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The men shake their heads and suck their teeth.
‘What if the country runs out of food?’
‘That’s never going to happen.’
‘Government’s talking about rationing butter and bacon in case we get short.’
‘Let’s hope it don’t come to that.’ The sailor shares cigarettes out around the group. They light them, the smoke curling in thin blue lines into the air. The smell reminds Jack of his dad.
‘You heading back out there?’
‘Got to.’
‘Got anything to protect you?’
‘’Course not. But I heard we might get a Navy escort.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’
They stand in silence for a bit, pulling on their cigarettes. The tobacco burns and crumbles and turns to ash that flies away, dissolving into nothing.
Above them, someone starts to rattle the conveyor belt. The sailors are leaning over the edge. One of them whistles, a shrill note that makes the men on the ground look up. ‘That’s us, then.’ The men start to disperse. ‘See you next time.’
‘Let’s hope.’
‘Good luck.’
‘See you.’
The men tip their hats at each other. The cart driver drops his butt on the ground, grinds it out with his boot. At last he is ready to go. He jumps up on to the driver’s bench and the boys clamber up on the back of the cart. They lurch off, past queues of lorries, their goods covered in canvas, waiting to be sent to all the corners of the world. Past a warehouse full of vast tusks sorted into piles of various sizes. Past men in top hats, stroking their glossy moustaches.
Jack leans against a bouncing crate. Carl tips his cap to the back of his head and rubs at his short hair. It looks soft, like the fur of the rabbits that hang in rows outside the butchers’ shops.
Jack swings his legs, enjoying the ride. ‘You ever thought about getting work on a ship?’ he asks.
‘Funny you should say that,’ says Carl. ‘My dad’s been on at me to give it a go. Says the docks are a mug’s game. He’s not fifty yet, but his back’s done in and his shoulder’s all but seized up. Sometimes my mum has to help him get out of bed in the morning …’
‘What about them Nazis?’
‘If the war lasts, then we’ll all have to face them somewhere, I guess.’
The cart bounces and bumps as the city unfolds behind them: streets clogged with men and women and horses and carts and bicycles and buses and trucks. The shops are busy now, chalkboards propped up outside, doors swinging open and shut beneath bright hoardings advertising brown ale and Rowntree’s pastilles.
At Covent Garden, the boys help place the boxes of fruit on to wooden barrows. A man walks past with a dozen wicker baskets stacked on his head, the tower swaying like a huge snake. Broad-bosomed women sit on the kerb, flowers in their hats, deep in conversation. Men pull barrows and crates this way and that. Horses chomp at bags of hay. Vehicles come and go. You’d never believe there was a war on.
The cart driver presses a ha’penny into Jack’s hand. ‘Thanks, lads. See you again,’ he says.
Jack pockets the shiny coin, swallowing his disappointment. Three hours of honest work earns less than the brief second it takes to snatch a wallet.
They drift towards the arched entrance to the market. The air is a pandemonium of people bartering over fruit and vegetables and flowers. Beyond a clump of ragged children, Jack spots a familiar face. Vince.
Carl puts a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Leave it,’ he says. ‘You’re doing good without them.’
Jack shakes him off, pulling the ha’penny from his pocket and shoving it into Carl’s hand. ‘We can’t split this,’ he says, ‘it’s not enough.’
‘You got to stick at it.’
‘I’ve just got one more thing to offload.’
‘There’s always just one more thing …’ says Carl, but Jack is already making after Vince, who is sliding down a back alley, hugging the wall as if he wants to sink into the brickwork.
Jack blocks his path. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he says.
‘Well now you found me,’ says Vince, his eyes glittering like the sewer rat that he is.
‘I’ve got a bracelet,’ says Jack.
‘I heard you had something.’
‘It’s a proper fine one.’
Vince narrows his eyes. ‘Thing is, jewels is tricky things to get rid of,’ he says.
‘Oh, come on. It’s never stopped you in the past …’
‘Give me something to go on, then.’
Jack describes every pearl and stone in detail. He has taken the bracelet out from beneath his mattress nightly to admire its workmanship.
Vince is quiet for a moment, as if mulling over the sum in his head. ‘I’ll give you ten pound,’ he says eventually.
‘Ten pound?’ says Jack. ‘It’s worth ten times that.’
Vince shrugs. ‘Maybe through the proper channels …’
‘You mean through Stoog?’
‘That’s the way it works, my friend.’
‘I’m not your friend,’ says Jack, grabbing him by the collar.
Vince throws his hands out to the sides, twisting on the end of Jack’s fist. ‘It ain’t my fault,’ he says. Jack yanks the neck of the shirt hard before releasing his grip so that Vince yelps, then backs away, rubbing the pinched pale flesh of his neck. ‘What you do that for? You know I got to keep Stoog sweet …’
‘I’ll find someone else to take it,’ says Jack.
‘You can try. No one else is going to touch it. Stoog’s put the word out.’
‘Who does he think he is? Al fucking Capone?’
Vince shrugs. ‘Someone’s got to be in charge,’ he says, ‘or else the whole system falls apart.’
Jack feels the anger bubble up inside him. ‘I don’t need the money, anyway,’ he says. ‘I’m doing fine going straight.’
‘Looks like it,’ says Vince.
Jack glares at him for a moment and then spits his contempt on to the ground at Vince’s feet. But Vince is already sidling on down the alley, as slippery as a jellied eel.
It takes Jack some time to find a pawnbroker who will accept the bracelet and its tenuous provenance. The shops with their three gold baubles hanging above the door are easy to find, and he makes sure it is far enough north not to impact on his patch. The price is pitiful – worse, even, than what Vince offered – but Jack cannot take the risk of the bracelet hanging around the house any longer – and he does not want to have to crawl back to Stoog, cap in hand.
Carl and Jack take the day off on Sundays, even though Jack could do with the extra work. Betsy and Jack like to meet Carl down by the river at Cherry Garden Pier. It’s become a tradition. The siblings don’t even bother to say goodbye to their mother. She likes to lie in on Sundays. Dead to the world now that she’s toiling all hours. It seems wrong to Jack that his mother is working on site, building a new bridge across the river, of all things. He can’t get used to her leaving in her overalls, walking like a man in those clumpy boots, with that scarf around her head. In the evening her face is smudged with dirt, and she stinks of grease and oil. He wonders what his dad will think when he comes back. He wonders where his dad is. On the Belgium–France border, they’ve been told. But Jack’s not sure exactly where Belgium is.
Carl is waiting for them in the usual spot. The tide is out, and they roam the muddy beach, searching for treasure among the slimy pebbles and bits of smooth, gnarled wood. Sometimes there are old coins, medieval pins, Roman pottery to be found. Stoog says he once saw a severed hand, but no one believes him.
They find a place to sit on the driest bit of the shoreline furthest from the water. In the distance Tower Bridge sticks two fingers up at the sky. The river oozes towards the sea. Ships of all shapes and sizes run with it and against it. The dredgers are at work scraping their clawfuls of silt away from the banks and dumping them into the middle of the river. Jack breathes the smell of the dank shore deep into his nostrils.
Carl throws a stone as far as he can. It plops into the water. ‘My dad’s inquiring about that place at sea school,’ he says. There is an apologetic tone to his voice.
Jack’s heart sinks, but he can’t blame his friend for wanting to do something about his life.
‘You could come?’ says Carl.
‘I can’t,’ Jack says, tilting his head in Betsy’s direction. ‘You know my dad wanted me to keep an eye on the girls.’ He tries to raise a smile, but it’s impossible. He is destined to be stuck here, scraping a living while other people travel the world, or fight the Jerries. It isn’t fair.
‘Any trouble from Stoog?’ Carl asks.
‘I’m steering clear.’ Carl still does not know about the bracelet business, and Jack has managed to avoid Stoog for now. There is an uneasy truce on the streets as the city waits to see what the war has in store for it.
Carl is silent for a moment, watching Betsy sift through the rubbish on the shore. Her shoes and socks are wet, and her hands are filthy. Her long dark hair is matted like a bird’s nest. ‘Don’t give up now, Jack,’ he says. ‘You’ve worked hard at staying out of trouble.’ Jack does not tell him that he has already started to thieve again. Three wallets in almost as many days. He had forgotten what easy money it was compared to the lugging and scrimping down at the docks. Blackout has its advantages, after all.
Betsy tugs at Jack’s sleeve.
‘Look,’ she says. She holds a piece of coloured glass up to the light. Although it has been polished smooth to a hazy green on the outside, inside it there is an imperfection – a crack – that looks just like a star. ‘It’s for you.’
‘Don’t you want to keep it?’
‘Promise you won’t send me away like the other kids?’
‘I’m not planning on it.’
‘Promise.’
‘Fine! I promise.’
‘Then I want you to have this to remember your promise.’ It’s the most she’s said in weeks. Her solemn brown eyes peer out at him from under the tangle of her hair.
‘I don’t need it to remember,’ he says, grabbing hold of her and rumpling the top of her head.
‘Take it.’ She presses the glass into his hand until it hurts.
‘All right!’ he says. ‘I won’t forget. You’re not going anywhere.’ He pulls her down next to him and gives her a squeeze. They watch the sky darken and lighten as clouds shift across it, chasing each other away from the city. They are each lost in their thoughts.
It starts to drizzle, blobs of cold on their skin. Jack stands, yanking Betsy up too. ‘Come on,’ he says. The three of them make their way towards the embankment. The rain trickles down their backs and over their gas mask boxes, softening the cardboard and making the doodles on Betsy’s blur at the edges.
The boys start to run, but Betsy can’t keep up. Carl grabs her and hoists her over his shoulder as if she weighs nothing more than a coat. She hangs there giggling as he trots up the beach and the uneven stone steps towards the road. Jack laughs too: he had forgotten what Betsy’s happiness sounded like. It rolls and falls from her mouth like a song in time with Carl’s strides, and her long hair flies out behind them like seaweed.
CHAPTER 2 (#u63a52a62-342e-5051-9a05-0d67ffaaa350)
Sunday, a year later, and they no longer meet at Cherry Garden Pier. In fact, Jack has not seen Carl for weeks. The Nazis have started to fly their bombs across the Channel, and Mr Mills keeps an even tighter rein on his son.
With fewer and fewer ships making it through, there is hardly any work at the docks. The men clamour for jobs; the gangers struggle to keep them under control. There is nothing for Jack. He is bottom of the heap. It is no longer a question of whether he stays straight. He does what he can to survive.
Betsy and Jack wander the streets and parks, making the most of what little daylight there is and enjoying the break from the daily drudgery of their lives. It has been raining heavily, and there are dirty puddles on the road. The pavement is dark and shiny. The wheels of the traffic splosh through the water and spray them with mud. They wander past their old school. It has been taken over by the air-raid wardens, and doubles as a first-aid post. The playground where they used to play hopscotch and marbles and kick-the-can is empty now, apart from sandbags and a big board with a clock face on it, telling them what time blackout is tonight. An ARP warden has just finished moving the hands. It’s the same warden who patrols their street, shouting through the letterbox if he thinks there’s any light showing at night.
They are at the edge of the park when Betsy tugs on Jack’s sleeve. ‘Look!’ she says. It is the first time he has seen her smile for weeks. The cumulative effect of fear, poverty and boredom has ground them both into near silence; his face is as pinched and drawn as hers.
Carl is waving at them across the grass. The boys greet each other warmly, and Betsy lets Carl hug her. He lifts her clean off her feet. She looks pitifully scrawny dangling there against his stocky frame. The three of them linger in the park, relaxing in each other’s company, catching up on all those weeks missed.
‘I’m going at the end of the month,’ says Carl.
‘Going?’
‘Don’t you remember? Sea school.’
‘So it’s actually happening? You’re leaving me for dust.’
‘It’s not too late, Jack. You could still come. There’s space …’
‘You know I can’t …’
Carl shrugs. There is no point pressing on. ‘How you been keeping anyway?’
‘I get by.’
Carl frowns, but there is no time to expand, because at that moment they see more familiar figures approaching: Tommy and Vince are swaggering along the path. Beside them is Stoog, carrying a football and walking with jerky movements, as if at every step he expects trouble.
Jack can sense Carl’s irritation. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘they’re not that bad. Have a game? It’ll be like the old days.’
‘I thought you two had fallen out?’
‘We fell back in again.’ It is true that they have buried the hatchet for now, but there is always a simmering tension where Stoog is involved, and Jack knows that he has not forgiven him. But Jack needs Stoog again, as he needed Carl before. Stoog can get him work. On the street they’re brothers of a kind.
‘You know you can’t trust him …’
‘I have to trust him. I’ve got no choice.’
‘There’s always a choice.’
‘Please?’ Jack puts a brotherly arm around Carl, and Carl rolls his eyes, but nods.
