Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Sunday, 15th December 1940
It was the second night we’d slept in the cupboard under the stairs, with Cyril snoring like an ack ack gun and the baby wailing like a siren. Our Jean made sure that she and the baby got most of the space so we were curled up at the narrow end. It was easier to breathe when Bill set off for the early shift taking his cheesy feet with him. Cyril made some excuse about picking up some potatoes from his store at the allotment. Jean affected to be very taken up with sorting out Elizabeth. She was all right as babies went, but it meant I had to help Mam doing all the women’s work around the house. I needed to get out and see what was going on.

‘There’s far too much to do to be sitting around at Sunday School,’ Mam said when I tried that as a way of getting outside and having a look.

Dad came in from the night shift. He hung his haversack and coat on the back of the door, pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and snapped it open as he sat down by the fire. Mam pulled his boots off and he put his feet on the fender. He patted his waistcoat pocket and swore under his breath.

‘Here, Frank. Get down the shop and get me some baccy.’ He rustled in his pocket and found a shilling. ‘Half an ounce of Erinmore, and mind tha brings the change.’

Sam was sitting on his front door step with little George. ‘We should be doing some’at,’ he said. ‘What about collecting for a Spitfire? Remember Miss Malkin told us about it?’

I thought that sounded a right good idea. ‘We could see if there’s any aluminium lying around and take it into school next week and if we get most, we’ll get a badge.’

‘Can I come?’ said little George. ‘My dad’s getting me a Spitfire kit for Christmas.’ I rolled my eyes at Sam. We both knew George didn’t have a dad. ‘He is too,’ he shouted.

‘He’ll have to come,’ Sam said. ‘Mam’s looking after him all day.’ We didn’t mind too much. George was a bit of a mardy arse, but he came in handy for fetching and carrying.

I ran round to the shop and back home with the Erinmore. Keen to get on Dad’s right side, I filled his pipe, tamped it down and handed it to him. I put the rest of the pack into his tin and snapped the lid back into place.

‘Can I go to Sam’s?’

‘Ask Mam.’

‘Does tha not see enough of him at school?’ Mam asked.

‘It’s for school,’ I said. ‘We’re collecting for the Spitfire Fund.’

‘I’ll have thee mithering all day if I don’t, so as soon as we’ve had dinner, get on out. Be in before dark.’

‘What’s tha got in pockets?’ I asked little George as we walked down the street. He pulled out some bits of candle, a piece of string, and a threepenny bit. We stopped at the corner shop and sent him in to buy aniseed balls. We decided to look at the houses that had been bombed out on Friday night to see what had been left around.

We turned the corner into Gelsthorpe Street and stopped and stared. The sun was low and shone through a line of empty windows, some with bits of curtain hanging down. It reminded me of the manger we’d made at school. Miss Malkin had brought in a cardboard box and we’d cut holes in it to make windows; then glued a few bits of grass and sticks onto the front. We’d stood it in the window to dry and the sun had glinted through, like a holy light. Gelsthorpe Street looked like this, a cardboard box with windows cut out and a holy light shining through. With the icy puddles glinting, it made a real Christmas scene. We squeezed through a door hole and found ourselves inside, which was really outside, surrounded by a tangle of furniture and clothes. There was a bed on a table, with bricks, chimneys and toys scattered around.

‘Might there be bodies?’ George asked.

‘I reckon there might,’ I said. His mouth dropped open.

‘Or ghosties,’ Sam said. George started wailing and rubbed his face on my sleeve, leaving a trail of snot. I pushed him away. He started walking back to the fence.

‘I’ll tell my mam,’ he sniffled. Sam looked at me and shrugged, then ran over to George.

‘Come on, Georgie,’ Sam wheedled. ‘Tha knows we can’t manage on our own. We’ve got to get enough scrap metal for a wing, at least.’

George found a pan. He could hardly lift it with both hands.

‘It’s iron,’ I told him, but he was happy enough dragging it around. We moved a door that was laid flat half under rubble and that’s how we found the coal cellar. The door slid aside enough to allow us to wriggle down the first few stone stairs before we could stand up and move around. We pulled the door back to cover the entrance. We made out a pile of coal below the grating, but otherwise it was too dark to see anything.

‘Our place,’ Sam said, spinning around.

‘Shall we live here?’ George asked.

‘Right good,’ I said. ‘We can find stuff to turn it into a proper place.’

After three or four trips we had chair cushions, a cot mattress, and an eiderdown that we found hanging off a beam. Sam came across a meat-safe with a brown paper package tied with string inside, containing four pigs’ trotters. The cellar was right cosy, much better than under our stairs at home. Then we went out around the streets searching for aluminium. We took it in turns to be lookout in case the police or wardens came near. There were signs up everywhere about looting. Though we weren’t stealing anything, there was no knowing what people would think.

We were on Liberty Road when I heard my name but when I looked up the road all I could see was a giant potato on legs.

‘Where’s tha gas mask, our Frank?’ As it got closer, I realised the potato was Jean with a balaclava on, her gabardine tied up tight across her middle and bulges sticking out all over. Then I saw she had baby Elizabeth wrapped under her coat and a haversack on her back. Their gas masks were hanging off her arm.

‘I’m off home in a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it then. Where’s tha going?’

‘To see Violet’, she said. ‘To see if me and Elizabeth can stay with her. She might be glad of the company.’

I didn’t say anything. ‘Up her own backside’ was what Mam thought of Violet. Why she would suddenly start liking our Jean, enough to let her stay with her in her fancy house, was beyond me.

‘Get off home,’ Jean said. ‘Mam’s out of her mind, and they say there’s more raids on the way.’

We nodded, but I said nothing in case she guessed I was lying. When she got to Chapel Hill, she turned and waved. We ran down the hill back to Gelsthorpe Street and under the fence. I picked up a two-foot length of pipe that made a good gun. Sam got a chair leg and we had a sword fight. I jumped onto a shiny sheet of thin ice in one of the ruts, breaking it into shivering slices that I passed around. We became a plane crash; a group of RAF pilots who had baled out and were attacking the enemy with their long, sharp steel daggers.

‘Hande hoch!’ we shouted, lunging at one another until our icy knives went mushy and dripped from between our fingers. By then the daylight had all but gone.

‘Where’s my pan?’ George whined. We searched and found it by the door to the cellar. We told him to stand still and guard it while Sam and me gathered up bits of wood and pushed them down the cellar stairs.

A siren wailed. We looked at one another, then threw ourselves down the stairs and pulled the door across. Sam went back to bring George’s pan inside. After a bit of a performance with a couple of damp matches from Sam’s pocket, we lit the candle ends from George’s pocket and set them around. With wood and some of the coal we built a lively fire. We drew up the cushions and started to cook the trotters in George’s pan.

‘I want to go home,’ George said, ‘I’m cold.’ Sam and me looked at one another. ‘I know a rhyme,’ Sam said, ‘it’s rude,’ and he chanted:

‘Auntie Mary had a canary,
Up the leg of her drawers,
When she farted, it departed,
To a round of applause’.

George was giggling fit to burst. ‘That’s right good.’ I asked Sam when I could catch my breath, ‘Where did you get it from?’ He was grinning, pleased as Punch, his freckles shining in the firelight.

I heard my dad’s voice, shouting my name from the street, and I shushed them. I closed my eyes and saw Dad imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. He’d be wearing my granddad’s greatcoat from the last war, the straps of his haversack and gas mask crossing his chest. His hair would be sticking out sideways from beneath his cap, and he’d have his hands shoved deep into his pockets to keep warm. I reckoned if I lay low, he’d give up looking for me soon. Since the rolling mill was working round the clock and he was on the fire watch roster, he was generally out at one or the other at night. I’d cop it in the morning. I’d probably get the strap. But this was the adventure of a lifetime and I thought it worth the risk.

Dad’s voice faded down the street as he called a few more times and then he was gone. George was asleep by the time the trotters were cooked. He was curled up under the eiderdown with coal dust all over his face and brown aniseed round his mouth. The trotters were a bit burned at the edges but they were good to suck at. The juice dribbled down my chin.

A deep humming was coming towards us. It reminded me of the time I’d been venturing in the allotments, and knocked a wasp’s nest out of a tree. A cloud of wasps chased me up the path until I dodged into an open shed and hid until they’d gone past. Dropping the trotters, Sam and I ran to the stairs, shoved the door aside and stuck our heads out of the gap. The misty searchlights lit up the little planes like the sun catching dust motes on a sunny day. We took the hoods off our torches and shone them into the sky, criss-crossing one another, laughing out loud. One black dot separated itself from the rest. It came towards us, turning into a spot, a blob, then into a boulder, all the time coming nearer. I dropped my torch and ducked. I closed my eyes. The ground shook beneath my feet and I opened my eyes to see a ball of flame leap into the air behind the ruined houses. I looked at Sam. The whites of his eyes glowed pink with reflected light. He said something but I couldn’t hear. We pulled the door across, dropped down into the cellar, and curled up under the eiderdown with George. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, tomorrow night, even with Bill’s cheesy feet up my nose.

***

When I woke, a grey light was filtering through the grating. I heard scratching and turned my head to see a rat, the size of a small dog, chewing on one of the trotters. I jumped up, but my legs gave way with cramp and I fell onto George, who yelped and threw his arm out, hitting Sam in the mouth. By the time we’d untangled our bodies, the rat had gone. We clambered out of the cellar and stood, looking over the roofs towards the orange glow in the sky. George pushed in between us and put each of his hands into one of ours.

‘Happen we’d best go home before school,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ Sam said. ‘George’s mam’ll be right vexed with us for keeping him out.’

The only sounds as we walked were the water hissing out of broken pipes and the popping of a line of blue and yellow flames beside the broken pavement. We turned the corner into our street, and stopped, lost, in front of a shallow crater with a small fire burning rubbish in the bottom. A beam lay across it and John Culshaw was helping a man to shift it. I could smell chicken cooking. Puzzled, I looked along the street. A line of faces stared back at me. Mr and Mrs Wreakes stood next to a green door that was lying on the ground with the number 89 painted white on it. She held a plant in one hand, and under her arm was a brown teapot. She nudged Mr Wreakes and nodded towards me. I realised of course I’d not yet had a wash and Mam would have something to say. I rubbed at my face with my sleeve. Mrs Platt, a piglet held to her, and her three children holding onto her coat, all stared at me with their mouths open. Mam always said they were a gormless lot who’d make a better living catching flies.

As John and the man shifted the beam, a fountain of water spurted out of the ground. Mrs Wreakes put a hand on my shoulder. Since she’d never been kind to me it felt very peculiar and I shook her off.

There was a scream and I looked up, expecting to see Mam or Dad or one of the lads come to give me what for. But it was George’s mam running towards us, tripping over pieces of brick, arms outstretched. She usually dressed as neat as ninepence. Now she had no coat on and with her hair standing on end, she looked like a madwoman. I wondered why she hadn’t gone to work yet.

She came up to us, yelling, ‘Get away from my baby, you stupid boy.’ She picked George up, squashing him against her, which set him off wailing.

Sam was shaking my sleeve. His eyes were pink and staring through the coal dust. I followed his eyes into the hole that had appeared beneath the beam. I saw broken pots, a twisted fender, a shoe, white fingers, a tobacco tin. I couldn’t make out the writing, but I knew it said Erinmore on the lid.