Unexploded

by Alison Macleod

  ‘Then you open it.’

  He met Orson’s eye. ‘You killed Clarence.’

  ‘So did you.’ Orson nodded at the tin. ‘Are you going to open it or not?’

  They had to bash the lid against the terrace table. Then Orson’s hands plunged in. ‘Money,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t have it.’

  Orson fished at the bottom. ‘What the …?’

  ‘You’re not allowed.’

  Orson lifted the flap of the envelope.

  Philip peered in. ‘Medicine?’

  ‘No …’ Wheels and sprockets spun behind Orson’s eyes.

  ‘Sweets?’

  ‘Definitely not sweets …’

  ‘My father will be home soon.’

  Orson slipped the pills into his shirt pocket.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I might need them.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For Hal. If he doesn’t get better.’

  ‘You said they weren’t medicine and you said Hal won’t get better.’

  ‘Happier. If he doesn’t get happier. He might not want to go on if things stay like they are. He hates it. The bedpan and the sponge baths and Mother dressing him. He hates it all. And her kisses before bed. And the way she cuts and combs his hair. And that phonograph … I told her, “You’re making everything worse!” I said, “You’re nasty, Mother! He doesn’t belong to you!” and Father locked me in the telephone cupboard all night as a punishment.’ He fixed Philip with a wild stare: ‘Remember … You promised. You promised you’d help.’

  Orson had said nothing of it since that summer day but now he was saying it – he’d remembered – and worse still, there was a dirty old tin buried in his garden, and a pair of bright pills in Orson’s pocket that didn’t make anyone better, and worse than everything, worse even than the broken mess of Clarence, was the promise he’d made to Hal that day … We have to get Hal a Jew.

  Orson chose a spot, among the dead stalks of autumn, for Clarence’s grave. ‘It’s jolly good the Park is empty today,’ he said. ‘If anyone asks, say you heard the blast and it was a lorry backfiring.’

  Philip’s teeth chattered. The force of the blast still trembled in his jaw. A cold drizzle fell. ‘I killed him,’ he whispered. Because Orson was right, it was his fault because Clarence had been his friend, not Orson’s.

  ‘He died in his sleep,’ Orson said. ‘That’s the best way to die.’

  ‘I killed him.’ How Mrs Dalrymple would hate him if she knew.

  Orson checked the pills in his shirt pocket and buttoned his coat. ‘Never mind. I won’t tell anyone what you did.’ His eyes were sticks that poked.

  36

  She stepped inside, stamping the sleet from her boots, and walked into the nave where two small paraffin stoves coughed out more stink than heat. Frost dimmed the inside of the stained-glass windows. The altar was covered in dust sheets, and the long red carpet that ran to it had all but disappeared beneath the mud and damp.

  ‘Ha!’ he called out merrily from the scaffold. ‘You’ve come to read to me while I teach myself how to mix plaster! Splendid!’

  She smiled and unbuttoned her coat. ‘I’m afraid not! You’re no longer a worthy cause!’

  She walked up the centre aisle. She was only passing, she said. The other week, when she’d learned that the Camp had been closed at last, she’d almost cheered. She’d asked her husband what had become of the last of its residents and was thrilled when she’d learned about his commission.

  ‘Yes! Your husband arranged it,’ he said. ‘He spoke to the Bishop last month.’ He glanced back at her. ‘I am in his debt!’

  ‘Not at all,’ she called, taking a seat in a middle pew. She felt an involuntary flickering of pride. Geoffrey had said nothing of it to her until she had asked, and now, now she was moved to see Otto Gott-lieb dashing about this space, between ladders and arches, juggling trowels and brushes, free at last. For the first time in months she felt a force of feeling for her husband, like a hidden spring pushing hard, painfully, behind her heart. For the first time in more than a year, she looked forward to getting home; to telling him she’d popped into St Wilf ’s and she knew, she knew now, that the commission had been his doing.

  Like her husband, Otto Gottlieb was a changed man, or so it seemed. His hair had grown thick if rather wild. He had blood in his cheeks and had put on weight, or at least he appeared less thin under the bulk of various jumpers. But how did he work in such temperatures? It was even colder inside than out. Her breath made wreaths in the air. She couldn’t bring herself to take off her gloves or hat.

  He was hauling a heavy bucket from the chapel into the nave, so she wouldn’t have to call around the corner. ‘Apologies!’ he said. ‘Plaster needs constant attention or it gets lumps. This is yet another trial batch.’ He rolled his eyes at his own poor showing.

  His dark hair was flecked with silver. A pencil sat behind one ear and a cigarette behind the other. His eyes were wide and deep-set; his face, pale, angular, almost Oriental across the cheekbones, and in need of a shave. He had bad teeth but a charming smile, and he was tall, not as tall as Geoffrey but tall – for a Jew, she heard herself think, and she wondered that her mother could still sit, ensconced, at the back of her mind.

  He was handsome, in an uneven sort of way, she decided.

  Handsome for a Jew, her mother-self added.

  Perhaps she had caught it, the vileness, from her parents. Once upon a time, Geoffrey had been her shield; her guarantee of immunity from their views. She’d shaken off their habit of contempt like an infection. She and Geoffrey had lived altogether differently. He was a man committed to fairness in all things. That was their story. Only now she knew he’d let her down from the start – from before the start in fact – shamelessly goading a Jew at a Midsummer Ball. Perhaps she’d always sensed it. Perhaps she had intuited more than she’d ever admitted to herself.

  The hairline crack in the man’s monocle.

  His glowering stare.

  The split in the seam of Geoffrey’s jacket.

  The man’s sudden departure at the sight of them a year later at the theatre.

  Hadn’t she disliked him at first sight? Wasn’t that the truth? Foreign, she’d decided as she passed him at the ball. She’d noted his hot, ugly stare. The discourtesy of it. The affectation of his eyepiece. The lofty intelligence of his face. His small, silly neck in white-tie. Put him next to Geoffrey or Tom, and he was a clockwork, wind-up toy of a man. A man who’d snubbed the man with whom she had – already – fallen in love. She was eighteen years old, ignorant, and everything about him had unnerved her, through no fault of his.

  In their life together, had Geoffrey disguised his true opinions less for himself than for her? Was it the unspoken condition of their marriage? Did her own rot run deeper than his? Would it – had it – spread to Philip?

  Otto was pulling on another jumper, more moth-eaten than those he already wore, and the memory of his scarred back flashed luridly in her mind.

  ‘You’re shivering!’ he announced brightly. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I have a kettle to call my own.’

  ‘No! Thank you! I really am just passing.’ She looked high into the rafters, avoiding his eyes. ‘You don’t mind painting a church?’

  ‘Not a bit.’

  ‘Will it be New Testament or Old?’

  ‘Old. I can reveal that much.’ He winked.

  ‘A compromise between you and the Bishop?’

  ‘None was needed, I assure you. I was simply very grateful for the work.’

  ‘It’s just that most churches tend to find the New a little more …’

  ‘Palatable?’

  ‘Yes!’ She laughed. ‘Easier on the eye!’

  Only then did she see, in the pew across the aisle, the crumpled blanket, the mildewed pillow, and the hot-water bottle. His accommodation. A damp, threadbare towel had been thrown across the baptismal font. Was he washing there?

  �
��I trust you’re being paid?’ she called in an apparently casual way.

  ‘Something up front for the materials and the rest upon completion.’

  ‘And when will it be unveiled?’

  ‘In June, or possibly even May with a little luck.’

  ‘But that’s months away! I thought frescoes were high-speed work.’

  ‘Once one can actually begin. But here, the exterior wall needs renovation work first. The pointing between the brickwork is faulty, and the builders are distracted. Bombed houses seem to have that effect. There’s water getting in somewhere – can you see all that staining? That must be put right before any new plaster can go up. And until I can get the plaster on the wall, I can’t test my pigments. I’ll need four or five good tones for each colour. That will be the fascinating bit. Watching the colours emerge.’

  ‘Emerge how?’

  He looked up from his bucket. ‘I work on the assumption that there is a secret chemistry in all art; in this case, a reaction between the pigments, the plaster, the temperature, even the spirit of the building. I tell myself that the colour in a fresco is dependent upon the most minute of things; that it is catalysed by the light of the first onlooker’s gaze, by the carbon of their breath, by the speed or calm of their hearts.’ He seemed to forget to stir.

  ‘In any case, first there are compositional sketches to be approved and cartoons to be drawn – after I find three models, that is – and all this before I can even begin to mix the pigments. Then it’s a case of fifteen to twenty sections per wall. Three walls. Each section must be painted in a day, because everything’s determined by the speed of the drying plaster. A fresco has something of its own mind. One plans every square inch but there remains the element of chance, fate, mystery, coincidence – call it what you will. Finally there will be some tempura work for the finer detail at the end – if the shakes in this arm of mine forget to shake,’ he added.

  He let his eyes take in the loveliness of her once more, but she was distracted, her head turning as she surveyed the church.

  ‘Forgive me. I have completely lost the art of conversation.’ He grinned. ‘God only knows how.’

  She suppressed a smile. ‘You do well enough.’

  ‘Would you model for me?’

  His words took even him by surprise.

  ‘Clothed,’ he added.

  Did she blush, she wondered, out of pleasure or embarrassment? ‘Are you in the habit of painting naked women, Mr Gottlieb?’

  ‘Otto.’ He shrugged and smiled. His stir-stick was in motion once more. ‘I am, rather. But that won’t be required.’ For he would not forget the perfection of her naked back in the sunlight. It was embla-zoned in his memory, on his heart.

  ‘Clothed?’

  ‘Rest assured.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘In that case, my answer is’ – her mouth twisted impishly – ‘no!’

  He looked crestfallen, and she clapped. ‘Apologies!’ she laughed. ‘I couldn’t resist. And please, call me Evelyn.’

  ‘Evelyn – are you sure you won’t consider it? I have two male models, men from the Camp as it happens, but I need –’

  He had pushed too far.

  She started to button her coat. Her smile was still warm but faltering. ‘I’m afraid it won’t be possible.’ She was withdrawing into a married woman’s respectability, straightening her hat. He’d lost her. In the tower over their heads, winter gusted.

  ‘Otto, tell me, where is it you are living these days?’

  She was Lady Bountiful again.

  When she had insisted he meet her outside the Salvation Army on Park Crescent at half past four that same afternoon, he’d imagined she was about to introduce him to the local soup kitchen, which he would be too ashamed to say he knew well already. Instead, in the gathering dusk beneath the grim Christian fortress, she passed him a set of keys. Number 5 Park Crescent, she said, nodding to the town-house across the street. A neighbour was away for the war. At Numbers 4 and 8 too. It was a scandal that such large houses should sit empty. Her gloveless hand touched his. The keys, when he took them, still held her warmth.

  He glanced up. An old lady at Number 6 watched them from a high window and then was gone. The November sky was pewter. The first snow was falling, falling, muffling the world. Only her eyes were bright.

  She was talking. He made himself listen. Others on the street would not be ‘of the same mind’, she said, but Number 5 was neigh-bourless on one side – that was to say, Number 4 – and on the other, it shared a wall with one elderly neighbour only at Number 6. He was on the verge of saying he’d just seen her, but Evelyn hardly paused for breath. She was sorry but the shutters would have to remain closed at both the front and back. It would be for the best if he slept in the study and lived on the ground floor only. There was bedding in the linen cupboard and a servants’ loo in the scullery. He would have to rely on the gas heaters since chimney smoke would arouse curiosity, but even so, the house would be warmer and more comfortable than a church pew in winter. He would have to enter and exit the house at the back, via the Park, keeping to the far perimeter path. ‘If anyone should see you and ask, you are to say you’re visiting friends at Number – and here,’ she said, ‘your memory should fail you. Please say as little as possible. Please sound as English as you possibly can, and please be discreet. Mr Beaumont, incidentally, is often in the Park on weekend afternoons with our son when the weather is fine. You won’t be using the front door, and I must, in any case, hold on to that key. But the big one on your chain is for the Park’s gate and the little one is for the kitchen door, which you should lock from the inside when you’re there and obviously from the outside whenever you leave.’

  ‘This is enormously kind,’ he said.

  She pressed her collar to the white of her throat and bounced briefly on the balls of her feet. Then she extended her arm, smiled broadly, shook his hand, and wished him well. She would very much look forward to seeing the mural in the spring.

  She was making herself a stranger again. Her words and tone made it clear: she hoped not to bump into him on the Crescent.

  The sky had deepened to night. The wind had come up, and the flurry of snow was blowing harder now, stinging their eyes and cheeks. He wanted to draw her to him and wrap her in his ill-fitting coat. ‘There’s just one further thing, if I may,’ he said.

  She huffed on her hands. ‘Geoffrey will be home shortly and I really must –’

  ‘It’s only that I still find myself in need of a female model, and, as you’ll appreciate, I’ve not been in much of a position to meet women of late. Nor is it a request one can simply put to a woman standing at a tram stop. In spite of my impropriety earlier’ – he grinned his charming best – ‘I understand your position entirely. But I wonder if you or your husband might put me in touch with the other woman who attended the concert at the Camp that night. Or better still, perhaps you or your husband might intercede on’ – he raised his eyebrows comically – ‘the Artist’s behalf.’

  ‘The other woman …?’ she said.

  ‘At the back of the stand that night …’

  But women weren’t permitted at the Camp. Geoffrey had made that point more than once. No female visitors, no female staff.

  Otto let his eyes linger over the detail of her: the lustrous brown top of her head; the berry red of her coat; her small, bare hands; the bright energy of her in the snow-shaken night. His heart would have to survive on such details, like a wretch thieving food. Yet the bleaker he felt at the imminence of her departure, the jollier he sounded. ‘In the row just ahead of me. I assumed she worked in the laundry or the cookhouse? Whatever the case, she had exceptional posture. Those benches left much to be desired but that woman’s back never slumped once throughout the concert. That, you see, is an underrated quality in a model: a sitter who can actually sit! And while hers isn’t the sort of figure I actually require for the mural’ – his gaze sharpened – ‘it is always good to draw from life, at the sta
rt of things at least, and in any case, I need to – what is the phrase? – limber up.’

  She was grateful for the blackout, for the darkness that covered the tumult of her face. Even as she listened, nodding, hardly hearing what he said, her world was plummeting, like a gold-caged lift down a dark shaft.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gottlieb. I’m afraid I couldn’t say who she was.’

  It was all she knew, all she could hold in her head: Geoffrey had not given her up after all.

  That day, he’d smelled it, even before he’d looked up from the contracts on his desk: cedarwood.

  He’d winced as he stood. His secretary had hovered. Would they be taking tea? Leah had shaken her head, embarrassed, and removed her gloves. He’d walked around to the front of his desk, held her chair, and longed for the weight of her in his lap.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How are you both?’

  ‘Yes. Well.’

  She looked pale. Her coat was too sober a blue – it aged her – but her beauty spot was in place, and her lips were slick with colour. She sat, her face lowered. The silence was painful.

  ‘Is it money?’ he said finally. ‘May I help?’

  ‘Yes. Money. Exactly.’ She laid a manila envelope on the desk and slid it towards him. ‘You left this at mine when you … when you went.’

  He met her eyes. ‘When I fled.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘when you fled.’

  ‘It was a … gift.’

  She looked past him, her eyes cold.

  ‘An apology, rather.’

  She reached for her gloves and stood.

  ‘Keep it, Leah. Do please keep it.’

  ‘It is not mine.’

  ‘Keep it for Misha, then.’

  ‘Keep it for you, you mean.’

  ‘For me. Yes. Please, keep it as a favour to me.’

  ‘I don’t need to make you feel good, Mr Beaumont.’

  She knew his name.

  ‘Is not my job any more.’

  He felt the heat in his face. ‘No.’

  ‘I have new job.’ Her back was rigid. It was hard to imagine she’d ever lain soft in his arms. ‘I play organ at cinema. Is not Chopin, but Misha gets to push the pedals and he loves it.’