The Restless Sea

The incomers are upon them. ‘Up for a game?’ says Jack.

Stoog shoots Carl one of his looks. They have never got on. The other boys watch in silence. Stoog puffs out his chest, enjoying being the one on whom the decision rests. He nods slowly. The boys grin.

They call to a couple of the other boys who are scattered across the park. Jack recognises Eddy, who used to be in Betsy’s class, one of the many kids who trickled back to the city after the first round of evacuations to the country. ‘Why don’t you two go and look for conkers?’ says Jack.

Betsy nods at Eddy shyly and they wander off towards the large horse chestnut tree on the edge of the path. Eddy swings his gas mask up into the tree. Betsy giggles and does the same. They run to where the green balls are knocked down on to the wet grass, cracking them open to see if any are worth keeping.

The older boys set up a football pitch, using their gas masks to mark the goal posts. ‘Only thing they’re bloody good for,’ says Jack.

‘And this,’ says Stoog. He takes his mask out and holds it over his face, making a loud farting noise. The boys laugh. Stoog is in charge again, and everyone is in their rightful place.

It has turned into a breezy day, and the ground has dried a little but it is still slippery. Jack soon warms up. It is good to be doing something physical, to be chasing his friends and to feel his heart pumping and to be thinking of nothing else but the ball. Soon they are caked in mud. Stoog forgets his attitude, and Carl belongs for a moment. They point and laugh at each other, and their cheeks glow as steam rises from their skin and dissipates into the cool afternoon air.

But their fun is short-lived. A man in a tin hat is making his way across the grass towards them. ‘Come on, lads,’ he shouts. ‘Time to get home now.’

It’s the ARP warden. The boys roll their eyes at each other.

‘Just a bit longer …’ says Tommy.

‘No,’ says the warden. ‘The dark’s coming in fast tonight and we’re expecting trouble.’

The other boys moan too, and then Stoog picks up the ball and flings it at Jack, who flings it at Tommy, who pretends to fling it at the man. The man reacts instinctively to catch it, but there’s nothing to catch. The boys laugh, and Tommy drops the ball on to the ground as if to start the game again.

‘Come along, now.’ The man’s cheeks have turned scarlet. ‘It’s time to be going home.’

‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on, old man,’ says Stoog.

‘Watch your mouth, sonny.’

‘Who’re you telling to watch their mouth?’

‘Who do you think?’ says the man, squaring up to the boy. The rest of the boys form a ring around them. Betsy and Eddy stop looking at conkers. The tension vibrates in the cool air.

Carl steps in. ‘Let’s leave it there. He’s only trying to help.’

‘Never thought a Jew boy would be on the same side as a fascist,’ says Stoog, spitting the words as he cranes his neck around Carl, trying to push him out of the way. The ground is soggy beneath their feet. The sky is darkening.

‘Don’t you call me a fascist,’ says the warden.

‘Why? What you going to do about it?’

‘Yeah. What you going to do?’ Vince says, the excitement high in his voice.

Stoog and the man circle each other like tomcats.

‘Jack?’ says Carl. ‘Don’t let this happen …’

Jack is torn between backing both boys. ‘Maybe we should go,’ he says. ‘It’s almost too dark to play anyway …’

Stoog snaps around, shoving his face close to Jack’s and saying, ‘That’d be just like you. Running away …’

And the warden says, ‘Now, now. I don’t want any trouble …’ But Stoog is already turning on him and he pulls his arm back and thumps the man in the side of the head with his bony fist, knocking his helmet on to the ground. There is a cracking sound and blood but Jack isn’t sure whether it’s from the warden’s ear or Stoog’s knuckle.

And Carl is yelling, ‘Stop it,’ but Stoog is already swinging again, and this time he is aiming at Jack and hissing under his breath, ‘This one’s for the docks,’ and he lands a punch right in Jack’s eye, and there’s a stinging pain and a mist descends and all Jack can think of is whacking him back.

Carl is still shouting at them to stop, but Jack doesn’t care. Stoog may be skinny, but he’s fast and he’s accurate. Tommy steps in to help Jack, and then Vince thwacks him in the mouth, and all of a sudden the game has turned into a brawl of fists and teeth and pulled hair and ripped clothes and no one is really sure who is hitting who but all Jack knows is he’s furious – furious at Stoog for hitting him, furious with curfew and blackout, furious with feeling hungry all the time, furious with his dad and his brother for going away, with Carl for getting out and doing something with his life, furious with the whole bloody lot of it. And he’s thumping and smashing and he can taste the blood in his mouth and hear the crunch of bone and the thud of flesh and it feels good to be in the moment, not to worry about where it’s all heading.

It is Carl who manages to stop him. He grabs Jack with the grip of a deal porter’s son, pulling him out of the fray.

‘Let me go,’ says Jack, twisting away from Carl, trying to scratch at his face, kick his shins, anything to release the hold. But it takes more than that to bring Carl down. ‘Let me go,’ says Jack again.

But Carl is furious. There is a vein throbbing in his neck and he is panting. ‘What’s bloody wrong with you all?’ he says as the other boys draw back sheepishly, spitting the blood from their mouths. No one has seen Carl lose his temper before. ‘Take a look at yourselves!’ He points at the warden. ‘He could be your father. Your granddad.’ And now he turns on Jack. ‘And you,’ he says, ‘you’re the worst of all. You had a chance to do something different, but you’re going to end up just like them. Well, I wash my hands of it. You go ahead and kill yourself. I’m out of here.’

He has finally released Jack. They stand chest to chest, eye to eye. Jack clenches his fists, the rage still pumping around his system. He hears a whimper, and a small, cold hand closes around his wrist. He glances down. Betsy. He looks at the warden, a grey-haired old man who is picking his helmet up with trembling hands. He takes a step backwards. The boys and the warden wait for the explosion. He takes another step backwards, and grabs hold of Betsy’s hand. ‘Fuck you, Carl,’ he says. ‘And fuck you, Stoog. Fuck the lot of you.’ And he turns and staggers away, dragging his sister with him across the muddy grass.

The other boys begin to disperse, and the warden doesn’t leave until the last boy fades into the twilight.

A month later, and the raids have grown steadily worse. London has now had nineteen consecutive days and nights of relentless bombardment, of noise and smoke, flame and dust. The docks have been obliterated, the mighty cranes are twisted and contorted into strange shapes, the warehouses flattened, the barges charred embers. Barrels of alcohol explode like gunpowder; paint melts and pours into the Thames, turning it into a river of fire. The deal porters’ timber went up on the first night of the raids. The firemen couldn’t get close enough to quench the inferno. It still burns, lighting the way for the next bombs.

The money from the bracelet is long gone. The only good that came of it was the sewing machine that Jack’s mother uses to make new clothes out of the old. But clothes don’t put food in their stomachs, so Jack has found new ways of getting by that inevitably involve Stoog.

He pulls a package wrapped in paper from his bag and offers it to his mother. Six fat sausages peep out. ‘Mostly gristle,’ he says. His mother takes the parcel. She’s given up asking where he gets these things. She places it on the side in the kitchen. She cannot bring herself to look at him.

Later, Jack lies on his back and stares up into the darkness, listening to his mother’s dry cough, the wail of next-door’s baby, the hollow thud of an air raid in the distance. They have moved their mattresses into the small front room. They sleep in their clothes. The shelter Jack so proudly built with his brother and father is useless. It is cramped and smelly, and most of the time inches deep in fetid water.

In the distance the sky is bright with flames. There is the whine of sirens. Probably another attack on the docks. He is so used to it, he feels himself begin to drift off. A floorboard creaks and a ghostly shadow moves from his mother’s mattress towards him. A small voice says, ‘Jack? You awake, Jack?’ Betsy climbs in next to him. She is so slight that she easily fits on to the single mattress.

‘Come here,’ he says, hugging her trembling body tightly. As he smooths her dark curls, Betsy’s breaths begin to lengthen. She scratches at her head. Lice. They’ve all got them.

Jack cannot remember what it was like not to feel hungry. Food is rationed, there are queues at the shops, and their mother doesn’t have time to wait in them because of her job. Jack has plenty more profitable things to do than wait for a slab of butter, and Betsy refuses to be separated from him. There are rats everywhere. Tommy says they’re as big as terriers down his street. Stoog has been catching them and selling them for meat.

There is a whistle outside the window. Speak of the devil. Jack and Betsy are immediately wide awake and scrambling out into the cool air of the streets. Stoog leers at them in the moonlight. ‘Got a good feeling about tonight,’ he says.

Tommy and Vince are here too, and other faces that Jack and Betsy recognise. They make their way through the park where they used to play cricket and football, now home to the anti-aircraft brigade. They hug the shadow of the tree line. Jack can just make out the pale wall of sandbags and the dark shape of the three-inch gun behind it, the movement of the men of the Royal Artillery, too tense and expectant to notice the youngsters who should be safely tucked up in a shelter.

They move in silence. There is no point in trying to talk above the squealing sirens that send everyone else scurrying under tables and staircases, deep down into the underbelly of the Tube stations. But not them. They know there will be rich pickings about.

They pause at Tower Bridge, lining up one by one to gaze at the river. The moon glitters in oily patches on the surface of the water. There are shapes down there: boats battered and sunk by the previous nights’ raids. Fuel and timber still burn, pale lights flickering among the ripples. Above them, searchlights criss-cross the sky, illuminating the trailing tendrils of the monstrous barrage balloons that float fatly there. Further away, black smoke curls up from the docks, blotting out the moon like a cloud.

They hear the German planes before they see them. They can identify each type as well as any anti-aircraft regiment. No British up there yet. They can just make out the bombers, flying wing tip to wing tip above the river, following the trails of moonlight flashing on the surface, searching for the small fires lit by the incendiary devices that exploded earlier, mythical birds seeking their prey. Betsy’s eyes grow wider. Time stands still. The sound of the engines roars in their ears, rumbles in their chests. Thud thud thud. Like a heartbeat.

The planes are almost on top of them. The rat-a-tat-tat of the anti-aircraft guns starts up. Suddenly the planes swing to the left, to their side of the river, the south side, over the docks again. They catch a glimpse of light in a cockpit. And then … Boom!

The noise slams through them. They are running again, this time in the wake of the planes. The searchlights try to pick out the bombers in their pale beams, but they fail. The drone of more bombers joins the battery from the ground. Shrapnel tinkles like metal rain on the roofs. The fire engines come clanging along the road.

And now the Allied planes come swooping in to try to fight them off. But the boys aren’t interested in dogfights these days. They are running over rubble, and the air is full of dust and bangs and wails – human and inhuman. Fires rage across the city. Boy Scouts run from warden to warden, shouting above the din. But relaying messages won’t fill empty bellies.

Jack and Betsy stay together, but the others fan out, looking for the butchers and the grocers, anywhere for a bargain. ‘You all right, Bets?’ says Jack. She nods. Her teeth shine white among the smudges of dirt on her face.