Unexploded

by Alison Macleod

She didn’t look up. ‘Lilac. I had to put it in something. And I thought you’d prefer me as your courier. Geoffrey was going to find you at the church but I intercepted.’

  ‘Thank you …’ He reached for the cigarette behind his ear. ‘I wanted to stay longer but I was losing the light. I’m almost there. Only the final central section remains. The bit I’ve looked forward to painting most.’

  He struck a match against the range. She wasn’t listening.

  She studied the profile sketch. She looked up, her face clouded, preoccupied. ‘I told him I would deliver it to you via the Salvation Army.’

  He tapped his nose. ‘Understood.’

  ‘I only glanced at it. It’s shift work in town. Please don’t feel obliged. If you do want it, they need you to report tomorrow by seven.’ She dropped the sketch and started opening cupboards, then his Frigidaire, impatiently. ‘Apart from those old potatoes, what do you actually have to eat, Otto?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Please don’t make yourself late back.’

  ‘You’re not fine. You’re thin. And you can’t report for work hungry.’

  ‘Thank you for this.’ He waved the envelope. ‘Now go. I’m fine. Truly.’

  She blinked something back – a thought, a word, an apology.

  He turned the key and bent the crown of his head to the door.

  Then, late that afternoon, the three cheery taps: Philip.

  ‘One moment!’ he shouted through the door. He gathered up the sketches and stowed them in a cupboard, but when he turned the key once more and opened the door, two boys entered instead of one.

  ‘This is my friend Orson,’ said Philip.

  ‘How do you do, Orson,’ said Otto. His heart lurched at his ribs.

  ‘How do you do.’

  ‘Goodness.’ He forced a grin. ‘My kitchen, as you can see, Orson, is a poor place to receive guests.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind,’ said Philip, walking in.

  ‘Not a jot,’ said Orson.

  ‘Should I be expecting any other visitors, Philip?’ Otto asked warily.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I only know Orson. And Hal, his brother.’

  ‘His brother …’

  ‘His grown-up brother. But Hal has the shakes and a bullet in his head, so I don’t think he’ll ever be able to come.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Orson.’

  Orson was looking around the room. ‘It must be jolly nice having your own secret place.’

  ‘My friends are away at the moment.’

  ‘I hear you’re good at drawing.’

  ‘Philip is very good himself. Which reminds me.’ He turned to him. ‘Long time, no see, my friend.’

  ‘I’ve been busy …’ Philip let Hal’s belt slide down his coat sleeve. He felt the cold steel of the buckle meet his wrist.

  ‘Too busy to draw?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘far too busy for that.’

  ‘We’ve had exams,’ Orson quickly added, ‘at school.’

  ‘Well, I am sorry to hear that too.’

  ‘ “Vell?” ’ Orson repeated.

  ‘He’s from Wales,’ said Philip dully. He felt odd, unhappy, and he didn’t know why. He hadn’t been able to eat a single sweet on their way there.

  Otto watched the wheels turn behind Orson’s eyes. The boy had worked it out, though he said nothing. He was clearly older and more knowing than Philip.

  At the table, he served them the rhubarb he’d stolen from the fruit plot in the Park and had boiled up with sugar. In the Frigidaire, he still had the cream top from the pint he’d nabbed off a doorstep that morning.

  ‘Hurrah!’ said Orson to Otto. ‘Aren’t you having any?’

  Otto shook his head and pulled a cigarette from behind his ear.

  Philip stared at his bowl like he might be sick.

  Orson smiled as he passed Otto the cornet. ‘Here, have one of these. Have as many as you like.’

  And still, every time: the jar on Dr Metzger’s desk, the children’s smiles.

  ‘Go on,’ said Orson. ‘There’s lots. The green ones are nice.’

  He reached in blindly. A striped sweet appeared in his hand.

  ‘A bull’s-eye,’ said Orson. Beneath the table, he kicked Philip’s foot and flashed a grin.

  ‘What a treat,’ Otto declared and turned away to the sink.

  Philip eyed Orson across the table. Then Orson nodded and withdrew, not the stocking from his pocket as planned, but something much smaller: a green pill, one of the pair he’d taken that November day from the buried flour tin. It gleamed like treasure on his palm. Then he raised a finger to his lips, glanced over his shoulder, and slipped it into the cornet.

  ‘Thanks very much for the rhubarb!’ he sang out, pushing back his chair.

  Philip stared at the cornet that Orson had abandoned in the middle of the kitchen table. He couldn’t move. Those pills, he knew, weren’t pills that made you better … And everything started to spin like a propeller in his head. Otto was showing him once again how to draw two lines for the Spitfire’s fuselage; next, at their cross-hairs, a large oval; then, for the tail, a quadrilateral; then two more ovals for the wings; and finally, for the tail fins, two small ovals and a little circle. ‘You have to find the secret shapes inside the thing you want to draw,’ he’d explained. It had been so exciting to see the plane, the real thing, appear on his page at last.

  Spin, spin, spin, and Otto was hugging his mother and touching her back, and his father was drunk in his chair and too tired for cricket in the Park.

  He and Orson were supposed to scare Otto – with Hal’s special belt and the lasso of broken glass. Then he was supposed to say: Leave my mother alone.

  He was reaching for the sweets – to stuff them into his pocket, to carry them and the pill away – when he saw it. Poking out from beneath the fruit bowl. A lilac envelope with his mother’s handwriting.

  He had given his mother that notepaper set for Christmas. Now here it was, in Otto the Jew Thief ’s house. She had written him a secret letter.

  He pushed back his chair and almost stumbled over the table leg.

  ‘Yes, thanks for the rhubarb!’ Then he ran out the door in Orson’s wake and didn’t stop until they had crossed the Park.

  They stood by the burn pile. ‘Will he die?’ he panted.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Orson, wiping the sweat from his cheeks. ‘Russian courtiers tried to kill Rasputin with cyanide but he didn’t die because they fed him pastries and sweet things by accident. Lots of sugar might stop it. I found a book in the library.’

  ‘Is it painful?’

  Orson shrugged. ‘First it’s hard to breathe. Then you fall unconscious. Then you have a heart attack and your skin turns pink. He’s German, you know.’

  ‘Not Welsh?’

  ‘Of course not Welsh. A spy, no doubt. We might get a medal.’

  ‘Orson’ – he tipped his face to the sky because tears pushed at the backs of his eyes – ‘the green liquorice torpedoes look just like the pill.’

  ‘Yes’ – Orson pulled up a sock – ‘that was lucky, wasn’t it?’

  45

  Twilight came and Evelyn was back at Otto’s, edging through his door bearing a dinner plate covered by a pot lid. Heads of lilac poked from her skirt pocket.

  ‘What’s this,’ he laughed, ‘my last meal?’

  ‘My Frigidaire is full. Leftovers. You have to eat if you’re working for the Army.’

  She spotted it then, the cornet of sweets on the table.

  ‘You’ve found me out,’ he said quickly. ‘My sweet tooth!’ It would do her no good to learn that two neighbourhood children had discovered him.

  She laid the plate on the countertop, and, at the tap, started to fill a milk jug for the flowers.

  He reached for the cigarette behind his ear but found only a pencil. ‘Forgive the question, but where does your husband think you are?’

  At the sink, the water chugged. He supposed they’d row
ed. He could sense something simmering within her.

  ‘Checking our neighbours’ houses, as I do at this hour. I’m not stupid, Otto.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest you were.’ He checked his shirt pocket, then a cupboard shelf. But nothing. Only an empty packet.

  A tendril of hair fell across her cheek and she swatted at it. The tap was still running at the sink. She was lost in some dark haze of thought.

  ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘You’re not yourself.’

  She turned, her words quick as a slap. ‘You don’t know what “myself” is, Otto.’

  She bored herself. She bored him. Why should he know who or what she was? But none of this could be spoken. Fear. Fear. That’s what separates us. From others, from ourselves, from life.

  She wanted life, she wanted it badly. She needed the world to burst open. To go up in smoke. She wanted the enemy to invade the shore and be done with it. Fear was exhausting, but nothing tired a body like hope.

  She watched Otto ransack his one-room home for a cigarette. He was fine. Free now. Happy as long as he had a sketchbook, a French cigarette and a pencil or a paintbox. He knew what his life was. He knew his mind. What had he told her that day on The Level? I am drawn to actresses, dancers, whores, and their themes. The hatless women of this world. Women who are alive.

  She shivered. His kitchen was draughty and the week had been freakishly cold.

  ‘I’m wrong for it, aren’t I?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Your Bathsheba.’

  He stopped in mid-motion, his face a question.

  ‘I’m entirely wrong.’ She looked at the lino. ‘I realized when I saw your sketches earlier. They were here before … Did you pitch them?’

  ‘Of course not.’ So this was the source of her mood. ‘I put them away for safe keeping.’

  ‘I thought you rude when I first met you, but actually, although you hide it well, you are unfailingly polite.’ She smiled faintly and turned to go. ‘You need someone … compelling. I know that.’

  ‘Yes. And that day in St Wilf ’s, I asked you because I wanted you.’

  The tap still ran uselessly behind her.

  ‘No, the woman you actually wanted was the woman you saw that evening in the stands at the concert.’

  ‘That isn’t true.’

  She turned her face to the ceiling. Her cheek, her chin, trembled. ‘She was my husband’s mistress, incidentally. Or prostitute. Or whore. I don’t know the parlance these days. I haven’t seen her myself, but you have, and Geoffrey has – obviously – and she is no doubt … compelling. Perhaps she can be located.’

  ‘Stand there, please.’ He pointed to the sink with his pencil.

  She bowed her head. ‘No, really … It’s too late, Otto. But thank you for trying, thank you for your courtesy.’ She nodded, her decision made, and walked to the door.

  ‘Yes,’ he called. ‘Our work together has been ordinary. I grant you that. It lacks life. I’ve wondered about it a little myself. But that is the work, and if there is any fault, it is mine. You are not ordinary, and I am not ordinary. We are not. Go if you want to go, Evelyn. Tell yourself what you like. Pity yourself as much as you like.’

  She was struggling to turn the key. The door tended to swell in damp weather. She is leaving me, he thought, always leaving.

  Something hot burst within.

  ‘Fine. Knit for Britain if you must. Pat the hands of the dying. Wear as many fucking hats as you like. As you felt obliged to remind me a moment ago, you are not stupid. But you know as well as I do that the greatest risk in life is to risk nothing.’

  He reached for his sketchbook and clapped his hand against it. ‘Now either do as I say or leave and don’t come back – not with food, flowers, books, keys, jackets, gainful employment or … or any other charitable donation. I may be a lost cause, but I am not the lost person in this room.’ He bent to breathe, a hand on a knee. ‘Nor, I’m afraid, can you expect an apology.’

  ‘You have nothing to apologize for,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Leave if you’re leaving, Evelyn.’

  She stood, her face impassive, her hands balled at her sides.

  He turned and continued his search for cigarettes. At the sideboard, he shook another empty packet and swore in German.

  ‘Right,’ he said with his back to her. ‘It would seem you are still in the room. Good. But I will not allow a word more. I require silence from a model. Your body needs to do the talking. Go stand over there, stand where you were at the sink. Move the lilacs.’ He pointed. ‘By “go”, Evelyn, I mean now … Here, give those to me. No – face the sink, not me.’ He squinted. ‘Leave the tap on. Turn it fully on.’ He took a breath. ‘No, on.’ His eyes were hard. ‘Now take off your blouse and roll your slip down to your skirt band.’

  ‘You said “clothed”.’

  ‘Bathsheba bathes. It’s what she does, Evelyn. In my experience, it is difficult to bathe with one’s clothing on.’

  He bent, reached for a paintbox, and kicked a cupboard door shut.

  Searching the house, Philip at last found his father upstairs. He’d fallen asleep in his bed right after dinner. A fug of drink and bad breath stirred as he slid through the door. He shook him by the shoulder. ‘It’s the blackout. We have to close the shutters.’

  His father didn’t open his eyes. ‘Ask your mother, please, Philip.’

  ‘She isn’t home.’

  Geoffrey sat up, glanced at the clock on the nightstand and buttoned his shirt. ‘No … Of course she’s not. She’s checking our neighbours’ houses. Nothing to worry about.’ Even in the twilight of the room, still drunk, he could feel the force of his son’s frown.

  Philip stood at the threshold on the edge of light. How could he say it? He was sure, sure … Otto was in Number 5. So was his mother. So were the sweets and the torpedo pill.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.

  His father was searching the sheets for his shirt. ‘No. Nothing’s wrong.’

  He wobbled on a loose floorboard. ‘Her chain with the keys is still on the key board.’

  Geoffrey checked the Park. He walked the Crescent. It was a Saturday evening in the middle of May. Not quite dark. It made no sense. He’d have to walk towards town. Perhaps she’d decided on a stroll while he slept. Perhaps she’d left him. He never seemed to shake the fear.

  He told Philip to go to Tubby’s. He scribbled a note of apology and told him to give it to Tillie when she answered the door.

  ‘But I can’t.’

  ‘Why can’t you?’ His tongue was thick. His head was cement.

  ‘Tubby’s forbidden.’

  He lowered himself unsteadily to meet his son’s heavy gaze. ‘Tonight, he is not forbidden. He is unforbidden. He will never be forbidden again. Now go find your toothbrush, your pyjamas and your gas mask. And wear your coat. It’s a cold night.’

  At the sink, she clutched herself. ‘What are you doing?’ She could hear him behind her, shovelling coal.

  ‘Making a fire, a low fire. Otherwise you will freeze. There’s no hot water, I’m out of paraffin, and you’re shivering already.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Towards me, please … Three-quarters. Untense your shoulders. Let them drop a little. Lift your ribcage.’ He double-checked the key, pulled a chair up behind the kitchen door, and hooked one long leg over the other.

  ‘Do I turn the tap on again?’ How trite everything sounded. She glanced down at herself. Her breasts were small, absurd.

  ‘Yes – on.’

  Water gushed forth like a geyser, icy and sharp, and she bent to it, gasping as she splashed her face, her neck, her breasts. Foolish. She felt foolish. And so naked.

  She heard him sigh. She waited for him to direct her or to shout, exasperated. It was a brave effort, but it wasn’t working. If it was obvious to her, it was obvious to him. In a moment, he would offer her the towel and be done with it. That would be the sensible thing, they’d admit failure, and she�
��d be released.

  Instead, without a word, he lay his sketchbook on the floor at his feet, stood up, and hauled his jumpers and shirt over his head in one swift motion.

  She turned to him.

  His ribs stood out like a cage of bone. His skin was pasty; his nipples sunken. Beneath his clothes, his body was older than he was. He turned to lay his clothes over the chair back, and she saw then, once more, the hidden landscape of his back; the scar tissue, red and livid; its sheen ghastly in the kitchen light; the iron stamp of hobnails.

  He bent for his sketchbook and took his seat again. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I think that’s better. Shall we resume?’

  Tears stood in her eyes.

  His pencil hovered, and he shook his head, smiling into his page, wordlessly saying, No need, no need for tears.

  ‘I’m so cold,’ she said, and he rose from his chair and went to her.

  Evelyn was nowhere. Geoffrey had walked as far as the Pavilion. She would not have gone further in the dark, not without so much as a torch. In any case, the prom was closed; the beach off-limits. Had she taken a coat? Was she in trouble somewhere? Their neighbours’ keys jingled madly in his coat pocket, and he had to turn up his collar against the cold. The sleep after dinner had only made him feel worse, more stupefied, less steady on his feet.

  The Crescent’s windows and towers were blinded, the night was thick – starless, moonless – and now, as he glanced up, there was something else to mystify him. At Number 5, a thin twist of smoke rose, grey and pale, against the blackout.

  Squatters. Perhaps an intruder.

  The coal glowed in the grate. Otto led her to the fire, and there, in the squeeze between it and the mattress on the floor, she reached for his hand, clutching at his fingers. Was it pity? he wondered. He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t. He’d break her arm rather than suffer her kindness. But when her palm pressed his, he understood.

  Her body rose as he kissed her – her breast to his chest, her lips to his neck – and the awareness overwhelmed him. He’d go through everything again to arrive at this moment.

  Obscene. An obscene thought.

  And true.

  He reached out, smacking the wall for its switch until there was only the flickering of the fire in the grate. His lips grazed her throat, the hollow of her collarbone, her nipple, and her hands moved over the ruin of his back, light as a child’s.