Intervals of Hope, page 13
Dozens of dwellings had crumpled to the ground.
When we arrived back at the doorstep of our house at 21 Grove Street, we stood there for a long time, staring into the pile of bricks, dust, and rubble, knowing what was once there but attempting to contemplate what was now here before us.
The home for which my father and I had worked for so long had been suddenly and violently obliterated.
Even though I had read of such destruction in my father’s war journal, it never seemed real—just words on a page—until now. With this mess before me, I wondered why my father’s writings always seemed so calm and free of dread. And why the terror and anger that certainly must have taken hold of him never came through in the text.
All I knew now was that we had to get away from here.
We went to the local train station to discover that the northbound train to Cuffley Station was no longer running. A conductor said that several locations along the main line had been bombed, and no service would be offered until repairs were made. We sent a telegram to Uncle Devon letting him know about the house, that we were staying in the Tilbury station underground, and that we would be in Northaw as soon as we could. We returned every day to check the progress of the increasing number of railway line repairs, surveying the disintegrating city as we did. Our nights passed immersed in the delightfully potent stench of faeces, surrounded by the faces of strangers trying to sleep despite the rumbling of bomb blasts on the streets above.
As I lay awoke one evening listening to the explosions, I was preoccupied with thoughts of my father’s meaningless death. The managers and owners of the mine had determined that 40 pounds constituted the worth of a man. I had escaped with a disfigured face and a hobble in my step. I envisioned Mum holding the check in her hands, and Albert attempting to hug her, wondering how long we would be here in this place ruminating about such repugnant reminiscences.
Families huddled together all around me, sleeping or chatting to protect possessions and food from pickpockets and the eyes of rats that glinted back from the darkness.
Once we could get away, our family would finally be together in Northaw, with Uncle Devon as a surrogate father, and for reasons that no one would have wanted to contemplate. Glaring back at those tiny eyes, I fell asleep.
15
I hadn’t slept very much for two days, and so I had fallen asleep without thinking. Just as I began to sleep, after what might have been an hour, there was a loud bang and a shell burst right over top of me. It was no good way to wake up; I’ll tell you that…
A thunderclap came, shaking the ground above, arousing me from slumber. Along with the blast came a gaunt man approaching me who stared back with a face reminiscent of my father’s. He was calling Mum’s name. Unshaven and dirty, his clothes were dishevelled.
Uncle Devon greeted me, smiling briefly before suggesting that I not awaken Mum and Ian who were still somehow sleeping on the floor.
“I got your Ma’s telegram saying where you were,” he said. “Cable Street’s out. Hit tonight. Stepney’s been hit, too.” His voice echoed throughout the cavern, and, when he stopped, someone coughed. Others could be heard faintly whispering.
“There’s pamphlets going around,” I said quietly. “Talk about what’s been bombed and it causes nothing but panic, and everybody’s terrified enough… if you start telling people that they have nowhere to live but here in the underground, well—”
“You know my old lorry that was in the barn? It’s dead now, but it got me five miles north of here, to a crater where the road was. I walked by the train station. Northbound trains are running.”
“We’ve been waiting for a train to Cuffley Station.”
“You’ll be waiting quite some time, by my guess.”
Devon beckoned me to follow him. Walking away from Mum and Ian, we shuffled over to a lit area near the edge of the platform. The smell of faeces and urine wafted up from below.
“France, Norway and Denmark have surrendered,” he said, coughing. “German troops are moving in on our Channel Islands.”
“We have to get back to Northaw.”
“To blazes with Northaw. You’re all coming to Canada with me.”
“Canada? What about your farm?”
“Your great-grandmother, she lives in a small town in Ontario. Your father grew up there, you know.”
“I know, but we’re not going, not now.”
I moved away from the platform’s edge.
“Look at this place,” he said, following me. “You want to stay here? The trains heading south are running, probably not for long. A ship is leaving out of Portsmouth tomorrow.”
“We can get back to Northaw easier than hopping across the sea.”
“There are a dozen children living on our farm. And you’ve seen the streets. The Germans are coming. Soon they’ll be in our Channel Islands, then on to the coast, then inland. Then, they’ll chase us out of sap. You heard what they did in France, Norway, and Denmark. Blitzkrieg, they call it. Lightning war. Attacking by ground, and from the air, at the same time.”
“You’re going all to pieces.”
“It’s already started, and I’m not waiting around to see it finished. The same as your Mum kept you and your brother away from the mines for so long to protect you, she’ll want to keep you away from England for the same reason.”
Another blast shook the ceiling above. Devon led us back to Mum and Ian, who were still curled up on the floor. Mum looked up, and then rose to stand beside us.
“Devon,” she said, smiling as she embraced him.
“I’m going away to my Gram’s home,” he said. “I want you, Nicholas, and Ian to come.”
“To Canada?”
“Yes. She’s alone, now that Grampa’s gone. She’s not faring well. It’s a good time to leave. Good for everyone. I brought some money for our passage.”
“It’s a fine idea,” she said, as though trying to convince herself. “We’ll leave as soon as we can. But what of your farm?”
“It’s not safe there, or anywhere here.”
“And yet children are being evacuated there,” I said. “Some kids are looking after the place now.”
We huddled together on the floor to sleep, the family cat frantically poking along the edge of the platform for mice. Our only possession, the small pile of bills for passage to Canada, which Devon failed to mention was gathered through my years of work at the mines, was guarded by everyone squeezing in together.
Early the next morning, I went alone to the British Museum before anyone was awake. On the way, atop one of the masses of debris, I found a screwdriver and a hammer in amongst other tools, promptly placing them into my jacket pocket.
The trees lining Great Russell Street were mostly gone, along with several portions of the street, and the heavy iron gates were lying on the curbside. Walking between the colossal Roman columns and up the twelve wide Portland steps, I found that the main doors to the museum were closed. No one was about. A chain and padlock were tied tightly around the door handles.
Placing the screwdriver through the eye of the padlock and leveraging against the door, I hammered down hard. After a few attempts the lock fell apart, and the chain came rattling to the ground. The main doors creaked opened, and I was inside.
There were crates strewn everywhere, some still in the process of being assembled. Only a few paintings remained on the walls. The exhibits had all been partially dismantled. Sunlight filtered in through a part of the museum beside the Reading Room, where the outline of an unexploded bomb sat ominously silent among the rubble.
Walking carefully past a grey tailfin and over to the exhibit on trench warfare, I found the exhibit was not yet packaged for shipment. Producing the hammer, I smashed the glass and retrieved my father’s letters, medals, a photograph of him in uniform, and some of Pa’s other memorabilia from the war. Large sheets of brown paper were in a nearby crate along with some lengths of string. Carefully wrapping my father’s former possessions, as I had watched the butcher do at the market innumerable times, I tied the package tightly with string. No one saw me as I walked out of the main entrance, replaced the chain and broken padlock, and continued down Great Russell Street, smiling at the parcel under my arm.
As the train to Portsmouth swayed and groaned back and forth along the tracks, the arid landscape made me recall my only memory of Great Granny. She had come over from Canada on a boat when I was very young, staying for a month while my brother and I recovered from the measles. She tried to teach us shorthand and played cribbage with us, and read us books. I still remembered seeing her off at the docks in Portsmouth, wondering, as the boat departed, how she was apparently immune to catching the disease Mum had said was so contagious.
“Why’s Great Granny living in Canada if she was born in Ireland?” Ian asked.
“The Canadian government gave free land to attract immigrants, decades ago,” Devon explained, “the only condition was to build a house there and farm the land.”
“I would’ve taken the whole country,” I said, to which Ian agreed.
Mum, who had her arm around Ian, stroked the gleaming black cat on her lap and peered out at the blurring landscape.
“We’re running away, though.” I said. “We should be staying here to fight.”
“You can’t fight bombs,” Devon said. “And these Germans are taking over. Our family is together. Now there’s something to fight for. A new start for all of us. No turning back.”
The dock at Portsmouth was overcrowded with families: men, women, and wailing children departing together, others bidding farewell, all beneath seagulls probing for food.
We ascended the platform, and an hour later, thick ropes attaching the British cargo ship Luffworf to the dock were untied and thrown aboard. As we began walking around the deck, the vessel slowly pulled away from shore.
An assemblage of people lingered on the docks, continuing to wave until they were too small to be seen. Waves crashed and pounded against the doddering vessel’s sides, the wind and cries of the family cat howling in my ears.
After two weeks at sea, up on deck for some air to alleviate my queasy stomach, I overheard one of the passengers talking about a U-boat that had torpedoed and sunk a British civilian liner, also headed to Canada, only three days ahead of us.
Eighty-three children were killed, along with two hundred and eleven passengers and crew who had been evacuated from England.
“You feeling any better?” Mum asked as I arrived back in the cabin.
I didn’t respond.
“What’s troubling you?” she asked.
“Our house in London, flattened,” I said. “Seasickness. Wondering why we’re off to Canada. Word up on deck is a German U-boat sank a British civilian ship three days ahead of us.”
“Oh, is that all?” she replied.
I spent the remainder of the trip with an unsettled stomach, not only from the effects of the rolling sea, but from trying to forget my terror that the ship might go down.
After our arrival in Canada, while clutching on to my father’s wartime journal on the train from Halifax, I grasped that I had run away from my own country during a time of war when I was nearly of the age to enlist. My country was in danger of being invaded, and the capital was being bombed. Pa had never seen such aggression toward English territory in the Great War, and he would have been ashamed of my actions now.
Our family is together. Now there’s something to fight for, Devon had said. A new start for all of us. No turning back.
Meanwhile, my country was on the other side of the ocean, waiting in expectation for the courageous to defend her.
16
The town of Khartum in Ontario, Canada, was named in honour of Ottawa Valley voyageurs in the 1860’s who navigated from Alexandria, Egypt up the Nile in a failed attempt to rescue Charles Gordon, a British war hero in Khartoum, Sudan. Here in Khartum in Canada, news of the fighting was everywhere. I found some books in the house, which I didn’t have the stomach to read: one called Men of Iron, with a cover depicting a painting of a proud knight perusing the landscape, mounted on a strong horse, as peasants cowered beneath him; and a book about deserters executed in the field during the Great War. My mother had a collection of romance novels as well as some travel and gardening books. Great Granny had a collection of Tennyson’s poems, and she chastised me for cracking the spines, explaining that she had owned these books since childhood, and they were the only remembrances she had from her mother who died young. Great Granny did not express what I had perceived, that she had maintained the books over the decades in impeccable condition as a memento to what she might have considered an implacable, though inadvertent abandonment, that which her husband was also so recently guilty of.
My father’s journal was more enticing than any of these, although I refused to crack that spine. I tucked his army photographs and war journal away in my drawer.
As she had done in London so long ago, my mother tuned in to the wireless newscasts every night, only these broadcasts were grainy and barely audible.
“Countries such as England continue to fight,” Mum said one night after the newscast as I stood over the sink, handing her a washed plate.
Ian was sitting at the table with Great Granny, completing a crossword puzzle that she had made for him, while Devon was outside tending to the animals.
“Other countries are occupied,” Mum continued, placing the plate in the drying rack. “Or waiting for—”
“War!” Ian interrupted, shouting excitedly before filling in the puzzle.
“Waiting to see what’s happening next,” she concluded, as though insinuating that men such as my father had the courage to fight, while others such as Devon and I were idle spectators simply awaiting its conclusion.
I read a portion of Pa’s diary that night before tucking it away in my drawer again, recollecting the life story of a man who, at the instigation of the last war, had decided of his own accord to sign up as one of the first Canadians over to the battlefields and one of the last to return, marching all the way to the Rhine at the end of the entire mess.
Devon would listen to none of my complaints or wishes, and he disregarded any news of the war, or Mum’s impressions of them. He had seemed content to run away from England, just as he was pleased to stay away from any news of the war in this isolated place, and as such, he must have wished that the ears of other members of the household, and the community, were similarly closed.
In mid-December of 1940, a family I did not recognize walked down the main street of Khartum.
We all peered out the window at the three daughters and their parents, a raggedy, unkempt bunch with tattered clothes, walking down the white, snow-lined street. The parents had their heads down and their hands clasped tightly together, as if humiliated at having to return. The three daughters darted their heads around nervously, cognizant that everyone in the town was staring at them.
“The Frances family,” Great Granny said, looking at me. “They left Khartum years ago. Their oldest daughter, Jane, she is about your age. When they moved away, she was a girl with dark pigtails and a dirty face.”
The townspeople seemed somehow pleased in their animated conversations, almost proud of this family’s apparent disgrace; watching what might be construed as their rationale to remain in Khartum, while a failed escape attempt now paraded down the street before them.
“Some families try, but cannot flee this place,” Great Granny said, removing a jar of pickles from the cupboard.
“One day soon, this town will be abandoned,” Mum replied as she set plates on the table. “Gone to the mice and the weeds.”
“They’re already building a town of their own,” I said. Mum smiled. “They’ll really spruce the place up.”
“Some of us, though,” Great Granny replied, “like the Frances family, have nowhere else to go.”
The oldest daughter in the family seemed familiar, as though I had seen her before. But that couldn’t be. As she walked by, I scrutinized her face. Carrying a basket of dried flowers, she had iridescent azure eyes, the eyes of an angel, which seemed to heighten the image of whom I thought she was.
This woman partially hidden beneath a thick jacket and fur-lined hood had the elegance of a screen siren without the makeup, what they called a natural beauty. She was a younger and more unrefined version of the actress who played Violet at the Duke and Duchess Theatre in London.
Now, this rendering of Violet paraded down the street every day to buy milk from the McIntosh family. She wore dried flowers in her hair and was always smiling. I watched her carrying jugs of milk from inside our front window over the coming days, imagining that she was walking across the stage instead.
I approached her one day the same as I had approached Violet and the sham Lieutenant beside the Wellington Arch in London, as though she was a sick or wounded animal.
Sure, I could come close, but I needed to know where to escape if confronted. And I turned the left side of my face away from her, so she would not see the permanent record of my accident in the mines.
This time, though, I would start by providing some arbitrary observation about her mannerisms: a comment I would make about her appearance, perhaps, or maybe some feminine flaw I had noticed that I could bring attention to, and somehow turn into a compliment about beauty being distinctive and individual; the way my father had coached me in the pub one day after work in South Leeds about how get a girl interested. Before I received this advice, I had utilized this technique to win Violet over at the Wellington Arch. The method did work.
She approached me cautiously too, holding a jug of milk and seemingly unaware of why this young man had interrupted her path.
“Why’re you turning away?” she asked, smiling, her voice scratchy and hoarse. “I see your scars, don’t be ashamed. My father was injured in the Great War. He has scars on his face, too. Says they didn’t pin a medal on his chest but gave him that as a reminder instead. You’re too young to have been injured in the war, though. You’re a Dixon… Nicholas, right?”
