by Juliet West
Yes, he’d give Jillie the heave-ho, and that wasn’t the only thing he needed to break off. He’d been agonizing over it for a while now, ever since that first conversation with Bill Cork last year. Bolshie Bill everyone called him, big in the union, always trying to drum up new members. Tom had decided to join, and when he got chatting to Bill and told him that he belonged to the blackshirts, that he was doing his bit towards a fairer Britain – a corporate state that would hammer the greedy capitalists and the corrupt politicians – Bill almost had a choking fit. ‘You’re being taken for a ride,’ he said. ‘Fascism isn’t socialism. It’s for jingoists and anti-Semites. It’s the gospel of hate.’ Tom hadn’t known how to respond, had felt humiliated, but the more he read and the more he thought, the more certain he became that Bill Cork was right. Fascism wouldn’t look after the working man: far from it.
He wondered how he would break the news to his mother. Well, she would just have to bear it. There were worse things than a communist for a son.
9
Bea hadn’t told Harold it was her birthday, and she knew he was unlikely to remember without the trail of hints that she generally left in the preceding days. Still, it would dawn on him eventually, and then he would feel guilty. He could be quite sweet when he felt guilty. Chocolates and so on.
It was her fiftieth birthday. Half a century – amazing to think. That fortune teller on Blackheath had got it all wrong, hadn’t she? Read Bea’s palm when she was seventeen and assured her she’d be married by twenty and would travel abroad – most likely America. Your lifeline is strong. I see success and money. What a hoot. Bea was twenty-eight when she and Harold married, and this field in Sussex was probably the furthest they’d ever travelled. You had to laugh.
‘Something amusing?’ Harold was next to her, squinting through his spectacles at yesterday’s paper.
‘Not really. Just recollecting.’
‘Right-o.’ He eased himself from the bed. ‘I’ll have a shave before it gets busy.’
Bea watched him leave the tent. His leg must be bad this morning, because his gait was more uneven than usual; he swung one arm in a semicircle to help him balance. But he hadn’t moaned too much about the camp bed, despite his reservations about coming on the holiday. Perhaps he was even enjoying himself a little.
Lying back on the mattress, Bea stared up at the grey-white canvas. Spiders had appeared overnight, tiny money spiders weaving their webs in the seams. Well then, she might as well make a wish for money. She shut her eyes and imagined the perfect windfall. Fifty pounds should do it: enough to keep them comfortable over the winter, a proper feast at Christmas, a little Whitsun holiday in Broadstairs or thereabouts, and a nice sum for Tom to kit him out with new boots and a warm overcoat for work. They had him trekking the streets in all weathers, that blessed newspaper.
A shame Tom had ended up in a tent with Samuel Beggs, thought Bea. That boy was a proper ruffian, however much his mother insisted he’d turned a corner thanks to the blackshirts. Fortunately Tom didn’t seem particularly enamoured of Samuel Beggs. Then again, he didn’t seem enamoured of anyone or anything – he’d been in a strange mood for weeks now. More than likely it was just a phase. Her little brother Jack had turned sulky at a similar age. He’d glare if you asked him something perfectly harmless like ‘Pass the salt.’
Tom had certainly been busy. There were so many activities, she barely saw him except for mealtimes, just long enough to sneak a dab of Vaseline on his cheeks. He was looking quite suntanned already, ever so handsome in fact. Almost a man. When Tom was a small boy, people would remark how like Harold he was, and it was true, he did have the same gentle nose, the heart-shaped face. But when she looked at him, Bea could see only Jack. Tom’s eyes weren’t quite such a startling amber, but he had Jack’s straight white teeth and the dimple in the centre of his chin that all the girls adored. She sat up with a lurch of dread. That’s to come, she thought, and it probably won’t be long now. Tom will bring a girl home, and Bea hoped to God it would be a decent girl, not one of these modern sorts, with lips smothered in Tangee and eyebrows plucked to non-existence. If she was a decent girl, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. After all, a girl with manners might be an asset to the family. She might remember people’s birthdays.
The tent flaps opened and Harold stooped back inside, one arm behind his back. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said, swinging his arm forward with a flourish. He held out a bunch of flowers: buddleia and valerian, two stems of hollyhock. ‘Tom has the card.’
‘Thank you, love.’ She took the offering and smiled. Wild flowers from the lane. Well, at least he hadn’t forgotten. Dipping her head she inhaled deeply, and tried not to recoil at the strong smell of cats. ‘Though what we’ll do for a vase . . .’
‘I thought we might go for a drink this evening? There’s a pub in Aldwick. Or we could walk into Bognor.’
‘Not tonight, Harold. It’s the beetle drive.’
‘Ah. Tomorrow then?’
‘One night this week. I’m sure there’ll be time.’
Mrs Hunter had very small feet, and she wore the most beautiful shoes: black heels, with a dainty velvet bow at the front. Bea’s own feet had swollen in the heat, and they puffed over the sides of her worn black courts like bread dough in a small loaf tin. Bea crossed her ankles and stowed her feet under the chair where they would not be seen.
The title of the meeting was ‘Why Women are the Backbone of the B.U.F.’, and Mrs Hunter left them in no doubt that all the women present were utterly crucial to the cause. As Mrs Hunter warmed to the theme, her audience listened in careful silence. Outside the marquee, there were distant shouts and cheers, the sound of a tractor engine sputtering. But it was easy to ignore all that, with Mrs Hunter speaking in her quiet and friendly way.
‘Sir Oswald has made it very clear that women are of exceptional assistance in the attempt to build a fascist Britain. In our efforts to combat the Jew, who could be better placed than the ordinary housewife? It is a plain fact that our local traders are being driven out of existence by the Jew, crushed and exploited by their alien presence. You, of all people, must act by boycotting Jewry in your midst!’ Mrs Hunter’s lips, which had thinned and twisted as she spoke of the Jews, relaxed into a smile. ‘We shall entertain no talk of violence or unpleasantness. The inflammatory lies you have heard about events in Germany have been put about by communists and degenerates. Herr Hitler is in essence a peaceful man.’
Bea shifted in her seat. She had never liked this Jew talk, and lately it was getting more insistent. What would Mrs Hunter say if she knew that she, Bea, worked for a Jewish man? If Bea boycotted Mr Perlman, she would be two pounds a week poorer, and then that would be it, they’d be on the bread line. Tom’s wages were hardly adequate to put a decent meal on the table. The money from the lodger was a help, but it added extra pressure, knowing she had to cook for Mr Frowse. The one time she served up a cheap cut, he left half his meal on the plate, went out and came back smelling of fried fish.
Of course there’d always been muttering about the Jews, that was just part of everyday life. Housewives grumbled to neighbours across garden fences; husbands carped as they queued for their dole. But it was only grumbling, nothing more sinister. It was a jokey thing, Bea told herself, saying that Jews were on the make, the way people said that the Irish were dozy or the French smelt of onions. Doubtless foreigners had their own jibes about the English, and where was the harm in that? Muttering was one thing, but boycotting – combating the Jews – that was another.
Bea wondered whether to raise her hand, to challenge Mrs Hunter. Because she knew there had been violence in Germany; it wasn’t all communist lies. She’d seen the photographs plain as anything in Mr Perlman’s paper.
But when Mrs Hunter finished her speech everyone applauded with gusto, and Bea didn’t have the nerve to raise her hand. Perhaps she was being over-sensitive. She pulled a hankie from the sleeve of her blouse, sneezed and wiped her eyes. The coun
try air must be getting to her.
It was all so complicated, thought Bea, and that was the problem with politics. You had to throw in your lot with one party, but you couldn’t all believe in exactly the same thing. That was acceptable, wasn’t it? You focused on the policies you did support – in her case, it was the fact that Mosley was the leader least likely to start another war with Germany. Peace was all Bea wanted. Tom safe at home. She thought of Jack, how proud he’d been when he came home from the recruiting office, brandishing his papers. The twist of Indian toffee he’d bought to celebrate. She hadn’t eaten a toffee, not a single one, since the day Jack left for France.
Elevenses was served after the meeting: fruit scones with jam and whipped cream from the local farm.
Bea sat at a table in the corner, on the edge of a conversation. Samuel Beggs’s mother was sounding off about foreigners, spitting out scone crumbs as she spoke: ‘I’d put ’em all out to sea in a big ship, and then I’d pull the plug.’ A woman at her side cackled.
Bea thought of Ivy and felt a shiver of loss, though her friend was ten years dead. What would Ivy have made of the blackshirts? They’d have wanted her on their side, that was certain. Ivy was a magnificent speaker, wouldn’t think twice about standing on an upturned fruit crate in Lewisham market to harangue passers-by on the issue of women’s suffrage. She was forever getting up a march, and Bea was always at her side, wearing her knitted green-and-purple scarf, chanting ‘Votes for Women!’ till her throat was hoarse.
How straightforward life had seemed in those days before the war. Bea had marched, she had chanted and canvassed – and she had never once questioned the cause. Votes for women! Yes, that had been a noble campaign, each one of them united in a common purpose. Men, too. Harold believed in women’s suffrage: that’s how she’d met him, when she was selling buttonholes at a rally in Hyde Park. Afterwards he’d bought her tea and shortbread at a cafe near the Albert Hall.
‘Penny for them, Mrs Smart?’
It was Mrs Beggs, looking at her with slanted eyes.
‘Just reminiscing. Were you a suffragette before the war, Mrs Beggs?’
She threw her head back in horror. ‘Not likely! How old d’you take me for?’
The other women laughed and Bea felt a flush creep up her neck.
‘I was twelve when the war broke out,’ Mrs Beggs went on, patting her hair. ‘Seventeen when I had Samuel.’
‘We’ve a fair number of ex-suffragettes in the movement,’ said Mrs Wright. ‘Mrs Richardson for one – fearless woman. Marched right into the National Gallery and took a meat chopper to that nude painting, didn’t she?’
Bea nodded. ‘The Rokeby Venus,’ she said. ‘How they repaired it I’ll never know.’
Mrs Beggs looked unimpressed. ‘Some of them suffragettists were off their nuts, if you ask me. Anyway, who needs Mrs Richardson when you can have O.M.?’
There was more laughter, and a long wolf whistle. The cackling woman sang the opening lines to ‘You Made Me Love You’, and the table chorused in reply, ‘I didn’t want to do it.’
Bea dolloped a large spoonful of cream onto her scone and stared out of the marquee into the field beyond. She pictured Mosley on the beach at Aldwick Bay, his broad shoulders bare and tanned. Extraordinary that he should have stripped off like that. So informal, yet so right : a show of solidarity towards the whole lot of them, young and old, rich and poor. Ivy would have admired Mosley, all right. And she would have supported his crusade against war, of that Bea was certain.
10
Hidden in her diary were two postcards; they had arrived before lunch and by a stroke of good fortune she’d got to them before Mrs Waite.
The first was from Bronny, a picture of St David’s Cathedral on the front, and on the back a long message in impossibly small handwriting, detailing the tedious journey, the smell of boiled plums in the hospital, and her grandmother’s long-haired terrier, Oscar, who bared his teeth and snapped whenever she tried to pet him. I’m praying we’ll be home by Saturday, she signed off. Mummy says she can’t miss the hospital fete.
The second postcard was plain, the type one could buy in packs of two dozen from the stationer. Lucia had drawn the blackshirts’ emblem on the front in thick black ink: the sticks and the axe bound together with rope. She must have posted the card yesterday, after their walk in the wood. On the reverse she’d written a message, diagonally, so that Hazel had to tip the card into a diamond shape to read the writing. Absolutely gorgeous to see you this afternoon. Edith and I plan to bathe tomorrow at four. See you at the beach huts? Fondest regards, Lucia.
Hazel chewed her lip and looked at the clock. Almost three. Was it a mistake to have given Lucia her address? Mother would be vexed if letters and literature started arriving from the blackshirts. Hazel would have to claim that she’d been talked into it inadvertently, that she’d found herself chatting to one of the newspaper sellers in the town, given her address without realizing what she was signing up to.
Lucia seemed determined that they should be friends, yet Hazel wasn’t sure what was behind it, whether Lucia really liked her, or whether she was simply trying to recruit new blood for the movement. Well, whatever the reason, Hazel didn’t much care. Goodness knows it had been ages since she’d met anyone interesting, and now there were two interesting people in as many days. A pity the boy hadn’t come back last night. She’d been so sure he would reappear.
She changed into her bathing costume, pulling her beach dress over the top. It was a plain dress of white poplin, and there was an oil stain on the hem, but it would have to do. On the landing, she took a towel from the airing cupboard. When the doorbell rang, she jumped.
Hazel opened the front door, expecting the grocer’s boy, and wondering why he hadn’t gone round the side as usual, but there stood Lucia on the doorstep, wearing dark glasses and a pair of scarlet beach pyjamas.
‘Surprise! I know I’m a little early. Thought I’d call for you en route.’
‘Lucia, I was just getting—’
‘It’s all right, isn’t it? My card arrived?’
‘Yes . . . but I’m not quite ready.’
‘Are your people here?’ Lucia lifted her sunglasses onto her head and peered beyond Hazel into the hallway. She had put some kind of pomade on her hair, so that it was sleek and almost flat to her head in the old flapper style.
‘No. Everyone’s out. Is Edith with you?’
‘Attack of the monthlies.’
‘Oh . . . I see. Well, come in. I was just finding a towel.’
Lucia stepped inside and glanced around the hallway. ‘Adorable house,’ she said. ‘Do you come here every summer?’
‘Actually, we live here all year. We moved down a while ago. From London.’
‘How perfect. Although I think it would drive me a little demented, living somewhere so quiet. I’d miss town.’
‘I miss it every day. I’d like to move back,’ said Hazel.
‘Oh yes, you must. Really! I’m longing to flat-share. It’s beastly at home, just Father and me.’
They stood facing each other. Hazel felt unsure, suddenly, of what she should do next. If it had been Bronny calling round, they’d go straight up to her bedroom. But Lucia was different. A proper visitor.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Hazel asked. There was lemonade in the larder, and if pushed she could make a pot of tea.
‘You’re sweet, but shall we head to the beach? It’s such a glorious afternoon, I don’t want to waste a moment indoors.’
Lucia shaded her eyes and squinted towards the shore, where a dozen or so boys scampered around the waves. ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten about the swimming lessons. Let’s walk further on, Hazel, or Mrs Winters will rope me in.’
The wind was getting up, and high stems of marram grass whipped at their legs as they picked their way along the beach. Lucia’s halter-neck top had a faint gold print like the scales of a mermaid and her skin was bronzed and smooth. Hazel couldn’t have f
elt less glamorous with her freckled arms and her old beach dress. Still, at least her bathing costume was passable. Turquoise was the perfect colour for fair-skinned blondes; she’d read that in Miss Modern.
They reached an empty stretch of beach between two low-growing clumps of kale.
‘Now for the conjuring act,’ said Lucia.
She shook her rolled-up towel and a black bathing costume dropped out. Hazel realized with alarm that Lucia was going to change into her costume right now, on the beach.
‘Be a sport and screen me with the towel, would you?’ asked Lucia.
She’d just have to go along with it. What choice was there? Lucia was older, of course, more confident, and if Hazel acted coy she would look like a baby. So she nodded and took the towel, held it out with arms stretched wide and her head twisted to one side.
‘Oh, don’t be bashful on my account,’ laughed Lucia. ‘We’re all girls together.’
She took off her trousers and drawers first, then bent down to wriggle into the legs of her costume. Next she untied the halter knot of the pyjama suit and pulled it over her head, flinging the top in a crumpled pile with the trousers. Even with her eyes turned away, Hazel could see the pale curve of Lucia’s breasts. How carefree she was, thought Hazel. Standing there, half-nude, casually looping her arms into the straps of her costume, now fastening the clasp of the little belt around her waist . . .
