‘Mum! Mum!’ said the little boy.
In another moment her hand was being clutched by a very small one, whose owner said, ‘’Urry, can’t you?’ and tugged hard.
He had a little torch in his hand and its faint gleam showed a green baize door.
‘We’d better look sharp,’ said the small boy, and Miss Ranskill, her hand still held in his insistent clutch, followed as he bumped against it with his shoulder. She dreaded what she might see the other side – murder, perhaps, or torture; but there was only an empty stone-flagged passage with another door at the end.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, but the only answer was – ‘Come on.’
Then the child opened the other door, switched on a light, and began to plop bare-foot down a flight of stone stairs.
Miss Ranskill closed the door behind her and followed him.
A square case, dangling from a strap, was slung over his shoulders. He was wearing blue-and-white striped pyjamas and his gold-streaked hair was ruffled at the back of his head.
Now they were in the cellar, but it was not at all an ordinary sort of cellar. There was a strip of carpet on the floor. Three camp-beds, each with a bundle of rugs, were stretched along the length of one wall. There was a paraffin stove and a little oil-cooker and a couple of deck-chairs, in one of which was a rather grubby Teddy Bear.
A set of shelves by another wall held a row of books, a row of tins and a white-painted box with a red cross on it. Another shelf made a home for saucepans, a frying-pan, a kettle, crockery and a teapot.
There were candles and a box of matches on a table.
The little boy curled himself into one of the deck-chairs, nuzzled his face against the Teddy Bear and remarked:
‘We’re in time tonight. Mum’ll go to the pictures once too often.’
There were traces of tears on his face, his eyes were shining and a tiny pulse beat under the blue veining of his temple. But now that his crying was over, he was perfectly assured and at home. If he had rubbed his torch and summoned a wailing banshee to appear in a blaze of blue light, Miss Ranskill would not have been more amazed, for, to her, this cellar was an Aladdin’s Cave of delight. If it could have been moved to the island, she and the Carpenter would have had all they could possibly have needed. Here was simplicity and everything that was necessary – all the furnishing in perfection for a desert island.
‘Better light the stove, ’adn’t you, and a candle case the lights go?’
The striking of a match and the shielding of its wavering flame was better to Miss Ranskill than all the electric light switches in the world. She felt a sense of ritual as she lit the stove. Now she was compensating herself for all the fire-lighting struggles on the island. She set match to candle, too, before asking, ‘Why should the lights go out?’
‘Power Station might cop it,’ answered the boy. Then he added conversationally, ‘We brought down two Fokker-wolfs Thursday – that was the night our own flak killed Mr Coppinger.’
‘Oh!’ Once again Miss Ranskill was made aware of the new English language. She asked another question.
‘What was the noise – that awful whining noise before we came down here?’
The boy fidgeted and rubbed his chin against the Teddy Bear’s head. His face flushed as he answered, ‘I’ve not created for a long time now, but I’d bin dreaming.’
‘Created?’ repeated Miss Ranskill. Was the boy a ventriloquist? No, it was impossible that that eerie outpouring of misery could have proceeded from his small throat.
‘Kick up a row,’ he explained. ‘But ’Arold woke me up and I’d bin dreaming, and I didn’t know if Mum was in. I knew the doctor ’ad a went out some time since. I’d heard the night-bell.’
‘Who’s Harold?’ asked Miss Ranskill.
‘’Arold’s our siren – the one that sounded first. The second one we ’eard was Minnie from Larkford.’
‘Sirens?’ Miss Ranskill’s mind was snatching at a story – the story of a cruel-faced beauty luring sailors to the rocks. So might a siren have wailed across the water enticing the brave to the sound of distress.
‘Air-raid warnin’s – you know.’
‘Do you often have them here?’ She emphasised the last word as disguise for her ignorance.
‘Not so much as we did, but they mean something now. Early on when we did ’ear the siren we didn’t get bombs. When we did get bombs we didn’t get the siren.’
He was about eight or nine years old, Miss Ranskill decided, terribly wise in his pathetic generation. His face was grey with sleeplessness, and his hair clung limply to his forehead. He shivered a little, and she changed the subject.
‘What have you got in that box round your neck?’
‘Go on! You know!’
‘I don’t.’
‘Go on with you!’
‘Show me then?’
Grubby fingers groped at a fastening and dragged out something with rubber straps. Then with a duck of the head and a jerk of the fingers the little boy was transformed into a pig-faced monster, a sort of synthetic goblin. His voice sounded muffled as he spoke.
‘Mrs Mallison always makes me bring it down in case of leaks from the gas. She don’t think ’Itler’ll use gas ’cept in the big towns. They mike us tike ’em to school though, just in case.’
Rows of pig-faced goblins paraded before Miss Ranskill’s mind’s eye – a ballet of child-goblins dancing to the tune that Hitler played and capering to the death-call of Harold and Minnie, the sirens. So this was England now, and she had looked forward to picking primroses.
The child pulled off the pig-face and began to stuff it into the cardboard container.
‘I’ve a tin ’at too,’ he told her. ‘Bought it at Woolworth’s last Christmas.’
‘Do you take that to school too?’
‘No, that’s only a bit of fun. It might keep a bit of shrapnel off of my ’ead though. D’you think there’ll be bombs tonight?’
His eyes darkened slightly.
‘I–’ said Miss Ranskill, helpless against the look that awarded her a false omnipotence. ‘I – surely not tonight.’ There was pleading in her voice too.
‘I don’t mind all that much. After there’s been bombs, Mrs Mallison gives us cups o’ cocoa and biscuits.’ He glanced at the row of tins on the shelf, and went on reminiscently.
‘Arter we was bombed out in Plymouth that time, they give us bully beef and cocoa made with Nestlé’s. You don’t get that now – not unless you’ve been bombed out.’
‘Don’t you?’
Miss Ranskill was remembering the iron tonics of her childhood and the rewarding chocolate ‘to take the taste away’. Was bully beef just compensation for the iron tonic of the bombs?
‘I liked Plymouth better’n this. When the blitzing started we used to go and sleep out in the fields all night, and walk back in the mornin’.’
‘Who did?’
‘Most of us along our street. I used to get a ride on top of a pram sometimes. It was all right in the summer. Then our street got an ’it. Our kitten and me Aunty got killed and Mum said she ’adn’t the ’eart to get any more furniture together, so we come ’ere. I missed the kitten.’
Having given his wordless picture of ‘Aunty’, the boy continued:
‘Worst time was when they got the school. We was all right though, me and about fifteen more, but some in my standard was killed.’
He broke off and his knuckles whitened as he clutched the Teddy Bear.
‘D’you think there’ll be bombs tonight?’
Miss Ranskill looked at the ceiling for answer, but found none there and none in her mind either. She asked another question.
‘Did you always live in Plymouth?’