Read The Safest Place in London for Free Online Page A

seemed too great. He was not hurt in any way that she could see, other than the sunburn and blisters, but he spent the first week at home trying to count all the men who had died, counting fretfully on his fingers, remembering each name. But never when she was in the room, never whenhe thought she was watching him. He sat in the armchair with his sleeves rolled up and read the paper, he went to the pub and drank watery wartime beer, he rolled his cigarettes and in the evenings he listened to the wireless and, when the news came on, he railed against the politicians and the government and the navy and the Admiralty and anyone, really, who sat in an office and made decisions while he was out there getting his arse shot off. She liked that: his fury, his energy. But apart from that first moment when she had burst into tears and run at him, they had forgotten how to be close.
    And Emily, born seven months after Joe had left and now more than three years old, was a stranger to him as much as he was to her. Her demands, her constant presence, seemed to surprise him, and sometimes it was funny and other times it made him furious. At night, when Joe wanted what any man wanted after three years at sea, Emily’s sleeping there in the same room with them infuriated him, but he had grown up in a small house with many people, they all had, and her presence quickly became familiar to him.
    Emily greeted the sudden appearance of a dad with a mixture of disdain and open hostility that lasted up until the first tins had arrived. For Joe had got himself signed on at the dockyard, unloading the few convoys that made it past the German U-boats. He was supposed to be on sick leave and there he was putting in shifts at the dockyard. Nancy was furious. But it was hard to be angry with the extra money—and that wasn’t all. After his first shift Joe came home with two tins of peaches and a tin of Carnation milk wrapped in a sack. How he’d done it without being caught she didn’t know and she didn’t ask. Theyate the peaches and drank the Carnation and sent him back for more.
    But that would stop now Joe had gone.
    This morning she had scrubbed the front step and Emily had played in the bomb wreckage in the street outside as Joe had flung his things into his kitbag. It was all new, his kit; he had lost everything in the ship that had been torpedoed so the navy had given him new stuff. It didn’t look new—it looked like a hundred sailors had used it before him—but she made sure it was clean at least. Joe placed his new sailor’s hat on Emily’s head and laughed at her. He didn’t tell them the name of his new ship and Nancy had not wanted to know because his last ship had been torpedoed and it seemed like bad luck. Seeing him in his uniform for the first time, Emily went suddenly shy. She understood he was departing—that huge, heavy kitbag was hard to ignore—but what did it mean when you were three? By the end of the day she would have forgotten him.
    ‘Right then.’ Joe placed his kit on the floor. He had shaved, making a better job of it than usual, as though he wanted to make a good impression on his new ship. ‘Em, you mind you look after your mum,’ he said, tweaking her nose, and instead of looking outraged Emily regarded him wordlessly, silenced by the uniform and the kitbag and an awareness of something terrible but unspoken.
    ‘You got everything?’ Nancy said.
    ‘Think so. You’ll be alright, then, will you?’
    ‘’Course we will. We’re used to it, ain’t we, Em?’
    Emily nodded uncertainly.
    ‘Don’t do anything daft,’ Nancy added.
    ‘’Course I won’t. Right then . . .’ And he had picked up his kitbag, slung it over his shoulder, and kissed them both goodbye.
    Nancy had stood at the door with Emily and together they watched him till he had turned the corner.

    Nancy scanned the sea of faces on the platform above. The man in the raincoat whom she had noticed earlier had gone from his spot in the