by Juliet West
3
At last the parade was dismissed. Tom stood to one side as his column jostled and whooped through the narrow wooden gate leading from the lane to the beach. Finally he stepped through and headed left, away from the crush of excited cadets streaming down the shingle bank.
Tom had been to the seaside once before, on an outing to Margate organized by the social committee at his dad’s old factory. He must have been nine or ten. Soggy oysters were what he remembered, thick rough shells that looked as though they were filled with globs of phlegm. He had shaken on plenty of vinegar and the fumes made his eyes water. There was a photograph of that day slotted into the wooden frame on the parlour mantelpiece. It was a picture of him on the promenade, holding his parents’ hands, blinking against the wind, the sea a stormy smudge behind them. The following year his dad was laid off, and after that there were no more seaside trips. For a Saturday outing they would take the bus to Hyde Park and follow the crowds to Lansbury’s Lido. There was a man called Mr Reeves who was teaching his two sons to swim, and he let Tom join in the lessons. But Tom’s own dad refused to go in the water – his scars had never properly healed, and he claimed he would frighten people away if he showed himself in a bathing costume. ‘Go on, Dad,’ Tom would wheedle. ‘If you scare everyone off we can have the place to ourselves.’ His dad would smile from the deckchair and shake his head, knock his empty pipe against his thigh.
Now Tom stood and looked to the east, towards the pier at Bognor, and he thought he had never seen a sight so bloody marvellous. Here was a blue sea, not Margate grey, and the sky was cloudless, hazing down so that it merged with the shifting colours of the water. There were plants and grasses sprouting from the shingle, some with yellow flowers, others that looked like flattened cabbages. Everything was unspoilt and natural. It couldn’t have been more different from Margate.
‘Tom!’ His mum waved as she made her way up the bank. Her face was red under her black woollen beret and a single trickle of sweat dripped from her temple. ‘Come down to the shore, love. O.M. is going to bathe and there’s a photographer.’
Tom shrugged. He hated the way everyone called him O.M., or the ‘Old Man’, as if they had a kind of intimacy or friendship with him. He wasn’t even that old in any case. Bea often remarked on how far Sir Oswald had come, for a man not yet forty. ‘Such determination,’ she would say, with a sideward glance at his dad. ‘Such drive.’
‘I’m not being in any photographs,’ said Tom.
She sighed. ‘But love, it would be a shame to miss out. You can change behind the huts. You’ve got your trunks on, haven’t you, under your uniform?’
Tom looked over to a row of five or six white-painted beach huts. Beggsy was there, along with Jim Dove and Fred Tester. They were unbuttoning their black shirts, stepping out of trousers. Fred pulled his shirt over his head to reveal a saggy knitted bathing suit that looked as if it must have belonged to his dead granddad, and Tom knew the other two would rag him something rotten.
‘All right. Don’t think I’m smarming up to Mosley, though.’
‘Smarming up? I didn’t say anything about smarming.’ She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her brow. ‘You used to be potty about Sir Oswald. That little scrapbook of yours . . .’
‘Your scrapbook. You let me mix the paste.’
‘Now you’re just being silly, twisting things. Come along, get that uniform off and enjoy the weather. Mind you, this is a bit too hot for comfort.’ She fluttered the handkerchief around her face in an effort to stir up the air.
‘I wanted a swim anyway. But I’m not posing for any photographs.’
The tide was out and it was a fair walk to the sea. Tom stepped across the shingle, trying not to wince as the pebbles dug into his bare feet. Beggsy and the others were just ahead, Fred hugging himself with both arms to stop the lads from twanging the straps of his suit.
It was a relief to step from the shingle onto the sand. Ahead of him, Beggsy started to run, a wild sprint, wheeling his arms, head thrust down as if he was charging towards the finishing line in a running race. Tom smiled and started to jog. The sand became wet and clammy, grabbing each footprint and sucking it down.
Mosley was already in the water, a fixed grin on his face. Beggsy and Jim stepped through the waves towards Mosley and his hangers-on, letting out short cries of surprise every time a wave lapped higher, over their thighs, their stomachs. They were freezing their bollocks off, thought Tom, but they didn’t want to let on.
Tom turned to Fred. His fists were clutched to his chest and he stared down at the water, as if by concentrating hard enough he could make the English Channel warmer.
‘Only one thing for it,’ said Tom. ‘On the count of three.’
Fred grinned. ‘You’re on,’ he said, unfurling his fists and trailing his fingers into the water.
‘One, two, three . . .’ Tom plunged in and swam underwater, away from the Mosley crowd, the low rumble of the ocean pressing against his ears. He pushed his body on, strands of seaweed collecting between his fingers, his breath running short now, but still he kept swimming.
When he finally surfaced he couldn’t see Fred. And then . . . there he was, a distant figure standing in the waist-high waves, one arm raised apologetically. Tom smiled to himself, turned onto his back and swam farther out. Somehow the sea felt warmer here, luxurious. He trod water and gazed back towards the beach. Mosley must have had enough; he was getting out already. Two women offered him towels and he took them both with an exaggerated bow.
From this distance Tom had a clear view of the buildings that backed on to the beach. Big as mansions they were, detached jobs, some with thatched roofs and exposed wooden beams, others built of red brick with slate tiles. They looked fairly new – one of those exclusive estates you saw advertised in railway station waiting rooms. He allowed himself to imagine the possibility, the thrill, of waking every day in one of those houses, wandering down a long leafy garden, climbing the back wall and dropping down to this beautiful beach on the other side. What a life.
A conifer stood in one of the gardens, its golden branches pointing towards the sky. In the shade of the tree was a summer house, white-painted timber with a green-tiled roof. The summer house was probably bigger than his bedroom at home, he thought, now that he’d moved into the box room to make way for Mr Frowse.
A small bird flew into the lower part of the conifer, quickly followed by another. Something in the shape, the squat muscular body, made him think of a bullfinch. Bullfinches, nesting? Would they nest next to the sea like this? Egg-collecting was a young lad’s hobby, he told himself, time he grew out of it, but he couldn’t suppress the twist of excitement that always came with the prospect of a new find. He’d like to get up into that tree and have a look.
Another movement caught his eye. Someone – a girl – was standing in the summer house, peering out across the beach. Either she was very tall, or she was standing on a chair. She brought her hand to her face and held it there for a second. She might have been laughing, or smoking – it was impossible to tell from this distance – but he fancied that she was watching him, and suddenly he felt foolish to have been staring at this house and garden so intently, to have imagined himself living there.
Tom heard his mother’s voice calling from the beach. There she was, waving one arm above her head. He gave a reluctant wave, to reassure her that he wasn’t drowning, and swam a slow crawl back towards the shore.
4
‘No use knocking.’
The voice came from behind the topiary yew, which was clipped to resemble a peacock. Hazel lowered her hand from the door knocker, and the old gardener emerged from behind the peacock’s fanned tail. He was holding a pair of pruning shears.
‘Nobody home?’ Hazel asked.
Adams smiled, and the dry skin cracked on his lips. ‘Gone up to the grandmother’s. She’s taken ill.’
‘The grandmother in Wales?’
‘That’s right.’
Hazel looked down at the honey bees droning around the lavender bushes. So much for the walk into Bognor, the cinema and Clark Gable. It was a shame about the grandmother, but still, Bronny might’ve called by, just to warn her that she was planning to disappear.
‘Did they say when they’d be home?’
‘No idea. Depends whether or not the ol’ girl rallies. They think she might, you know . . .’ He widened his eyes and drew the blunt side of the shears across his throat.
There was nothing to do but wander around the estate, hoping she might bump into someone, but she knew that Patricia was away in the south of France, and Lottie – poor thing – was fell-walking in the Lakes with an earnest godmother. Hazel passed the social club and the tennis courts, where four women were playing a game of doubles. One of the women called, ‘Thirty-fifteen,’ and Hazel recognized Miss Bell’s voice. She kept her head down. She hadn’t practised the piano for days. If Miss Bell saw her she’d only ask how she was getting on with the Scarlatti or the Bartók. God, the Bartók. Just the thought of that piece made Hazel’s stomach tighten. The jarring rhythms and the clashing notes. It made no sense whatsoever.
She could still taste the cigarettes, though she’d eaten half the bag of mint imperials. She’d smoked two Pall Malls in the summer house, standing on the wicker table so that she could see over the wall and onto the beach. It was odd watching the blackshirts. For one thing, they were incredibly white. Their ribs stuck out and there were shadows under their shoulder blades, especially on the younger lads, scrawny boys who acted as if they’d never seen the seaside before. Most of them couldn’t swim, by the look of it, just fooled around in the shallow waves before shivering up the shingle, shaking themselves like dogs.
At home, Hazel told Mrs Waite she’d like her supper early. ‘I’m going to Bognor with Bronny to watch a film,’ she said. She scratched her nose and turned her face to the kitchen window, fixing her eyes on the pear tree where a blue tit pecked at a half-grown fruit.
‘You’re to be home before dark,’ said Mrs Waite, dolloping a lump of fish pie onto a plate. ‘No later than nine. Did you want me to warm up the tart for pudding?’
‘Just the pie, thank you, Mrs Waite. We’ll get some sweets at the Odeon.’
The heat had dulled her appetite, but she did her best to force down the fish. The dining-room windows were open, and a slice of sunlight angled in, illuminating one of Francine’s paintings that hung above the sideboard. It was an oil landscape painted somewhere on the Downs, greens and browns, with black brushstrokes (birds or bats?) swooping around what might have been a plough or a tumbledown barn. Hazel used to enjoy watching her mother paint – she always seemed to be happy as she took out her brushes and mixed colours on a palette. But Francine rarely set up the easel now; it was in one of the attic rooms, abandoned along with Father’s violin and Hazel’s packed-away toys.
She pushed the remains of the fish pie to one side of the plate and lay her knife and fork across the food in an attempt to mask the leftovers. Mrs Waite took the plate, tutted, and walked back to the kitchen. A year ago she would have chided Hazel, encouraged her to eat up, but her tactics seemed to have changed. There had been a power shift, and it felt almost as if Mrs Waite had given up on her. ‘When I was your age I’d been out to work two years,’ Mrs Waite had said recently. Hazel had been unsure how to respond. Should she apologize? But it wasn’t her fault; she hadn’t wanted to stay on another year at school. And in any case she didn’t mind the idea of work, was looking forward to it, if she was ever given the chance. Anything was better than another term at Rosewood House, cooped up with scatty Miss Lytton and her obsession with ancient Rome. Hazel imagined herself escaping Rosewood and finding a job in London. She wasn’t sure what kind of job yet. She’d long ago given up on the idea of concert pianist, because to achieve that she’d have to practise for hours and hours a day and she just couldn’t be fagged. A piano teacher – that was possible, then again she’d be expected to teach the modern stuff, Schoenberg and the rest, all those discords that actually hurt her ears. Nursing? There was nursing, she supposed. She thought about Charles. Apparently he did some kind of medical work, although he was vague when Hazel once asked which field he practised in. ‘Medical and social,’ he’d said with an enigmatic air, and her mother had stifled a laugh.
Through the open windows came the distant sound of a bugle. Hazel gulped a mouthful of water and rushed upstairs to get ready. On her mother’s dressing table she found a pot of rouge and rubbed a little into her cheeks. She dabbed her finger in the pot again to redden her lips. The rouge tasted like damp flannel. Disgusting. She flattened down her hair, looked in the mirror and smiled. Her smile would have been perfect but for the small chip in one front tooth. It had been Nanny Felix’s fault, pushing her too fast on the bicycle so that she toppled over and hit the London pavement. Hazel smiled again, this time with her mouth shut. Her eyes looked more green-blue than blue-green, and her face had lost its chubbiness around the cheekbones. She looked older than sixteen, she thought. With her mother’s white hat and the slip-on mules, she might even pass for twenty.
The parade was already halfway along Barrack Lane. Hazel walked as fast as she could without running. Once she had caught up, she carried along the pavement beside the drummers, her hat brim tipped low in case anyone she knew should be passing. It was a warm evening. The sun was still bright, its heat pulsing from the south-facing walls of the red-brick terraces and guest houses that lined the streets leading into Bognor. Families stood in their front gardens and stared, and when the parade reached Marine Drive the crowd of onlookers grew: bemused holidaymakers trailing buckets and spades; old women in headscarves; a group of young lads who mimicked the marchers, then sloped off when the standard bearer turned to glare.
Past the pier and on to the Theatre Royal. A blackshirt with a long neck and a loudhailer paced up and down the promenade opposite the theatre. ‘Mosley speaks!’ he called. ‘Seven o’clock start, free admission!’
Hazel followed the swarm into the foyer and found herself shoulder to shoulder with a crush of uniformed blackshirts and others in ordinary clothes – men in pressed suits, women wearing fashionable hats and colourful summer wraps. The air crackled. Gone was the familiar theatre mustiness, the stuffy politeness. Even the flocked wallpaper and faded velvet drapes seemed shot through with anticipation. Hazel had watched Bronny’s dreaded ballet shows here, she’d played piano in the music festival. How odd to find the theatre transformed like this, into somewhere thoroughly grown-up, somewhere almost glamorous. She stood to one side, near the doors, debating whether she might actually dare to go into the auditorium. A small man in a flat cap appeared next to her. As he pulled a wad of handbills from a canvas bag, his elbow jabbed into her arm. ‘Sorry, miss,’ he said, touching his cap. Hazel nodded in reply, trying to edge away, but still watching him as he stepped forward to press the leaflets into people’s hands. She could just see the heading at the top: ‘Stop the Fascist Lies’, it said, and underneath was stamped a blood-red star. Most people glanced at the handbills in disgust and screwed them into pockets or dropped them onto the carpet. A few seconds later, two blackshirts approached the man and steered him away. He struggled but they held down his arms and forced him into the street, shoving him hard so that he stumbled into the gutter. ‘Shame on you!’ the man hissed. And then he lifted a clenched fist and yelled: ‘Don’t listen to the fascists! Evil lies!’ He began to sing; a wavering tenor threading across the seaside street. ‘So comrades, come rally, and the last fight let us face . . .’
It was too hot in the foyer, difficult to breathe. A prickling sensation began at the back of Hazel’s throat but when she coughed, the prickles intensified, as if there were insects crawling up her windpipe. She coughed louder and her eyes began to water. What was she doing here? She should leave now, walk over to the promenade and buy a lemonade or an ice to cool her throat. She looked at the entrance, but the crowds were still streaming
in and it would be awkward to push her way out.
She noticed a sign for the ladies’ lavatories. Yes, that was the answer. She could lock herself in a cubicle until the meeting started, then creep away unnoticed.
There was a queue for the lavatories, with three women waiting ahead of her. A blackshirt girl stood at the sinks. She was leaning in towards the mirror, poking tentatively at her eye as if there was a grain of sand stuck in there. On her hand she wore a gold ring with a tawny-coloured gemstone that caught the light from the bulb above the mirror. It was the girl from the parade earlier in the day: the one who’d given Hazel the leaflet. She recognized her sharp jaw, her large dark eyes. Now the girl blinked, looked at Hazel’s reflection in the mirror and smiled again, raising her pencilled-in brows.
Hazel half-smiled back, just as the cough started again. She felt light-headed and reached a steadying hand towards the sink.
‘Are you all right?’ asked the girl. ‘You look fearfully pale.’
‘Yes, it’s just . . .’ Hazel trailed off.
‘You’re here for the meeting?’
‘Oh, not really. I’m only passing.’ She took a deep breath and felt her head clear a little.
The blackshirt girl rinsed her hands under the tap, then straightened up, turning away from the mirror. Her waved ebony hair shone under the ceiling light. ‘Shame to miss Mosley,’ she said. ‘Quite a tour de force once he gets going.’
Hazel thought for a moment. She couldn’t go home just yet, and the film would have started by now. Perhaps she would stay after all, buy a drink at the theatre kiosk to settle her throat. ‘How long will the meeting last?’ she asked.
‘An hour or so, I should think. Then questions from the floor. That’s when it gets interesting. Are you with your people?’
‘No. I was coming with a friend but . . . she’s not here after all.’
‘Sit with us, why don’t you? I’m Lucia Knight.’ She spoke her name with a flourish. Lu-chee-a – the Italian pronunciation, Hazel supposed. ‘And here’s Edith now.’
