The Girl Below(44)
I hadn’t visited the communal garden since childhood and was surprised by how small it was. Running wild and unsupervised around it with the other children who lived on our street, it had seemed enormous, a continent of jungle and grassland with areas we’d mapped out, prosaically, as Big Wood, Small Wood, and the Dark Forest, where none of us dared to go. I’d played uneasily with the other children, their savage games shocked me—and I was equally fearful of being left out. One of the boys always had matches to set fire to anything that wasn’t sopping wet, and both boys and girls had taken turns to squat under the drooping willows of Big Wood to see who could do the biggest shit. I’d not told my mother about those games in case she forbade me to play in the garden, but I once came home with a scorch mark on my dress and she had wheedled it out of me, while I cried, that we had been lighting fires.
I stood on the communal lawn and viewed our old flat from the garden side. The patio gate was invitingly open, but I walked past it a few times before working up the nerve to go in. In the few days I’d been staying at Peggy’s, I’d seen no one coming or going from the basement, and that morning all the windows and doors at the rear were heavily curtained and shut. It was impossible to tell if the people who lived there were away or just sleeping, but I told myself I wasn’t really trespassing because it had once been my home. I decided to make my visit a quick one though, just in case, and slipped through the gate and walked hastily over to where the entrance to the air-raid shelter had once been. I ran my foot through what was now a chalk path. Some of the gravel displaced, and I saw that it was only ornamental, a thin layer of white stuff spread over concrete. Unconvinced that I had been searching in the right area, I rubbed away the chalk in a few more patches, but found no metal plate underneath, just a continuation of what appeared to be newly laid concrete. Satisfied the hatch was no longer there, but also slightly disappointed, I smoothed over the chalk as best I could and made my way over to the French doors, still in place, but freshly painted in chic gunmetal gray.
“Excuse me,” said a sharp voice from above. “But can I help you?”
I looked up to where a woman leaned out of the first-floor window—what had been my parents’ bedroom after the flat was turned into a maisonette. Her hair was wrapped in a fluffy white towel, and she wore a matching robe.
“I’m sorry,” I called up. “I’m staying upstairs with Peggy.”
She frowned. “We don’t know anyone upstairs.”
“I used to live in the basement flat. There was an air-raid shelter in the garden. Do you know if it’s still here?”
“An air-raid shelter?” she repeated. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you know if it was filled in?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Never mind.” I made my way toward the gate, and tried to end the encounter on a friendly note. “I like what you’ve done with the garden. It looks really smart.”
“We haven’t touched it,” she said. “We’re renting.”
I promptly left the garden and decided to walk down to the delicatessen on Chepstow Road to grab a takeaway coffee. The place thronged with people in suits grabbing breakfast on their way to work, their sense of urgency palpable. Next to them I felt tranquilized, and realized I hadn’t left Peggy’s flat for more than two days, nor seen or spoken to anyone other than the old woman or her daughter. My world had reduced to the size of a dot, and the shrinkage felt permanent, irreversible.
When I returned to Ladbroke Gardens, I found Peggy in her room, down on her hands and knees and wielding a large pair of dressmaking scissors. In the other hand, she held a necklace, a long string of pearls with a diamante pendant. She appeared to be trying to unpick the curtains, but had so far succeeded only in cutting a large hole. The scissors she was using were serrated, and the curtain, where she’d hacked at it, had a manic, toothy grin. She hadn’t heard me calling out her name after I let myself into the flat, or even coming into her room, and when she finally saw me standing next to her, she dropped the scissors in fright.
“Hillary!” she exclaimed. “I forgot you were here.”
“I wasn’t,” I said, not bothering to correct her. “I went out to get a coffee. Do you need a hand? Those scissors look rather sharp.”
“No, dear, I’m quite all right,” she said, stuffing the necklace into the pocket of her dressing gown and casually moving the scissors out of sight. “But I would so love a cup of tea, if you wouldn’t mind?”