The Faithful

by Juliet West

  ‘I suppose you could . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘And your boyfriend wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Your circumstances. I assumed . . . a boyfriend or a fiancé or something.’

  She shook her head. ‘There’s no boyfriend. I’m too busy for that. I have a job now, and there’s the movement. I’m in the new drum corps, the women’s section. Lucia roped me in but it’s actually good fun.’

  She stopped. Tom’s face had hardened at the mention of the movement. How idiotic of her to gabble like that. He checked his watch, then stood up.

  ‘Perhaps it’s best if I write to you first, once I know where I’m based,’ he said. ‘Can you give me your address?’

  She hesitated. Yes, it was the fairest way. If he had her address, he held the cards. It would be her turn to suffer and wait. Because there would be more suffering, she knew that now. She could burn anything she liked, but she could not simply forget him.

  ‘I don’t have a pencil, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Just tell me. I’ll remember.’

  As he repeated the address, despair invaded her body like a terrible sickness. She realized she had been picturing a future with Tom – a quiet wedding in the register office, a modest little house in Lewisham – when of course all she could hope for was a room in Lucia’s flat, a narrow single bed and the endless frightening nights waiting for the crying to begin . . .

  ‘You’re living with your mother?’

  The question surprised her somehow. To think he knew so little. ‘No, I’m sharing with Lucia. You remember her?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘It was Lucia on Aldwick beach, wasn’t it, took all the credit when you saved that little lad from drowning?’

  Hazel nodded. She had forgotten entirely about the boy, the way he had dragged her down, the horrible panic as the seawater closed over her head. She felt again the weight of the water, the sensation of being crushed. ‘I believe Lucia was there that day, yes. She’s been very good to me.’ Very generous, she was going to add, but that might set Tom thinking, might make Hazel sound as if she was desperate or needy, and then he might start asking questions. No, she must attempt to be breezy. She stood up beside him and stuck out her right hand.

  ‘Very best of luck in Spain,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for your letter.’

  They shook hands, his fingers warm and firm around hers, and she felt the shock of contact as their eyes met again.

  ‘I must be mad,’ he said, and walked away.

  21

  Housework was her only release, and Bea embraced it with vengeful energy. She lifted a cushion from the fireside chair, plumped it with a punch and dropped it back on the seat. Kicking away the footstool, she rolled up the front-room rug, hung it outside over the washing line and walloped it with the carpet beater. Dust clouds billowed into the sky. She took a hankie from her housecoat pocket, sneezed and blew her nose. She thought she had finished crying, but the dust had set her off again.

  She blamed herself. It was her fault because she had brought Tom up to be interested in politics, to stand up for what you believed in. Now – God knows how – he’d decided that he believed in Karl Marx and the communist claptrap. Months, this had been rumbling on, but when the trouble started in Spain he began bringing home the Daily Worker, and as they sat reading after tea he would hold the paper up to his face, muttering over Franco and the poor Republicans and what he called the scandal of non-intervention. He tried to start arguments about Spain, but she and Harold had agreed they wouldn’t rise to it. She couldn’t bear the house to become a battle zone. ‘It’s a hot-headed phase he’s going through,’ Harold said. ‘Best thing is to humour him.’

  But that was August and now it was October, and Tom’s mind was made up. He was going.

  He’d announced his intentions on Monday, after they’d finished their tea and Mr Frowse had gone out for his evening walk up to Blackheath. Tom insisted that no amount of pleading would prevent him; in fact it would only make him more determined. Bea wondered what she could have done to make him hate her so much that he would volunteer to fight for another country’s war, when all she had wanted was to protect him from becoming a soldier.

  ‘You’re only eighteen,’ she said. ‘You’re too young.’

  He told them about a boy called Ronnie Burghes who was already out there, and he was only seventeen. Burghes’s mother was a communist, he added, and she supported her son all the way.

  Bea had cried then. What chance did she have in the face of such wickedness? Tom had crumpled a little, tried to comfort her. He’d held her hand and said he was truly sorry, but it was something he had to do. She couldn’t bear him to be tender; that was worse. If he felt a scrap of genuine love or tenderness towards her, he wouldn’t be going at all.

  Bea left the rug airing on the line and went inside to reheat the mince. Harold would be home at any moment. She held the match to the gas and watched the flames leap into a ring of fire. It was too cruel, she thought. Just when Harold had a job back at the factory and life was looking up, Tom had ruined everything with his fixation on Spain.

  She tasted the mince and added another spoonful of salt. Perhaps it was just talk and he wouldn’t go after all. And how would it look at the branch? Her own flesh and blood fighting for the Reds? She’d keep it quiet for as long as she could, but it wouldn’t be easy. Please, she prayed silently. Please, God, let him change his mind.

  The back door opened and Harold came into the kitchen. He was carrying a large brown-paper bag.

  ‘Thought these might cheer you up,’ he said, putting the bag down on the table.

  ‘Biscuits?’

  ‘Bourbons included.’

  She was holding a wooden spoon. She didn’t know whether to take a swipe at Harold or to strike her own head with it. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Stirred the mince.

  ‘Lovely day,’ he said. ‘Been busy, I see.’ He nodded towards the garden where the beaten rug hung on the line.

  Something bubbled and shrieked inside her. And when she spoke her voice was strangled, high-pitched. ‘You think a bag of broken biscuits will cheer me up? Make things right?’

  He looked down at the biscuits. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Bea. I just thought . . .’

  Tears sprang again to her eyes. Her head swam and the anger seemed to drain from her. She didn’t have the strength for a fight. ‘He’s going, Harold. Our boy. He’s going.’ She let the spoon drop into the pot and sat down hard on the kitchen chair. ‘Maybe there’s still a way to stop him. Speak to him again, can’t you?’

  ‘I can give it another go, love. But it’s like he said. The more we try to persuade him, the more determined he’ll be. Give him a few weeks and he’ll soon grow sick of it. He’ll be home and we can get back to normal.’ He chuckled. ‘We might even find it funny in years to come—’

  ‘What?’ She raised her voice. ‘Funny? You actually think this could ever be—’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve heard it all now. You promised you’d love him the same, Harold. You promised. But you can’t. How can you? Oh, I knew it would come home to roost in the end. This pain –’ she slapped a hand to her heart – ‘I swear it will kill me. And in you come with your bag of biscuits . . .’

  She began to unbutton her housecoat, fingers clumsy, head shaking. She would go out this minute, take a walk around Manor Park, let Harold serve up his own dinner. Harold stepped forward and put his right hand on her shoulder. As her trembling fingers struggled with the last button, there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They turned in surprise.

  ‘Mr Frowse?’ asked Harold under his breath.

  Bea shook her head. Mr Frowse always had a meal at his work canteen. He would have said if he was coming back for dinner.

  The kitchen door opened. Tom stood with a bulky envelope in his hand. He looked pale as milk. ‘Just some paperwork I needed,’ he said, lifting the envelope. ‘I forgot to take it this morning.’

&nbs
p; Bea wiped her face but she knew it would be red and puffy and Tom would see that she had been crying. Had he heard their argument? She tried to recall exactly what had been said, but her brain felt flat and dead. She was so tired.

  ‘Have some dinner, will you?’ she said, taking three plates from the rack. ‘I’m just serving up.’

  ‘I can’t. Sorry. Work’s busy this afternoon.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ She slid one plate back. It cracked against another and a flake of chipped china dropped onto the drainer.

  ‘See you tonight then.’ He nodded and disappeared.

  Bea looked into the garden at the yellowing leaves drooping from the Bramley. What did it matter if she was outside at Manor Park or inside eating dinner with Harold? Tom would be going just the same. She took the cutlery from the drawer and laid up for two.

  The morning after he left for Spain, Bea picked through the large cardboard box on the landing. Outside, a church bell was tolling a funeral, each low note measuring out another endless second. She wondered about the mourners inside the church and whether their grief could be as deep and as wretched as her own.

  ‘I’ve sorted through my room,’ he’d said. ‘Some of the stuff might do for a bazaar. If not, put it out for the bins.’

  She took each item from the box: comic books; a wooden boat without a mast; his old Boy Scout uniform. A bazaar? Unthinkable. She would keep the lot. There’d be room for another box under their bed, Tom’s things pressed up against Jack’s.

  His room was cold with November air. She wiped a little condensation from inside the window, held damp fingers to her lips. Moisture from his own breath. What had he decided to keep, she wondered? His collection of birds’ eggs was still on the shelf. She took down the wooden box and opened it. The eggs were nestled in their beds of cotton wool, and below each one Tom had recorded the name and the date and the place where the egg had been found. The last was a bullfinch egg. Aldwick Bay, Sussex, July 1935. Their summer holiday at the blackshirt camp. It was around that time he went on the turn. What had happened to change him so completely? She picked up the egg and held it in the palm of her hand, amazed at its weightlessness. As she replaced the egg she saw there was an envelope tucked into the side of the box, almost hidden by the fluffy white layers. She slid the envelope out. Blank. Opening the unsealed flap, she drew out a single sheet of white paper. It was dated last year, September 18th, and it began, My only love Hazel.

  No, she mustn’t read it.

  Bea replaced the letter and put the box back on the shelf. She sat on the edge of Tom’s bed. He had pulled over the bedspread but the linen was rumpled underneath. She ought to strip the sheets this morning. Give everything a thorough clean.

  Anger rose, tight in her throat. It seemed to come in waves, back and forth like a tide. When the tide was out, she felt only emptiness and grief. When it rushed in, her body swirled with such fury she felt giddy. Bea twisted a strand of thread on the tasselled bedspread and looked up again at the box of birds’ eggs. Why should she bother with niceties and respect when Tom had shown her neither? She would read the letter, yes, she’d read it now. She snatched the box down from the shelf and pulled out the envelope.

  My only love Hazel,

  I’ve thought about nothing else. Why didn’t you meet me that night? Did you get my notes, the letter? I’ve tried to work out how I might have given offence or whether I did or said something that changed your mind. If you would only explain, then at least I could understand. Until then, nothing can sway me. I think you are the most beautiful girl in Aldwick and the world, and I love you.

  Tom

  A girl in Aldwick? Who on earth could she be? There was no one called Hazel that she could remember at the camp.

  Bea read the letter again. Well. If this Hazel wasn’t at the camp, she must have been an outsider, a local from the village. Perhaps she was the one who put the communist ideas into Tom’s head. It made sense, the timing was right. She was to blame! Bea wished there was an address on the envelope, because if there had been, she would take the train down to Sussex and have it out with Hazel and her family. No doubt Hazel was at the heart of the whole Spain calamity. He was trying to impress her, prove that he was true to her and true to the cause. Oh, it all made sense now. Bea sat on the bed and let the letter float down to the bedspread. A queer calm washed over her. If it was all for a girl, surely there was more chance he’d see sense, once he’d accepted that she didn’t want him and no amount of bravado would win her over? Yes, that was it. He’d acted impulsively because he had a broken heart, and soon it would mend and he’d be home. Now she wished desperately that she had found the letter sooner: she could have talked it through with Tom, and that might have been enough to keep him in London. Then again . . . better this way. Let him come to the decision himself.

  She tucked the letter back into its place and looked again at the untidy bedclothes. Poor boy. To think of him lying there, lovesick. When he came home she’d make more effort to understand him and in time they would become great friends again, just as they always had been.

  22

  He’d palled up with a chap called Jacob, a ruddy-faced clerk with a thespian bent who claimed to be bound for theatrical glory until the Spanish cause beckoned. Jacob was partial to poetry: he kept volumes by Charlotte Mew and Francis Thompson in his knapsack, and he often quoted lines from poetry or plays that Tom vaguely recognized from English lessons at school.

  They’d met in a Newhaven cafe, sailed together on tourist tickets, then taken the train from Dieppe to Paris where French comrades were waiting. In Paris they were given their itinerary. They would journey into Spain with a band of fellow volunteers – Americans, Mexicans and Australians. We few, we happy few, said Jacob.

  A small bus rattled them over the border into Spain. As Tom looked out of the grimy window at the snow-topped peaks of the Pyrenees, he thought how proud Bill and Petra would be to know he was finally here. Was that why he’d done it, to prove to Bill that he was a serious communist, that his blackshirt days were truly over? Bill had been doubtful when Tom first said he wanted to go to Spain. But once he was certain of Tom’s commitment he’d helped him get the necessary papers – a backdated union membership card and a letter from a Communist Party stalwart to vouch for his trustworthiness and dedication to the cause. Dedication – yes, he was proving that all right! There could be no more ribbing about his fascist past after this. Tom remembered the trace of envy he had seen in Bill’s eyes when he went up to Limehouse to say farewell. ‘I’d be coming with you, comrade, if it wasn’t for this.’ Bill stretched out his hand and rested it on Petra’s swollen belly. She’d smiled and clasped her husband’s hand. ‘Please be careful, Tommy,’ she’d said, then stepped forward to kiss his cheek. Tom turned away so that they couldn’t see the blush creeping up his neck.

  The bus left them in a tumbledown village, where locals gave solemn clenched-fist salutes and girls handed out mugs of strange coffee and shrivelled oranges. A lorry drove them on to the barracks at Figueras. Uniforms, of sorts, were issued. The next morning they climbed back into the lorry and travelled south in convoy to the training camp at Albacete. They hadn’t been at the camp long when the ¡Avión! whistle sounded and they were shouted at by a furious Spanish corporal for failing to take cover. Tom pulled Jacob down, diving just as the planes appeared overhead. Daring to look up, one cheek planted into the cold wet earth beside a water trough, Tom saw that they were German aircraft, Junkers and Heinkels heading north. He thought of the girls with the oranges, the white terrier pup that had bounded by their sides.

  The barracks were full, so they were to build their own makeshift shelters from pine branches. They worked together – Tom, Jacob and two miners from Derbyshire – and when it was finished their four-man shelter was surprisingly welcoming, the straw palliasses snug against each other, a space behind the head of each for their scant belongings.

  ‘How long do you think we’ll be here?’ Tom asked one of th
e Derbyshire men.

  ‘Fortnight at least.’ He took a screw of tobacco from his breast pocket and began to roll a smoke.

  Jacob whistled. ‘We’d better make ourselves at home.’ He paused, and Tom imagined that his comrade was searching for some apt line, but evidently none would come.

  Tom was woken from a dead sleep by the call of a bugle. His eyes flew open and he was startled not to see the white canvas of a bell tent. The pine-branch roof sent his mind into a spin. Where was he? Where were Fred and Jim, where was that rough bastard Beggsy? He turned to one side and saw the back of Jacob’s head, and a jolt of fury shot through him. For pity’s sake. He’d trekked all those miles across Europe and still the blackshirts claimed him!

  At the water trough he splashed his half-naked body, trying to cleanse the memories of Sussex that had plagued him afresh these past few weeks. It was Hazel’s fault, asking to meet up at St Paul’s that afternoon, looking so sad and beautiful as she offered her half-baked apology. Seeing her again had dragged everything up, and now the ache from last summer was as keen as it ever had been. How foolish to say he’d write! He’d honour his promise of course – he wouldn’t be able to stop himself – but then he’d be the one waiting again. Waiting and waiting and never knowing.

  ‘Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh . . .’ said Jacob, rubbing his skin with a tatty flannel.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Tom.

  Jacob threw the flannel at him and they might have wrestled like schoolboys had not the squat cabo been standing on the other side of the trough, surveying his latest recruits with a weary frown. They fell silent, and Tom heard the drumming of a woodpecker in the pines just beyond the camp. He looked up to see another bird circling high in the cloudless sky; it was some kind of raptor, most likely an eagle. The cabo might know the name of the bird, but Tom wouldn’t dare ask. For the first time he felt homesick: to be in a country where the birds were a mystery. His ignorance unsettled him more than he thought possible.