The Report (11 page)

“You say you noticed that the Museum Cinema up the street was turning out and people were dashing into the street. Were they worried?”

“No.”

“Jumpy?”

“No, just heading for shelter, I think. On that occasion the picture palace seemed to empty all at once.”

“It was not closing time or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Do you think they’d heard the siren and they thought they would be safer somewhere else?”

“Yes.”

“It is a biggish cinema?”

“A fair-sized picture palace, sir.”

“And you say the people were coming out quickly?”

“Some of them. Not running, though. Nothing like that.”

“Did you see the constable at the entrance?”

“No, sir.”

“You were already in the shelter? You had got down there, had you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you pass a constable on your way in?”

“No, sir.”

“Could you see over the heap of people on the stairs?”

“No, sir.”

“Were there people on the landing between the flights of steps?”

“One or two.”

“Fallen bodies?”

“No, these were people on their legs.”

“I am trying to see what happened. There was no one on the landing?”

“No, sir. Just a wall of people stretched the whole way across the bottom step.”

“And how long do you think this wall received additions to it? How long did the pressure go on?”

“Well, that is hard to say, but a short time.”

“A short time?”

“Maybe a matter of seconds.”

“When you got to the shelter, what was happening?”

“There was a crowd.”

“Was there a constable at the entrance?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“I saw some lights dropping from the sky, sir. I don’t know what they were. When I got to the fourth stair, something large and heavy went off.”

“You mean a sound of some kind?”

“Yes.”

“We just need your help a little bit more here, officer. Thank you for coming back. I’d like to know the farthest point of Constable Henderson’s patrol from the shelter.”

“Well, it extends from Cambridge Heath Railway Station to Mile End Gate, the shelter being approximately midway.”

“So the farthest point?”

“Couldn’t be more than a quarter mile.”

“No more than five minutes, then?”

“That’s what I would think.”

“But he does not seem to have got to the shelter until the trouble had already started. And we know that was at least ten minutes after the alert.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you been into this with him at all?”

“He says it took him four minutes from the time of the alert, which I am satisfied is an understatement.”

“An understatement?”

“Yes.”

“So you are investigating this?”

“Not at this time.”

“You were at the shelter, were you, on this particular night?”

“No, sir.”

“You did not go there at all?”

“I’ve said nothing about that.”

Laurie looked at Ross, then back at the witness. “I’m sorry, you did not go there at all?”

“Yes, sir, I lost two children. I searched among the dead for them.”

“That is awful.”

“They’re all right now.”

“They’re all right?”

“Yes, they came through.”

“Did you go with them to the shelter that night?”

“Yes, sir, with the wife and children. We were nine in all.”

“Let us start from the beginning.”

In the afternoon Laurie noticed a gray moth hiding on one of the upholstered chairs. The moth had oriented itself so as to be correct within the upholstery design, an impressive bit of camouflaging, although the insect couldn’t help its color. When Ross returned from lunch, Laurie pointed out the moth. It seemed to him a sign they would uncover something soon, but Ross just stared, baffled.

Laurie looked down at the name on his paper. “Bertram Lodge?”

Ross held the door, and the pale clerk bobbed in. He had a white parting in his hair like a gash and put himself in the chair as if trying to collect his bones into the smallest possible pile.

“You’ve been unwell?” Laurie asked.

The rims of Bertram’s eyes reddened a shade. His skin looked sensitive, almost damp. Despite his pathetic manner, however, he seemed to show a certain disdain for the proceedings by wearing, Laurie was fairly certain, his pajama top under a cardigan and a pair of mismatched boots.

“These chairs,” Laurie said, looking about the room. “You placed them, correct? They have not been unuseful.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“They did some good, actually. Got the government to release the number of dead sooner.”

“One hundred seventy-three,” Bertram said. “Five fewer than previously feared.” He eyed a few chairs as if he thought he might immediately remove them for accuracy’s sake. “Sixty-one injured.”

“Right.” Laurie looked at his notes. “Let’s begin. When you arrived at the shelter on March third, what did you see?”

“The entrance backed up with people.”

“What were they doing?”

“Pushing.”

Laurie looked at him. “Pushing.”

“Yes.”

Laurie looked at Ross, then down at his papers.

“Mr. Lodge, you are the first person to come before this inquiry and say there was pushing.”

The boy looked confused. “If others don’t feel guilty—”

“I don’t know about that. Perhaps they describe it differently. Why was there pushing, then?” Laurie asked.

“Something seemed to be wrong. The crowd wasn’t moving.” Bertram let a degree of rudeness that astonished him into his voice.

“Was there a constable at the entrance?”

“One or two.”

“What were they doing?”

“Trying to clear some of the people away. After a while, they advised us to go to another shelter. Some people did.”

“Did these constables use force at all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But only in the sense of dragging people away?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Laurie nodded. “Now, Mr. Lodge, I’d like to ask you about your correspondence with the Regional Commissioners—”

“It wasn’t mine. I just sent the letters back and forth, back and forth.”

Laurie kneaded the back of his neck. “Right. Well, maybe you could elaborate a little for me. What exactly is missing?”

“Several letters and a plan.”

“A plan?”

“A plan. A drawing. The local council had an engineer draw up a plan to change the entrance because they were worried about a crush. I sent it to the Regional Commissioners for approval.”

“When was this?”

“Nineteen forty-one. Between September and November. By about Christmastime we gave up.”

“This correspondence should have been in this building, the town hall?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea why it isn’t?”

“I imagine it has something to do with the Regional Commissioners’ refusal to permit the work.”

“And what reason did they give?”

“Waste of money.”

Laurie shook his head, the lines across his forehead twitching in consternation. Bertram cracked the knuckles of one hand and asked if the interview was over. Laurie nodded.

“Then may I show you something, sir?” Bertram reached into the bag at his feet. “Mr. Wycomb says the Regional Commissioners requested this, but now the Regional Commissioners say they did not. They think it was the London County Council or possibly the Ministry of Information.” He opened the notebook as he spoke. “I was asked to inventory the victims’ belongings. The bodies were still in the hospital and the morgue, and I went through their pockets, but now no one seems to want the list. No one seems to know who needed it.”

“Let me see,” Laurie said. He skimmed a few pages, read what he might have expected:

Not one of the casualties had more than a half dozen items, Bertram said. The children, in general, had nothing but small toys and scraps, sometimes a piece or two of boiled candy. One elderly man had a silver pocket watch that looked to be valuable. The women seemed united in their possession of spools of thread, probably intending to get the mending done until they could sleep.

Laurie closed the notebook.

“Looking at the still bodies was the hardest part,” Bertram said. “After I got used to it, touching was less difficult than I thought it would be. I tried to be gentle, but some of the pockets were so small. I had to apologize to a little boy whose only possession was a key on a strip of leather.”

Laurie cleared his throat. “Did you return the items to the families?” he asked quietly.

Bertram explained that most of the families had seen his signs and claimed the items at the town hall. His girlfriend had arranged for the mobile canteen to serve tea. The unclaimed items, he’d wrapped in paper and distributed personally.

“Good.” Laurie held the notebook out to Bertram.

Ross stood, but Bertram didn’t move.

“Sir, I’m not an expert, but I wanted to say that I agree with the coroner’s evidence. The victims did not look like there’d been a stampede or a panic. Blood was only in their mouths, sir. No twisted limbs. Very bad bruising, of course, but that’s to be expected.

“I saw all the bodies, sir, eighty-four women, sixty-two children, twenty-seven men.”

“You’ve done a good job,” Laurie said. “It must have been very difficult.”

Bertram took the notebook. “What am I to do with it?”

All three men stared at the green cover. “Type it up,” Laurie said. “I believe it can be said someone will want it eventually.”

Bertram asked if it should be alphabetized.

“I don’t see how that will matter much.”

“Plain or bond paper?” Bertram asked.

Laurie turned to Ross.

“All right, Bert,” Ross said. “Time to go.”

When Constable Henderson reappeared, he was nervous and slightly drunk. He announced that he was off duty but that, as he had an academic interest in history, he was more than happy to see them again. Ross smiled.

“Very kind,” Laurie said. “An academic interest, you say?”

“Yes, sir, though I don’t have time right now to indulge it.”

“So that’s not why you weren’t at the entrance when you should have been the night of March third? You weren’t studying your history books?”

Henderson turned red.

“I don’t mind telling you that I and several of your superior officers believe there are some miscalculations in your statement about when you arrived at the entrance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have anything to add? Would you like to revise your statement?”

“I stopped, sir, for a few minutes.” He rubbed his face as if to banish the beer. “There was a group of boys with torches they weren’t handling properly. They were running and waving ’em, sir. I thought someone might get hit, you know. They also had a couple of bottle rockets.”

“Bottle rockets?”

“Yes. Three or four, I think.”

“Did they set these off?”

“Not while I was there.”

“If they had set some off earlier, before you came upon them, could someone have mistaken the sound for that of bombs or antiaircraft fire?”

“Hard to imagine, sir.”

“Why is that?”

“Everyone knows what a bottle rocket sounds like, don’t they?”

“Were the boys shouting anything?”

“No.”

“Not inciting the crowd in any way?”

“No, sir. Just running around with their torches.” He shook his head slowly. “Sir, if I’d known that something was going to happen at the shelter, I would have ignored those boys and walked right on as fast as I could. But on another night, I might have been reprimanded for not speaking to them.” Henderson put his hand over his eyes. “It’s hard, sir, to know what’s right.”

Laurie conceded that that was certainly true.

They ate their cake quickly, Laurie pleased with both it and the progress of the interview. He was glad he’d bought the cake, even though it had taken him several minutes of deliberation in the store. After the war, the habit of deciding when such a treat was justified lasted a lifetime. He’d revised, however, his opinion on the merits of a casual luncheon, thought he might even consider eating outside next time if the weather were cooler. He’d tell the mighty William that the younger members of the club were on to something after all.

He enjoyed Barber, found him clever and appreciative of the report. It touched him when the boy had shown up for their second interview wearing a tie. At least that was what Laurie thought it was, though it was as wide as a plank.

But talking to him was like talking to any young person about the war years: they spoke from a background of black-and-white pictures, while your memories were very much in color. They asked about the rationing, while you saw coupons. They spoke about the public morale, when what you remembered were the faces. Try as they might, they heard only a chord or two, while the whole symphony still roared in your head. Laurie felt he was back in the house on Bonner Road again, with Armorel, sirens wailing. He had that old peculiar feeling of waiting for the planes rushing toward them in the dark.

And yet it was a relief to be discussing Bethnal Green again. He disagreed with the view, expressed in a number of articles over the years, that he’d done little else of consequence. He thought he’d shown courage in his handling of a number of extradition and deportation cases after the war, but opinion had swung against him. Before the war the public praised his ability to resist extralegal pressure. After the war his judgments were considered insensitive. He’d been told he did not understand the difficulties of the era.

Bollocks.

Barber was saying something about the plight of messengers.

Laurie sighed and wondered aloud if Samuel Johnson would have agreed that, like second marriage, producing a report was the triumph of hope over experience. He was eager to turn the conversation to lighter topics. The day demanded it. But Barber had opened his notebook and was studying a page.

“A refugee?” Barber said. “The first woman who fell? But wouldn’t that suggest—”

“Is a mistake always an accident? An accident always a mistake?” Laurie said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. The wine was making him glib. He’d never been able to drink quite as much as his friends and remain discreet.

“Low committed suicide,” he said suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck. “The chief warden of the shelter.”

Barber stared.

“There. Something new. That’s what you want, isn’t it? He tried to resign. Sent a letter to the home secretary, but we wouldn’t accept it.
I
wouldn’t accept it.”

“That’s not in the report.”

“Right.”

“Why not?”

“Someone stepping forward to accept responsibility doesn’t do away with the need for blame.”

“Doesn’t it depend who the person is?”

“Does it? In my experience what people want to believe is more important to them than what actually happens.”

Then Laurie, forgetting he was not, in fact, on Bonner Road, reached for the lamp that would have been on the table next to the chair. But that table had not moved to the house on Nelson Close, and the room wasn’t really dark yet. His hand groped a moment, then sank. Barber seemed not to have noticed, but Laurie covered with a few coughs and a stretch.

Barber said, “You didn’t assign individual blame.”

“It’s a relief to know that hasn’t been forgotten. It wouldn’t have been fair to her.”

“Who?”

“Ada Barber.”