The Silent War (48 page)

Although Sunday respected Mr Callow’s skills, she couldn’t bear his manner, for like so many doctors and specialists, he rarely addressed a single word to her personally, and when he discussed her condition with anyone, he made her feel more like a specimen than a human being. But when she first heard him speak to her, she was amazed by how different his voice had been from what she had imagined, for it was much more high-pitched, and somehow didn’t fit the rather powerful frame of his body.

‘Miss Collins,’ he said formally, at last looking up from the pile of examination notes he had been hunched
over
at his desk for more than twenty minutes. ‘I want to ask you a few questions. Only this time, I want you to listen to them, without reading my lips. How do you feel about that?’

‘What do you want to know?’ replied Sunday, tired but confident.

Mr Callow got up from his desk, collected a chair from the corner of his consulting room, and placed it to one side of Sunday. Then he sat down, picked up a clipboard and pad, and spoke in a slightly raised voice towards her left ear. ‘This humming sound. You say you first heard it in the Salvation Army Hall,
before
your road accident. Is that correct?’

Sunday nodded and replied, ‘Yes.’

‘Can you remember the precise moment?’

Sunday thought for an instant, and her mind went blank. For several seconds, all she could concentrate on was the strong smell of sterilising liquid in an enamel jug on Mr Callow’s desk. ‘I think it was when everyone started crowding in on me,’ she replied. ‘I couldn’t breathe. I started to panic.’

Mr Callow was busily scribbling down notes. ‘Did anyone bump into you, or knock against your ear?’

Sunday shook her head. ‘Not that I can remember.’ Then she sensed that he was making some kind of movement at the side of her.

Mr Callow tapped what looked like a tuning-fork on the desk, then held it against Sunday’s left ear. ‘Can you hear anything?’ he asked.

‘A humming sound,’ Sunday replied immediately.

Although she couldn’t see Mr Callow’s reaction, he was certainly interested, if not entirely convinced. So he struck the tuning-fork again, but this time he held it further away from Sunday’s ear, and gradually brought it closer. ‘What about that?’

Sunday heard the humming sound quite clearly, but, like Mr Callow’s voice, it remained at a distance. ‘I hear it,’ she replied.

‘Loud?’ asked Mr Callow.

‘Not loud. Sort of – faint.’

Mr Callow scribbled some more notes, then got up from the seat and returned to his desk. ‘Right then,’ he said, leaning his elbows on his desk, resting his chin on his clasped hands, and staring directly at Sunday. ‘So, what do you think this is all about?’ he asked.

Sunday shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ was all she could reply.

Mr Callow grinned. ‘To be honest, Miss Collins, neither do I.’ He rubbed his chin, which he had only shaved an hour before. ‘But one thing I can say is that you are a very lucky young lady.’

Lucky! Sunday thought back over her last year and wondered how ‘lucky’ she had been to be nearly killed in a ‘doodlebug’ explosion, how ‘lucky’ she had been to lose first her hearing, and then her mum, how ‘lucky’ to be stalked by Ernie Mancroft, how ‘lucky’ to be knocked down by a van, and, most important of all, how ‘lucky’ to have found someone to love, and then to lose.

‘You see,’ continued Mr Callow, sorting through his notes, ‘after your first injury from the flying bomb explosion, all our tests indicated that the labyrinth, one of the two sensitive structures of the inner ear which control your balance, was severely damaged. Now, under normal circumstances there would be no way to correct a situation like that. However . . .’ He sat back in his seat, looked at her, and making sure his voice was raised just enough for her to hear, said, ‘Sometimes Nature has a way of stepping in and taking over where we poor mortals quite often fail. What I think has happened in your case is that not only was the labyrinth not damaged as severely as we first thought, but the other part of your inner ear, which we call the cochlea, was not affected at all. To be perfectly honest with you, I think both these sensitive areas are simply healing up on their own.’

Sunday looked baffled by all the scientific explanation. ‘So what happens now?’ she asked.

Mr Callow shrugged his shoulders. ‘Once your road injuries are properly healed, you can go home.’

‘But will I get my full hearing back again – in both ears?’

Mr Callow leaned forward again and, for the first time, gave her a beaming smile. ‘That’s a question we can only ask of Mother Nature herself. Or maybe even a higher authority!’

A week later, Helen Gallop collected Sunday from the hospital, and accompanied her back home. Although it was only a short walk back to ‘the Buildings’, Sunday had to hold on to Helen’s arm, for, as Mr Callow had warned, for the time being it was possible that her balance would be impaired. Even so, the moment she came down the hospital steps, the world seemed like a completely different place, for not only was the November sun bursting through heavy wintry clouds, but the faint sounds of the busy road she could now distantly hear all around her had transformed her silent world into a world of clanging trams, horses’ hooves and cartwheels, and the
sound
of people’s voices.

‘You know, Helen,’ said Sunday, as she held on tightly to her arm, ‘you have one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. In fact, it’s even more beautiful than I ever imagined.’

Helen laughed out loud. ‘You wait ’til you get home and hear some of the kids yelling,’ she said, without the need to turn and look at Sunday. ‘Then you’ll remember what voices are really like!’

When Sunday got back to ‘the Buildings’, people seemed to appear from everywhere. The news about her accident had caused great distress to all the neighbours, but when they heard that her hearing had been partially restored they couldn’t wait to come out of their flats and hug her and pat her on the back.

Doll Mooney was in her curlers when she threw open the main door of her block. ‘Sun!’ she screeched, rushing
straight
at Sunday and throwing her arms around her. ‘Oh Sun, is it true? Is it really true? Can yer really ’ear again?’

Sunday nodded her head. ‘Just about,’ she said. ‘As long as you don’t whisper.’

‘Me – whisper!’ yelled Doll, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘That’ll be the day!’

A chorus of laughter echoed around the backyard and floated right up to the top-floor flats. And Sunday
heard
it! Far and distant, but she did
hear
it! She felt like she was coming through a dark tunnel and seeing light again. For the first time in over a year, she would actually be able to
hear
the sound of her old ‘gang’ in ‘the Buildings’ as they laughed and jeered and complained and coughed and sang and kept the volume of their wireless sets too high. Suddenly, life was worth living again!

It was all like music – to her ears.

There is always something quite special about autumn, and the year in which two ugly wars came to an end was no exception. All the trees in Islington were a riot of gold, brown, red, and yellow, and in both Holloway and Seven Sisters Roads the pavements were, in some places, ankle-deep in dead leaves. When she was a child, Sunday hardly ever noticed the crunching of autumn leaves beneath her feet, but now that her hearing had been partially restored, she thought it was one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. However, after the late-autumn rains, the pavements soon became hazardous underfoot, as the crisp dead leaves were quickly transformed into a squelchy quagmire. It was a sure sign that winter was close at hand, for it was now cold – yes, really cold, and every chimney pot for as far as the eye could see was belching out thick black smoke.

If Sunday’s initial euphoria had somewhat diminished in the week following her discharge from hospital, it was only because she had come to accept the fact that her hearing really was only partially restored, and that she had to concentrate hard on the faint sounds that were squeezing their way through what appeared to her to be a tiny hole in her eardrum. Nonetheless, it was exhilarating to hear anything at all and not to have to rely on watching the lip movements of everyone who talked to her. For a time she found it quite awkward, for it generally meant having to turn her good ear towards the sound source whenever she wanted to hear anything. But at least she was more than compensated by the fact
that
she could now have an opinion about a person by the sounds they made, as well as how they looked. Even so, she longed for any sign that would give her hope that her hearing would eventually be fully restored, and dreaded the thought that that day would never come, or that the sounds she could now hear, no matter how weak, would be taken away from her.

Sunday’s most extraordinary experience came when she returned to her job at the Deaf and Dumb School. The children had clearly missed her, and the moment she walked through the front door they practically mobbed her. But it was the poignant little sounds they made that moved her the most, and when she brought in an old, portable wind-up gramophone for their dance lessons, she was astonished how swiftly they picked up the rhythm of a nursery children’s song without being able to hear the actual music. Their total dedication convinced Sunday not to abandon her sign-language efforts, and as time went on, she learnt more from them about communication than any expert. And she also told the Principal, Eileen Roberts, that, despite the fact that part of her hearing had now been restored, she wanted to carry on with her work at the school. As far as she was concerned, the children were now an important part of her life, and she would always be one of them.

At the beginning of December, Sunday went to Jack Popwell’s wedding. No one in ‘the Buildings’ was surprised, for he had been courting his lady-love, Ivy Westcliff, for over two years, and Doll Mooney told Sunday quite categorically that the two of them had been ‘bunkin’ up’ in Jack’s flat for most of that time. However, no one seemed to care, and there was general agreement that Ivy, who was a widow of five years and worked in a ladies’ hairdresser’s shop in Hornsey Road, was a wonderful match for house-proud Jack.

The wedding service itself took place in St George’s Church in Tufnell Park, and apart from the happy couple’s friends and relations, quite a posse of neighbours turned
up
. Most people agreed that December was a daft time to have a wedding, for everyone nearly froze to death in their party dresses when they were grouped together outside the church for the marriage portraits. Jack’s grandmother, who looked about a hundred years old, grumbled all the way through the ceremony, and could only be consoled by being fed a continuous supply of black-market jelly babies. Sunday was very impressed with the wedding reception, which was held in the Ancient Order of Foresters Hall in Holloway Road. Following a slap-up sit-down do, Jack had hired a three-piece band through one of his mates who worked with him at the Gas, Light, and Coke Company. Sunday was in her seventh heaven, for it was the first time she had been able to hear live band music since her Saturday dance nights at the Athenaeum Ballroom. Many of the guests there asked her to dance, including both Jack and his new bride, Ivy, but it was a strange experience to dance again to a tempo that she could actually hear. No wedding reception round Holloway would ever be complete without a knees-up, and that included a ‘Hokey Cokey’, a ‘John Paul Jones’, and the inevitable ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’. It was the end of a perfect evening, a perfect day. Until, that is, Jack announced to everybody that early in the New Year, he and Ivy were leaving ‘the Buildings’ to move into a council house out at Epping.

A few weeks before Christmas, Sunday had a letter from Jinx to say that, as she was coming on a weekend visit to an aunt and uncle at a place called Finchley, she would like to bring young Junior along to meet his Auntie Sunday. Sunday wrote back immediately, and on the last Saturday afternoon before Christmas, a trolleybus drew to a halt outside Jones Brothers’ Department Store in Holloway Road, and amongst the passengers out stepped Jinx clutching Erin Junior wrapped up in a large blue blanket.

‘You don’t ’ave to tell me ’ow fat I’ve got, ’cos I
know
!’ These were Jinx’s first words as she walked through the front door. ‘You can blame it on this little bugger,’ she said, immediately plonking Junior down on to the sofa. ‘’E’s turned me into a bloody porpoise!’

Sunday roared with laughter, then threw her arms around her old mate, and hugged her. ‘Oh, Jinx!’ she said, shaking with excitement. ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see you again.’

Then all the attention was turned on Junior, who was looking very disgruntled after the long, cold, and uncomfortable journey he had been made to endure.

‘He’s beautiful, Jinx,’ gushed Sunday, on her knees by the sofa, prodding her finger at poor, misunderstood Junior’s mouth. ‘He’s got Erin’s lips, that’s for sure.’

‘Ha!’ spluttered Jinx, indignantly. ‘’E certainly knows ’ow to use them, if that’s what you mean. You should ’ear ’im some nights, blowin’ out raspberries to keep me awake!’

As if to confirm what his mum had said, Junior put his tongue out and made the most disgusting raspberry sound, spraying his Auntie Sunday with spittle. But this only made Sunday roar with laughter again.

Jinx kicked off her shoes, and flopped out on to a chair at the parlour table. ‘D’you mind if I ’ave a fag, girl?’ she asked, with a weary sigh. ‘I’m gaspin’ for one.’

‘You shouldn’t be smoking now you’ve got a baby,’ replied Sunday.

Jinx, outraged, came straight back at her. ‘Now look ’ere you, Miss Big City bloody Collins, if you think I’m goin’ to—’ She suddenly stopped in her tracks, and swung a startled look across to Sunday, who had her back turned towards her, still fawning over Junior. ‘Sunday?’

Sunday turned, with a mischievous grin. ‘Yes, Jinx?’

Jinx felt a chill run up her spine. ‘You ’eard me!’ she gasped, leaping up from the chair. ‘You bloody ’
eard
what I said!’