by Sophia Tobin
He kissed her then. Watched her a little longer, before he put away the diamond, carefully, with gentle hands, before he returned to her, and kissed her again, and again, and she submitted. His breath, even; his eyes, fixed ahead. He did not seem to wish to look at her. He never had, in such moments as these. He had the thought of her as he wished her to be fixed in mind. It was that which moved him to desire.
Once, she moved, only slightly, but enough to make Ashton pause.
‘Do not forget yourself,’ he whispered.
*
Nine years before, their wedding day had been the grandest of affairs. They had only met a handful of times, but they were well-matched in looks. Ashton was one of three suitors. She had chosen him, she preferred to think, because of his great mind, although these days she was not sure – perhaps it had been the money, the enchanted world of Redlands. She was not sure she knew that bride, or what had been in her mind. The die had been cast, and she went forwards without further thought. True, during their courtship, she had noted in a place beyond knowing that he seemed to mimic enjoyment in her company, and sometimes looked faintly pained when she laughed. But they had each played their roles well, and the marriage was declared a love-match by all who saw them.
At the wedding breakfast she had displeased him by taking a second glass of champagne. She was silenced by the coldness of his gaze. Without knowing it, she had angered him. Her dear, sensitive husband. She had excused herself, with her bridesmaid, and walked quietly out, a smile drawn tight across her face. They walked the length of Redlands, through salon after salon, and when the noise of the guests had faded to silence, she stopped, and held on to a mantelpiece without a word, staring at the sightless eyes of a Kinsburg ancestor in a portrait above the fireplace.
Her wedding night had steadied her disquiet – it was short, and painful of course, as it had to be, but warmed by his gentleness afterwards, when he dried her tears, and said ‘there, there’, and held her in his arms with such warmth and kindness. No, it was in the week that followed that she truly realized who her husband was, in the act of love. Beneath his careful, sightless thrusting, she had felt a flicker of pleasure, and instinctively arched her back, and murmured. He stopped his movement. He looked down at her with that same look he had had in his eye when he saw that second glass: a mixture of disappointment and disgust.
‘Do not forget yourself.’
How strange it was, to feel both loved, and undesired. From that moment, her study had been how to prevent that look of disappointment from entering his eyes, both for his sake, and for her own. She had always been quick at her lessons, even if those lessons had never amounted to much. But she supposed it was lying beneath him that the seeds of her rebellion had been sown. She had thought, in their marriage bed, that closeness would be possible. She had seen a look which, now and then, passed between married couples of her acquaintance, a look of warmth, of secrets, and of something accessible only to them. But there was no such rapport between her and Ashton. Only their strange, repetitive routines, which she sensed gave him comfort. They did well in public; they could catch each other’s eye at the right moment and smile, when the eyes of the room were on them. They both had an instinct for performance.
Charlotte kept her eyes on her husband’s coat, lying on the chair, and thought of the diamond, as his breath grew ragged. He finished; collapsed half onto her, just for a moment. She reached up, and curved her hand around the back of his neck. Their faces lay close to each other for a moment, shadows between their profiles. Then he pushed himself up, and sat there for a moment, before he kissed her goodnight and left, carrying the diamond in his still-trembling hands.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1940
ENTRANCE HALL, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
When Christian emerged into the dark, panelled entrance Hall, Livy was nowhere to be seen. Bill was standing with his hands on his hips, staring at a large oil painting of a group of Georgian men raising a toast. which hung behind the reception desk. He looked over his shoulder at Christian.
‘I’m not going to ask,’ he said. ‘She’s run off that way like a greyhound out of a trap.’
Christian sighed, and put his hat on. ‘I’d best be off then. Good to see you, Mr Holliday.’
‘Hang on there. I need your help. This here masterpiece or whatever you want to call it is the last of the paintings on the walls and we’re going to get it down.’ His breath whistled through his nose. ‘It’s been giving me the heebie-jeebies. We’re going to wrap it up in some of my old sheets and stow it downstairs.’
‘Is this for Livy’s sake?’ Christian said.
‘No, for mine,’ said Bill. ‘Come and stand below it while I get up.’ He stood on a box. Christian did as he was told.
‘Hold on, ready yourself,’ said Bill. ‘One, two, three.’ With a grunt he lifted the painting off its hook, and Christian took the weight of it, feeling his muscles come to life. His war work had strengthened him; he was no longer just a desk man, and he felt an obscure pride at it. Bill came down the steps and took the other corner of the painting. Together they eased it to the ground.
‘Why does it give you the heebie-jeebies?’ said Christian, looking at the pained expression on Bill’s face as he gazed at the painting.
Bill gave a little shudder. ‘The other night, I was late locking the doors before the raid. Bloody thing was shaking. Thought it was going to come off the wall,’ he said.
‘The bombing causes vibrations, I suppose,’ said Christian.
Bill rolled his eyes. ‘If that’s what you want to think,’ he said. He watched Christian tilt his head and look at the painting. He didn’t want to bring the words out, but it had frightened him.
He had stood there, shining his torch up, seeking some explanation for the violence of it. As though something beneath the bottom length of the painting was pushing it up, levering it up, and releasing it with a crash. Unseen hands. At that moment, no bombs had been falling. ‘It’s a queer place,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been unhappy here, at some point. Apart from us, that is.’ He sneezed heartily into his handkerchief.
‘Livy will be glad you’re moving it, anyway,’ Christian said. He couldn’t help but glance towards the Stair Hall, to see if she was there; but she was not. ‘I’m sure it’s out of kindness to her, even if you don’t say so.’
‘You go on believing the best of people if you wish,’ muttered Bill. ‘If you’d give me a hand now, though.’
It was dirty work. The painting had hung there unmolested by a duster for decades. Still, they shifted it into storage, and as Christian came out into the lobby, brushing dust disconsolately from his coat, he saw Jonathan Whitewood walk through the front door. When Jonathan caught sight of him his face tightened with irritation.
‘Good day, Mr Whitewood,’ said Christian.
‘You here again,’ said Jonathan.
‘I’ve been helping Mr Holliday move a painting.’
Jonathan nodded as though the conversation had finished, but as he turned away Christian said his name. He looked back.
Christian smiled. ‘When Livy introduced us, you didn’t remember me, did you?’
‘Should I?’
‘I was wounded during army training. I was sent to Number eighteen General Hospital, London Region.’
‘I see.’ Jonathan took the cigarette lighter from his pocket and turned it in his hand. ‘I can hardly be expected to remember every injured soldier who was brought to my house.’
‘I suppose not. Do give my regards to Mrs Whitewood, please. She was kind to us. Visited, even put flowers in the wards.’ His words won a long look from Whitewood and Christian saw guilt there. Out of sight, within his sleeve, his injured left hand clenched tight.
‘It is in my wife’s nature to be kind,’ said Jonathan.
‘But not in yours?’
Jonathan’s expression hardened. ‘Young man, I’m really not sure why you are here. As a member of the committee of this Club—�
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‘I’m from the LCC. I have a perfect right to be here, to inspect bomb damage. If the government asks whether the building can be used for the homeless, then my department will be asked to advise on its state.’
‘My dear boy,’ said Whitewood, ‘I should think bringing the homeless to stay here would be a route to their certain deaths. We are catching it pretty hard here at the moment. Mrs Holliday doesn’t even like us to go upstairs at night.’
‘There is a large shelter downstairs,’ said Christian. ‘We shall see how things pan out.’
‘I should think we shall,’ said Whitewood, and Christian couldn’t help but think the man was mocking him. ‘I think it’s a ghastly idea.’
‘Ghastly idea or not, it is not up to you,’ said Christian.
‘We’ll see about that.’
‘It must be strange for you, not being the one in charge,’ said Christian, trying to lower his voice in volume at least. ‘But you may as well get used to it. The world you knew is already gone.’
Whitewood smiled darkly. ‘Is it? A trifle melodramatic, aren’t you? You forget, I lived through a war before.’
‘Redlands is a beautiful place,’ said Christian. ‘The Mirrormakers’ Club has an echo of it, doesn’t it? I’ve noticed the similarities. But surely you see, they were built for another world. This place still has some life. But the air is different at Redlands – rarefied. It’s a museum. It has no connection with the way real people live their lives.’
‘I suppose you think I’m not a real person,’ said Jonathan. He took out a cigarette and lit it; he did not offer Christian one.
‘It’s not what I meant,’ said Christian. ‘But if you’re asking whether I think you live in the real world? No, I don’t. You live in a beautiful dream. And it’s dissolving. Merit will be the thing that distinguishes society’s leaders when we win this war. But we will lose other things too – places like Redlands. Trying to hold on to them is futile.’
‘God almighty,’ snapped Whitewood. He raised his voice. ‘Bill?’
‘Have me thrown out, will you? As a member of the lower orders?’ said Christian, in a low voice. ‘Consider what you’re doing. With Livy.’
‘Who on earth do you think you’re talking to?’
‘I know who you are. I don’t think you do, but I’m asking you to try and see how your behaviour affects people.’ He paused, tried to gather his thoughts. ‘You’re the shadow that stands in the way of love. I don’t think you know what love is. I think you see people as objects, as things which are either convenient or inconvenient to you. Especially women.’
The words felt like a knife turning. Jonathan heard the catch in his own voice when he spoke. ‘You don’t know me.’
‘I saw enough, when I was at Redlands.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Leave Livy alone. At least, in that way.’
Bill’s slow plodding feet could be heard, moving slightly quicker than usual. When he arrived on the scene, he looked backwards and forwards between the two fuming men.
‘This’ – it was clear Jonathan could not remember Christian’s name – ‘person is leaving, Bill.’
‘Anything else you’d like to say?’ Christian said loudly, as though it were a public declaration. He waited for Jonathan to ban him from coming back, for him to use the terms a man of his generation might dredge up: filthy anarchist, communist. But Jonathan only turned away and walked through the door to the Stair Hall. Bill, obviously perplexed, looked at Christian as they heard Jonathan’s footsteps fade.
‘I suppose I’d better go,’ said Christian, as cheerily as he could, though his voice shook a little.
Bill held open the front door with ceremony. ‘We’ll be seeing you then,’ he said. And Christian saw what he thought was a slight smile beginning in his rheumy eyes.
*
Jonathan was breathing heavily as he pushed his way through the green door and began the descent into the vaults. He heard the sound of the wireless drifting up to him; Livy and Peggy must be having tea, and listening. Perhaps to a cooking show, about how to make the most of vegetable tops and bones.
He had telephoned Stevie on the way home, stopping in a small café where he drank a pale cup of tea and summoned his courage. Her voice, low and throaty on the line. He heard the disappointment in it; in the way her voice stayed even, as though she were keeping herself on a tight rein.
What do you mean, the diamond is a fake?
You must look through the family papers, Stephanie. Look through. Is there anything there relating to the diamond? To Charlotte, to Ashton Kinsburg? You must do this for me. I had a brief look before I came to London, but I didn’t really believe it at the time, I was furious, and I might have missed something.
That solicitor’s letter is the only thing, from your grandmother. It outlined the provenance, didn’t it? Said it had been stored at the Club before it went into the safe deposit?
Yes, but the real diamond is not in the safe deposit. And I can’t find it here. We need more information.
It doesn’t matter, Jonathan. Just come home. Why do we need the diamond, anyway? Forget it.
You must look through the papers, Stevie. Stevie?
I’m tired, Jonathan. These strange obsessions you get. It takes a certain courage to be married to a man like you, and I’m running low on it.
Stevie?
I must go now. You know they don’t like us to hold the line.
*
As he walked down the stairs, he drew hard on his cigarette, but the smoke caught him in his throat, and he began to cough. When he reached the vaults, Peggy was sitting on the edge of her seat, turned, and waiting for him. Livy sat with her feet curled up beneath her on one of the large Club chairs, one arm propped on the chair arm, supporting her chin.
‘Hello,’ he said. He went to her, and pulled the stone from his pocket, no longer wrapped in anything. ‘Hold your hand out.’ He dropped the sparkling thing into her obediently open palm. She looked down at it, then up at him.
‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’ She stared at him in astonishment.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Peggy, getting to her feet. ‘It can’t be real, surely?’
‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘But the real one is somewhere in the world.’ A beautiful dream, he thought. Had a man ever woken wanting a dream to be real as much as he did?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1940
ROOF LEADS, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
That night, one of the firewatchers didn’t show, and Bill went onto the roof to help the others. He spent a good proportion of the night smoking cigarettes, standing in the doorway of the dome, sometimes bowing his head against a nearby explosion, his hands always trembling. He felt he was always a little too slow with the sand or the pump, a little hesitant with the shovel. He could not bear to look up at the sky, at the searchlights and terrible droning planes. When the sky flashed white, he closed his eyes.
He thought of Christian, helping him get the painting down; of the wounded hand he had glimpsed, and how the young man had pulled his sleeve over it. He thought of the wounds he had received in the first war, of how he felt them sometimes spring into life. A ghost pain which chased its way around his body and his mind. Had he seen that picture move off the wall? He hardly knew. Only that his imagination was sometimes as vivid as reality. As it was for all them, he thought: all of them had some other version of a life running in the background, behind their eyes.
Once, he picked up an incendiary with a shovel, and flicked it hard and strong, almost straight up into the air, and he heard the shouts of the watchers; watched it curve high in the air, all the time the vision of Livy’s scar in his mind: of the sight of her cut and bleeding face, the blood a deep red on her pale skin; and of poor Miss Hardaker, the skin bubbling, her eyes open in agony, her hand a red scraping of burnt skin.
The sizzling bomb rose in the air. Then it fell, not straight down, but just past the ro
of of the building, onto the narrow lane below, landing on the street, catching and bursting into flames.
One of the watchers, a laconic man called Louie Robinson, poured water from the edge of the roof onto it. A waterfall, scattering in the air, but enough, just enough, to dampen it.
He handed the bucket to Bill. ‘Go and fill it up again, mate.’
‘Sorry about that.’ Bill rarely apologized; he felt it, as he said it now.
‘None of us perfect.’
Bill nodded in agreement, and did as he was told.
*
In the shelter, behind blast-proof doors, Peggy knitted on her camp bed. Jonathan and Livy sat on cushions on the floor, a chessboard between them. Jonathan had found it in one of the member’s rooms on the top floor, a ghost room covered with dust, the drinks bottles and glasses still there, one pane of the window smashed. He had been wandering around, half-dazed, and was happy to find it. He had brought the box down, set it down, dusted it off and lined up the pieces.
‘White or black?’ he said.
‘Black,’ Livy said. An explosion shook the ground, and dislodged more dust from the vaulted ceiling. It sometimes felt as though the building were being destroyed grain by grain, each night crumbling a little more. Livy looked up at the ceiling. ‘Poor Henry,’ she murmured. Then she looked over and saw Peggy, her needles still, her head forwards, chin resting on her chest. She rose quickly, silently, and went to her.
Peggy was deeply asleep. Livy took the knitting from her hands and, at Peggy’s stirring, gently supported her into a lying position. Peggy murmured, but did not open her eyes. Livy knelt by her until she slept properly, stroking her hair.
‘I hope you haven’t cheated,’ she said softly to Jonathan when she returned to the game.
