Evans - Crooked Heart

To Kate Anthony and Gaby Chiappe

S he was losing words. At first it was quite funny. The box of things, Mattie would say, waving her mauve-veined hands vaguely around the kitchen.

The box of things for making flames. Its a song, Noel!

The box of things for making flames
I cant recall their bloody names.

Or that church, shed say, standing at the top of Hampstead Heath, gazing down at the scribble of blue and grey that was London. The one with the dome remind me of what its called.

St Pauls Cathedral.

Of course it is. The architect has a birds name. Owl... Ostrich...

Wren.

Right again, young Noel, though I cant help thinking Sir Christopher Ostrich has a tremendous ring to it...

After a while, it stopped being funny. Wheres my... my... His godmother would teeter around the drawing room, slippered feet not quite keeping up with her heavy body. Wheres that damn thing, the blue thing, goes round my shoulders, the blue thing...

Some words would resurface after a few days; others would sink for ever. Noel started writing labels: SHAWL, WIRELESS, GAS MASK, CUTLERY DRAWER.

Helpful little man, Mattie said, bending to kiss his forehead. Be sure to take them down before Geoffrey comes to check on me, she added, suddenly shrewd again.

Uncle Geoffrey and Auntie Margery lived a mile away, in Kentish Town. Once a month, Uncle Geoffrey came for Sunday tea, and once a year he dropped by for Matties birthday, always bringing a gift that had been made either by himself or by Auntie Margery.

There are times, said Mattie, examining yet another cross-stitched antimacassar, when its very useful to have an open fire. What is the one thing that is more important than money, Noel?

Taste.

Which is something that Geoffrey and... she paused,... bosoms...

Margery.

... will never have.

At the monthly teas, Uncle Geoffrey smiled all the time and talked about his job in rate-collection, the marquetry picture frames he made in his spare time, and Auntie Margerys delicate health, which prevented her from ever leaving the house. His teeth were regular and well-spaced, like battlements. Noel liked to imagine tiny soldiers popping up between them, firing arrows across the room or pouring molten lead down Uncle Geoffreys chin.

And what have you been up to, young Noel? his uncle would ask. Keeping busy with hobbies? Model aircraft? Stamp collecting?

Hobbies are for people who dont read books, said Noel; it was one of Matties sayings.

After tea, Uncle Geoffrey would ask whether there was anything he could do around the house, and Mattie always found something awkward or messy shifting furniture, oiling a door. When the blackout regulations were published, Uncle Geoffrey was set to work sticking brown paper on the door-panes and checking every shutter for soundness.

After all, as Mattie said, you are our war expert. He had enrolled as an air-raid warden the day after Mr Chamberlain came back from Munich. He had a hat, a whistle and an armband.

So all you need now is an air-raid! said Mattie.

She didnt believe that there would be a war.

Matties house was a spacious brick box, with a fancy ironwork verandah and a garden full of azaleas. A Victorian gentlemans residence, she said. Or, more likely, the place where a Victorian gentleman secreted his mistress. Family in Mayfair, lady friend in Hampstead. It would have been considered frightfully out of town.

The road ran along a little crease in the fabric of the Heath, coming to a dead end at a bolt of rabbit-cropped turf; from the rear windows of the house you could see only trees.

Who would know we were in London? said Mattie, nearly every day.

It was a hot, slow summer. In the early morning, when it was still cool, they walked the mile to Parliament Hill and back, leaving dark tracks through the wet grass, singing songs of protest to the skylarks:

As we come marching, marching,

We bring the greater days.

The rising of the women

Means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler,

ten that toil while one reposes,

But a sharing of lifes glories:

Bread and Roses!

Bread and Roses!

Our lives shall not be sweated

From birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies;

Give us bread, but give us roses!

On the final chorus repeats, Mattie would simultaneously hum and whistle. A rare and underrated skill, shed remark, and one that, sadly, has never brought me the acclaim it deserves.

During the afternoon heat, she slept in a deckchair and Noel lay on the lawn and read detective stories, noting down clues as he went along. Wood pigeons crooned in the trees.

Whod know, sighed Mattie, whod know we were in... in...

In the silence that followed, Noel rolled over and looked at her. Her square, sure face was suddenly unfamiliar; her expression one hed never seen before. It was panic, he realized. Somewhere inside herself she was teetering on a ledge.

London, he said, its London.

Ah yes, London, she repeated, inching back.

The mechanical digger arrived one day when they were at the library. By the time they came home, the first lorry was already roaring back past their house, leaving a frill of sand along the verges behind it.

What are you doing? called Mattie to the driver, but he ignored her.

They followed the gritty trail to the end of the road, and there stood the great red digger. It had already scalped the grass from fifty yards of heath, and was taking savage bites out of the sandy slope. Another lorry was waiting for a load.

No! shouted Mattie.

Three neighbours arrived, sweating and gesticulating, and then a fourth, grim with knowledge.

Its official, he said. Ive been talking to the council. Its for sandbags, they say theyre going to need thousands if bombing starts. Theyre grubbing up Hyde Park, too...

Within the week, there were four diggers, not one, and a constant stream of lorries rattling up past the house and then grinding down again. The hole in the Heath grew daily, the cut edge a palette of yellows: ochre, mustard, butter, gold. When the wind blew, Matties front garden was more beach than grass. Every floor in the house crunched underfoot. Mrs Harley, the char, said the extra work was too much for her, and left.

A man came to the door, offering filled sandbags at 5 for a hundred, or empty ones for 3d each. And then you can do them yourself, he said. Lucky for you, youre right on the spot. Mattie closed the door in his face.

Their morning walk was changing. The detour they took to avoid the hole at the end of the road added another mile to the round trip; it was just too far for Noel, with his gammy leg, to manage comfortably, and meant he was always limping by the time they arrived home. There was a gun emplacement behind Parliament Hill now, and shelters being dug along the fields by the railway line. Mattie would stand and stare at the horizon, at the silver blimps motionless on invisible wires, and shake her head in disbelief. Isnt it strange, she said, that theres always enough money in the coffers for war?

During his August teatime visit, Uncle Geoffrey talked about the international situation before patting Noel on the head. And I wonder where this young shaver will be off to? he said, smiling as usual.

What dyou mean, off to? asked Mattie, very sharply.

The smile wavered. Youll have registered him, I suppose, for evacuation?