Beth Morrey - Saving Missy

‘Mesopotamia, 1916. Flies like soot around my face.’ He waved at the grey fog in front of him, and I could almost see them.

‘That blasted fever, too weak to brush them away … When I’d recovered, I was allowed home on leave. Marvellous to be back in London after that terrible heat. Your grandmother and I went out to a restaurant in – where was it, Jette? Swallow Street? – to toast my return.’

Our grandmother, sniffling over there in a dark corner. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to have dinner with her – she barely ever opened her mouth, either to eat or speak. She gave us a watery smile and ducked her head at another skirl above. Then the gap, like thunder after a lightning strike. When it came, it was quite faint.

‘We had a grand blowout, then walked back to Piccadilly to find a hackney – you couldn’t whistle for one, and of course it was dark along the back roads, and we were a trifle fuddled, must admit.’ He chuckled and drew on his pipe, Henry and I giggling at the thought of Fa-Fa, and particularly our grandmother, in such a state. No beating about the bush; that was why we loved him.

‘Then, in the darkness, Jette tripped and fell, and as I helped her up, a thief darted forwards and filched her purse, the rascal! I immediately gave chase.’

Fa-Fa shifted his bulk on the low stool as Henry and I gasped and clutched each other. Jette, hunched in the shadows, the mouse to his man. I couldn’t see her expression in the gloom, only her hand gripping the handkerchief.

‘Caught up with him fairly easily, turned him round and saw he was a young lad, too young to fight in a war but old enough to steal in one. Nothing much in the purse of value, a few coins maybe, but I wasn’t going back to Jette without it. Gave him a bit of a tap, just to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere. Thought that would be the end of it, but he clung on for dear life and try as I might, I couldn’t get it out of his grasp. Locked fast in his fingers, he just wouldn’t let go.’ Fa-Fa held up a ham-fist, tendons bulging, sending a few flecks of tobacco to the floor. He stooped forward to sweep them up before he continued.

‘In the end, had to give him a rare old pummelling, a good going over, but no matter what I did, his grip still wouldn’t budge from the bag.’

Another draw on the pipe – puff, puff, puff – along with the slow glow of the burn. Jette’s thin fingers plucked at her dress.

‘Punch, jab, punch! But he wouldn’t let go. Like a dog with a bone.’

Boom went the bombs. My grandmother blew her nose. We were all wreathed in the fug of Fa-Fa’s smoke. It made my eyes water, but I couldn’t take them off him.

‘Started kicking him in the shins, stamping on his feet. He was screaming but he wouldn’t let go. By the time I’d finished with him, he was curled in a ball at my feet, but his hands still gripped the purse. It was dirty and covered in blood as well. Realized even if I got it back, Jette wouldn’t want it. So I left him there, lying in the street, mewling like a baby, with the bag still clenched in those bloody hands.’

There was a brief silence, even from above, as Fa-Fa put down the pipe and polished his spectacles, rheumy eyes focused on the job. His hands were shaking a little as he put them back on.

‘Damned scamp got the bag. Admired him for it. Whatever was in it that he wanted, he got. Good on him.’ Leaning forward, he licked his fingers and pinched out the candle nearest our bunk. ‘And that’s the moral of the story tonight. If you really want something, you hang on. Don’t give up. Hang on, as if your life depended on it.’

‘Even if someone beats you black and blue?’ piped up Henry.

‘Even if they do that!’ retorted Fa-Fa, ruffling his hair. ‘Even if they cuff you,’ he tweaked Henry’s ear. ‘Even if they thump you,’ he aimed a mock punch at Henry’s stomach, then again a little harder. ‘Even if they bash the hell out of you, you hang on!’ He and Henry began play-fighting, but as the bombs started up again, the frolic became something else. Fa-Fa had Henry in a headlock, my brother’s face a livid red, eyes sparkling with excitement or tears, I couldn’t tell which. Jette stood, holding out her white handkerchief.

‘Father! What are you doing?’

My mother had slipped in through the cellar door, unnoticed. She was unwinding a scarlet scarf from her neck, pale from the cold and angry as usual. Jette rushed forward to embrace her, but Mama ignored her, still glaring at my grandfather. Fa-Fa looked up and released his hold on Henry, who fell back on the bunk, his hands at his throat.

‘When will you learn to be gentle around the children? They’re not your recruits. I suppose you’ve been telling them awful stories again. Now, Milly, Henry, let’s get you in bed, it’s far too late for you to be up.’ She began the motherly round of tucking us in, picking up our half-eaten pieces of bread and leaving them on the side for morning.

Fa-Fa retreated to a chair in the corner to pack another pipe, sulking, as Mama lay down on her pallet. The last thing I remembered was her blowing out the final candle, and the comforting smoulder as Fa-Fa smoked the night away. Then the ink-blot shadows on the walls sent me into a deep sleep that even the booms outside couldn’t penetrate.

The next night, an SC250 landed in the road outside our house, reducing the garden wall to rubble. No one was injured although Fa-Fa’s spectacles fell and shattered in the blast. After that, my mother decided we would be better off in the country and packed us off to my Aunt Sibyl in Yorkshire. But it seemed the decision wasn’t so much based on the bomb as the story of the bag, which Henry recounted to Mama the next morning, provoking another tirade. Fa-Fa was reprehensible, telling disgraceful stories which probably weren’t even true (Jette wouldn’t confirm or deny when asked), it was high time we got some country air, etcetera. So off to Kirkheaton we went, to a draughty old rectory where we slept in the garret, searched priest holes for ghouls, made dens in the woods and mostly forgot about the war and Fa-Fa’s strange habits.

We didn’t forget that story though, and used to tell it back to each other, lying in those hard narrow beds under the eaves. Each time, we’d add an embellishment – a dramatic flourish, some sordid detail, until eventually we weren’t sure where Fa-Fa’s tale ended and ours began. Did he make it up, or did we? Did any of it happen, or none of it? As the years passed, I was inclined to believe the latter.

Still, it’s true though, isn’t it? If you really want something, you hang on.

A week went by without anything happening that I could put in an email to Alistair. I hardly left the house, except to get a few bits – a scrag end at the butchers, a prescription from the chemist. I thought Sylvie was in front of me in the queue and bent my head so she wouldn’t notice me, but it wasn’t her at all, just some other middle-aged woman buying indigestion tablets.

I splashed out on a bottle of wine on the way home, though drinking on my own seemed like a slippery slope. But the evenings stretched, and a glass of something gave the synapses a sly tweak, lending a little ‘ entheos ’ – the Greek buzz of enthusiasm. Just the one glass, maybe two small ones, distracting myself from the rest of the bottle by poking around various rooms in the house, most of which were hardly ever used any more. What did I need a dining room for? All those dinner parties?