placed it on the table and sat down again to inspect her treasures.
It was not a coin, she saw, but a fairground token; dull bronze, about the size of a ha’penny. On one side it had the name Simmons on a roundabout where the horses would be. The other side had a thin, sad face with a large tear on its left cheek. It was just like the white faced men she had seen at Southend.
Putting it face down on the table with a shiver, she turned her attention to the other object – a key. Small, with a hollow shaft, it was a bit like the key for her trunk. She frowned over it for a while, but came to no conclusion.
Instead she took it across the room and tried it in the lock on the front of the large metal box. It was slightly too big, but at least she knew what sort of lock it might open.
Back at the table, she put the key next to the token and looked at the box again. There seemed to be a hinged frame within as if to hold something in place, but it would not move. She would need some oil. For the time being, she put the token and key back into the box and snapped it shut, placing it in the biscuit tin with her other treasures.
Out of the breeze and with warm bricks at her back, the sun still on her legs, Charlie looked down onto the site with sleepy eyes. On the far side, where the ground had long since been cleared, a mass of fireweed had thrown up spindly spikes that swayed in the breeze. Closer to, the remains of a block of flats surrounded its untouched central courtyard.
The great pile of rubble on which Charlie rested had once been a factory and offices. She had spotted it on her second run of the day, taking food back to her sanctuary. It had been cordoned off as unsafe, although she had grown to know piles of rubble well enough to know it was stable. She decided the barriers were there to deter looters.
After cadging a hot pie from a WVS van, she came back in the late afternoon to have a proper look. Slipping on to the site via the bombed out flats, she had climbed slowly up to a sunny nook. It was a good place to wait until it was safer to start exploring.
Finding the overturned lorry earlier in the day had been a bonus. A sewer weakened by bombing had collapsed beneath it. Crates of vegetables had spilled across the pavement and been picked empty within minutes before the police could arrive. Charlie had filled two string bags with potatoes and staggered all the way back to her cellar.
Perhaps the enamelled box had brought her luck, because her second trip out had seen second helpings at a new rest centre, as well as half a cabbage and two onions that had started to sprout. And the sunshine certainly seemed to have brightened everyone’s mood.
Knowing that she might be out after dark, she had put on the Guthrie over the top of her coat and made her way back to the ruins, thinking all the while of how she might get new clothes and some oil. She was still thinking about this as she sat and dozed in the warmth.
A drop of oil, or maybe a bit or margarine, would be easy. Clothes were another thing. She did not want to take them from anyone else as they were hard enough to come by as it was. And to get some from the WVS you had to swap. And to do that, you needed to be with an adult. Besides, she had nothing that was worth swapping.
A shout woke her. The sun had gone from her legs, but still shone, casting long, deep shadows across the courtyard below. For a moment, she thought she had been seen, but swiftly realised that it was the noise of a group of children as they played. Their shouts echoed around the arena with a hollow quality.
Yawning, she shuffled forward to watch. A scrum of small boys chasing a ball around were making the most noise, but there were others groups: girls were skipping with long ropes and chanting rhymes, “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground”; others played hopscotch on chalked out grids; some chased about playing tig.
Scattered amongst the noisy throng that reminded Charlie of the playground at her school, there were the inevitable quiet groups and loners. One stood blowing large soap bubbles that drifted gently, shimmering in the evening light and vanishing as they touched the ground.
Charlie shivered as she watched, bemused, wondering why the adults she could see walking by weren’t telling the children to get off the bomb site. It was going home time and there were plenty of them about. Even a policeman passed by without comment. And that made Charlie frown and look much closer.
That was when she began to see the things that had already made her flesh tingle. For a start, there were the children around the edge. She was sure they had not been there when she first started watching. Now they stood on the rubble amongst the fireweed and looked on, silent, unsmiling, and unmoving. Every so often, a small group would climb down and join in, although the courtyard did not seem to be any more crowded.
Then there was the game of football. Her eye was caught again by the furious, interlacing movement. None of the boys seemed to be shouting or laughing, too intent on the ball, but she could hear their voices.
Back and forth they went, weaving in and around the others, surging first toward one goal and then back toward the other. The ball unexpectedly shot up and sideways and two boys on the fringe of the game ran towards it from opposite ends of the courtyard, their eyes upward.
Charlie wondered who would get there first and quickly realised they were going to collide. She tensed, waiting for the crunch, seeing others converge on the spot as well. And then the ball bounced and the two boys were continuing on their way.
Open mouthed, Charlie stared at the spot where there should be a heap of groaning boys. She frowned. They must have passed each other very closely, but to Charlie it looked like they had gone straight through each other.
And that was when she finally noticed the late afternoon shadows. Every heap, every brick, every roof tile, and every chunk of concrete was brightly lit on one side by the deep red, setting sun. Every heap, every brick, every roof tile, and every chunk of concrete threw a long, sharp, dark shadow in the opposite direction. But the children had none.
Moving slowly closer into the wall that sheltered her, Charlie looked carefully to be sure she wasn’t just imagining it, that it wasn’t just a trick of the light. But there was no trick. Not one of the children below cast a shadow. And as she looked, she realized one of the children was watching her.