Fantastic Metropolis

There’s something to be said, she thought, for spending money on old-fashioned furniture. Most of this modern stuff’s rubbish. Just look at the joints. Dovetailing’s a forgotten art. All wire staples and hardboard. And the price! She’d had her table since she and Mo got married. Just like her mum’s. That oak’s hard as iron. Vi Corren smiled.

She’d be dead now if it wasn’t for good furniture. When this bomb went off, her table had somehow been lifted across her chair, protecting her from the collapsing walls. It was pitch dark, so she knew there’d be a lot on top of her. But she didn’t think she was in any immediate danger. And her chair was solid as a rock.

The suite was in perfect condition when she bought it at MacMurtry’s. Hardly used. It cost a fraction of that spindly modern stuff. Okay for a coffee bar, but you wouldn’t want it in your home.

MacMurtry’s furniture was better than new. Made by real craftsman, like her dad. Sound as a bell. Good prices. Of course, she had everything thoroughly cleaned.

Give me what you want to spend, she’d tell Mo. And then let me go and find what I want. He’d been glad of her savings when his back went out that time.

Over the years most of her furniture came from MacMurtry’s. That lovely sideboard, her cabinets. Mick MacMurtry had a big shop on the corner of Old Sweden Street. When his lease ran out they knocked the whole block down and erected some sort of insurance building. She couldn’t get on with all these new featureless skyscrapers.

Her dad had been a joiner and worked for Heals. Mo’s dad had been a Princelet Street tailor. “You tell me about three piece suits,” she’d say, “and I’ll tell you about three piece suites.”

He’d always liked her humour. He was a couple of years younger. The only kid she had, she told people affectionately. He’d be retiring soon and she’d be glad of it. He wanted a clean break from Brookgate. He’d set his heart on Tudor Hamlets. There wouldn’t be any argument from her now. She’d love a little garden.

The big armchair moved under her like a living monster.

Oh!

Huge stones groaning in the darkness overhead.

Then a terrible stillness.

Dust fell. Something squeaked and scraped and juddered, but the table held.

“No time for panic, Vi.”

She breathed slowly and easily, the way she did at the dentist. She refused to think of all the rubble that had to be on top of her.

Another noise. Not a shot. Guns made a simultaneous crack, thud, bang. This was like something snapping.

“Calm down, Vi.”

Most of her childhood Brookgate was already gone. Buried under glassy concrete. Streets you didn’t recognise. People you didn’t know. No proper shops. Really it would be a relief to move. Their insurance would easily cover them, though finding the furniture would be a problem. Everything decent was an antique, these days. Those old parlour drawleafs, still with their wartime utility marks, were selling to Americans for hundreds.

All their married life Mo had complained about her taste. Being a cabby, he picked up the latest trends. She’d bowed to him on decorations but she’d been firm about the furniture.

A second-hand table saved my life in 1945. They’d had an indoor shelter—steel sheeting and wire screens around your ordinary table. She felt so safe sleeping under it. Then the V2 hit Bacon Street. Mum at the pictures. Dad catching a few hours upstairs. The ARP dug her out. Bruised, stiff and wheezing, but unhurt. Just this permanent allergy to dust. She could feel her skin coming up now. The Mirror had called her “The Miracle Girl.” There’d been quite a few miracles in 1945.

She loved to see the sun come up over St Paul’s. If she had a wish it would be to enjoy one more London sunrise without all these new buildings in the way.

Mo had insisted on buying their flat. He’d seen ahead. You could ask any price you liked for a ground floor since the boom. Business people wanting somewhere near the City. Not much of the flat left now! Just the table, the chair and her. The basics.

She was surprised by her own spontaneous laughter. She was almost relieved. She spoke aloud, into the settling dust.

“I could do with a cup of tea.”

Still, then she’d need to go to the toilet. So it was probably for the best. She wondered what the time was. She’d find out soon from the wireless. When she knew they were searching for her, she’d turned it off to save the battery. These new headphones were so good she hadn’t heard the loudspeakers outside. What a fool! Everyone safe but her. Even the cat. People thought she’d left in the first evacuation. Mistaken her for the other Mrs Corren. Ticked her off the residents’ list. The other Mrs Corren wouldn’t have said anything.

They’d double-checked. But even if you stuck your head round the door you couldn’t see a person sitting in this big chair. So while everybody else responded to the bomb warning, she’d been in a world of her own, looking out of her window at the grey drizzle, the slow, reflective concrete, listening to her tape. Velia, O, Velia, the witch of the wood… Looking forward to Mo bringing in their usual Friday fish and chips.

According to the news, it had been a huge explosion centred on the bank next door. As warned, it had gone off at exactly eight p.m. She must have blacked out when it happened.

Terrible devastation. All the surrounding office blocks affected. The wireless had said Mo was on his way home when he heard the news. He usually rang her on his mobile. A real worrier, Mo. She felt so sorry for him. He hadn’t had her happy childhood.

Her mum had just been glad she was alive. Aunties all over the place. So much space. So much freedom. Ruins to play in. A vast adventure playground. And something more: That rediscovery of a wise, safe, dreaming, dignified, permanent London only made visible again by Hitler’s bombs.

A high price to pay, though.

She remembered when she’d run barefoot over grass, through the rosebay willowherb and dandelions and cow parsley down to St Paul’s. Good old St Paul’s. Thanks to the bombs you had a clear view across the city. Ludgate Circus. The Old Bailey. The way it had been centuries ago. The Tower. The Mint. Not much in the way of tourists, then. She’d known so many people. She’d loved it, running everywhere she wanted to go, cycling over footpaths trodden down to Smithfield, the river, the Customs House, Billingsgate. Wild flowers blooming. All the markets doing noisy business. In the evening, when the office workers had gone to their stations, you could sit on a ruined roof and watch the sun set over great stretches of river. Timeless security in the heart of the city.

As a girl she’d volunteered for the hardest paper round just so she could get up before dawn and stand on a pile of weed-grown rubble to watch the sun rise over St Paul’s. You couldn’t do that any more, now that they’d built those big, brutal barbicans.

What kind of happy childhood was it, she wondered, which made you so nostalgic for ruins? Ruins were all she’d really known. And there were so few records of them. Lots of pictures of Brookgate before the war, when all the old buildings were still standing. Lots of stuff afterwards, with the big cranes and the permanent scaffolding. By then she was working at the old cigarette factory and the big changes all went on behind hoardings. Then they closed the factory and turned it into executive offices. She got a job at Mullards, Clerkenwell, until that went, too, under that computer tower.

Her childhood had been wonderful. They never really left London. After staying in Wales for a week, they’d all come home. Mum said she’d rather die of an air-raid than die of boredom. The peace and quiet got on your nerves. Made you think about things too much. Better to be in it and doing something than out of it and worrying all the time. She’d wanted to be near dad.

Vi’s hands were numb. She wished she could get up and move around. She turned on the wireless.

Radio Five. Some chat about sports then, abruptly, the news. It was five in the morning. Rescue workers still had hopes of finding her alive. A real drama.

Her chair shook and the table overhead, scraped a bit lower. She could feel its pressure on her left shoulder. Like the weight of the earth.

A long moment. It seemed like an hour.

Something fell towards her and seemed to land at her feet. There was a rushing sound, a human yell. Then a surprising gap in the darkness. Lights. Dogs barking. Distant voices. She drew a deep breath of the cool air and shouted. “Here. I’m here.” Her voice was too hoarse. “Here!”

Exclamations. More scrabbling. The sound of a motor. Urgent tones. Instructions. Something moved. The table shifted again, but this time the pressure eased.

The patch of pale grey widened. It was the outside. Shadows. Torch beams. Something flashed in her eyes.

“Are you okay, love?”

“Well, I could do with a cup of tea.”

“We’re just bracing all this rubbish up so we can get you out properly.” The face in the torchlight was heavily bearded, wearing a turban. Was it Doctor Singh?

He smiled. “And I’ll tell Tom to put the kettle on.”

Suddenly she was freezing. The morning air. She was only wearing a pair of light slacks and a cotton sweater.

Another squeak and the table was off her shoulder altogether. The bearded man was crawling carefully towards her. “We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it, love.” He seemed to be reassuring himself. She wasn’t worried at all. She had faith in her furniture.

But when he reached her she almost cried, gripping his lovely warm hand.

“Now we’re both under the table,” she said. He smiled, checking this, feeling that.

“Nothing wrong with me, doc.”

“Amazing.”

He murmured rapidly and calmly into his mobile phone.

“We shan’t have any trouble getting you clear. The explosion blew most of the heavy stuff away from you. This table formed a sort of shelter. You’re a lucky woman, Mrs Corren.”

“Oh, I know that, dear,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been stuck in a bit of rubble. Could you ring my husband and tell him I’m all right?”

“He knows by now, love, don’t worry. He’s out there waiting.”

“It’s done terrible damage, hasn’t it?”

He was bleak. “You wouldn’t recognise anything. All in ruins. Your chances were a million to one. Like winning the lottery.”

The big steel arms were dragging the concrete back, as if a curtain lifted. Dawn light. Dawn breezes on her face. It was like being born.

“Oh!”

Suddenly she could see her rescuers, the sky, the broken landscape, the vast, shallow crater, the rubble beyond.

The light revealed more and more. Through a smokey haze she could see all the way to St Paul’s.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. “A genuine miracle.”

She watched as the sun began to rise, a radiant harmony of pale golds and reds, behind the cathedral’s glittering dome.

“Yes,” she said. “You can always rely on good furniture.”

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This short story first appeared in Nature, December 2000. “Furniture” was first broadcast by the BBC, October 1999, with additional lines put in by the editor with Michael Moorcock’s agreement to clarify it for listeners.