Before the Fall

by Juliet West

  I smile and she leans over to peck me on the cheek, then takes the fag from behind her ear with a flourish. ‘Now cheer up, sunshine, and give us a light.’ She holds the cigarette in her film-star pose, pouts her lips, and with her other hand she curls a lock of her yellow hair.

  I’m mashing spuds in the scullery when the fingers press onto my waist. The masher jerks away from me with the shock and flecks of potato fly off, landing on the floor and the shoulder of Alec’s coat.

  ‘Mind out, girl,’ he says. ‘Didn’t mean to frighten you.’

  ‘You never frightened me,’ I say. ‘Just a surprise, that’s all. Didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Where’s Jen?’ He flicks a lump of potato from his shoulder, not caring where it lands.

  ‘With Mum. Dad’s ill and he’s been taken in. They should be back soon.’ I take the potatoes through to the parlour, spoon the mash into two bowls, add some scraps of yesterday’s meat and gravy from the stockpot.

  ‘Taken in where?’

  ‘Hospital,’ I call back.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Tea’s ready!’ I shout up to the children, sliding the bowls onto the table by the parlour window. Steam curls up from the bowls and swerves in the draught.

  Alec has followed me in.

  ‘Any tea for me?’ he asks, in a little-boy-pleading voice.

  ‘I’ll get it in a minute.’

  ‘You’re a treasure.’ He strokes a hand down my arm, then sits at the table with his newspaper. ‘So, your dad’s back in the nuthouse.’

  The children are gawping in the doorway, naked but for their drawers. ‘What’s a nuthouse?’ asks Alice.

  ‘Never you mind,’ I say. ‘Now look at you two. You’ll catch your death.’

  I’d forgotten about their clothes. They’ll still be damp, but they’ll do. I let down the dryer ever so slowly. I don’t like to use it, a heavy thing like that dangling from the ceiling, just four screws in the plaster somehow bearing the weight.

  Alec watches me from the table, amused. He knows the dryer makes me nervous. The sour waft of wet wool fills the room as I shake out the clothes.

  ‘Let’s get your things back on. They’re warm as toast now.’ I slip on their vests and shirts, Alice’s pinafore and Teddy’s little breeches. ‘Lovely as you like.’

  ‘Lovely as you like what?’ says Alice.

  ‘It’s just an expression. Something a lady says at work.’

  ‘Are you going to work tomorrow?’

  ‘Not tomorrow. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Tomorrow’s . . .’

  ‘Tuesday!’ shouts Alice.

  ‘Yes, and you’ll have to be extra-special good tomorrow. There’ll be a lot to do, with Granddad White being ill.’

  ‘Granddad White’s always ill.’

  ‘Well, he’s more ill than usual. He’s had to go to hospital again.’

  They don’t ask any more questions, just sit at the table spooning in their mash, quiet for once as if they’re mulling it over. Teddy is wearing his Ducky puppet on his right hand, so that it looks like the beak is holding the spoon. The button eyes click on the metal as he eats.

  After a few mouthfuls he puts down his spoon. ‘Daddy in hospital?’ he says.

  ‘No, not Daddy. It’s Granddad. Daddy’s in France. For the war. You remember, Teddy?’

  His eyes fill with tears and a smear of potato slides out from between his shiny lips. Alec puts the newspaper down and looks at Teddy.

  ‘But your uncle Alec is right here, Teddy lad, and Uncle Alec might have something for you.’ He reaches into his waistcoat pocket and produces a wad of faggies. ‘My collection of exotic birds,’ he says, winking at me. ‘God’s honest. Parrots, macaws, the great auk . . . One of my clients wanted me to have them. “You’ve got a nephew, ain’tcha, Mr Danks?” asks this old boy. “I have,” I says. “A dear boy, and I’m like a father to him now ’is dad’s away fighting for king and country . . .”’

  I open my mouth to speak, but Teddy’s little face is all lit up and I haven’t the heart to interrupt.

  ‘ . . . and the old boy says, “You give him these ’ere faggies, with my regards,” and so that’s what I’m doing, Teddy. I’m giving them to you, just like the old boy said.’

  Teddy starts to get down from the table, but Alec puts the cigarette cards back in his pocket, pats them twice and holds up his hand – stop – like a policeman.

  ‘When you’ve finished your tea, that is. Eat up nicely for your mother.’

  Teddy’s smile is as wide as Alice’s envious scowl. ‘And as for madam . . .’ says Alec. ‘How will this do?’ He produces a paper bag and pulls out a bar of Fry’s.

  He can be kind to the children, I can’t deny it. But I know Alec. He’s not kind for the sake of it. He’ll be wanting something in return.

  Mum has agreed she’ll stay with us in Sabbarton Street till Dad comes out. We’ve been saying that a lot – ‘Till Dad comes out’ – but I’m not sure any of us is convinced. You can tell it’s killing Mum, the relief mixed with the guilt and the sadness. Alec and Jen have offered Mum their bedroom, but she won’t hear of it. Instead we make up a bed for her on the parlour floor, with the mattress from their tenement room. Alec turns the mattress over onto its newer side and the imprint of Dad soon flattens against the boards.

  A letter comes from George. It’s waiting for me on the hall shelf when I get in from work. Jen and Mum are out with the children. Just me here at Sabbarton Street. I can’t remember the last time I was alone in the house.

  George hasn’t written much, only a few lines telling me he’s in the pink, not to worry but the regiment is on the move and he can’t say where to. Last night some of the lads put on a show for the troops, a bit like a Pierrot show, and it put me in mind of our trip to Brighton.

  The day trip to Brighton. I haven’t thought of it in months. There’s a memento in my toffee tin, I’m sure of it – a picture postcard, never sent. I slide the tin from under the barrel and root around until I find that postcard, tucked inside a little sketchbook. We meant to write it out to Alice, but the day went by and suddenly we were on the train back to London.

  The photograph shows two Pierrots, one in a blue silk costume, one in pink, standing on the Brighton prom either side of an upright piano. We had watched their show on the esplanade as the sun began to set. On the beach just ahead, two sweethearts were sitting on a red towel spread across the shingle. They were holding hands, staring out to sea one minute, then in the next instant they’d turn to gaze into each other’s eyes, smiling and giggling.

  George and I sat silently waiting for the show to start, and in that silence a low boom rolled across the water. ‘Flanders,’ said an old man sitting on the other side of George. Two soldiers, heads bandaged, eased themselves into deckchairs in the front row. ‘God help them,’ the old man said, making the sign of the cross in the Roman way.

  I felt hollowed out by the sadness of everything. Those guns firing while the couple on the red blanket kissed and giggled. Had I ever giggled when George kissed me? Maybe when we first started going together . . . although that night in the Captain, I can’t remember an awful lot about it. Something possessed me to drink five gin and lemonades, large ones too, and he was knocking back the rum. At closing time we stumbled two streets to his backyard and I let him do what he wanted, let him kiss me and touch me, because he was a kind man, I sensed that. I liked him, the calm, heavy lids of his eyes, the slow blink. After that night George would meet me in Chelsea on my half-day and he’d take me to a tea shop where they served apple cake with thin sugar icing. How I looked forward to that apple cake, until the sickness started and after that I never touched another slice.

  The scullery door bangs open and Alice runs into the hall passage.

  ‘Mummy! Look what Nana give me.’

  ‘I’m up here.’ I shove George’s letter and the Pierrot postcard back into the toffee tin. Alice appears in a ragged feather boa. She jumps onto the bed, spins and
twirls, then dances back out the door, trailing dust and greying wisps of feather. Just like that, silence is stripped from the house.

  7

  The evenings are drawing in and the lodging room has never felt so dreary. Pictures are what he needs, something to cheer the place up because he’ll stay here now, for the winter at least. He takes out the African hanging that is folded at the bottom of his tin trunk: an orange and red patterned cloth he bought from a market stall. Esther had never let him hang it: she said the pattern looked like piccaninnies screaming; it hurt her eyes just to look at it. Not screaming, he’d told her, they’re laughing, but she couldn’t see it as he did.

  Perhaps he should call on Sonia, warn her that he’ll be making a racket, banging nails into the wall. But there is no answer when he knocks: she must be out already, working the pubs down Limehouse way.

  He takes a hammer and two nails from his toolbox, places one nail between his teeth, then lines the other up against the wall. Three taps of the hammer and the nail goes clean through. The wood partition is thinner than he’d thought; no wonder the sound carries so clearly. He’ll have to find a couple of shorter nails. He removes the nail and looks at the mark in the wall. It’s not much bigger than the hole a woodworm might make. He steps closer, then presses his face up against the wall and squints through the hole. Sonia’s room is almost in darkness, just a smear of grey twilight from the lace-curtained window. His eye adjusts to the gloom. Shapes become clear. Spread on her bedside table is a linen cloth, little wooden beads worked into the crocheted edges, and an empty glass tumbler. There is a vase filled with peacock feathers. The bed has been made, but Sonia has left a chemise or nightdress crumpled on the eiderdown. He stands back and shakes his head, as if that will quieten the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

  Surprising, he thinks, that so much can be seen through such a tiny aperture.

  Sonia comes in after midnight. Only one set of footsteps up the stairs: she must be alone. He looks at the African hanging for a long time and imagines her on the other side of the wall, slipping the nightdress over her skinny body.

  He wakes again at four and knows he will not sleep. Can it really be less than a year since Esther died? Each month, each day has stretched endlessly, like a road of fresh-made bitumen, treacherous and stinking. He shuts his eyes and tries to think of a different time, a different landscape. The childhood trip to Dorset. Immy’s face appears, her flat little nose and the wrinkles around her eyes, so strange on a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

  Immy had ignored him when he arrived at the house with Lady Tolland and Aunt Winch. She was all curtsies and smiles for Lady Tolland, a curtsey even for Aunt Winch, while he hovered behind them, his tongue poking at a loose tooth, which squelched satisfyingly as he wiggled it back and forth. When Immy was asked to show him to his room, her smile fell. She looked at him and her lips puckered as if she was sucking on an unripe gooseberry. It wasn’t his fault, he thought. He didn’t ask to be brought here.

  They traipsed up the back stairs in silence, and he followed her along the corridor to a box room with a small crooked sash that was propped open with a wooden spoon. The bed was made up with plain sheets, and an eiderdown fell in folds down to the floorboards. Immy walked over to the bed and aimed a kick at the eiderdown. There was the clank of metal. ‘Slop bucket,’ she said. ‘Don’t you be using the servants’ WC.’

  Did she think that would rile him? A slop bucket was nothing. At home he emptied his own into the outdoor privy every morning. And Aunt Winch’s, when her back was bad, which was more often than not.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, but she had already turned to leave the room. A thread from her black skirt caught on the edge of the door. ‘Dammit,’ she cursed, shaking the skirt free, then disappearing into the corridor.

  The thread hung on the splinter, swaying in the warm draught.

  He opened his case, took Jude the Obscure from it and sat down on the bed to read.

  Next morning Aunt Winch told him to make himself scarce. There was a dairy farm along the lane, she said, lads about his age. But he didn’t want to spend time with lads his age. He wanted to spend time with his book, with Jude Fawley as he walked the village roads towards Christminster City, tools slung over his back and stone dust in his black curly hair.

  He put the book into his haversack and trailed off through the garden and into the wood beyond. It was August and the canopy was heavy, shutting out the sunlight and creating a darkened space, still as a church. Swallows cried in distant fields, but inside the wood there was no birdsong. He followed a path to the right, swishing down nettles with a stick and stopping to pull ivy from a dead tree. As he carried along the path, the silence lifted and now he could hear water rushing. He rounded a steep bank, and when he reached the top, he could see the shallow stream below, the clear water crashing from an opening in the muddy rocks. The air was damp and green. He could taste the greenness on his tongue.

  On the other side of the stream, there was a kind of hut made of branches, a bivouac just like he’d seen in the Boys’ Gazette. He scrambled down the bank, splashed through the stream and looked inside. Immy screamed and clamped her naked knees together, grabbed at a petticoat that was wedged into a gap in the branches. The boy rolled to one side and scowled at him. He had odd ears. One stuck out more than the other, and the sticky-out one was blazing red.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said the boy.

  He turned and ran, back through the stream, up the bank until he reached the stile that led into the meadow at the far end of the garden.

  Something cracked and crunched in his mouth. The loose tooth was out. He spat the bloodied molar into his palm and examined it in the sunlight, the pale enamelled ridges and the blob of pink flesh that had held it in place. There was a molehill just ahead. He poked a finger into the top and let the tooth drop down into the crumbling earth.

  8

  When I reach Bow Creek, I almost turn back. I stare at the bridge, the stone steps encased by redbrick piers, the solid iron hulking between the banks. The water stretching down, down, who knows how deep? ‘Creek’, such a harmless-sounding word, like a trickle, a stream you might paddle in. But water’s dangerous, no matter how shallow. Babies drown in tin baths – you hear of them every year. Sometimes it’s a clear accident; other times people whisper. One less mouth to feed . . .

  My right foot is on the bottom step. I have to carry on. I can’t go back to Sabbarton Street, another night in with Jen and Alec. I won’t let the bridge trap me.

  Dor’s mum is putting pans away when I poke my head round the back door. ‘Only me,’ I call.

  ‘Dor’s in the front, love.’ Mrs Flynn straightens up from the cupboard. ‘She said you might be coming. Oh, you look peaky, poppet. Such a rotten week. How’s your mum?’

  ‘She’s all right. Staying with us till Dad comes out.’

  ‘That’s good. You girls will look after her, I know you will. Now go on through – you’re letting the cold in.’ She shoos me away from the door with a milk pan.

  Dor is squinting into the small mirror above the mantel shelf, lining her eyes with the burned end of a match. She smoothes her eyebrows with a little spit and pinches up her cheeks. The room is hot with banter and bickering, her brothers arguing over a comic book and her sister, Nuala, kicking out at them from the low stool where she’s trying to sew.

  They look up and say hello, Dor winking with the eye she’s not colouring. When she’s finished with the match, she picks up a lozenge tin from the shelf, takes out a curled-up flower petal. She rolls it between her finger and thumb, then rubs the petal across her lips.

  ‘Want some, Hannah?’ She’s holding out the squashed petal.

  ‘Not really.’ We used to colour our lips like that as kids, but I’ve never gone out like it.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ She shrugs, dropping the petal onto the hearth. ‘You remember Sim Harrison? He’s home on leave. Bet we’ll find him down the White Horse tonig
ht.’

  ‘Your boyfriend, is he?’ asks Harry, looking up from the comic.

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ she says, giving him a little shove. She bends towards the mirror again and pats her cheeks. The confidence seems to drain from her face. ‘What a sight, eh, Han? I just can’t get these hands clean, and as for my face . . .’ She turns her head to and fro and the lamplight shows up her sickly pallor.

  ‘You look lovely,’ I tell her. ‘A sight for sore eyes.’ I mean it, too. Her skin might be yellow, but she still turns heads when she walks along the street.

  She sighs. ‘Thanks for saying so. Got to keep trying, eh? Keep making the effort.’ She steps over Nuala and brushes a stray thread from my blouse. ‘You’ll like the factory girls – promise. About time you enjoyed yourself.’

  Mrs Flynn hurries into the hall as we’re putting on our coats. ‘You mind how you go,’ she says. ‘Keep your wits about you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Dor. ‘If there’s an air raid, we’ll go down the pub cellar. Safest place of all. And refreshments on tap.’

  ‘All a joke to you, is it?’ says Mrs Flynn. ‘I won’t sleep a wink till you’re home.’

  Sure enough Sim Harrison is in the pub, but he already has his arm around another girl. Dor pretends not to notice as we elbow our way to the other side of the saloon bar to find her friends.

  There’s six of them, crowded round a square table meant for two.

  ‘Over ’ere, Dor,’ an older woman says, raising her eyebrows so that her frown lines deepen, thick as pen strokes. ‘We’ll shove up.’

  ‘You’re a dear, Ada,’ says Dor.

  Ada doesn’t look much of a dear. She’s like a man, with her blouse sleeves rolled up so you can see the tops of her strong arms. The grey in her hair is tinted green from the factory, and her voice is low and scratchy, as if she’s smoked a dozen fags without stopping.