These Dark Wings Page 8

  I stand, straightening my top. I am suddenly very happy the cold weather made me change into trousers after school. I do wish I had some Vinolia soap, though.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘You’ve never seen this view.’

  The shine in his eyes startles me.

  ‘How did you get up here?’

  ‘Same as now.’ I gesture to the handholds below, trying to dim my smile and steady my breathing. Much easier the second time.

  A huge barrage balloon has been set up over the White Tower. Much larger and more otherworldly from up here, it sways and glitters in the cold air. Taut black cables anchor it to the earth. Somehow this grey whale protects us from bombs.

  Despite all his grousing – ‘I’m dead, absolutely dead’ – Timothy Squire doesn’t seem winded. He takes a large step forward, peering over the edge like an explorer on a peak. Not afraid of heights then.

  ‘You can see everything.’

  He keeps looking, the city spread out before us, the strange balloon behind. This time I allow the thrill of the climb its full moment.

  ‘We have to come back up here during a raid,’ he says, now sounding breathless.

  Tower Bridge is up, two great destroyers passing down river, the sun shining over it all. The smell of the spice docks travels on the wind. An hour at least before the dusk feeding.

  I wipe my face with the back of my hand. Although it feels quite warm, I am glad I had Mum’s old trousers for the climb. Imagine if the horrible girls saw me in trousers, what they would say – worse than ‘spy’. Timothy, it seems, notices nothing different.

  While he stares across London, I look out at the sprawling Tower below. From here it isn’t quite so daunting. The ancient walls look chalky, almost soft. A thousand years it has stood here, since William the Conqueror made it his home. None of Uncle’s many lessons come back to me. Nevertheless, it is an amazing sight. The juice is worth the squeeze, as Flo’s father would say. The raid damage is mainly along the North Bastion walls, now blasted black. Stone spills into the passage, the smooth turrets crunched by the bombs. The rest of the Tower rises solid, strong. Our fate is not decided yet.

  I see only one blue coat, heading in the direction of the White Tower. And a black smudge, perched motionless on the bench. My bench. Likely Raven Edgar extending his territory.

  This morning I checked with renewed hope to see if Mabel had returned, maybe waiting in front of the roost, ready to have breakfast with Grip. Surely she misses him, misses her home. But Mabel has not come back.

  What is she telling me?

  Holding my hair back against the wind, I turn to the south. Several women are working in the allotments. One stops digging for a moment, standing full in the sun. I remember sunbathing with Flo in her garden the August before the war; the soft grass, the slow afternoons. The woman below resumes her work. The distant cluck of hens can be heard.

  A far cry from Maida Vale. The broad streets lined with trees, the winding canal teeming with coloured houseboats, the bustle and excitement of Paddington Station, taking people to Wales, Bristol, Penzance.

  ‘Spitfires,’ calls Timothy Squire.

  While it has been weeks since I’ve bothered to look up at the droning sound, Timothy Squire acts as though it’s his first sight of planes in formation.

  ‘This place kicks,’ says the upturned face.

  I smile, but can’t hold it for long. Was that the two o’clock bell? It didn’t quite sound like the barracks clock. Was it a church bell, from the city?

  I am acting mad. Church bells have been banned since the summer. Every Londoner knows the signal and even Timothy Squire wouldn’t scoff at it. If the church bells ring, the invasion has begun. All the noises – bombs, fire, planes – are preferable to the tumbling notes of church bells. When the church bells ring, Hitler has come.

  ‘I have to feed the ravens,’ I say to the still upturned face, and abruptly begin the steep descent.

  I understand, as I land on the battlements undiscovered, something I first thought after the Balham disaster. It is not the Tower that is the prison. It is the war.

  I also realize that the letter I wrote, telling Flo I am coming, is still pressed inside my diary.

  ‘Edgar!’

  I have never seen him so agitated at morning feed. Uncle doesn’t seem to notice – or think too much of it. Last night’s raid has made them stranger than ever. Anxious, fluttering, restless. ‘Migration patterns,’ Uncle says, though I don’t understand what he means. The birds can’t fly.

  ‘Do you know the legend of King Arthur?’

  I nod, trying to hide the coming frown.

  ‘Yes?’ Uncle says, and I am embarrassed at how his face instantly shines. ‘What does the legend say?’

  ‘That King Arthur will return, some day, as a raven. So you should never harm one.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he says, and for a moment I think he will reach out a gloved hand and pat me on the shoulder. He does not.

  Uncle shoos Cora into her cage and I watch her skip right back out. She is calling, croaking loudly. She never acts like this – and the others are just as bad, Grip in particular.

  Kraa, accompanied by much hopping, on both feet, up and down. Uncle’s expression does not change. It is likely the cold as the autumn descends into winter. Or is it the passing gulls?

  MacDonald is not in his cage. The door is open, but he hasn’t returned. I don’t see him anywhere – and then I do.

  Fear seizes me, dark and cold.

  In the shallow ditch by the southern corner of the White Tower, his heavy body is twisted at an angle. Ruined and broken, motionless. It is several minutes, in the weak dusk light, with Uncle calling me back, before I find Raven MacDonald’s head.

  I can make no other thoughts come.

  The ravens protect the Tower. Without them, the kingdom will fall.

  I burst through the Gatehouse doors, rushing past the startled Watchman, and bound up the stairs, Oakes’s laughing face filling my thoughts.

  ‘You!’

  My voice cracks.

  Oakes is reading a heavy leather book.

  ‘Anna.’ He looks up, smiling but cautious. ‘Can I help you?’

  The Watchman, who followed me inside, takes his swift leave.

  ‘It was you.’

  My voice bounces from the walls.

  Oakes closes his book, leaving a finger in the pages. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I saw you! At the gate. You hate Churchill, you hate England, and you hate the ravens.’

  ‘Anna.’ He lets his book close. ‘What has happened?’

  I know it, looking at him. He does hate them – he called them the real Beefeaters because they steal his food. And he’s jealous Uncle spends so much time with them. He killed poor MacDonald. He cut off his head. I know it was him.

  He stands, looming over me. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘I know what you did. And I will prove it.’

  Thursday 17 October 1940

  The siren is half an hour early and each night is colder than the last. I have to clench my teeth to stop them chattering.

  He cut off MacDonald’s head. Why? Is this another warning? So I won’t tell Uncle? Maybe it wasn’t Oakes at all – maybe it was someone else?

  I have put Oakes from my mind. I do not smile at him at breakfast but I will not say sorry either. Someone did this, and if it wasn’t him... I don’t know. How could anyone be so wicked? To murder an innocent bird. No one else seems to care. They have graver worries.

  Hitler is going to invade.

  Nobody bothers with the shelters any more unless the bombing is close. Tonight, we are free to try and ignore it. Soon the sky through the window is a flickering red, and then a glaring white leads the way. Often the colours swirl together and I watch the reds and blues and oranges transform the wall. No need for a torch. And anyway mine appears to have run out of batteries. (It is near impossible to get new ones.) Or frozen dead.

  I should take
my workbook from underneath the bed. We’ve been kicked in the head with homework. The idea of returning to class fills me with loathing. I have pages and pages of notes to study. The book was more than half filled before Miss Breedon’s lengthy additions. At this rate I will run afoul of the paper ration.

  Instead I reach for my diary. It is also nearly full. I have not written in it, not a word, since I was brought here. But often I flip through the crowded pages, turning towards earlier entries.

  Friday

  Today we practised hiding underneath our desks. Which is awkward for most of us – and mean Helen Jones is just too fat to fit.

  I skip ahead several pages, turning back when my eyes latch on to a word.

  Wednesday

  I hope Mum was not unhappy with Father before he drowned. I know it seems a queer thing to worry about – but I do hope that in those last days they did not fight or argue. That for some reason would be the greatest sadness.

  I shouldn’t have turned back the pages, of course. Though Mum rarely talked of Father, that didn’t mean she was angry with him. Only that his memory made her sad.

  I can only think of him in that photograph, sitting at the kitchen table with Mum and me. Not quite handsome – his ears stick out a bit too much – with light hair, and an almost serious look. The hint of a smile, maybe, at his lips. (Who likes to have their picture taken, anyway?)

  A loud crash returns me to the present. I was so obviously tired at the dusk feeding that Uncle offered to put the ravens to bed on his own tonight. Tired from the school day, of course – how many kings are there in the Old Testament? – not because I am too sad at the loss of MacDonald.

  I put the diary back under the bed with the workbook and gas mask, taking out the wax earplugs Uncle gave me. (Mum always had cotton-wool plugs, which are far more comfortable.) I lie back, the sound muffled, and stare round the room, trying to ignore the horrid pang of hunger that never quite goes away.

  In the darkness I don’t see the empty room, the bare window sill. I see the desk in Mum’s study, the pens and pencils, the make-up cases, the yellow wrappers from those hard candies. When I finally close my eyes, they are still there.

  Another crash wakes me.

  I slide out from under the pile of blankets, which now includes the rug – it is far too cold otherwise – and move through the dark. Uncle will expect me to be asleep. He will be listening to the radio, so I can easily sneak past his room and down to the Stone Kitchen. It is a not-so-secret secret between us that the biscuits are hidden behind the great suit of armour.

  I open my door and leave it slightly ajar. Let the mouse, who has definitely returned, escape again. Cold air immediately grabs me but I shrug it off. I am not going far. Just a biscuit and then back to bed; hopefully a few more hours’ sleep before the dawn.

  Slipping down the stairs, I ease up before reaching Uncle’s door. Seeing no light from underneath the crack, I breathe easier. He is asleep.

  My foot misses the next stair. No. I can hear people talking.

  It is Oakes’s voice, coming from Uncle’s room, though his tone is somehow different. I risk a step closer to the door. Uncle is arguing with Oakes. I can make out their words.

  ‘What if something happens?’

  ‘Something could happen to any of us, at any time.’

  ‘You are ill, Henry.’

  ‘My thoughts are clear. This is not a discussion.’

  There is a silence and then Uncle speaks again, his voice softer.

  ‘She can never know.’

  The air in the stairwell is like ice. I am certain that Oakes has left the room through the back door until he speaks.

  ‘Never? Is that in the interest of the girl?’

  What girl? Me? I have forgotten all about my hunger.

  As I inch forward another step, the voices cease. Have they gone into another room? What can I never know? He is angry that I interrupted his writing. You accused him of being a spy and murdering a raven.

  I let another long minute pass; no sound comes from behind the door. Only the quiet ticking of a clock. Slowly I retreat up the stairs and pull my own door softly shut.

  I sit in the darkness, eyes wide, certain of the truth.

  They were talking about Mum.

  Uncle is lying to me. They are all lying to me.

  Hope has tricked me enough. The walls, the tunnels, the docks: every possible escape is blocked. I can’t go to Montreal; I can’t go home. If Hitler invades, nowhere in the kingdom will be safe.

  I must stay. Protect the ravens, like I told Timothy Squire, like I promised Uncle. I must stay, in the Tower, with its mean girls and traitors and bombs. I must stay and find out the truth about Mum.

  III

  THE RAVENS AND THE RUINS

  Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will Bring Us Victory.

  – Ministry of Information, poster

  6

  Friday, 18 October 1940

  Of all the rotten classmates, Timothy Squire is the rottenest.

  School work is impossible when you are always tired: eyes dry, hands slow, mind drifting. Timothy Squire still never acknowledges me in class.

  Leslie, who was beastly – all eye-rolling and hostile laughter – seems to have changed her mind about me being a spy. Even though she keeps calling me Magpie, she doesn’t say it in the same mean way. Her laugh, too, is still nasty, but now it is directed elsewhere. Sometimes at stout Kate, who sends cross looks back at us.

  Now Leslie turns to me between classes and tells me all sorts of things. ‘You can still get anything you want in the city,’ she says. ‘You just have to talk to the right people.’ Just imagine, someone being able to get hot chocolate and scones with cream.

  Leslie is full of dreadful stories too. ‘When the night clubs get bombed, and everyone is running and screaming in a panic, pickpockets and thieves go to work. Sometimes,’ she leans in cautiously, ‘they take fingers.’

  ‘Fingers?’ The desk creaks as I pull away. ‘Why?’

  She rolls her eyes at my innocence. ‘Magpie, you can sell anything on the black market.’

  Nobody would accuse her of being a Sunshine Susie. Many people talk about the black market, and it sounds like a dreadful place – filled with cheats and crooks and bloody fingers. Is this where you get the hot chocolate?

  How she hears all this, I can’t imagine. Leslie knows all about the pilots too – the day boys and the night fighters – and talks about how brave they are. While it occurs to me that she would find Timothy Squire fascinating, for some reason I don’t mention it.

  Why does no one speak to him?

  Miss Breedon returns and silence with her.

  Leslie is a great desk partner, and far more interesting than the lessons. Flo would love her. I can’t imagine these things happening in Montreal. She must be so bored.

  Today we have more gas-mask drills, and we wear the masks through history class. They smell dark and rubbery and the strap pinches my ears, and the eye-pieces instantly begin to fog up.

  ‘Great, now I look just like those stupid birds,’ comes Leslie’s blurred voice. With a long black beak and rounded eyes. She is not wrong. She could be Cora’s cousin.

  Before class ends, she nudges my elbow and, when I look, makes the loudest croaking noise through her mask. Even Timothy Squire turns round, his grey eyes wide with surprise, and I laugh even louder.

  ‘Sorry if we were a bit hard on you,’ Leslie says. ‘When you first came, I mean.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say.

  ‘We don’t get vacuees coming to us. You’re our first, Magpie.’

  I learn a lot from her. We often sit, the hour before dusk, on the low wall. Kate is never there. (She’s probably at home, crying like a watering cart.) Leslie says things are different now. Before the war, kids in the Tower were normal enough – they went to the cinema, rode bikes, ate Marmite sandwiches and ices.

  ‘What do you think of... him?’ I gesture vaguely
as we leave the school. Leslie knows who I mean.

  ‘Timothy Squire? You’re the only one who can stand talking to him.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Because you’re new.’

  That doesn’t answer my question, but for some reason I don’t want to ask again. Leslie has been completely lovely. She doesn’t even sound like she’s from the East End, not like Nell or Timothy Squire. She seems almost fond of me now. The ravens, however, Leslie has not grown fond of. Maybe it’s because of all the gas-mask drills.

  ‘You must hate it. Being around those awful birds,’ she says as we pass by the Green, a long day of memorizing the names of committees and agencies now behind us.

  I shrug, but Leslie won’t leave it.

  ‘What? You like them?’

  ‘They’re not so bad.’

  ‘Just look at it.’ She comes to a stop, points. ‘If you died, it would eat off your face, just like that. Pluck out your eyes and swallow them.’

  ‘Raven Cora?’

  My disbelief is matched only by hers.

  ‘Giving it a name doesn’t make it a girl, dummy. It’s still vermin. Why your uncle is allowed to keep them here is beyond me.’

  I shrug again, too tired to argue, as Cora turns towards me, listening. Across the ramparts the setting sun stretches her shadow. Two black eyes shine no light back at me.

  To others, they are a symbol of hope. And if I can help the ravens, keep them happy, keep them here, people will not lose hope.

  If the Tower ravens leave, the kingdom will fall.

  ‘Why don’t you ever talk to Timothy Squire?’

  Leslie answers in a mocking, sing-song voice. ‘Timothy Squire is a dirty old liar.’

  She laughs, an old joke.

  When Leslie and I part ways under the afternoon sky, I exhale loudly. A crashing headache is coming. Is he a liar? A loud croak wrests my attention back to the gathering ravens. They appear much more sinister as a group. Uncle would likely have some explanation for that.

  ‘I’ll be back to feed you lot in an hour.’