I must pop out to the post box by the new library on the London Road
where the first bomb hit. They will be wondering where I am at home. I
remember the air raid and the sirens. I ran down the cold dark hall to
Guy's room at the back and bumped into him on the landing and we held
hands in the shaking dark and Herbert rolled us under the bed no time
to go to the shelter in the garden the house shook and our ears burned
and we held each other under the springs and then the house burst.
Those small children are about. A boy and a girl. The boy is older.
I am in the sitting room but it has all changed: they have taken all my
things. I remember the man at the door so nice and polite he liked my
bread pudding, sliced, moist: a whole packet of suet; and lovely fat
raisins. He took my mother's old walnut table with its curved legs and
the mottled top, waxed. shiny. I kept it clean and polished for all
those years and now it has gone. Five pounds! The piano and the
pictures: where have they gone?
The carpet here is white, cut to fit the room. No pattern, like a
fluffy towel. I remember the street over the green speckled privet and
Herbert with his shears and the milkman with his wagon and the horse,
Dobbin, and the bottles. My tea tastes funny, but when I looked at the
black woman and wanted to speak, she went away. And outside it is
bright and glaring and the bright sea glitters and tall thin trees like
Palm Sunday wave in the wind.
"How are you grandma? Can I get you anything?" A man is there. He
looks like Guy is it Guy? And now he's gone and I want to ask for a
nice cup of tea but with proper milk.
We had tea in the kitchen afterwards, the three of us: Guy, Herbert
and I. I remember the floor sagged and when we crawled out from under
the bed into the dust we were on the edge of jagged boards and my new
dresser was gone and the front of the house was gone and the road was
gone and the hedge swayed in lumps on the path and the house over the
road was gone and the garden beyond was strange and bare and in the
moonlight through the gap. Then Guy was gone and he ran straight out
into the hole and rolled into the gas and water and mud in the smoking
hole and I screamed but afterwards we laughed and drank our nice tea.
Joan was all right: her street lost glass and Mr Littlewood at number
twelve died of a heart attack and the sweet shop, where the library is
now, was gone.
"Hello grandma," says the boy and he grins and shakes his head and
something is wrong with his eyes. The girl is behind the chair,
shaking. "We are your grandchildren. Do you know who we are?" says the
boy. His voice is very loud. The girl is shaking. Something is moving
on the floor. It is like an animal and I don't like it and I feel my
body start to shake too. It moves towards the chair where the girl is
and I see her again, her feet; and her hand is pulling and jerking and
the animal comes jerking closer to her and she touches it and it is
gone. The boy laughs and shakes and I know they are being naughty and I
say, "You are naughty children. What is that animal? Am I your grandma?
Why are you doing this?" and they laugh and go away.
There were three bombs in all and Guy kept a piece of ours jagged
and brown and heavy in his desk and they put the front back on the
house.
It is all such a muddle. The children have gone. I must go to the
post box.
And now it is hot so hot and bright and I cannot see. I am wet and
the wet air hard to breathe and my white curls are going flat the sun
is pressing down. The road is wider and the houses have changed. Where
is the post box? I am walking and my feet flop in my good shoes. White
pebbles in a garden and spiky plants. White walls and low houses and
heavy dark bushes and the pavement is shiny black like a road. The road
is empty and there is a black woman and something grey and quick moves
with a long tail under a bush and then is still. The wind is hot and
the tall trees with their thin bare trunks and bushy tops sway in the
wind.
Hands on my shoulders turn me round and I'm nearly falling and it is
Guy. "Mummy what are you doing out of the house? Where are you going?"
He holds me round my shoulders as Herbert used to do and we walk
back and I say, "You are a silly boy, I'm only going to the post but
the road is different."
"Mummy, you're here with us; you're with your family; this isn't
Westcliffe; you've come out here to stay with us in the warm, away from
the cold and the damp. Take my arm and come home into the cool, Joan is
worried. Come and sit with your grandchildren and Felicia will get you
some nice tea."