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Passing through the alleyway, her bundle of bread and vegetables clutched close to her chest, Joan felt a hand pressed against her shoulder. Startled, she swiftly turned to scream in the face of whoever dared touch her.

“Joanie, Joanie, stop. It’s me! It’s me!” A pale white face was staring, wide-eyed and smiling reassuringly, back at her. Joan, before she could finish so much as a syllable, held her breath and steadied herself.

“Oh, Viv. Oh, thank God. I’ve never been so happy to see you. I thought it was… well, I thought…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, hushing her words as they trailed off into the most horrid imaginations.

“I’m so sorry, I really didn’t mean it,” Viv apologised meekly. “I… I just get so worried when I’m alone. You never know who might be about.”

From the bruise about her neck that her scarf could scarcely conceal, Joan could see that the young Vivian had more than enough reason to worry. The streets they once called home, the alleyways and narrow paths they once treaded, had all at once been darkened. No matter who you were, Joan had thought in the short, quiet moments she could find for herself, you quickened your pace if you were out alone and stopping for a stranger was a fool’s gamble. That much she told her son and that much she told Viv as she pushed her along to walk. Not that she needs much telling.

“How’s Ted? I saw him the other day. He was shooing kids off the rubble at the grocer’s – he’s gotten ever so big, I must say.”

“Big for his boots, more like. Have you seen him rushing about with that...” Joan caught herself, pausing to quieten her voice. “That silly little armband they make him wear. Thinks he’s a proper little Bolshevik now, the little git.”

“I did notice. I… I don’t know what to say, really. I can’t really say much. You know how things get about, Joanie. I don’t want the local commissar coming ‘round.”

I can’t blame her, she thought as they both exited the alleyway and came out onto a narrow street. The tightly packed terraces, the debris filling up the pavement, and the curtains drawn across every street-facing window might have looked like any other street around, but this one brought Joan home.

“I don’t want him here either. I don’t want any of them coming our way, not with the trouble we’ve already had.” Looting had blighted every street – or near enough – in the East End and the accounts of home invasions turned fatal filled the monotonous breadline chatter. The Russians blamed ‘opportunistic elements’ or ‘criminal fascists’ in the community, but Joan knew better than to trust the very men who stalked the vacant streets at night.

The pair stopped outside Joan’s house, coming together for a small embrace before saying their goodbyes. Pulling away, she could feel that Viv’s grasp lingered for a few seconds more. She’s all alone with those kids – it ain’t fair on her.

“You ought to come over for something. Bring the kids for tea – I could do with the company and Ted would benefit from talking to someone who he didn’t have to salute.” Viv nodded enthusiastically, lunging forward for a second embrace that Joan tactfully met with a sincere pat on the shoulder. They smiled for the final time and parted, Joan darting off into the house and Viv picking her way through the piles of ruined furniture and ash-blackened brick scattered across the road.

Into the kitchen to set the small food bundle down, she could hear the sound of boys coming from the far side of the house. Ted and his bloody "Young Pioneers".

She called out to him from the backdoor, her hands on her hips and a stern look across her face, and Ted didn’t so much as turn his head. Instead, he was perched at the summit of a debris mountain, a mass of brick and corrugated iron, ordering about a group of smaller children from the street.

“Teddy! Teddy! What on earth do you think you’re doing?!” Boys of thirteen, she had known for a good while, were well beyond the years of obedience. War and occupation had surrounded the children of London in chaos and Joan knew that her own son was no exception. Ted, engrossed in the part of the precocious child servant to the local Russian “liberators”, beggared his mother’s patience more than he could have known with his scavenging and his brigade of tearaway friends.

“Comrades,” he called out to the gaggle of boys – ranging in age from eight to fourteen – standing eagerly at the foot of the rubble mound, “we have been tasked with removing these bricks and clear a path into Mr Howlett’s garden! Our Russian friends have promised us a great reward for our work, comrades! Are you ready, men?!”

The chorus of voices cheered, signalling the beginning of the boys’ efforts to displace the smashed pieces of wall and fencing from Mr Howlett’s garden. One of the younger boys, struggling to lift the three bricks he was carrying towards Joan’s backdoor, let the debris fall from his hands when he caught a glimpse of her scowling face.

“Freddie.” She recognised him from the end of the road. “Freddie Simpson. What do you lot think you’re doing in my garden? I ought to tell your mothers.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs Fletcher. We just… we’re just following Teddy’s orders. He says that Russian high command h-…”

“I’ll have none of that ‘Russian high command’ talk ‘round here, thank you very much. Have you even asked Mr Howlett’s permission?” She hadn’t seen the doddery old pigeon fancier all day and, whilst never having thought much of him before, knew what kind of state he could get in if he was Ted mucking about on his land. They can say it’s not his property, but he’d fight that until he was dead and buried, she thought, shuddering internally at the thought of the lonely septuagenarian shot for ‘counterrevolutionary activity’ like so many others had been in the past year and a half. Sid ought to cut his trips over the other side... at least until we can settle somewhere there – he’ll get himself killed one of these days, she thought, remembering the only trustworthy man she had left to her.

“Well?” The boy didn’t give an immediate answer, but she could see he was a little shaken. “Freddie, what’s the matter?”

“Mr Howlett is, well… the thing is that he’s gone, Mrs Fletcher. The Russian captain came up with a load of men and took him off – they had guns and all sorts.” It was the worst of her fears made true and her son, her boy, was lifting bricks for the Reds for whatever purpose.

She waved Freddie away, returning the kitchen to unpack her bundle of food, don her apron, and prepare for dinner. Ted would hardly stay outside all afternoon and forego his tea, Joan surmised. No meat, but he’ll manage. They’d managed for months without so much as a slither of ham or even tripe, despite Ted’s protestations that Captain Limonov would meet his repeated promises of "meat tomorrow". On the Russian commander’s more generous days, her son was tossed the odd half tin of biscuits or evaporated milk. Beyond those small treats, Joan slaved away at her stews and broths, eking out a bowl and a half for her and her son. When Sid came over, he preferred a cheese sandwich by the radio – Radio Free Britain if he could get it; the transparent propagandising of Cripps and Pollitt if not – in the front room and a cup of tea. If he never started nicking that Typhoo from the Americans, I'd have gone potty. She could at least be thankful for a cup of the brown stuff while Teddy was off playing "comrades and collaborators".

Halfway through the last of her two carrots, something clattered against the front door. Startled, her ears pricked up and she dug the kitchen knife deep into the cutting board. Once again, a series of knocks hit the door and Joan stepped into the hallway with the slender blade firmly in hand. Checking by the backdoor, the boys were almost finished with their little rubble clearance project. Another knock came. Resolutely, she took a deep breath and marched towards the front door with a steely-eyed determination and the knife pressed up against the small of her back. In her final steps, she heard a voice from the other side.

“Joanie… Joanie… it’s Sid. Open up, love, it's me.” Relieved and yet still shaken, she placed the knife down into the front pocket of her apron. Opening the door revealed the man she awaited almost every other night.

Sidney had been an old friend of her late husband’s. But, with Arthur long dead and no-one left for her turn to, Joan had struck up a close bond with Sid. Whilst she wanted for much and more for their day-to-day living, she knew that Sid would rather starve than see her and Ted go without. That’s why, more than anything, she’d hoped he would grow to become more than just "Uncle Sid". Ted could do with him here, with a proper man in the house – we both could.

Once inside, he wiped off his boots and gave Joan a quick peck on the cheek.

“How is the little comrade?” he asked, a bag of flour and a tin of teabags cradled in his arms. There was nought more precious to him, save Joanie and Ted, than the merchandise he "purchased" in the western sector of the city.

“In the garden. Him and his little Scout troop are clearing up Mr Howl-…” Suddenly, a lump appeared in her throat. She motioned to speak, but she couldn’t – Mr Howlett’s bookish appearance and his pigeons sitting so peacefully on his shoulder came to mind and her imagination began to piece together some fictive account of how the Russians got him.

“I heard about him, I heard. It’s alright.” Sid reached a hand out and brushed a long greying strand of Joan’s hair from her eyes. “Those bastards will get theirs, don’t you worry. Joanie, look at me.”

She looked up at him, his hand now clasped beneath her jawline.

“Those bastards will get what’s coming to them in the end. You and me and Ted, we won’t have to suffer it no more. We won’t have to be here when it all comes down.” She admired his optimism if nothing else, but her sadness quickly turned into a beaming amazement. Thinking his words over in her mind once more, she leapt up in her rickety wooden chair.

“No! You haven’t, have you? Where? Where?”

“Battersea. It’s the best I could get and I kn-…”

Joan interjected, “I don’t mind if we’re in Battersea or Burma or on the bloody Moon, Sid. So long as we’re safe and sound and out of all… this, I’m happy.”

If she had the means, she would have reeled out the bunting and baked a cake right there and then. For a few moments of her day, she could feel nothing but uninterrupted bliss with the man she knew could save her family. All that was necessary, then, was to bring Ted along with them.

“You know he won’t like it,” she said, cutting short her own small celebration. “He’ll put up a fight, Sid. I know him and I know he won’t go easily.”

“I suppose you’re right. I don’t know, love. You hear this and that about kids snitching on their parents, getting sweets for dropping them in it. Could Ted… you know?” Joan did know. She understood completely what Sidney meant and, try as she might, she could hardly resent him for it. Her Teddy wasn’t hers anymore; he was in too deep with the Soviets now.

A resigned sigh betrayed her innermost feeling of distrust for her own son, her own flesh and blood. It was almost too much for her to bare, however much she struggled against it.

“If he is, I need you. You can do something, can’t you?” Sid didn’t give an immediate answer, but seemed to ponder it.

“I can see. I could try, at any rate. Limonov can be outbid for Ted’s loyalty, I’m sure.” Braving a smile, Joan kept her doubt suppressed. He can try, bless him, she thought to herself, I can’t blame him for that.

They held each other, hand in hand, for a few silent moments before little Freddie Simpson came rushing down the hall. He poked his dust-covered face around the doorframe and began to shout.

“Mrs Fletcher, Mrs Fletcher! Come quick – we’ve found Mr Howlett’s pigeons!” Both Sid and Joan rose from their seats and followed the neighbours’ boy out into the garden, where the mound that had once blocked up the entrance to old Mr Howlett’s garden was several scattered piles of brick and rusted metal.

In the corner of the adjacent garden, Joan spied her son treading over broken plant pots to the door of a shed from which wild cooing could be heard. Those poor birds, trapped in there all alone.

“Uncle Sid!” Ted called out once he spotted his late father’s old friend standing beside his mother. “Can I get some help, comrade?!”

Happy to oblige, Sidney trekked over the debris still left in the Howlett garden and took the handle of the shed in both hands. He pulled it to his chest, as hard and fast as he could, and yanked it with impressive force. Joan drew closer to the action, cheering for him to throw the door open and put an end to her son’s play-collaboration. Ted’s friends kept behind their de facto leader, his tatty red star armband hanging loosely at the crook of his elbow.

It seemed to happen all at once. Sidney managed to pull the handle from the shed door and throw it wide open, the pigeons shot out and upwards in a grey swarm, and half of her son’s "Young Pioneers" ran back into the house in fear.

Their wings took them far out across the rows of terraced houses and the smoky remains of the east, guiding them over chimneys and westward towards the American zone. Past Tower Hill and the shattered remains of London Bridge, past Southwark Cathedral and the Radio Free Britain headquarters at Somerset House, and all the way up to where the sun was beginning to set. The pigeons were free once more, lost to the west and, like so many beyond the Liverpool Street checkpoints, they were not like to return east again.


Joan looked up to the birds in their occidental heaven and she envied them.​

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“The Roman burials of London, some of them in the very precincts of what is now the East End, are characteristically laid out with their heads to the west – suggesting in the process that the western quadrant of the heavens embodies more glory or more harmony.”
Peter Ackroyd (Introduction to The East End: Four Centuries of London Life by Alan Palmer)

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