What Was Rescued Read online

  I was longing to see him, of course. All the way to Paddington I was a bag of nerves, not helped by having to use the tube train for the first time when I got there. Even as I walked through the revolving doors of the pub, I spotted her. It seemed unbelievable that she should be there, smiling, sharing a pleasantry with someone near the entrance to the drab, brown function room.

  I knew she’d seen me; I turned my eyes away just a fraction too late and was aware of hers tracking me as I searched for the ladies’ cloakroom before I went in. Sure enough, as I came out of my cubicle, she was there at the washbasins, applying deep red lipstick. I stood at the basin next to hers and began to wash my hands. I chanced a look in the mirror and saw her eyes on mine. In that moment I knew that the magnitude of the effect she’d had on me was entirely justified. She must have registered my awareness of this, because she smiled quickly. Might she have risked ignoring me? Pretended I wasn’t there? Or that she didn’t recognize me, and that somehow she could keep this ignorance up for several hours before slipping quietly away?

  ‘It can’t be! Is it? Is it little Dora?’

  ‘Yes – not so little now.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a slip of a thing. You make me feel like an old lady.’

  She waited for my compliment, so I complied.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Lord, I hope I have! I just feel old next to you.’

  I couldn’t tell if this last remark required more flattery or was meant as some kind of palliative.

  ‘And yet it seems like only yesterday,’ she said, turning back to the mirror. There. She was trying to see if I remembered, but I would keep my cards close to my chest.

  ‘It’s all a bit of a blur to me, I’m afraid. I was only seven.’

  ‘Of course.’ That look again: fearful, dangerous.

  I saw her now through the eyes of a young woman. She had a military straight back, well-cut dark hair, arched eyebrows and fashionably conical breasts above a slender waist. Protruding from a cream-coloured bolero, her forearms were less fashionably covered in a dark down, which moved me a little.

  She snapped her lipstick shut and opened a compact. I looked away but could feel her eyes on me. I tugged at a rickety towel dispenser, which conceded no more than an inch of clean towel before it jammed. I had wanted to run my hand through my hair and powder my nose, like her, but instead I stood flapping my hands in an attempt to dry them.

  ‘Here, have a tissue,’ she said, clicking open a patent leather handbag that matched her red shoes. (I think I found her colour coordination a bit undermining.) I took it, but felt she was trying to disarm me with generosity. I stood there panic-stricken, puzzled, unresolved.

  It was the look in her eyes that brought it all back, and I knew she could tell. Perhaps I swallowed too hard, perhaps I looked away too fast, but she saw straight away that I hadn’t forgotten the event at sea that she had most wished me to forget.

  When I’d set off on that Atlantic adventure ten years before, it had felt as though life had been jump-started after a long delay. Life at home had felt provisional for some time. Not because of the blackouts or the rationing or the fear of raids, but because just as the war started the previous year, my sister, Siân, died of diphtheria. The house was filled with the absence of her, the space she left far greater than the little space she had occupied, and the silence was somehow louder than her laughter. My mother had been there for me, and not there, in equal measure. She would hold me closer than ever, her eyes miles away. I suppose she thought that the seavacuee scheme would keep me safe, at least, although she wanted to keep me close after Siân had gone.

  My father’s sister in Port Talbot had had a direct hit, and that had made up his mind. He thought they’d try to bomb the mines next, after the steelworks, and ours was a mining village.

  I really can’t remember anything much about the journey to Liverpool, except Philip. Phil and I were about the same age, and we liked each other straight away. I remember the concertina, of course, and Seamus playing it. That was what brought us together. Arthur was there, and Pippa, but it’s all a bit vague. I know Pippa’s mother got on the train with her to find her a place, which you weren’t supposed to do, so I knew she was a bit special. Dead posh. Also, later on, when an escort came round with a bag to collect rubbish, Pippa dropped a whole chicken sandwich into it – and half a beef one. Beautiful and wasteful. Utterly exotic in my eyes.

  Fortunately, the next day was glorious: clear blue skies and sunshine. We were taken to the docks, past dun-coloured boats and dun-coloured buildings, and there, suddenly, floating majestically in the harbour, was The City of India. Each one of us was awestruck. The ship was so huge and stately and gleaming. She had two funnels with bands of white and waited regally in the sunshine for us to board her. She was, quite literally, breathtaking.

  And on board! We were simply overwhelmed. I don’t think even Pippa had seen anything quite like it before. We were welcomed by Indian lascars who wore bright white robes and turbans, blue waistbands, and shoes that curled up at the end. They loved children and treated every one of us like gentry. First, we were shown to our cabins. Mine had a bunk I shared with a girl called Janet, and it had its own massive wardrobe, a sink and a giant carafe of water, which was changed daily. The dining rooms were fabulous. There seemed to be no such thing as second class on this ship. There were waiters in blue uniforms and white turbans, there were six-course meals (really, six courses for children!) and there were forty different kinds of ice cream! This wasn’t just for private passengers: this was for all of us. I could imagine Our Mam’s face if she knew.

  For our first meal – lunch – we had chicken. I remember it because at home we only ever had chicken at Christmas, and this was only September. I got to sit with Philip again at mealtimes, and we had so much fun together, asking the lascars about India and getting special treats just by asking for them. They would call us ‘Little Madam’ and ‘Little Sir’ and would smile and bring us delicious dishes we couldn’t possibly have made up. Pippa and Arthur sat with us, which made it even more majestic. Arthur was like a grown-up to me, and very dark and handsome – I felt quite coy around him, I did! I thought Pippa was pretty too, and quite an authority. She explained a lot of the menu to us, with such confidence it was as though she could personally take credit for the entire operation.

  In the end, we weren’t able to sail that first day. We were so excited that I don’t think we really cared. We had luxury and smiles around every corner, and we knew exactly what to do in the event of an emergency. At least, we knew exactly what to do in the event of an emergency on a gloriously sunny day with a beautifully calm sea.

  People come from such different backgrounds, don’t they? I hadn’t come across anything quite like it before, especially with Pippa. And I don’t just mean their class. I mean their experience of being loved.

  I had known love from birth. It had been the temperate climate of our family life, had fluffed up our feathers and kept us warm through the Depression, and even its trembling clumsiness after the death of my sister only served to show the power of its presence in our home. It would have been unthinkable to me that some children had to lie in wait for crumbs of love, had to catch it unawares, trick it into their arms or be tricked by counterfeit copies of it. At the age of seven, I couldn’t comprehend that people had different value systems to my own. I understood that Hitler was evil, and that the Welsh were good. Most British people, in fact, were generally good eggs. And so it followed naturally that everyone on this ship was generally a good person. We were all fleeing evil, weren’t we? I hadn’t reckoned on each passenger carrying with them their own little record of love, some with the pages crammed full, and some with the entries false or scrappy or with their ledgers almost empty.

  I knew poshness when I saw it though, and I saw extremes of it for the first time on this expedition. There were levels of poshness. I was somewhere near the lower end, and at the bottom were people li
ke the Joneses down our street, who had ten children with clothes that didn’t fit and a few pairs of shoes between them. Pippa was pretty much at the top. She wore new shoes and cardigans that weren’t hand-knitted. She spoke with a BBC accent, she had a mother who wore fur and broke rules, and she threw away chicken sandwiches.

  Pippa dispensed advice with an authority that immediately commanded you. In the absence of parents, she and Arthur were the people we sought most readily for instruction and reassurance. The escorts, Miss Prendergast and Mr Dent, were a little more remote, and the naval officers, though kind, even more daunting for us to approach. Seamus was easy to talk to, and although he had no interest in parenting us, he was often there on deck to chat to and to play us a few tunes.

  Within twenty-four hours, Seamus became our main focus of interest – second to food. He would give us his little concertina to play around on and then produce another from the canvas bag by his side. Philip and I took turns to play, although he made a lot of people put their hands over their ears and he lost interest quickly, frustrated by the inconsistency of the notes. But I liked the way they changed according to whether you pushed in or pulled out. Seamus played a slow air, and I tried to copy him. He showed me, note by note. It was tricky, but I loved it.

  ‘Pushing in takes the air out,’ he said, ‘and pulling takes the air in, and that will give you different sounds, you see now, with the same buttons. Try these now . . .’

  Philip was quite happy to let me monopolize the instrument, once he’d found three tin whistles in Seamus’ top pocket with which to blast everyone on deck.

  At one of these little sessions – perhaps on the second day, I can’t remember – Pippa came and joined us for a bit. Of course she wanted a go, and tried ‘Three Blind Mice’, ignoring Seamus’ efforts at tuition. She quickly ran out of air and found that the notes disobeyed her when pulling out.

  ‘There’s a little button there,’ said Seamus, showing her, ‘that lets you put the air in without making a sound. You have to let the air in.’ Pippa ignored him and went on pushing and pulling the concertina apart loudly and roughly. ‘You can’t take out what you haven’t put in,’ said Seamus, agitated for the first time. ‘Dora will show you, now.’

  She released the concertina abruptly and plonked it in my hands. I felt awkwardly favoured and thought she might be angry. I started to play ‘The Galway Shawl’ very badly.

  ‘I’ll tell you what now, Dora,’ said Seamus, ‘if you can play that little tune there by the end of the trip, the box is yours.’

  I was breathless. ‘The concertina?’

  ‘It is.’

  Pippa, who’d got up to walk away, stopped. ‘You’re going to give her the concertina?’

  Philip took a tin whistle from his lips. ‘You’re going to give it her to keep?’

  I remember Seamus just closed his eyes and started to play gently on his other concertina. ‘An instrument needs a player. I don’t need that one any more, but I want it to go to a good player. Dora here is going to be a grand player.’ He winked at me. ‘You take it away and practise. You have to be able to play that tune, mind.’

  I was speechless. My joy was only marred by the envy felt, I imagined, by Philip and Pippa, who were not receiving any such gifts.

  ‘But what about the diamonds?’ asked Philip.

  I saw Seamus wink at me. ‘Ah, I’ve no need of those, son. I’ve everything I need.’

  Phil looked at me with eyes and mouth wide open. ‘Crikey!’ Then he did a little jig on the spot. ‘If I can learn to play a whistle, can I keep it then?’

  Seamus put his head on one side, as though giving this some serious thought. ‘You take the big one away with you and practise in your cabin,’ he said. ‘You play me something on it by the time we get to Canada, and I’ll give it to you.’

  Philip was more than content with his penny whistle, and I was, of course, overwhelmed by the concertina. I spent every moment I could practising, and I drove Janet mad with the racket in our cabin. I pretty much had the tune off after a day, but I never got to perfect it. That’s not because the ship sank, but because the next evening, something very odd happened.

  3

  ARTHUR

  You can imagine how we felt when we set eyes on The City of India. The only time we’d seen anything remotely like it was on a jigsaw puzzle of the Queen Mary we kept in a cake tin at home. But this was miles better. To start with, we were dog-tired because we’d had a terrifying night of air raids in Liverpool, and now it was a glorious late-summer day with clear blue skies. Sunlight lit up this beautiful liner, waiting for us like a palace on water.

  We all cheered up even more when we went on board. These lascars welcomed us with such pleasure and dignity that we felt like royalty. Philip was so excited, because after we’d been shown to a large room on board by our ‘escort’ (Mr Dent), we met Dora and Pippa. And, if I’m honest, I was pretty keen to see Pippa again.

  For once, I was quite pleased to have Philip with me, because Pippa took quite a shine to him, and he and Dora were a good source of shared amusement for Pippa and me. Normally, I hated having to look after Philip. I was six when he was born and used to my mother’s full attention. Had I been merely a toddler when Philip invaded my life, I would probably have kicked up an almighty fuss, unburdened by any need to pretend finer feelings. I would have thrown things about in a jealous rage, beheaded his toys, screamed at him and jumped on him and tried to sabotage his feeding at my mother’s breast. She would have been left in no doubt as to my childish trauma at being replaced. As it was, she told the neighbours and relatives, ‘Arthur adores his little brother,’ and, ‘He’s so good with Philip. I don’t know what I’d do without him.’ This, the result of my attempts to please her, fed the grudge I could not speak of. I resented the way he took all her time. I didn’t want mushy food and silly rhymes, but I was angry at the pleasure these things seemed to give them both. I would have been mortified, of course, if she had hugged me in front of my friends, but I ached for her to hug me as much as she hugged Philip, and I hated myself for wanting to knock down the towers they built together, for longing to go to his cot and shake him awake so that he would scream.

  I suppose I wanted her to notice me, but since the little attention I got seemed to hinge on being good with my brother, I was loath to tamper with secure approval. Sometimes, when I was in the garden shed with my father, making ships in bottles (a passion of his), I would look out through the shed door and catch my brother watching me from the kitchen window. He would be helping my mother bake, and I fancied he was taunting me with the bowl I knew she would let him lick. He stared at me with slit eyes, and I felt all his cruel satisfaction at being so close to my mother. Little git, I thought.

  Once, my father caught me scowling back at Philip, and he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You have to pay attention with these ships. Every moment counts. It takes patience and commitment.’ He was holding the threads to pull up the hinged masts of an intricate finished ship inside its bottle. ‘You know, Arthur, Phil is so jealous of you being out here doing men’s work with me. He must feel a right Charlie making buns, don’t you think?’ Then he handed me the threads. That was the first time he’d ever let me do it myself. I still have that ship.

  The incessant emergency drills on board were a bit tiresome, but it was still exciting. The hint of danger, constantly renewed by these drills, became mixed up in the potent thrill of adventure. I suppose we had rarely felt so much adrenaline over so short a period of time, so it’s not something we could forget easily. That heady exhilaration was galvanized by news that we couldn’t set sail the next day as planned, because the harbour exit had been mined. We had to wait another day for them to be cleared. Danger, excitement and endless ice cream. What a cocktail!

  I shared a cabin with Philip, and he had the top bunk because he enjoyed the novelty of climbing up a ladder to bed. I tried to keep an eye on him, as I’d promised Mum I would, but he kept going off with Dora to l
isten to Seamus play his concertina. I have found out since that the Irishman was working the night shift in the boiler room. No wonder he liked to be on deck when he could. Dora and Philip couldn’t get enough of him, and it was easy to track them down just by following the strains of an Irish jig or a polka.

  It was important not to let Philip wander off too far, because every so often this bell would ring, and we’d all have to go to our muster station (a passenger lounge, in our case) and have another wretched drill. We had several drills a day, and unless he was with me, Philip often got lost. The passageways do all look a little the same on a ship, and he had only just turned six. Once, I found him being ushered out of the ladies’ cloakrooms in the private quarters by a very firm woman in a mink, when he thought he’d found the gents’. And Dora, who was only seven herself, found it pretty confusing too, although she wasn’t quite as clueless as Phil. She used to bring him to me and say, ‘He’s lost, love him,’ and she’d give him a little cuddle (what she called a ‘cwtch’ – Give us a little cwtch, then) before she handed him over. She always looked so caring, though, holding his hand and turning her sweet little face towards his. Obviously I wasn’t interested in her then, but I was envious of him – irritated, I suppose – because of his effortless intimacy with a girl. He just seemed to be a magnet for affection.

  Anyhow, we were all assigned to a lifeboat (I was in the same boat as Phil) and actually had to sit in it to be absolutely certain we knew what to do. We were told about the dangers from U-boats and torpedoes, but we felt very safe with these naval officers drilling us all the time. We were shown where the provisions were – corned beef, sardines and ship’s biscuits – and no sooner had one drill finished than another one seemed to begin. We had two life jackets, one navy blue kapok one, which we had to wear all the time, and one inflatable canvas one. These were puffy, unwieldy things, but we had to carry them about everywhere, even to mealtimes.