Memory Train

IT was a very international episode, because she was an Englishwoman buying a toy for her little American girl in a dime store on State Street, and whilst it happened, for a few moments, time stood still.

She had picked up a little model of a garden with the flowers brightly colored and standing up prettily in miniature around a glass pool of water. There was also a stalk bending solemnly over the water, and a lantern. Jane squealed with delight at the sight of it, and cried, ‘Oh, I’d rather have that than anything else!’ And because she used the long a,and spoke with an English inflection, the people near her laughed, and a man with a jolly, comic face cried, ‘Stretch a point and give it her, ma’am. It’s only a dime.’

So she was just about to get it, and she had planned where to put it in the nursery, and how she and Jane would pretend to water the flowers, when she happened to turn it over and caught sight of the words on the base, ‘Made in Japan.’ It was at this moment that time ceased to be, for standing in the dime store, the garden in her hand, Jane on one side, the comic man on the other, she left them all, and went thousands of miles away, and more than twenty years back on a memory train that had been too often shunted down a forgotten track of time.

And first she saw the frightened face of a little Chinese boy seen at the cinema, and as she looked the tilted eyes straightened, and it was the face of her six-year-old brother. The ‘Take Cover’ signal had sounded, and he was stumbling by her side through the darkness to escape from the congestion of an English seaside town. It was two o’clock in the morning, and though it had been very exciting to bundle out of bed at first, now it did n’t seem quite such fun, and they were both shaking as they walked towards the country. There was a rhythmic beat high up in the sky, the noise became louder and louder, and when they looked up and saw the pencil-shaped craft right above them they stopped walking and stood quite still. Now he clutched her hand tightly, and his breath came in sobs as his white face shone up at her. He said in a shrill voice, ‘I don’t like standing here doing nothing. It’s right over us.’ His voice sank to a whisper, as if the Zep might hear: ‘Well, only God can help us now.’ Then he glanced upwards again, and added, ‘And I don’t think even He can.’

The coarse grasses on the sand dunes along the Norfolk coast were behaving very strangely. They were vibrating, almost humming, and little streams of sand were falling, falling. No one noticed at first because it was a very amusing picnic, and they ate sandwiches spread with margarine, and someone cried, ‘I take thee, Marge, for butter or for worse,’ and they laughed a lot — till, in a sudden silence, she heard the signal from the grasses, and they put their ears to the ground, and looked out to sea. Before long the whole coast seemed throbbing, and, though nothing could be seen, the tingling and quivering of the sand flowers and grasses became unendurable. They said, ‘They’re headed for London,’ and the party broke up.

Aunt Emily was in complete command of the whole situation. It was one o’clock in the morning, and in her nightdress and a Jaeger dressing gown she stood pouring steaming hot cocoa for the whole household. ‘Sugar, Henry?' she asked. ‘Who wants cake?’ They were all in night wear, and old Uncle Henry had insisted on their wearing overcoats, for, he said, you never knew what might happen. Why was the noise so terrific? They seemed to be at the very heart of things, here in the country, sixteen miles north of London. She tried to keep steady; she smiled brightly at her cousins’ jokes; but her lips trembled and her teeth chattered as she drank the cocoa. It was difficult to be self-controlled, and reserved and British, because the whole scene was so fantastic. She could n’t talk about the weather, or ask Uncle Henry if he was having a good night.

Some pictures crashed from the wall in a sudden crescendo of firing, and they all looked out of the French windows. There was the Zep, high above the house in flames. Uncle shouted, ‘Good God, it’s coming down on the house!’ And they ran into the garden to the sound of distant cheering, with the flaming mass coming nearer and nearer. The air was hot; they dared not look up; but suddenly a gust of wind came and they were saved. It was blown into the field next door, and already they could hear the village people running over the field. Aunt Emily was still collected, though at seventy it was n’t easy to negotiate the fence quite decorously in a nightdress and dressing gown. The curate, on the other side, raised his eyebrows at the sight and exclaimed, ’Ladies too?’ But his own appearance left much to be desired, and Aunt Emily went right on. They walked slowly, nearer to the blazing pile. The sky was red; the distant cheering had ceased now, and she was glad, because it did n’t seem right with those bodies burning in the field.

Now the memory train moved forward a little. Why did the warning signal go right in the middle of the morning? She leaned out of the windows of the Admiralty where she was working, worried at this irregularity in procedure. Oh, how beautiful they were, this squadron of aeroplanes, perfectly controlled, the light flashing on them moving on London, in fan formation with a single one leading! They must be English; they could n’t be German, right over London in the morning! But the guns were sounding, naval officers crowded to the roof, the girls were herded to the cellar, and the bombs began to crash. A few of the girls moaned and became hysterical, but she sat very still, shaking a little, and thought, ‘Will it be the next one? What is happening to Father and Mother, and Westminster Abbey, and the Strand?’

Then she smiled, for the signal came, ‘All Clear ’; and was it her little brother or was it Jane plucking at her sleeve, and crying, ‘ Why are you standing still and doing nothing?’

She was out of her dreams now. She would do something. The comic man would n’t understand — how could he? Jane would be hurt; but, oh, not so hurt as her small brother had been, or as the little Chinese boy to-day. If she stood still and did nothing, and heard that beating all around her, the beating of machinery, the pulsing of memory, hatred might fill her heart; she might smash the little garden that led on or back to death. She put it down.

‘Jane,’ she said, ‘we must get something else.’