The Book of Lost Things(7)
And he was smiling.
III
Of the New House, the New Child, and the New King
THIS IS how things came to pass.
Rose was pregnant. His father told David as they ate chips by the Thames, boats bustling by and the smell of oil and seaweed mixing in the air. It was November 1939. There were more policemen on the streets than before, and men in uniform were everywhere. Sandbags were piled against windows, and great lengths of barbed wire lay coiled around like vicious springs. Humpbacked Anderson shelters dotted gardens, and trenches had been dug in parks. There seemed to be white posters on every available space: reminders of lighting restrictions, proclamations from the king, all of the instructions for a country at war.
Most of the children David knew had by now left the city, thronging train stations with little brown luggage labels tied to their coats on their way to farms and strange towns. Their absence made the city appear emptier and increased the sense of nervous expectancy that seemed to govern the lives of all who remained. Soon, the bombers would come, and the city was shrouded in darkness at night to make their task harder. The blackout made the city so dark that it was possible to pick out the craters of the moon, and the heavens were crowded with stars.
On their way to the river, they saw more barrage balloons being inflated in Hyde Park. When these were fully inflated, they would hang in the air, anchored by heavy steel cables. The cables would prevent the German bombers from flying low, which meant that they would have to drop their payloads from a greater height. That way, the bombers would not be as certain of hitting their targets.
The balloons were shaped like enormous bombs. David’s father said it was ironic, and David asked him what he meant. His father said it was just funny that something that was supposed to protect the city from bombs and bombers should look like a bomb itself. David nodded. He supposed that it was strange. He thought of the men in the German bombers, the pilots trying to avoid the anti-aircraft fire from below, one man crouched over the bombsight while the city passed beneath him. He wondered if he ever thought of the people in the houses and the factories before he released the bombs. From high in the air, London would look just like a model, with toy houses and miniature trees on tiny streets. Maybe that was the only way you could drop the bombs: by pretending that it wasn’t real, that nobody would burn and die when they exploded below.
David tried to imagine himself in a bomber—a British one, perhaps a Wellington or a Whitley—flying over a German city, bombs at the ready. Would he be able to release the load? It was a war after all. The Germans were bad. Everybody knew that. They had started it. It was like a playground fight: if you started it, then you were to blame, and you couldn’t really complain about what happened afterward. David thought that he would release the bombs, but he wouldn’t think about the possibility that there might be people below. There would just be factories and shipyards, shapes in the darkness, and everyone employed in them would be safely tucked up in bed when the bombs fell and blew apart their places of work.
A thought struck him.
“Dad? If the Germans can’t aim properly because of the balloons, then their bombs could drop just anywhere, right? I mean, they’ll be trying to hit factories, won’t they, but they won’t be able to, so they’ll just let them go and hope for the best. They’re not going to go home and come back another night just because of the balloons.”
David’s father didn’t reply for a moment or two.
“I don’t think they care,” he said at last. “They want people to lose their spirit and their hope. If they blow up airplane factories or shipyards along the way, then so much the better. That’s how a certain type of bully works. He softens you up before going in for the killer blow.”
He sighed. “We need to talk about something, David, something important.”
They had just come from another session with Dr. Moberley, during which David was asked again if he missed his mother. Of course he missed her. It was a stupid question. He missed her, and he was sad because of it. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that. He had trouble understanding what Dr. Moberley was saying most of the time anyway, partly because the doctor used words that David didn’t understand, but mostly because his voice was now almost entirely drowned out by the dronings of the books on his shelves.
The sounds made by books had become clearer and clearer to David. He understood that Dr. Moberley couldn’t hear them the way he could, otherwise he couldn’t have worked in his office without going mad. Sometimes, when Dr. Moberley asked a question of which the books approved, they would all say “Hmmmmm” in unison, like a male voice choir practicing a single note. If he said something of which they disapproved, they would mutter insults at him.
“Clown!”
“Charlatan!”
“Poppycock!”
“The man’s an idiot.”
One book, with the name Jung engraved on its cover in gold letters, grew so irate that it toppled itself from the shelf and lay on the carpet, fuming. Dr. Moberley looked quite surprised when it fell. David was tempted to tell him what the book was saying, but he didn’t think it would be a very good idea to let Dr. Moberley know that he heard books talking. David had heard of people being “put away” because they were “wrong in the head.” David didn’t want to be put away. Anyway, he didn’t hear the books talking all of the time now. It was only when he was upset or angry. David tried to stay calm, to think about good things as much as he could, but it was hard sometimes, especially when he was with Dr. Moberley, or Rose.