Chapter 13
As they emerged on to the street in daylight, Tom saw his new home for the first time.
What struck him was how strange it was to have white houses – white showed the dirt, most dreadfully, and these houses were most dreadfully dirty.
Something about the white stucco with the black railings, like skeletons, terrified him.
Uncle Henry tapped at the railings with his walking stick.
‘What happened to the missing houses?’ said Tom, trying to be polite about the state of the street as they walked along its curved outer pavement, towards a larger road.
He peered at his uncle as they walked along together.
He wasn’t used to having relatives. This new uncle was, Tom thought, rather magnificent, from his battered deerstalker and his worn dove-grey soft wool jumper to his wide tweed trousers.
He was tall, and slender as a reed, lifting his hat to passing matrons on the other side, raising his eyebrows at a fluffy grey-and-white cat winding its way along the railings as though they and it were magnetic. Walking beside him, Tom felt proud.
‘Were you here in the war, Uncle Henry? What was it like?’ Tom mimed with a gun. ‘Pop! Pop! Ha!’
‘Ah! parts of it.’
‘When did you meet my father?’
Uncle Henry ran his stick lightly along the railings.
‘Used to come to Sevenstones, the place in Wiltshire. Fine fellow, your pa, bravest of the brave. We all fell for him, Irene most of all, of course. I remember the first time he walked in. Bam. Right in the middle of the hairiest fighting in the skies, 1940 this was, felt it was all over at times and in steps a chap straight off 87 Squadron, fresh from shooting down five Huns in one night. That was the night that started to turn the tide – I remember it well – and he was in the thick of it, your pa.’ Henry gave a shout of laughter at the memory.
‘He breezed in, you know, carrying a bottle of champagne he’d begged off a barmaid in a pub.
Had his uniform on, so they knew where he’d been.
I should think they’d have given him the whole damned pub if he’d asked,’ said Uncle Henry ruminatively.
‘That’s your father. Sell water to fish. Life and soul of the party. You know.’
‘Not really,’ said Tom cheerfully, skipping alongside him, hands in pockets, having forgotten all about his vow not to think about his father. Hearing about him from other people wasn’t painful, it was marvellous. ‘We don’t have any friends. And we never had a party.’
‘Never had a party? What rot. Don’t believe it.’
‘There’s no room, honest. And Dad didn’t like visitors. If they knocked, he wouldn’t let them in. So they stopped knocking.’
‘How extraordinary. Didn’t you mind?’
‘Oh.’ It hadn’t occurred to Tom to care one way or the other.
He was happy with his father, and that was that.
‘No, not at all.’ And then he felt the dizziness that had struck him earlier in his room creeping across him, the sense that if he didn’t block everything out he might start to feel how much he missed him.
He gritted his teeth, then said, ‘Uncle Henry, what’s Sevenstones like? ’
‘Old tumble-down cottage, size of a shoebox. Father bought it to paint. He went through an ancient history phase, very into Constable’s Stonehenge and true England, druids and all that rot.
Some chap he met on a train sold it to him.
Supposed to be on the site of some burial chamber, not that we ever found any gold crowns or any such thing, but there are seven stones circling the place, rather jolly.
Still, on Midsummer he’d waft round the garden and we got into the habit of it too, quite fun, thirty people watching the sunrise together, it rises just so – between the hills –’ He held his hands about a foot apart.
‘Then we’d all go orf, to get shot.’ He blinked rapidly.
‘Last one out had to clean up and leave a bottle of champagne on the mantelpiece for the next lot. Gate locked, key under the stone.’
‘But … could anyone go there?’
‘Yes, he gave it to us to use in the war. We painted it, Jenny, Irene and I, great fun. Dragged some furniture up from town and had a phone put in; I think someone even got the Yanks to pay for it, Special Ops, you know. That was it. Then it was open house, you see, it means anyone and everyone,’ said Henry.
‘Anyone … glamorous fighter pilots like your pa and his RAF pals, GIs and WAACs, girls serving in Fighter Command, those American drivers, Leila and Katty and Teddy … anyone who could get to the place by car – anyone and everyone was welcome, especially if you had a pash on someone, a trip to Sevenstones usually helped things along, what? Now here –’
They had turned into a narrow road lined with shops, in front of which were stalls selling fruit and vegetables, immaculately stacked together as though at a slight touch the potatoes and cabbages would become dislodged from their display and roll down the road.
‘This is Portobello Road. Antiques here; fruit and veg there. Listen to me, young Tom. This is your patch. Don’t go further north than Blenheim Crescent, you understand?
Up there. And behind you’ – he jabbed the stick back behind them towards the crescent – ‘don’t go west of Portland Road.
Just stay here, the streets around here, and you’ll be fine. ’
‘Why?’ said Tom, who was used to roaming where he liked, when he liked, for hours at a time.
‘Unsavoury lot over there, and up there,’ said Uncle Henry.
‘Times are changing. Not our kind of people. Didn’t used to be like this.
Before the war …’ He trailed off. ‘You don’t want to go mixing with them, the poor’ – he jabbed his thumb in the opposite direction – ‘or the Blacks. Understand? Stick to our patch.’
Tom didn’t understand, simply because in his life so far he had not really encountered either class or race, at least so far as he was aware.
He knew that Donald Murray, who had been at Gatehouse School until last year, was to be a sir one day, but Donald Murray was a fool who didn’t know how to play catapult games and ran to his father when he was called names.
But so much of what Henry or Jenny said didn’t seem to make sense, so yet again he nodded.
‘Understand,’ he said, and held his uncle’s hand as they crossed over the road. ‘What about Mr Smithers – is he poor or Black?’
‘He’s trade; it’s different,’ said Uncle Henry.
He waved his hand airily and took a slim flask out of his pocket, one which Tom recognized from the breakfast table, and took a large gulp.
‘And, as for the business about Sevenstones and the parties, the Americans and whatnot – look, see, don’t mention any of that to Jenny, I beg of you.
Fearfully sensitive about some things, my Jen, not up to questioning.
’ He pushed gingerly at the peeling grey door of the antiques shop. ‘Anyone about?’ he called.
‘I say,’ said a quiet voice, a woman’s. ‘Henry dear, how could you possibly have known I was alone?’
‘Ha!’ said Henry hastily. He turned to his nephew, who stood on the threshold, and gently nudged him back outside. ‘Why don’t you push off, what? Have a wander round, find your bearings.’ He took five shillings from his wallet and handed it to him.
‘But I don’t know how to –’ said Tom, but his uncle’s expression had rearranged itself. Henry stared at him quite blankly, making a shooing motion, as the door of the shop shut with a slam and a frenzied jangling of a bell and Tom found himself, for the first time, alone in London.
He had never had five bob. He so rarely saw money, his father being paid in favours or food, that he wasn’t really sure what to do with it.
He felt like that Midas fellow they’d learned about in school.
Five whole bob! He tucked it carefully into his pocket and headed north up Portobello Road; and, when he reached Blenheim Crescent, continued on past it, ignoring his uncle’s instructions.
A large grey scruffy dog trotted by, barging past Tom and growling, and Tom jumped out of the way: he didn’t like dogs.
The rain was coming down harder now, and the carts were shutting up.
On the corner back towards Ladbroke Grove, a blank expanse caught his eye.
A square hole in the ground, a few yards below street level and filled with the most extraordinary collection of bricks, dust, iron; small hills and cathedrals lay within it, arched windows with no glass; and, holding it all together, dusty rubble like snow, only it was rust-coloured snow, brown and black.
Some children were there, climbing in and out of the half-walls, the alcoves and pitted basements; from the last, strange roots with the beginnings of leaves sprang forth.
It was the bomb site Jenny had mentioned.
The children were calling to each other, laughing and chatting.
One of them, a boy about Tom’s age, threw something to the other; it missed him and he swore loudly, then disappeared, as if vanishing back into the one part of the wall still standing.
Then, a second or two later, he reappeared and opened a front door.
They carried on laughing. One of them pretended to shoot the other, who pretended to fall down dead.
Their accents were so strong that Tom couldn’t understand them. He edged a little closer. ‘Your mum bought it here!’ one of them shouted at one of the older boys, who stood at a distance, arms folded, face red. ‘She’s right under here, ain’t she? You listening to me?’