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them. Where would they be, if not for that bomb? Michael saw their chance and got them in quick. They’re the lucky ones to have a roof at all. Where would they live, if not here? They might be as wretched as that man in Bacon Street. They might still live apart, Michael in his Old Street lodgings, her and the girls still cheek by jowl with her Aunt Kate in Birmingham, living off sour charity. Waiting for Michael to make their fortunes, to find the gold in London’s streets . . . though gold’s only in stories: Mary’s streets are Michael’s, and those are only paved with flowers.
    Or silver. Mary has seen the silver, and other things. But she doesn’t ask.
    The latch clicks and she jumps up. She’s quick into the hall, but Mrs Platt is there before her, wiping her hands on her skirts.
    ‘ There you are! Your mother’s been so worried. I don’t know what you two were thinking of!’
    ‘Thank you, Mrs Platt,’ Mary says, and the girls troop past in general silence, Floss head up, Iris head down.
    Mary has them all back in the kitchen, is doing her best to be stern while the girls clean their hands and faces, when she sees that Iris has been crying.
    ‘Dirty as a coal miner,’ Mrs Platt says, and Floss looks up, wet and feral.
    ‘I’m not!’
    ‘Mrs Platt,’ Mary says, ‘you’ve been a help.’
    ‘I’ll be going then,’ the old woman says, grudgingly; but she does. Alone with her children, Mary touches Iris’s blotched face.
    ‘What’s this for?’
    ‘She saw a ghost!’ Floss says, but Iris shakes her head.
    ‘It wasn’t.’
    Mary cleans her child. She had the water warm, but already it’s cold in her hands. ‘Of course not,’ she says, ‘there’s no such thing.’
    ‘There is,’ Floss says, ‘she saw it in Long Debris! You did, Iris, didn’t you?’
    But Iris won’t say. Only later, when they’re both in bed, when Mary is kissing them in the dark, does Iris lean into her neck to whisper muzzily.
    ‘It wasn’t.’
    ‘What, love?’
    ‘It wasn’t the ghost,’ Iris says. ‘It was smaller than him.’

2. Summer
    On the first it is dry. A watercart goes laying the dust.
    On the second, third and fourth, it’s wet. The costers are crestfallen hawks, the tarps fat ponds of rain.
    On the fifth, the Jew watchmaker plays chess with the Banana King.
    Just as they do most Saturdays, weather and families permitting, Solly Lazarus and Clarence Malcolm climb up to the fifth floor laundry (where no one much goes anymore – the cant of the Columbia Buildings is appreciable up here), and set up the table and chairs, the board and pieces and the ash-tray, out on the old drying balcony. Clarence has brought apples. Across the bombstruck wasteland that runs a zigzag east of them, Solly can see his wife. She’s tramping through the rubbishy grass, her basket – hooked over one arm – full of a froth of elderflower.
    Clarence whistles, Solly waves, and Dora waves back up at them. Clarence is glad to see her there. He’s hoping she’ll give him an edge.
    When Clarence takes a piece, he slams his own on top of it – ‘Ha!’ – so that the board and table shake, and sometimes (the floor being what it is) the whole thing goes teetering over, both men wailing and catching at it, and all the pieces sliding south, so that they have to start again.
    When Solly thinks he has a clincher, he grips his pipestem in his teeth, smiles around it – ‘Aha!’ – and moves his piece extra slow, his goggle eyes darting up to make sure Clarence is watching, so that they’ll both remember his genius for posterity.
    Now it’s Solly’s turn. Clarence blows a Gold Flake smoke ring. He says, ‘Bernie was talking.’
    ‘You’re trying to distract me, Clarence. Don’t think I don’t know.’
    ‘It’s true, though. Someone knows a council man, says they’re going to turf us out.’
    ‘Just talk,’ Solly says, ‘those council men, they like the sound of their own voices.’
    ‘Let’s