—7—
The story of the tiger distracted us for a time, but after an hour, I lost steam. The teapot had run dry, and we’d eaten all the biscuits. We fell silent, listening to the world beyond our little room. Whistling, distant booms, the rattle of guns and engines overhead.
Mother relentlessly knitted. Betty sniffled.
Peter paced the very small area available to him, raising the tension in the room.
He could hardly settle. His hands were shaking.
My pity was laced with fear—his demons could make him violent and cruel.
The presence of my mother ordinarily kept his temper in check, but these were extraordinary circumstances.
“I need a smoke,” he growled.
“Peter,” my mother said mildly. “It will no doubt be over soon. Just wait. Surely a cigarette isn’t worth dying for.”
He grunted, recommenced his pacing. Four steps to the far wall, four steps back.
Again.
For another hour, we huddled together, Betty curled against me, her body tensing every time we heard the whistle of a falling bomb and waited, waited, waited for it to land.
The sound of the explosion let us know how far or near it was.
Most of them farther. One or two nearby, the noise rattling the window glass, sending showers of dirt over our heads.
Mother brushed it from her shoulders. “We’ll need to cover the ceiling with cloth, I suppose.”
Just after six, the sustained song of the all-clear siren rang. Betty spoke for all of us when she patted her bosom and stood up eagerly. “I need the loo something fierce.”
My mother laughed, holding out a hand so Betty could help her up. “Indeed.”
Peter was already to the top of the stairs, and by the time I brought up the rear, he was nowhere to be seen.
“Betty,” I said, “perhaps we shall have sandwiches for our supper? Is there any bacon left this week?”
“Not a bit,” she said. “I have some tomatoes from the garden, and can fry some potatoes.”
“That sounds just right,” Mother said. She reached for the wall to take a breath. The ordeal had exhausted her.
“Come,” I said, catching her by the waist. “Let’s go sit while we wait.”
She didn’t protest, leaning on me as we made our way down the corridor. “I loved remembering the tiger,” I said in an upbeat tone.
“The summer we met the Singh family.” She settled in her chair. “Quite notable in your life, certainly.”
I deflected. “I’ll fetch a cup of tea.”
“Leave the sugar for someone else,” she said, but she sank against the chintz of the chair with a weary sigh, closing her eyes.
Betty sliced potatoes at the table, appearing to be fully restored. I said, “I’m going to make a pot of tea for Mother.”
She nodded, gesturing toward the box that held our ration.
The kettle was hot on the stove, the fire low but warm in the grate. What would happen if a bomb fell on the house? I wondered, but it was plain once I considered. The gas lines would break in the bombing, and there would be an explosion.
“Will you fetch a handful of parsley, Miss Elsie?”
“Of course.” I opened the back door, to head out to the garden. “Oh, my!” I cried. “Look! Betty, come look!”
She rushed over, knife in hand, and we stared agape at the southern horizon.
Great billows of black smoke clouded the sky, and all around the clouds was a deep-orange glaze.
“I reckon they’ve bombed the docks,” I said, and although we’d known it was likely coming, it was hard to adjust the mind to the reality.
Her family lived on the East End. “Do you want to go?” I asked. “Make sure your family is well?”
Tears welled in her eyes, and she nodded. “I would, please. I’ll make the dinner and then go on, if that’s all right.”
“Heavens, no. I’ll manage.”
She yanked off her apron, dropped the knife on the table with a clatter, and raced down the corridor.
Her coat was on a hook near the door, and I followed her out, to see the aftermath from this angle.
It was much calmer here, people in the streets returning from the Tube station, full of chatter and worry, comparing notes.
A car made its way down the street. Nothing appeared to be hit or on fire, but then we were a long way from the docks.
Mrs. Newsom, from two doors down, stopped at the foot of our steps. Her hat was askew, but her jacket was as tidy as ever. “Everyone all right in there, Elsie?”
“Yes, thank you. Do you need anything?”
She raised a hand as she walked on. Betty hurried away to the bus stop. Would buses run as normal? Would she be able to get through? I thought to call out to her, but she was too far away to hear. If a bus did not come, she would soon return.
I saw no sign of Peter. He’d likely made a beeline for the pub, and would be working his way into an obliterating drunk. Well, he could make his way home on his own tonight. I needed to tend to my mother.
By the time I brought the tea, she’d fallen asleep. I left it at her elbow and went back to the kitchen, turning on the radio for company. The announcer’s voice came through, a comforting ordinariness, and I found calm in slicing the robust potatoes.
Toward the end of the last war, when food had grown scarce in London, I’d retreated to our deserted family estate in Herewich, and learned how to grow a victory garden.
But that had been twenty years before and I hardly remembered any of it.
Luckily, Betty had been raised in the country.
She ordered the local man to build beds and dig them deep, augmenting with eggshells and coffee and other mysterious additions until we had the mix she pronounced ready.
The two of us pitched in to do the planting, while Mother had sat with us in the cool of the garden, enjoying the fresh air.
It had proved a soothing way to spend our time, digging and weeding, keeping anxiety at bay over the encroaching march of the Nazis, the air battles overhead, the heavy threat of bombings.
Awake too early over worry, I’d come outside and pull weeds and tuck up a tendril of beans, pluck snails from the tomatoes.
In the evenings, when dark thoughts of what might happen crept in to haunt me—how would I keep my mother safe?
What would happen to all of us?—I puttered again.
A weed, a handful of snails, a carrot, and I could breathe again.
While the potatoes fried, I stepped out the open back door to gather the parsley Betty had asked for.
Clouds of smoke still billowed against the horizon, but it was otherwise a mild evening, the drama over for the day.
From the earth seeped the reassuring scent of fecund summer.
I pinched parsley between my fingers, and the sharp green fragrance brought back that other summer when I had not been alone, when the war had taken so much, but delivered a blessing I could almost not grasp.
Closing my eyes to inhale it all, earth and herbs and carrots and the onset of evening, I was filled with longing.
The story of the tiger had called up my yearning for India, the smell of it, the feel of it enfolding me.
I wished for a forest that might hold a tiger, for a market alive with color and animals and bells, for elephants, for bowls of spice in many shapes and colors.
And as ever, I longed for the company of Tanveer, for his perceptive gaze, and gentle teasing, his questing mind and far-reaching ideas.
Standing there below the smoky sky that promised another long, exhausting war, I ached for a different life, one where we might have been able to live our days as husband and wife, and raise a family, and be happy.
But that was not the life we were given.
Alone in the garden, a wave of deep loneliness moved through me.
Abruptly, the air-raid sirens bleated their warning of incoming airplanes.
I jerked in alarm, dropping the herbs, and looked up, fear bolting through my chest. I ran for the house, pulled the potatoes off the burner on my way through to Mother, who stirred awake at the noise. “Do you think it’s an error?”
“I don’t know. It does seem odd that they would come back, doesn’t it? Surely they’d have to refuel?”
The sirens continued, up and down, up and down. Through the back door, I saw nothing amiss. “We can wait a little.” The stairs to the basement were close enough.
And then, on the horizon, I saw them. Lines of birds, so many birds.
But not birds, of course. Planes. “We need to go down,” I said. I closed the back door, and I helped Mother hobble back down the cellar stairs to the little couch and her basket of knitting. “I hope Betty’s made it home all right,” I said.
“Where’s Peter?” Mother asked.
“The pub, no doubt.” I shrugged. I deeply hoped he would stay there. “It’s just us now.”
“Poor Peter,” she said, taking up her needles. “His nerves have never been well, have they?”
“No.” He was better when he didn’t drink, and he’d left it alone for quite a long time, but had taken up the habit again when the Nazis invaded Paris. It could make him unstable and volatile, a complication we truly did not need at the moment.
Somewhere not far away a bomb exploded, and I yelped, covering my head instinctively. Some deeply uncharitable part of me hoped it was the pub, but of course, that would mean harm to people I genuinely liked, rather than just the one I wished to escape.
In the close cellar shelter, the waiting was both tedious and horrific.
I dozed at some point, the screen of my dreams flashing memories I would have gladly left behind, the look of the lamplit windows the night we heard that my best friend Nina’s brother had died in the Battle of the Somme; the searing cry that was torn from her throat.
In another flash, I saw myself on the train from Lucknow to Bombay, bound for the ship that would carry me back to England and the husband I did not want, weeping every tear that had ever been mine to own, knowing I could not shed one more once I arrived.
The porter brought me chai, milky and sweet, and a towel to absorb my tears—