by Juliet West
‘Introduce us to your friend, then,’ says Ada.
‘This is Hannah, who I told you about. Known her since I was this high,’ says Dor, gesturing towards the floor with the flat palm of her hand.
‘And poor old Hannah never got much higher,’ says Ada. All the girls laugh, then say things like ‘Only joking’ and ‘Don’t take no notice.’
Dor and I have to share a stool, half on, half off, but the more we drink, the less we care. Dor says I should have a fag – do me good after the aggro of the week – and I think I may as well, with the clouds of tobacco smoke already choking my lungs. I hold the cigarette away from me, put it to my lips occasionally and try not to think what my mum would say if she could see me sitting in a pub with a group of girls, smoking and drinking like navvies.
‘Dor says your husband’s fighting,’ says Ada.
I nod, stubbing the cigarette into the ashtray. ‘That’s right.’
‘Mine too. Army?’
‘Poplar & Stepney Rifles.’
‘Fancy – just like my old man.’
It surprises me to learn she has a husband. She’s so different, so much herself. It hadn’t crossed my mind to think of her as Mrs Someone.
‘You heard anything recently?’ she asks.
‘There was a letter this week. They’re on the move, apparently, but he couldn’t say where to.’
‘They’re going south – I know that much.’ She lights another cigarette, draws deeply and drops the match into the neck of a beer bottle. There’s a rash on her wrist, specks of fresh blood where she must have scratched. ‘And you know what south means?’
I don’t know what south means.
‘A-lex-an-dri-a.’ She flicks her tongue around the word, revelling in it.
Alexandria.
Alexandria. Is it a woman or a place? And then I remember it from the Empire map on the wall at school. Egypt, is it?
‘It’s the port of sin, ain’t it? Get up to all sorts there,’ she says. ‘And knowing my Cole, he will find all sorts to get up to, dirty bugger. Long as he don’t bring back no unwanted gifts, if you get my meaning.’
She winks and the other girls laugh. I shift in my seat. The edge of the stool digs into my thigh.
‘Not her George,’ says Dor. ‘He wouldn’t get up to nothing. Devoted family man, ain’t he, Hannah?’
Ada looks at me and scratches at her wrist. I know what she’s thinking: that I’m above my station. Hoity-toity.
‘Must be your turn to fetch the drinks, Hannah,’ says Ada. ‘Mine’s a barley wine.’
It’s busy at the bar, three deep, and I’m pushed up close to a Chinese sailor, so close I can smell the sweet spice of his jacket. Eventually I’m at the bar, clutching my coins and wondering how I’ll remember what everyone’s having.
‘Evening,’ a bald man says to me. He’s sitting on a bar stool, one elbow resting on the beer-splashed counter. He’s familiar, but I can’t place him. I’m praying he won’t start speaking to me when he turns instead to the person on the other side of him.
‘Young man!’ he says. ‘How the devil are yer?’
The young man doesn’t seem too intent on talking either. I sneak a look sideways and I notice his hands first. Big hands, yet somehow elegant. I glance up to his face and he is looking straight at me.
‘Mrs Loxwood,’ he nods.
‘Mr Blake.’
The landlord’s wife hands him a flask, a takeout, and he drops coins into her hands. She winks and tells him to mind how he goes.
‘Goodnight, Mrs Loxwood. Albert,’ he says, touching his fingers to his cap. Then he turns and dips back through the crowd. The heavy pub doors bang shut.
My face flares with the embarrassment of it: Mr Blake seeing me like this, standing in a public house clutching my money at the bar.
‘You’re a friend of Daniel’s?’ says the bald man. Under his fingernails is a line of deep red and it dawns on me then: he has a meat stall at Rathbone Market. This is the first time I’ve seen him wearing anything but a blood-spattered apron.
‘Not exactly. An acquaintance.’
The landlord appears in front of me.
‘What can I getcha?’
I want to disappear, to turn and run, but I can feel Ada’s eyes on me. She’ll be getting thirsty.
Dor appears to help carry the drinks.
‘Saw you chatting away,’ she says. ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Oh, he’s a butcher . . . Rathbone Market.’ I risk a glance back towards the bar. ‘Think he’s had one too many.’
‘Not the old feller – the younger one, bought the takeout.’
‘He’s a customer from the cafe. Mr Blake, I think he’s called.’
‘Well, is he married or what?’
‘No idea.’
Dor looks hopeful. ‘I’ve been meaning to pop along to that cafe of yours, haven’t I?’ she says. ‘Extra spoonful of sugar, you promised, if I didn’t show you up.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what’s the best time to run into Mr Blake?’
‘I couldn’t tell you. Depends on his shifts.’
‘I’ll just have to take me chances, then.’ She gulps a mouthful of gin and lemon, and licks her lips. ‘Come on, Han. The girls are gasping.’
It doesn’t take Dor long to reel in Mr Blake. She’s on a stretch of night shifts, so it suits her to pop in to the cafe at two-ish, after she’s had a sleep. She happens to sit at his table; I happen to introduce them. She says she’s seen him somewhere before: the White Horse, wasn’t it, on a Friday night? I leave them to it. Customers waiting.
The next time Dor sees Mr Blake at the White Horse, she’s straight up to the bar, asking him for a light, brazen as you like. He buys her a drink – doesn’t have much choice from what I can see – and by the end of the night she’s still talking to him at the bar, perched on a stool, her skirt hem riding up to her calves, a shoe dangling from her foot.
It’s packed in here tonight. Outside, the December fog is freezing, but the pub doors are shut to the icy draughts, and I can feel my cheeks blazing with the heat of port wine. Shouldn’t have had the third glass, but Ada was determined. She’s drinking more than usual, which is saying something, and she seems to be all clued up on the Poplar and Stepney Rifles. When I tell her I still haven’t heard from George, she can’t wait to fill me in.
‘They’re definitely in Greece,’ she says. ‘We got a secret code. Set it up before he went, didn’t we? It’s the first letters of the first sentence tells me what country he’s in. See . . .’ She produces a letter from the waistband of her skirt. ‘“Greetings to my dear wife.” That’s “G-r” for “Greece”. When they was in France, it was “Freezing cold but out of harm’s way” or some such.’
A code? It had never occurred to me or George to set up a code, and now it’s too late. I ask Ada if she thinks they’ll be home soon on leave. Christmas is only two weeks away. Perhaps some of them will get time off.
She shakes her head. ‘Bugger all chance,’ she says, refolding the letter. She seems to get one letter a week. More, maybe. ‘Out there for the duration, if you ask me. And it don’t look like stopping anytime soon.’
I notice a word pencilled in large letters on the back of the envelope: NORWICH.
‘What’s that?’
Ada rolls her eyes and her mouth crinkles at a wicked angle.
‘“Norwich”? You never heard of “Norwich” before? Quite the lady, ain’t she, our Hannah?’ The other girls smile as she straightens her back and clasps her hands like a toff. ‘“Knickers Orf Ready When I Come Home.”’ She says it in a nobby accent. The girls hoot as she takes a cigarette from her tin. ‘Trouble is, I don’t know if I can wait till he gets home. Especially when you see them two lovebirds over there. Makes you come over all romantic, don’t it?’
We look across the pub to Dor and Mr Blake – Dor and Daniel – sitting in the corner near the yard door. She is leaning towards him, her elbows on the ta
ble, wearing her new blouse: cream with dark green stripes – cost her a packet in the Army & Navy. The neckline is low and edged in lace, so that you can see her flushed throat and the smooth dipped skin above her collarbone. With one hand she fingers a curl of dynamite-yellow hair, slow and rhythmic, twisting the curl, letting it drop, then picking it up again, twisting. Dor seems to be doing most of the talking, but he is smiling sometimes, chipping in.
‘She don’t waste no time, does she?’ says Ada.
‘Dor’s always been like it. If she wants something, she generally gets it.’ This comes out wrong, like I’m criticizing, and I hadn’t meant to criticize. I smile at Ada and the other girls. ‘But you can’t blame her, can you? I mean, there ain’t many men to go around, and Dor’s a single girl.’
Everyone nods, everyone except Ada, who scratches at the rash on her wrist. It’s spreading up to her elbows, raised like a burn.
‘Even so, I can’t ’elp wondering about his lordship over there,’ she says, jerking her head towards Daniel. ‘Why ain’t he in uniform?’
‘War work,’ says Daisy. ‘Dor told me he just got another six months’ exemption.’
‘He’s a feather man more like.’
‘But if he’s exempted,’ I say, ‘you can’t call him—’
‘I can call him what I like,’ says Ada. She sniffs and squares her shoulders. ‘Fact is, he’s not doing his bit.’
‘But . . .’ I want to defend him, but I can’t think how. The port wine has muddled my brain. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I say, and steal another look at Daniel. His lifts his pint glass, gulps two mouthfuls and glances towards me. He smiles and I turn away, embarrassed to have been caught staring.
I’m bursting for the lav. They’ve got a ladies-only privy now, out in the yard. I sit there, head swimming, and try to think it through. It seems to me there’s something childish, unthinking almost, about this ‘do your bit’ attitude. I can’t explain it to Ada: I struggle to explain it to myself. All I can think of is a playground bully, of Eliot Hever, whose father belted him every Sunday and once tied him to a lamp post, the length of box cord pulled so tight he never lost the tremor in his hands. Eliot liked to teach the smaller boys similar lessons whenever he got the chance. If I’m in hell, then why shouldn’t you be too? I’m certain that was Eliot’s reasoning, and there’s a whiff of the same from Ada.
The toilet door rattles, but I push it shut with an outstretched foot. Christ, it’s freezing out here.
I want to go back in and say to Ada: ‘Maybe it’s just as brave not to go, to stand up to the white feather brigade?’ But the moment I step into the warm pub, I know I can’t risk it. What would be the point of arguing with Ada? I know I’d never win.
Just before Christmas a letter arrives from George. It’s light, insubstantial as ever. He wonders what we’ll be having for Christmas dinner. I know what they’ll give us, he says, a tin of Maconochie’s stew. You can count on it. All the way from London – maybe you even smelt the beef cooking?
I read the letter to the children at bedtime. Alice sits up, rocking back and forth on the bed, but Teddy lies on the pillow stroking his nose with the sock puppet, an absent look in his sleepy eyes. It occurs to me that he can’t make a connection between the letter and his father. Why would he? He’s not even three years old and his dad has been gone almost a year.
‘Lie down quietly, Alice,’ I say. ‘I’m not reading if you fidget.’
She sulks back on the pillow, arms folded across her chest. A gale is blowing outside; every gust rustles the sheets of newspaper that are pasted to the window frames. So much for the newspaper keeping out the draughts. It’s as if somebody is in the room, turning pages.
I read the letter slowly, pausing on certain lines: Tell the children to be extra good for Mummy and Don’t go playing near the creek. By the time I’ve finished, Teddy is asleep, but Alice’s eyes are spilling with tears.
‘What is it, Alice?’
‘There’s dads what aren’t coming home,’ she sobs. Her bony shoulders are hunched right up. Teddy stirs, then buries deeper under the covers.
‘Violet told me,’ she whispers through little shudders. ‘Her uncle is never coming home, not for Christmas or never. The Boche ’as blown him up, she says. What’s the “Boche”?’
‘It just means the Germans, love. But we don’t have to worry – we’ve got our letter, haven’t we?’ I hold it up, give it a little shake like a winning raffle ticket. ‘Your daddy is all right. Look, he says it’s warm and sunny, and he’s having Maconochie’s stew for Christmas dinner.’
It’s not much of a comfort, I know, but what more can I say without making promises that might not be kept? There’s hundreds dying every day, thousands maybe. When it’s quiet in the cafe, I scan through the casualty lists in the left-behind newspapers. I can’t help looking for ‘LOXWOOD, Rifleman 592482’, just in case there was some sort of mix-up, a letter that never arrived.
‘What are we having for Christmas dinner?’ asks Alice, suddenly hopeful.
‘Your uncle Alec has promised he’ll find us a chicken . . . and I might just have a few treats from the cafe. Mrs Stephens can be very kind, can’t she?’
‘Lovely as you like,’ she says, and we both smile.
I climb into bed and stroke Alice’s hair until she’s asleep. George’s letter runs through my head. He misses us; I know he does. So why did he leave? Why did he abandon us when he could be here now, safe with his exemption papers, just like Mr Blake?
Outside the bedroom window, the north wind shrieks. It rifles off the creek and fires dirty rain against the panes. I think the war is everywhere: in the rain, in the river, in the grey air that we breathe. It is a current that runs through all of us. You can’t escape the current; either you swim with it or you go under. In my dreams, I am always in the river, always floundering. Dad is trying to rescue me, but it’s no use. I never did learn to swim.
9
His last day in Dorset was a Saturday, and he had no choice but to go out with the boys from the farm. They were walking the five miles to the coast and Aunt Winch thought the sea air would do him good. Charmouth Beach was famous for fossils, she said. Perhaps he would find a souvenir to take home.
They set off after breakfast. There were five boys, the youngest aged eleven, the eldest sixteen – brothers and cousins with matching blond curls, save for the youngest, Vic, whose hair was straight and red.
The weather had been wet in recent days, and a warm mist hung around the fields and the hedges of the vale. They tramped along the lanes, silent at first, then Lester trod on Tink’s bootlace, sent him stumbling, and Tink thumped him and called him an idiot. They scrapped as they walked, exchanging insults, until Ralph, the eldest, knocked Lester on the head with the bowl of his clay pipe and told him to fucking shut up.
He trailed behind the five boys, behind Ralph and his tobacco smoke, which drifted in short bursts from the pipe. He recognized Ralph’s ears, the way one stuck out more than the other. He knew that Ralph must recognize him too.
To the south, there was a wooded hill and Ralph decided they should climb it. ‘Might be a fair crop,’ said Ralph to John, elbowing him in the ribs. John nodded and dragged his stick through a wet ditch, hooking up a clump of slime that could have been leaves or a dead frog and flicking it towards Vic so that it landed on the back of his neck. The fighting started again and he wondered whether he could slope off, crouch behind a hedge and stay there until they had forgotten about him.
Too late. Ralph looked back and told him to keep up, said he wanted to talk. Not exactly a conversation, it turned out, more of an inquisition. ‘What’s it like in London? . . . Have you ridden in a motor car? . . . Have you been to a cinema show?’ They laughed at his accent, made him repeat particular words and tried to mimic them: abaht, nuffink, me muvver.
‘You live with that old aunt, then?’ asked Ralph. ‘You an orphan boy?’
He had nodded, because that seemed easier.
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br /> The hill was steep – the highest hill in Dorset, they told him – and he felt hot and heavy when they reached the top. They sat on a dead tree trunk to eat buttered bread and drink water from leather flasks.
When the bread was finished, Lester handed round apples. Ralph and John didn’t want apples; they jumped up and began to roam the wood, heads down, searching the ground until Ralph stopped near the trunk of a huge beech tree. He took a large piece of cloth from his trouser pocket and lay it on the ground. They began to pick mushrooms, tiny brown domes, camouflaged in the dead leaves. A mound of mushrooms rose in the cloth. Ralph picked up the cloth by its four corners and walked back to the dead tree trunk where the rest of the boys were still sitting. He offered the mushrooms – five each, he said – and the boys took them, laughing, swallowing them down with the water. Barely chewing.
He shook his head, but they jeered. ‘Don’t be namby,’ they said. ‘Five won’t hardly touch you.’ Ralph counted out five and dropped them in his lap. He gagged as he swallowed, but somehow kept them down.
The boys grew wild as they climbed back down the hill and followed the lanes to Charmouth. He found himself blinking at the green hedgerows, the daisies and the purple vetch, the colours so vivid it was as if his eyes had been stretched to twice their size. A white butterfly appeared, mazy above the hedgerow. He wanted the butterfly more than anything, wanted to capture it and care for it, but when he reached out, the butterfly dipped from his grasp and disappeared into the white sky.
The sense of loss lay coiled in his gut as they tramped towards Charmouth Beach. The butterfly was as beautiful as his mother, and the pain felt sharp as the day she disappeared.
They told him it was prehistoric mud, crumbly with fossils, smelling of dinosaur shit. ‘No, we bain’t joking,’ said Ralph. ‘See for yourself. Over there is the best place to dig.’ The dairy boys laughed when he reached the mud and began to sink. Then they disappeared and their absence was worse than their laughter. How long would they leave him here, with the tide coming in? The mud was almost at his waist, and struggling only seemed to speed things up.
