by Sarah Waters
‘Does that matter?’
‘No,’ said Helen, after a moment, ‘I suppose not.’
She sat and drew on her shoes, bending her head, so that her hair fell before her face. ‘You don’t,’ she added lightly, as Kay was turning from the room, ‘want to ask other people?’
‘Other people?’ asked Kay, surprised, turning back. ‘You mean, like Mickey?’
‘Yes,’ said Helen, after a second. Then, ‘No, it was just a thought.’
‘Would you like to call in on Mickey, on the way?’
‘No. It’s all right, really.’ She straightened up, laughing at herself, her face quite pink from the effort of leaning forward and reaching to tie her laces.
They didn’t go to the Zoo, in the end. Helen said she didn’t, after all, like the idea of looking at so many poor little creatures in their cages and pens. They began to walk, and saw a bus marked up for Hampstead; and ran to catch that, instead. They got off at the High Street, and had a lunch of sardines and chips in a little café; they looked in a couple of second-hand bookshops, then made their way, through the handsome, higgledy-piggledy, red-brick streets, to the Heath. They walked arm in arm—Helen not minding the fact that they were two women, now, for one expected to see women, she said, on a Saturday afternoon on Hampstead Heath; it was a place for plain, brisk women, spinsters, and dogs.
Actually, there were many young couples about. One or two of the girls wore trousers, like Kay; most were in service uniforms, or in the glamourless austere get-ups that passed, these days, for weekend best. The boys were in battledress: khaki and navy blue and every shade between—the uniforms of Poland, Norway, Canada, Australia, France.
The day was cold. The sky was so white it hurt the eye. Kay and Helen hadn’t come to the Heath since the summer before last, when they’d gone bathing in the Ladies’ pond; they remembered it as lush, green, lovely. But now the trees were utterly bare, revealing, here and there, the brutal, barbed-wired flanks of anti-aircraft batteries and military gear. The leaves that had fallen months before had turned to mulch, and the mulch had a rime of frost on it: it looked unhealthy, like rotting fruit. Much of the ground had been marked by shrapnel, or torn by the tyres of trucks; and in the west there were enormous canyons and pits where earth had been dug, at various points, for filling sandbags.
They tried to keep away from the worst of it, going more or less aimlessly, but following the more secluded routes. At the junction of two broad paths they turned north; the path led them up, then down through a wood, and they emerged, in another few minutes, at a lake. The water was frozen, right across. A dozen or so ducks were huddled together, like refugees, on an island of twigs.
‘Poor things,’ said Helen, squeezing Kay’s arm. ‘I wish we’d brought bread.’
They went closer to the water. The ice was thin, but must have been strong, for it was littered with sticks and stones that people had thrown in an effort to break it. Kay bared her hands—for she was dressed against the cold, in gloves and a belted coat, a scarf and a beret—and picked up a stone of her own, and tossed it, just for the pleasure of seeing it skitter. Then she went right to the lake’s edge and pressed at the ice with the toe of her shoe. A couple of children came to watch her: she showed them the silvery pockets of air that bulged beneath the ice’s surface, then squatted and prised at the ice with her hands, bringing up great jagged sheets, which she broke into smaller pieces for the children to hold, and fling, or stamp on with their heels. When the ice was crushed, it became white powder—exactly the powder of broken glass at a bomb-site.
Helen was standing where Kay had left her, watching. She’d kept her gloved hands in her pockets; the collar of her coat was turned up, and she was wearing a loose wool hat, like a tam-o’-shanter, pulled down low over her brow. Her expression was a queer one—a smile, soft, but also troubled. Kay fished out a last piece of ice for the children and went back to her.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
Helen shook her head, and smiled properly. ‘Nothing. I was enjoying looking at you. You looked like a boy.’
Kay was banging her hands together, to knock the chill and the dirt from them. She said, ‘Ice turns everyone into boys, doesn’t it? The lake at home, when I was a kid, used to freeze sometimes. It was much bigger than this. Or maybe it only seemed big to me, then. Tommy, Gerald, and I used to go out on it. My poor mother! She used to hate it, she used to think we’d all be drowned. I didn’t understand. All the boys she knew, of course, were getting killed, one after another…Are you cold?’
Helen had shivered. She nodded. ‘A bit.’
Kay looked around. ‘There’s a milk-bar here somewhere. We could get a cup of tea. Would you like that?’
‘Yes, perhaps.’
‘You ought to have a cake or a bun, too, on your birthday. Don’t you think?’
Helen wrinkled up her nose. ‘I’m not sure I want one, really. It’s sure to be awful, whatever we get.’
‘Oh,’ said Kay, ‘but you must.’
She thought she knew where the milk-bar was. She put her arm through Helen’s and drew her close and led her along a new path; they walked for another twenty minutes, however, without finding anything. So then they went back to the frozen lake, and tried another path. Then, ‘There it is!’ said Kay.
But when they drew close to the building they saw that it was half burnt-out, the window-frames glassless, the curtains in ribbons, the brickwork black. A notice on the door said, Blitzed Last Saturday. Underneath it someone had fixed a sad-looking paper Union Jack, the kind that had once, before the war, been stuck on sand-castles.
‘Damn,’ said Kay.
Helen said, ‘It’s all right. I didn’t really want anything.’
‘There’s sure to be somewhere else.’
‘If I have tea, it’ll only make me need the lavatory.’
Kay laughed. ‘Darling, you’ll need the lavatory, whatever you do. And, it’s your birthday. You ought to have a cake.’
‘I’m too old for cakes!’ said Helen, with a touch of impatience. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘God, it’s cold! Let’s keep walking.’
She was smiling again, but seemed distant to Kay, distracted. Perhaps it was only the weather. It was hard to be cheerful, of course, when it was as cold as this.
Kay lit them both cigarettes. They went back yet again to the lake, and up through the wood—going more quickly, to try and get warm.
The path, from this angle, began to look more familiar to Kay. She remembered, suddenly, an afternoon she’d spent here in the past…She said, without thinking, ‘You know, I believe I came this way once, with Julia.’
‘With Julia?’ asked Helen. ‘When was that?’
She spoke with a try at lightness; but self-consciously, too. Kay thought: Bugger. She said, ‘Oh, years ago, I don’t know. I remember a bridge, something like that.’
‘What sort of bridge?’
‘Just a bridge. A funny little bridge, quite rococo, overlooking a pond.’
‘Where was it?’
‘I thought it was this way, but now I’m not sure. It’s the sort of thing, I expect, like Shangri-La, that you can only find by not really meaning to look for.’
She wished she’d said nothing. Helen, she thought, was pretending an interest in the bridge—overdoing it slightly, to make up for the awkwardness that had been conjured by the saying of Julia’s name. They walked on. Kay tried one way, half-heartedly, and then another; she was about to give it up when the path they were walking on suddenly opened up and they found themselves in exactly the place she’d been looking for.
The bridge wasn’t nearly as charming as she’d recalled; it was plainer, not rococo at all. But Helen went at once to the side of it and stood gazing down at the pond beneath, as if enchanted.
‘I can see Julia here,’ she said, smiling, when Kay joined her.
‘Can you?’ asked Kay.
She didn’t want to think of Julia, especially. She stood f
or a second, looking down at the new pond; it was iced and littered like the other one, and had its own straggling band of refugee ducks. But then she turned to Helen and gazed at her profile, at her cheek and throat—which had pinked, at last, with what seemed real excitement and interest; and she caught a glimpse, beyond the turned-up collar of Helen’s coat, of the cream lapel beneath it, and beneath that, the smooth, blemishless skin. She remembered standing in the bedroom, fastening up the handsome dress; she remembered the sliding of the silk pyjamas, the feel of the weight of Helen’s hot, suspended breasts.
She grew warm with desire all over again. She took Helen’s arm and drew her closer. Helen turned, saw her expression, and glanced about in alarm.
‘Someone will come,’ she said. ‘Don’t, Kay!’
‘Don’t what? All I’m doing is looking at you.’
‘It’s the way you’re looking.’
Kay shrugged. ‘I might be—Here.’ She put her hands to one of Helen’s earrings and began to unscrew it. She spoke more softly. ‘I might be fixing your earring for you. Say your earring was caught? I’d have to unfasten it like this, wouldn’t I? Anyone would do that. I’d have to put back your hair, that would only be natural. I might have to move closer…’
As she spoke, she was drawing the ornament from Helen’s ear, and smoothing the chill, naked lobe with her fingers.
Helen flinched. ‘Someone will come,’ she said again.
‘Not if we’re quick.’
‘Don’t be silly, Kay.’
But Kay kissed her, anyway; then felt her break almost roughly away. For someone had come—a nice-looking woman, walking a dog. She’d appeared on the other side of the bridge, soundlessly, from nowhere.
Kay held up the earring and said, in an ordinary voice, ‘No, it’s no good. I’m afraid you’ll have to do it.’ Helen turned her back to her and stood stiffly, as if absolutely riveted by some little detail in the scene below.
As the woman passed, Kay caught her eye and smiled. The woman smiled back—but smiled uncertainly, Kay thought. She must have glimpsed the end of their embrace, but was doubtful: puzzled and embarrassed. The dog came trotting over and sniffed at Helen’s heels. He took ages to go.
‘Smuts!’ cried the woman, getting redder and redder in the face. ‘Smuts! Bad dog!’
‘God!’ said Helen when they had gone. She tilted her head to put the earring back on, her hands at her jaw, her fingers working furiously at the little screw.
Kay was laughing. ‘Oh, so what? It’s not the nineteenth bloody century.’
But Helen wouldn’t smile. Her mouth was set, almost grim, as she fumbled with the earring. And when Kay made to help her she moved sharply away. Kay gave it up. What a lot of fuss, she thought, about nothing…She got out her cigarettes again, and offered the case. Helen shook her head. They went on with unlinked arms, in silence.
They rejoined the path they had come in on and, without debating it, crossed to another, heading south. This led, they saw after a moment, to the crest of Parliament Hill. The slope was gentle at first, but soon grew steep, and Kay glanced at Helen from the corner of her eye, and saw her moving brusquely, breathing hard; she looked as though she might be working herself into a temper, looking for a reason to start complaining, a way of somehow blaming Kay…But then they got to the top, and saw the view. Her expression changed, cleared, grew simple and pleased again.
For you could see right across the city from here, to all the landmarks of London; and because of the distance—and because of the smoke from so many chimneys, which hung in the chill, windless air like a net in water—even the patches of rubble and the hollowed-out, roofless buildings had a certain smudgy charm. Four or five barrage balloons were up, seeming to swell, and then to shrink, as they turned and drifted. They were like pigs in a barnyard, Kay thought. They gave the city a jovial, cosy look.
A few people were taking photographs. ‘There’s St Paul’s Cathedral,’ a girl was saying to her American soldier boyfriend. ‘There’s the Old Bailey. There’s—’
‘Be quiet, will you?’ a man said loudly to her. ‘There might be spies about.’
The girl shut up.
Helen and Kay stood gazing at the view with everyone else, shading their eyes against the glare of the bleached-out sky. Then, a little way along the path, a bench became free, and Kay darted to claim it. Helen joined her, moving more slowly. She sat, leaning forward, frowning, still gazing hard across the city.
Kay said, ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’
Helen nodded. ‘Isn’t it. I wish it were clearer, though.’
‘But then it wouldn’t be so charming. It’s romantic, like this.’
Helen still peered. She pointed. ‘That’s St Pancras Station, isn’t it?’ She spoke quietly, glancing about for the officious man.
Kay looked. ‘Yes, it must be.’
‘And there’s the university building.’
‘Yes. What are you looking for? Rathbone Place? I doubt we’d be able to see it from here.’
‘There’s the Foundling Estate,’ said Helen, as if she hadn’t heard.
‘It’s further west than the Coram’s Fields, and further south.’ Kay looked again, and pointed. ‘There’s Portland Place, I think. It’s nearer to there.’
‘Yes,’ said Helen, vaguely.
‘Can you see? You’re not looking in the right direction.’
‘Yes.’
Kay put her hand on Helen’s wrist. ‘Darling, you’re not—’
‘God!’ said Helen, sharply moving her arm away. ‘Must you call me that?’
She spoke almost in a hiss, glancing about as she had before. Her face was white, with cold and with annoyance. The lipstick was standing out on her lips.
Kay turned her head. She felt, suddenly, a rush not so much of anger as of disappointment: a disappointment in the weather, in Helen, in the day—in the whole damn thing. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said. She lit up yet another cigarette, without offering the case. The smoke was bitter in her mouth, like her own soured mood.
Helen said quietly, after a time, ‘I’m sorry, Kay.’ She’d clasped her hands together in her lap and was gazing down at them.
‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’
‘I feel a bit blue, that’s all.’
‘Well, don’t for God’s sake start looking like that, or’—Kay threw away the cigarette, and lowered her voice—‘I shall have to put my arm around you; and think how much you’ll hate it.’
Her mood had changed again. The bitterness had gone, had sunk as quickly as it had risen; the disappointment, after all, had been too huge a thing to bear. She felt filled, instead, with tenderness. She felt actually sore, about her heart. ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said gently. ‘I suppose that birthdays are never as much fun for the people having them as they are for the people putting them together.’
Helen looked up and smiled, rather sadly. ‘I must not like being twenty-nine. It’s a funny age, isn’t it? Much better to have got it over with and gone straight to thirty.’
‘It’s a perfect age,’ said Kay, with some of her former gallantry, ‘on you. Any age would be that—’
But Helen had flinched. ‘Don’t, Kay,’ she said. ‘Don’t—don’t be so nice to me.’
‘Don’t be nice to you!’
‘Don’t—’ Helen shook her head. ‘I don’t deserve it.’
‘You said that this morning.’
‘It’s true, that’s why. I—’
She looked out across London again, in the same direction she’d gazed in before; and wouldn’t go on. Kay watched her, perplexed; then rubbed her arm, gently, with her knuckles.
‘Hey,’ she said quietly. ‘It doesn’t matter. I wanted to make the day a special one, that’s all. But maybe you can’t expect to have a special day in wartime. Next year—Who knows? The war might have ended. We’ll do it properly. I’ll take you away! I’ll take you to France! Would you like that?’
Helen didn’t answer. She had tu
rned to Kay and was holding her gaze, and her look had grown earnest. After a moment she said, in a murmur, ‘You won’t get tired of me, Kay, now that I’m a beastly bad-tempered old spinster?’
For a second, Kay couldn’t reply. Then she said, in the same low tone, ‘You’re my girl, aren’t you? I’ll never grow tired of you, you know that.’
‘You might.’
‘I shan’t ever. You’re mine, for ever.’
‘I wish I was,’ said Helen. ‘I wish—I wish the world was different. Why can’t it be different? I hate having to sneak and—’ She waited, while a woman and a man went silently by, arm in arm. She lowered her voice still further. ‘I hate having to sneak and slink so grubbily about. If we could only be married, something like that.’
Kay blinked and looked away. It was one of the tragedies of her life, that she couldn’t be like a man to Helen—make her a wife, give her children…They sat in silence for a moment, gazing out again at the view but not seeing any of it now. Kay said quietly, ‘Let me take you home.’
Helen was pulling at a button on her coat. ‘We’ll only have an hour or two before you’ll have to go out.’
Kay made herself smile. ‘Well, I know a way to fill an hour or two.’
‘You know what I mean,’ said Helen. She looked up again, and Kay saw then that she was almost crying. ‘Can’t you stay home with me tonight, Kay?’
‘Helen,’ said Kay, appalled. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I just—I don’t know. I wish you could stay with me, that’s all.’
‘I can’t. I can’t. I have to go in. You know I do.’
‘You’re always there.’
‘I can’t, Helen…God, don’t look at me like that! If I have to think of you, at home, unhappy, I’ll—’
They had drawn closer together. But now, as before, a man and a girl came strolling along the path, beside their bench, and Helen drew away. She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Kay watched the couple—who had paused to look at the view, like everyone else—and wanted to kill them. The urge to take Helen in her arms—and the consciousness that she must not do it—was making her twitch, making her ill.
