The Faithful

by Juliet West

  They were invited back the following year, and the next. Edward and Charles’s friendship grew, became almost secretive, and Francine found herself excluded from the fishing trips and the tracking expeditions, left instead to sit and read in the shady garden, eavesdropping on the conversations between her mother and Mrs Lassiter. They spoke about West End plays, and new fashions, and complained good-naturedly about their husbands’ shared obsession with the stock exchange.

  One afternoon Mrs Lassiter seemed genuinely irked. ‘I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn’t chalk up the share prices on my forehead,’ she’d said. ‘Perhaps then he would take notice of me.’

  Francine’s mother had found the notion hilarious, and she spluttered into her teacup, composing herself when she remembered that her daughter was within earshot.

  Francine carried on reading, pretending to concentrate. The wind blew a leaden cloud over the sun. Mrs Lassiter shivered, and they agreed it was time to go indoors. As the maid gathered up the tea table, Charles burst into the garden from the path that led to the bridleway. He clutched his fishing rod to his chest and his face looked red and damp as if he had been running.

  ‘Dear, where is Edward?’ frowned Mrs Lassiter.

  ‘On his way, I expect,’ said Charles. He cast his eyes down and stomped towards the house.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Francine’s mother called out. Charles stopped, his shoulders hunched, then he turned around with an effort of politeness that seemed to pain him.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Ellis. It’s just that I forgot my hat and I’m too hot. A touch of heatstroke, I think.’

  ‘Then you must lie down in your room, dearest,’ said Mrs Lassiter. ‘Close the curtains and Flynn will bring you iced water.’

  The maid bobbed and hurried away with the tray.

  Edward returned in time for tea, a large trout sliding in the bottom of his bucket. He didn’t ask after Charles, and he sulked through dinner. Later, when they were alone in the bedroom, Francine asked Edward whether he’d fallen out with Charles. ‘Something and nothing,’ said Edward airily. ‘He’s an awkward cove, we’ve always known that.’

  The following summer Edward said he wouldn’t go with them to Lostwithiel; he’d been invited to a school friend’s in the Peak District. Edward didn’t come the next year either, the year Charles was sixteen and seemed more disconsolate than ever, due to the fact that his mother had ‘spawned’ (he spat out the word to Francine at the dinner table, hand cupped over his mouth), producing a plump baby brother whom Mrs Lassiter worshipped even more than her prized roses.

  A midnight breeze blew through the open window. There was the sound of a front door opening and closing. Francine swallowed down her nausea and sat up from the armchair. It was no use; she would have to shut out the sickly roses, sacrifice the fresh air. Unsteadily she crossed Charles’s drawing room and slammed down the sash.

  12

  Her body was still a little shaky, the muscles tender and tight, but overlaying that was a coil of energy, ready to spring. There was a clarity to Hazel’s vision now. She had a sense that everything was brighter; life was magnified and outlined in outrageous definition. She was alive, Leonard was alive, the Lewisham boy was alive. And now she wanted to live her life. Live it properly, not waste it.

  She lifted the piano lid, disturbing the fine layer of dust on the glossy black wood. Miss Bell had told her to start practising the Bartók at the most difficult passage. Master that and everything else will come, she said. But somehow that seemed wrong to Hazel, illogical. She began at the beginning – the simple run of quavers, the octave leaps – and when she reached the devilish bars a kind of miracle happened. Hazel kept the tempo, struck every note with perfect, stylish precision. It was a portent: the gods were with her.

  In her bedroom she did a headstand on the rug and held it for one minute. She looked at the clock upside down. Still only nine. Reading would help pass the time. She sat with her back against the bedroom door and turned to chapter nine: Physiological and Technical Considerations. It sounded dry, but it turned out to be riveting. Equal rights for women was van de Velde’s theme. She read the passage twice, to make sure she had properly understood.

  A woman is not the purely passive instrument which she has been so long considered, and is still considered, far too often. And in any case, she ought not to be a purely passive instrument! For sexual union only takes place if and when both sexes fully participate and feel supreme sexual pleasure. If, anywhere and in any circumstances, the demand for equal rights for both sexes is incontestable, it is so in regard to equal consent and equal pleasure in sexual union, and in the interests of both.

  Equal rights in sexual relations? The idea amazed her. Bronny had related the exact opposite: a married cousin had told Bronny (after several glasses of Christmas punch) that sex was a second curse, a wifely duty one had to endure. But if this book was to be believed, that needn’t be the case at all. And why shouldn’t it be believed? Van de Velde was a doctor, after all, distinguished in his field. There was every chance that he was right, and Bronny’s married cousin was wrong.

  She crossed the room, took her notebook from its hiding place over the curtain pelmet and felt around for a pencil in the drawer of her bedside cabinet. On a fresh page she copied out the passage.

  At midnight, when she was certain Mrs Waite was finally asleep, she slipped on her dress and tiptoed down the stairs.

  She saw his hands first. One hand firmly gripping the top of the wall, and the other more tentative, just the fingers curled to help him balance. Then the whole of him appeared, dressed in flannel trousers and a shirt, untucked on one side. She stepped out onto the path. The wind felt cool and she hugged her bare arms to her chest as she called a quiet hello. He sat in silence on the wall, his legs dangling down. She thought that he would look up into the tree, mention something about the bullfinch eggs, but he simply stared at her. The wind gusted and caught his hair, blowing it into his eyes.

  ‘You’ve come,’ she said.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  His voice was a beautiful baritone. Could he sing, she wondered? She would like to hear him sing.

  ‘You can climb down from there if you like.’

  He peered past her, up the garden and towards the house. She was about to reassure him, to let him know that no one was watching, that only the old housekeeper was home and she’d be snoring like a drain by now. But then she decided it might be wiser to keep him guessing.

  ‘I won’t be trespassing?’

  She laughed, a little louder than she had meant to, and the sound lifted on the breeze. ‘I’m inviting you, aren’t I? Do you smoke?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘They’re in the summer house. I have wine, too, if you’d like a glass. It’s Trebbiano. That’s from Italy. Have you ever been?’

  He shook his head and jumped down, followed her into the summer house. They stood facing each other, the wicker lounger between them.

  ‘I went to Italy once, when I was twelve,’ she said. ‘Daddy has friends there, in Rome, except they’re not friends any more.’ She paused, wondering how much she should say, and then decided she should say whatever she liked. A woman ought not to be a purely passive instrument. She took her tumbler of wine from the table and gulped another mouthful. It was her second glass, and her limbs had begun to feel odd: dense and liquid at the same time. ‘It was silly, all my fault, really. I overheard a conversation between my father and his friend’s wife, Adriana. They didn’t know I was in the larder. I was stealing strawberries, great fat strawberries, bigger than you could imagine. I kept quiet, of course, watched them through a grille in the larder door. He kissed her. I felt sorry for my mother, felt she ought to know, so I found her and told her what I’d seen and what I’d heard. She slapped me and then apologized, said it was for stealing the strawberries. Then she cried and asked me to tell her again. To remember every last detail. So I did as I was told, and that turned out to be the wrong thing,
too.’ She paused, took a deep breath and realized what an idiot she must sound. ‘Sorry. I’m gushing on. You don’t even have your wine yet. And I’m Hazel, by the way. Isn’t that funny? We haven’t been introduced.’

  ‘Thomas Smart. Tom is what everyone calls me.’

  Tom Smart. She thought it was perfect for him. A perfect name.

  She handed him a tumbler from the picnic basket that lay open on the floor.

  ‘Help yourself to a cigarette,’ she said, pouring his wine almost to the brim. She nodded towards the packet on the arm of the seat. He picked up the Pall Malls, slid one out by an inch and offered it to her. This was it, she thought. The way lovers find each other in the pictures. The leading man offered the lady a cigarette. She wondered why it was always that way around. The man offering first. Her head rushed like the wind in the marram grass. Here they were, just as she had planned. The Prelude. She had made this happen, and it hadn’t been difficult at all.

  The first match he struck flared and died, and they both smiled, raised their eyebrows. The second match kept its flame, and he held it to the tip of her cigarette. She thanked him with her eyes, inhaled lightly and turned her head to blow the smoke in a thin stream towards the open door.

  Now his cigarette was lighted too, and he was drinking the wine, and they looked at each other in silence. It was his turn to speak, she felt. She had chattered enough, carrying on about Italy and her parents like that. Why hadn’t he responded? A dreadful thought struck her. What if he wasn’t the charismatic young writer she’d taken him to be? What if he was actually a bore?

  He dropped the matchstick into the ashtray and looked up. There was no moon, only the dim glow of their burning cigarettes.

  Finally, he spoke.

  ‘And did your mother . . . did she confront your father, about Adriana?’

  It was a good question. Direct, worthy of a newspaper reporter.

  ‘Oh, yes. There were all sorts of unpleasant scenes. It was patched up for a while but they’re apart now. My father is in Paris. They call it a trial separation, but no one can say when the trial ends.’

  ‘Is it just you and your mother, then? I mean – do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘And your parents?’ she asked.

  He smiled. ‘One of each. They’re not too bad, as parents go. We live in Lewisham.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you said.’ So he lived with his parents. That was a shame. She had pictured him in lodgings; a first-floor room with a high ceiling, sparse but clean. His landlady (decrepit, Victorian) would not allow guests, but he would smuggle her upstairs, and if they were discovered she would claim to be his sister, or a cousin, visiting for the weekend.

  ‘Tell me about your job on the newspaper. Is it awfully exciting?’

  He swallowed two mouthfuls of wine, rubbed at an eye. ‘I may as well say . . . Look, I gave the wrong impression the other night. I don’t know why I said it – well, I didn’t at first, you just assumed, but the fact is . . . I’m not a reporter.’

  ‘What are you then?’

  ‘A messenger boy. A runner. But I do work for a newspaper. On Fleet Street. That bit was true.’ He stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘I expect you’ll want me to leave now.’

  She thought for a moment. The lie was unfortunate, but it was obvious why he had lied: to impress her. If he wanted to impress her, that had to be a good sign. And his confession was sweet. She liked him more for it.

  ‘I’d rather you stayed.’

  ‘Really? Right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Good.’

  ‘I felt sure you’d come last night,’ she said. ‘I was down here till one.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to come but . . .’

  ‘You’re here now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He put his wine on the table and leaned across the lounger. She leaned across too, just a little, and she could feel the warmth of his breath. The touch of his lips made her gasp: the sweet wine taste of them, the heat from his skin. He brought one hand up to the side of her face, ran a finger lightly along her left cheekbone. Instinctively, she raised her hand to meet his, and a dusting of ash fell from her cigarette onto his arm. She pulled away, twisted the cigarette into the ashtray. Her heart lifted and crashed as if it were a giant buoy, rising up in a storm. What should she do now? She couldn’t remember a word of Mr van de Velde’s advice. They kissed again, properly this time, their mouths opening, tongues – astonishingly – touching, and he pulled her downwards, until they were on the lounger, pressed together between the wicker arms, stray spikes of willow scratching at the back of her thin dress.

  She kissed his face and his neck. Small, light kisses that raised goose pimples on his skin. Tom’s hands ran beneath her dress, his fingernails tracing a delicate path on her thigh. Now his shirt was unbuttoned and she kissed the breadth of his shoulder, the roughness of his chest. Her teeth grazed his skin, and she took an oval of flesh into her mouth, bit down hard. Tom cried out, but she did not stop.

  13

  Charles untied the blindfold and stepped to one side like a conjurer revealing his best trick. ‘Open your eyes,’ he said.

  Francine blinked into the morning light – the sun was horribly glaring in her fragile state – and gazed up and down Bruton Street. She saw a telegram boy pass on his bike. Two parked cars. A clump of dirty straw blocking a drain cover. What could Charles possibly mean? What surprise?

  ‘Well?’ He twirled the blindfold – one of his silk cravats – in an impatient manner that only left her feeling more befuddled.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. You’ll have to give me a clue.’

  ‘Ninety in silence?’

  She looked at the mint paintwork of the car parked to her right. It was a Brough. A Brough Superior.

  ‘The car? You’ve actually bought it?’

  ‘Promised I’d make last night up to you, didn’t I? Couldn’t bear to think of my Frangie abandoned last night. I thought we could motor down to the coast after lunch. Give the beast a decent run out.’

  ‘How marvellous! Brighton?’

  ‘Aldwick, if you don’t mind, Frangie. I could pick up my watch from the house. I’m absolutely lost without it. I would have caught that train last night, you know, had I—’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Francine. ‘But I’m not missing the Cole Porter.’

  ‘We’ll be back for the weekend, of course. Back in style.’ He stroked the bonnet. ‘And I know a perfect little stopping place en route. Very secluded.’

  Why did it have to be Aldwick? she thought gloomily, as she went inside to dress for the journey. Brighton would have been so much more fun. It was a tawdry town, of course, but that was part of the charm. It made no pretence at gentility, unlike Bognor and its risible ‘Regis’. Still, it would be an adventure to drive to Aldwick in the Brough. Hazel would have quite a surprise.

  14

  The rounders tournament dragged on, and by some fluke his team was in the final. Tom stood at his outfield post, a position he’d picked because from here he could see the edge of the copse. Every few seconds he looked towards the trees, then upwards to the murky clouds that were gathering from the south.

  It was impossible to concentrate on the game, to ignore the raw energy coursing through his body. Every sinew and every nerve was stretched tight with yearning. He thought of her face in the moonlight. Her kiss. The shock of the bite.

  He kicked a heel against the yellowing grass, replaying last night’s conversation in his mind – awkward at first, and then her story about Italy; the wine they had drunk; the cigarettes; their bodies pressed together in the sunlounger. His hand brushing against her breast, her thigh. The bite. It wasn’t the usual kind of love bite: Jillie had given him a couple of those, and he’d inflicted one in return. All spit and suction. Horrible. No, Hazel’s bite was something completely different. Proper passion.

  She had pulled back from the embrace, thoug
h, as if it had surprised or troubled her, then she’d straightened her dress and topped up their wine. They smoked another cigarette, spoke quickly in low whispers, making plans, plotting. They would meet again today, at five, in the copse at the bottom of the campsite, next to a rope swing that hung by the stream. From there they could walk through Aldwick to a cornfield she knew, somewhere they could be alone. She would have to be home for supper at seven, but later he could come to the summer house again. She’d wait for him.

  ‘When do you go back to London?’ she had asked. They were sitting on the floor, their backs against the side of the lounger.

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘And after the camp. Will you write to me?’

  ‘Every day. And I’ll come down to Bognor, often as I can. I’ll save all my money for the train.’

  As he buttoned his shirt, she gave Tom a sly look. ‘Will there be another march before you go home? I haven’t seen you in your uniform.’

  Tom shrugged his shoulders. ‘If there is, I’m not sure I’ll be marching.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Hazel tilted her head to one side. She looked disappointed and he hesitated for a moment, wondering how much he should explain. He had to be honest, he decided. It had worked last time, when he told her he wasn’t actually a reporter. If they were going to be together – and they were going to be together – they needed to be completely honest about every single thing.

  And so he’d explained his doubts about fascism, how it had all started after the conversation with Bill Cork, and how he was reading about politics for himself, scouring every paper in the staff canteen from The Times to the Sketch. He stopped and apologized: ‘Am I droning on?’

  She put her hand over his. ‘Not for one second. Tell me everything.’

  ‘It’s just . . . if you only like me because of the blackshirts, the uniform or whatever, well, that isn’t really me. After this camp I’m going to leave. I’ve made up my mind. I just haven’t had the guts to tell the old girl yet.’ She squeezed his hand. He felt a jab of pain but did not flinch. ‘Because I want to do something decent with my life, Hazel. My mates at home, it’s like their lives are mapped out. They get their girlfriends in the family way, find themselves stuck in dead-end jobs . . . cooped up in a poky room with a wife and a screaming baby.’