The Faithful

by Juliet West

  ‘Aren’t they all?’

  Charles sighed and reached for Francine’s hand across the narrow kitchen table. He had called round to Earls Court unexpectedly, and she was still in her nightgown, uncomfortably aware that yesterday’s eye make-up would be smeared into the creases around her eyes.

  ‘Timing is everything. You know how precise Veronica likes to be.’

  She sniffed and told herself that she must try to smile, try to be gracious.

  ‘It’s no fun for me,’ he continued. ‘She’s another of Veronica’s social cases. I have to get them to bathe first.’

  ‘Don’t!’ said Francine, pulling her hand from his grasp. ‘It’s too squalid.’

  ‘But Frangie, you’ve always been so understanding. Open-minded. I rely on you—’

  ‘You say Veronica screens them, but how do I know? Sooner or later you’ll pick up some vile disease from these slum women.’

  ‘Not exactly slum women, darling. The fee is still considerable. Vee’s not running a charity.’

  ‘You just said yourself they’re filthy! They need to bathe before you’ll bed them.’ She stood up and walked to the kitchen window. Labourers were dismantling the scaffolding from the roof of the exhibition centre: the building work was finally coming to an end. She thought of the day ahead – stuck in the flat with the scaffolding clank-clanking; workmen yelling and catcalling whenever a woman passed; the man in the flat above practising on his wretched oboe – and now not even the prospect of dinner with Charles to look forward to. She felt a twist of anger as she turned back to look at him. He was fiddling with a cufflink, and there was a look of weariness – or was it boredom? – upon his face.

  ‘You don’t care where these women are from, do you?’ she hissed. ‘You don’t care what they look like or smell like. You fuck them for money and you love every single minute of it. All those babies, those children running around London. You must have hundreds of them now.’

  ‘Two hundred and eighty-two,’ he said in a faraway voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two hundred and eighty-two, since 1916. One child a month, near as dammit. At least, those are the successes we know of. Not every woman keeps her follow-up appointment.’

  He smiled and her rage flared brighter.

  ‘This is a joke to you?’

  ‘Frangie, really,’ he said, rising from the table. ‘If you’re having a bad day I think it’s better I leave. Though I must confess I had hoped—’ He reached out and pulled at the silk cord of her dressing gown. The bow slowly unlooped.

  She looked down at his hand, felt the light pressure of the cord against her waist. He smiled again and stepped towards her. She caught the scent of his cologne.

  ‘Had hoped?’ she asked.

  The cord slid to the floor and he stroked a finger along her bare collarbone.

  ‘I might fuck them for money. But I fuck you for love, my darling.’

  When he kissed her she felt the rage melt away. It would be all right. He still wanted her. The other women meant nothing. They were simply . . . business.

  There was no food in the flat, so she walked to the Italian delicatessen on the Cromwell Road. The grey skies had lightened and the temperature was rising. Perhaps it would be a sunny day after all. In the delicatessen Francine bought bread and tomatoes for lunch. She hesitated over a tray of pastries decorated with glazed apricots and strawberries.

  ‘Tre . . . grazie,’ she said, pointing to the pastries. Jasmin had a sweet tooth, just like Hazel, of course. She’d pop by and surprise them. The delicatessen sold wine, too. Hazel wasn’t keen on wine, or any alcohol, it seemed, but it would be a shame to arrive without a respectable offering. She bought a bottle of Chianti, and the shopkeeper parcelled everything up in brown paper.

  The walk took twenty minutes, and she wished she’d worn different shoes, or hailed a cab, but the wine would have to serve as her extravagance for the day. How tiresome this money situation was. The Aldwick house had not been let as frequently as expected, and the last guests had refused to pay the balance because the water heater had broken down on the third day.

  She passed a solicitor’s office, its brass plaque glaring in the sudden dazzle of sunshine. She had not yet heard from Paul’s solicitor. Paul was chasing recompense for a cancelled contract; it seemed he couldn’t afford the time or the money to invest in a divorce. Everything hinged on selling the Bloomsbury flat, but that was far from straightforward. Property in town was hardly the most desirable, with all this tiresome talk of war.

  Hazel looked unwell, thought Francine. When she answered the door her face dropped, and she gave a guarded glance over Francine’s shoulder, asking whether Charles was on his way.

  ‘Charles is busy today. I’m feeling a little lonely, as a matter of fact. I’ve brought us some treats. Have you had lunch?’

  She held up the paper parcel and Hazel opened the door a little wider.

  ‘Not yet . . . We’ve been out. Come in.’

  Jasmin’s face broke into a wide grin when she saw Francine. She was wearing a knitted yellow cardigan that looked as if it was covered in mud or chocolate, and her face was just as grimy. ‘Nee-nee,’ she called, clapping her hands. ‘Nee-nee.’

  How sweet, thought Francine. Jasmin seems to have decided on her own name for me. Nee-nee. Yes, that was much better than Grandma or Granny. Clever little girl. She bent down and stroked Jasmin’s head.

  ‘It’s Nee-Nee come to visit, that’s right. Haven’t you grown?’

  ‘You haven’t seen her for a while.’

  ‘Isn’t it silly, darling? I honestly have no idea where the time goes. Of course there was the fortnight in Biarritz – it was so kind of Deborah to invite me. Dreadfully hot out there, though. As much as one could manage to take a dip in the pool.’ She looked down again at the parcel and handed it to Hazel. ‘Just a few luncheon things. And a bottle of vin. I’m ever so thirsty.’

  Hazel mumbled a thank-you and disappeared into the kitchen. Francine sat on the edge of the sofa, surveying the room. It was an odd set-up. Rather bare and unfeminine, considering the occupants were two young women. A dining table was pushed against the back wall, and on it were several foolscap files, piles of papers and a coffee-stained cup and saucer. In the corner next to the table was a standard pole with a huge flag wound around it. Francine didn’t have to unfurl the flag to know it would be emblazoned with some ghastly fascist emblem. She had given up trying to fathom why Hazel found the Mosley party so attractive. The way the man preened and strutted; he was plainly ridiculous.

  Next to her on the sofa was a copy of the Blackshirt. She glanced down at a cartoon on the front page that showed a group of Jewish bankers, stunted and grotesque. The image made her feel queasy. Was it possible that Hazel found this loathsome Jew-baiting amusing? Francine knew it was the kind of thing her dead father would have admired, anti-Semite that he was. She’d managed to hide Paul’s ancestry from him, but there’d been a suspicion from the start. ‘Always imagined you with a taller fellow,’ he’d sniffed. ‘Rather exotic isn’t he? Interesting face . . .’

  Francine folded the paper and slid it underneath the sofa, out of sight.

  ‘Nee-Nee.’

  Jasmin had pulled herself up and now she was toddling over to Francine, her chubby button toes splaying on the rug with each wobbly step.

  ‘Clever girl!’ said Francine, holding out her hands. ‘Clever girl has learned to walk! Come to Nee-Nee, that’s it.’ Jasmin lunged towards her, almost overbalancing, but Francine clasped her under the arms and lifted her onto her lap. ‘We’ll have a little song, shall we, Jasmin? Now let’s see . . .’ She began to sing: ‘Daffydowndilly has come to town, sweet and fresh as a country breeze. In a yellow petticoat and a green gown, daffydowndilly has come to town.’ At the end of the song she blew into Jasmin’s hair, and her wispy curls lifted in the stale air.

  ‘’Gain,’ laughed Jasmin. ‘’Gain!’

  ‘Again? How about Nee-Nee’s favourite?
Mummy used to like this one, too.’ Francine began to rock Jasmin. ‘Bye baby bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting, to fetch a little rabbit skin, to wrap his baby bunting in.’

  Jasmin’s warm body melted into hers; she lay in Francine’s arms staring up with devoted eyes.

  ‘That’s meant as a dig, is it?’

  Hazel was standing in the doorway holding a glass of wine, her face pinched and angry.

  ‘A dig?’

  ‘Daddy’s gone a-hunting.’ She slammed the glass down on the table so that the wine sloshed over the edge.

  ‘I honestly didn’t give it a second thought, darling. It’s just a nursery rhyme. You’re being ridiculous. Oversensitive.’

  ‘If you’re so desperate to know who the father is, I’ll give you a clue,’ said Hazel.

  She strode across the room, lifted Jasmin from Francine’s lap and held her against her hip.

  ‘There are two possibilities,’ said Hazel. ‘And one of them is Charles.’

  Francine sat motionless, allowing the seconds to pass until Jasmin began to cry and squirm in Hazel’s arms. She stood and staggered towards the table, picked up the glass and gulped down the wine. Without a word she walked towards the door.

  ‘’Gain!’ shouted Jasmin. ‘Nee-Nee ’gain!’

  Jean stood with her arms crossed, the hem of her drab petticoat flapping below her skirt. ‘Mr Lassiter didn’t say to expect you.’

  ‘Didn’t he? Oh, it’s all arranged. I know he won’t be back until later but I found myself at a loose end.’

  Francine’s legs were trembling, but Jean didn’t seem to notice. Grudgingly, she let Francine through the front door and showed her to the sitting room. ‘I’m in the scullery,’ she said, ‘in case you need anything.’

  ‘Actually, I might go up for a lie-down,’ said Francine, putting her hand to her forehead. ‘I’ve this headache. It’s rather close, suddenly, don’t you think?’

  ‘Heatwave coming,’ sniffed Jean. ‘The ants are getting ready to swarm.’

  ‘The ants. Yes, quite.’

  Upstairs, she sat on the bed and tried to summon a sliver of calm.

  There are two possibilities.

  What did she hope to find in his bedroom? A journal, perhaps. A list of his conquests. Letters. Proof. She began to open the chest drawers, quietly in case Jean was loitering, running her fingers through the layers of socks and underpants, shirt collars and braces. She searched through his bedside cabinet, under the mattress, under the bed. Nothing. Finally, she opened the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. There were some tennis whites there, and an old scuffed cricket bat. She was about to close the drawer when she saw a cigar box pushed towards the back. Inside were a few photographs – Charles as a baby in a Victorian studio, trussed up in his christening gown; a photograph of herself with Charles and Miss Heath, taken on the banks of the Fowey. On the back was an inscription in careful handwriting: Me with Francine, Summer 1909. It was the first summer that Edward had not come to Lostwithiel, the summer before—

  She dropped the picture face down in the cigar box, and now there was just one photograph in her hand. It had been taken a year later, the summer when—

  Francine gazed at the picture: a shot of Charles with his brother Lawrence at twenty months old, little Lawrie dressed in a blue linen romper, holding the red-painted toy train that Francine’s mother had brought as a gift when they arrived for the August holiday.

  Francine felt an icy sweat break on her forehead. Here he was – Lawrie, smiling for the photographer who’d come to the house that rainy morning. She remembered how the flashbulbs had excited Lawrie and made him giddy so that he’d refused to have a nap after lunch. The weather cleared in the afternoon and the two families went into the garden to enjoy the sunshine. Lawrie cried for his mother to put him in the hammock, and then cried for her to get him down again, and the rigmarole repeated itself until Mrs Lassiter sighed and said nannies really oughtn’t to be allowed half-days. Finally, exhausted, and with the bribe of his green bedtime blanket, Lawrie settled in the hammock and fell asleep.

  As the early-evening sun filtered through the oak leaves the parents went into the house to dress for dinner. ‘Keep an eye on the baby, won’t you, children?’ said Mrs Lassiter. ‘Call me when he wakes.’

  They both nodded and smiled. When Mrs Lassiter disappeared Charles gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘Children? I’m almost eighteen.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather they think of us as children?’ asked Francine. She sat straight-backed on the rug, her legs folded sideways beneath her. ‘If they had any idea, we’d never be left alone.’

  He stared at her body and smiled. One hand reached out and stroked the underside of her calf. She put down her magazine.

  ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Come tonight.’

  ‘I can’t wait until then. I’ve been in torment all day, Francine. Agony. Just a short walk down to the field.’

  ‘We can’t leave Lawrie . . .’

  They looked into the hammock. Lawrie’s thumb was planted in his mouth, his blanket snuggled to his cheek. ‘He’s fast asleep,’ said Charles. ‘A kiss, that’s all. You wouldn’t deny me that?’

  Francine slipped her shoes back on and stood up. ‘I’ll go first,’ she said. ‘Come and find me.’

  The field at the end of the garden was edged with a row of sprawling beeches. She stood with her back against a beech trunk, watching a flock of half-grown lambs grazing in the distance. A tiny fly landed on her forehead and she flicked it away. When she heard his footsteps shushing through last autumn’s fallen leaves she stepped on a twig to make it snap. The footsteps stalled for a second: Charles had heard. Now he was before her, his eyes locked on hers, his face grave with love.

  How long were they gone – ten minutes? Twenty? Afterwards Francine went ahead, Charles promising to follow at a respectable distance. Reaching the garden, she knew before she peered into the hammock that Lawrie was no longer sleeping inside. The fabric was light and empty, the fringed calico swaying unburdened in the breeze.

  Scanning the lawn, Francine quickened her pace towards the house. By the steps to the veranda she saw a flash of green – Lawrie’s blanket, snagged on the wooden post. He had toddled into the house then; that was good. She would follow him inside and with luck, no one would ever know that they’d left him alone.

  At the top of the veranda steps she heard Charles running up the lawn. A clot of colour hit her eyes as she turned her head. The toy train.

  It was floating blood-red in the barrel that collected rainwater for Mrs Lassiter’s roses. Below the train was a small pale hand, fingers reaching up like fragments of lifeless coral.

  Francine and her parents had boarded the first train back to London the following morning. They sat stiffly in the carriage, white-faced with shock. A tragic accident, the police inspector had pronounced, but Mrs Lassiter had made it clear she blamed Francine for Lawrie’s drowning. Charles did his best to defend her – the walk down to the field was his idea, he told his mother – but Mrs Lassiter took little notice. Charles was a boy; boys were liable to be distracted. Francine was a young woman; she would be a mother herself one day. She should have known better than to abandon a sleeping baby.

  They never returned to Lostwithiel. Francine’s father would bring home the occasional snippet of information, gleaned on the golf course or at bank dinners. Charles Lassiter had suffered some kind of breakdown, it was reported, and when war came he was registered unfit and shoved into a clerking role for a merchant-shipping firm. ‘I’d like to know how much Lassiter paid for the psychiatrist’s report,’ sniffed her father.

  It was Harriett who had reintroduced Francine to Charles, unwittingly, at the opening of a Sickert exhibition one summer in the late twenties. ‘Have you met Charles Lassiter?’ Harriett said to Paul and Francine as they stood in the gallery sipping white wine. ‘Charles, this is Paul Alexander and his wife, my friend Francine.’

  Lassiter. Francine looked at the bl
ithe blue eyes and the combed hair and could see little trace of the young man she’d once known. But there was his straight sharp nose, the full lips now upturned in an easy smile.

  ‘Charles?’

  He took her hand. ‘Francine. How delightful to see you after all this time.’ He kissed her hand, and then both her cheeks, and she found it impossible to hide her astonishment. Even when they moved apart she was acutely aware of him: the way his face crinkled with each laugh; the sun-weathered hands which pushed through his hair; the adolescent intensity replaced with such effortless charm.

  Harry thought it was marvellous that two childhood friends had been reunited, and she threw a drinks party so that Charles and Francine could reminisce at leisure. There were more drinks parties. Luncheons. Dinners. Francine tried to resist Charles’s overtures, but after Paul’s infidelity she saw no reason why she shouldn’t indulge. And God, what a joy it had been. Just the memory of that first night together was enough to make her pulse quicken.

  They had endured so much. They were bonded, even when they were apart, when she was with Paul or he was with Carolyn or his clients or any number of lovers he had enjoyed over the years. Nothing had been able to break the bond. But Hazel?

  Francine lay on the bed until she heard Charles’s car pull up outside, the click of his heels on the pavement and his key in the door. She hurried down the stairs into the hall and almost collided with Jean. The two women spoke at the same time.

  ‘Mrs Alexander said you was expecting her—’

  ‘Charles, I won’t be staying—’

  Charles dropped his keys next to the telephone and tossed his hat onto the stand.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Jean,’ he said, taking Francine by the elbow. ‘How lovely to see you, Frangie.’

  He steered her into the sitting room and closed the door behind them. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked. ‘You look rather wild.’

  PART THREE

  29

  London, May 1940

  ‘Do you like butter, Mummy?’