eeper of the Biscuit Tin| Judith reads … |
The warning wail of the air-raid siren invaded Gwen’s dream and reached deep inside her six-year-old body. Her stomach floated free for a moment, then dropped to her toes and bounced back to its place like an India-rubber ball.
Her mother was by her side in an instant. Monster shadows created by her candle’s flame hovered around her on the walls. She bent over her to turn back the blanket. Gwen moaned in protest as the cold night air moved into her sleep-warmed bed and seized her body with icy fingers. Her mother’s hand pressed her shoulder with a light touch and Gwen sat up, released from the paralyzing grip of fear by her touch.
Wrapped in her warm dressing gown, her knitted slippers on her feet, Gwen stumbled behind her mother holding on to the back of her flannelette nightdress, mother and daughter together in the circle of candlelight.
Gwen’s free hand clutched her gas mask. At the head of the stairs, the sand-filled bucket caught the flickering light and its silver reflection glinted on the polished wooden banisters as they passed. Gwen thought of the day that the air-raid warden, too wheezy for the real army, inspected their house to make sure they had enough buckets of sand.
“If there’s a fire from an enemy bomb,” he said, “use the sand to put it out. No one must ever play with the sand.”
Gwen did play with it once, watching all the while in case the warden should appear. She let the sand’s dry grittiness run between her fingers. But it wasn’t like the cool wet sand at the seaside, with its promise of grand castles to be built for parents and uncles to admire, so she left it alone after that.
In the kitchen, Gwen’s brother and the evacuee cousins from London were already settled on the mattress under the sturdy wooden table. Gwen didn’t like the evacuee cousins. When they played war-games together, they had to be the enemy soldiers while John and Gwen were the British. But tonight they were all British; tonight was not a game and fear hung unspoken in the air.
Gwen’s grandmother, white hair pulled back in her usual neat bun, waited for her in the tiny pantry under the stairs. A straight-backed chair opposite Grandma Davies was ready for her to sit on—oldest and youngest together in the safest place in the house. The edge of the small table pushed into Gwen’s chest, but she soon forgot her discomfort when Grandma brought out a deck of cards from the folds of her long black skirts, setting it down on the table between them. They pursued the card game tonight with as much eagerness as they did each afternoon—except on Sundays. They were strict Methodists and didn’t play games on the Sabbath.
Gwen and her grandmother were the keepers of the biscuit tin. The biscuits were baked for just such an occasion as this, made with butter and sugar saved out of the family rations. Gwen’s mother had kept them hidden from her sweet-toothed father, who would eat cake for breakfast if he could get it. Now she took the tin from them went into the kitchen and rewarded him with the first biscuit. Leaning back in his chair, unlit pipe in his mouth, he looked up at her with a shy smile. All this Gwen saw through the pantry door.
Early in the morning, the siren announced the all clear over the small Welsh town and everyone returned to their cold beds and damp sheets to catch what sleep they could. Gwen relived her experience in a world of private dreams and nightmares, unable to tell if the man in the uniform was friend or foe. He played solitaire and ate cake, while Gwen tried to build a castle from sand in a silver bucket.
© Judith Lawrence
