by Juliet West
‘You’ll miss Alec too, won’t you, Hannah?’ says Jen. She has that strange slant to her eyes.
I manage a nod. ‘So will the children.’
‘He’s fond of your two. You might want to call Teddy in, by the way. He’s looking a bit pink from the sun. Didn’t you notice?’
‘I’ll get him a cap. When does Alec go?’
‘A fortnight, he thinks.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I put my hand on her shoulder, but she looks out of the window.
‘Don’t be,’ she says. ‘We’ll manage.’
That evening I try to make an effort with Alec, chat to him over our supper, look him in the eye. He’s putting a brave face on it, says he’s hoping for the eastern front, might even be fighting alongside George. If he gets the eastern front, the warmer winter might do his chest good. He might come back a new man.
I’m feeling almost kindly towards him. That is until he corners me in the scullery when I’m putting away the dishes. He sidles up so close my back is pressed against the wall.
‘Suits you, don’t it, Hannah, to have me out of the way?’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I’m not daft – that’s the point. You’re a pretty little thing, ain’t you? Some men might find you hard to resist.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He puts his hand up to my face, cradles my chin. ‘It’s not just me who’s watching you,’ he says. ‘I’ve got friends everywhere. You mind how you go. I don’t want nothing upsetting Jen while I’m away.’
He’s bluffing, trying to provoke me. I won’t rise to it. Even if he has been watching me since the funfair, there hasn’t been anything for him to see. ‘I’m sure Jen can look after herself,’ I say. ‘Just as well as I can.’
Whiffin’s is on the dock road, not far from Daniel’s boarding house. I mustn’t think of him. The trick is not to look around, not to give in to memory. Keep hold of the children’s hands, march along eyes straight ahead, take no notice of the hospital steps where I dropped Dor’s barley water, try not to breathe in when I pass the florist’s and the scent of violets that reminds me of the flowers he never had the chance to give.
Whiffin’s Photographic Studio, 237 East India Dock Road. Six postcards for two shillings. It’s a fair price – cheapest you’ll get. Not that I need six postcards. One for George, one for Mum . . . maybe one for Dad?
‘Frock’s itchy,’ says Alice. ‘When are we there?’
‘We’re here. This is it.’
I push open the door and a woman behind a desk looks up. ‘Can I help you?’ She has round tortoiseshell spectacles and neat wavy hair tied back in a bun. A little girl is sitting behind the desk next to her, writing out sums in an exercise book.
‘I’d like a photograph, please.’
‘A special occasion?’ she asks.
‘Not really, just something to send out to my husband. He’s been asking.’
‘Of course. The children grow up so quickly. He’s at the front?’
Alice and Teddy must be staring at the little girl because she pokes out her tongue and shuts the book.
‘Eastern front.’
‘Salonika? Oh, that’s something. They say it’s not too bad. Building roads, growing tomatoes, I’ve heard. He’s drawn the long straw there.’
She shows me into the waiting area. It’s a queer-shaped room, the furthest wall veering off at an angle. There are no windows, only two mirrors: a large one on the angled wall and a smaller one opposite. Alice stands in front of the large mirror, plucking at the tight collar of her dress. Teddy and I sit on a bench that has green cushions tied to the seat.
‘Magic!’ shouts Alice suddenly. She hops up and down in front of the mirror. ‘Hundreds of me. Look.’
I stand next to her. It’s a curious sight, the two mirrors working together so that our reflections go on and on. There I am: my face, the back of my head, two sides disappearing off into some unknown place. I can’t understand it, can’t fathom where I must be going.
Strangest of all, the person in the mirror doesn’t look like me at all. I’ve not stopped to look at myself in the glass at home, haven’t seen my reflection in weeks. There are shadows under my cheekbones, and my eyes seem small and creased. I can see my mum’s eyes. My face as I’ll look in twenty-five years.
‘Mrs Loxwood?’ an old man with a greying moustache peers round a second door in the corner of the room. ‘I’m Mr Whiffin. Do come through.’
Alice skips ahead, but Teddy is unsure and holds my hand. He has never had his photo taken before. George and me once took Alice to a studio in Bow, not that she’ll remember it; she can’t have been more than six months old. Whiffin’s is much smarter than the Bow place. It smells very clean, of wax polish and fresh paint. On one wall is a backdrop done up like a park, the canvas decorated with pictures of trees, white flowers and green grass. In front of the canvas is a pile of huge grey stones, stacked up to form a kind of seat, and an old stone pillar that looks like it could have come from the ruin of a posh house or a castle.
Teddy lets go of my hand now and rushes over to the stones, which Alice is already attempting to climb. I follow them with my comb, raking it through Teddy’s hair and tidying Alice’s ringlets now she’s perched on the top.
‘That’s it, children,’ says old Mr Whiffin. His jowls wobble as he speaks. ‘You make yourselves comfortable. You’re King George –’ he points at Teddy with his sunburned face – ‘and, little lady, you’re a fairy princess.’ They both laugh, but Mr Whiffin puts a finger to his lips. ‘Got to keep a straight face for the photograph, children. Show your daddy how grown-up you are. Like this . . .’ He strikes a pose, his hands clasped together over his waistcoat, chin raised a little and his lips pressed together. ‘Smile with your eyes,’ he says. ‘Only your eyes.’ The children giggle and then quieten down. He must have something magical about him, this Mr Whiffin, because even Alice stays calm, her eyes wide as she practises how to smile without moving her lips.
‘Now, Mrs Loxwood, if you’d like to stand next to the column.’
I remember my reflection: the hollow cheeks and the tired eyes. I shake my head at Mr Whiffin. ‘It was just the children I was thinking of. He’s got one of me.’
‘Are you sure? I know how much it means to the men, something new . . .’
‘I haven’t dressed for it.’
‘You have, Mum!’ pipes up Alice. She turns to Mr Whiffin. ‘She’s put on her locket special.’
I can’t explain it to Alice, this sudden feeling that to have my photograph taken for George would be wrong. It’s too intimate. Better to keep the distance between us.
‘Shush, Alice. Daddy knows what I look like. It’s you two what’s changed. All grown up now – he won’t believe it.’
Mr Whiffin nods and positions himself behind the camera.
‘Remember, children,’ he says, his voice low and grave under the heavy black hood, ‘smile with your eyes.’ The camera shutter clunks and the room glares with light.
When we leave Whiffin’s, the sun is still hot, though it must be after five. There’s a ripe old reek coming off the docks, and the horse dung in the gutter is alive with flies. A white nag clops past, pulling a brewer’s van, great big old thing he is, temperamental, and the driver is in a sweat trying to keep him in a straight line.
‘When’s tea?’ asks Alice.
‘Now, if you like. Thought we’d go up Chrisp Street for fish and chips.’
They grin at each other and then up at me.
Alice squeezes my hand. ‘Can I do me own vinegar?’ she asks.
‘I should think—’ I stop mid-sentence and listen. A whistle is sounding from somewhere ahead. Not a ship’s whistle, a policeman’s whistle. Then the clanging of bells, warning flares exploding in the sky, and suddenly everyone is running.
The policeman shoots past on his bicycle. ‘Take cover!’ he calls, between blows of the whistle. Crowds bolt in the same direction: the
few hundred yards to the Blackwall Tunnel. We can hear the aeroplane engines now, and when I look up, they are right above us, wings gleaming.
If I was on my own, I’d run into a shop and ask to hide under a counter, but we’re only two seconds from the tunnel now, and the crowd is surging towards the entrance, a mass of people swirling like water down a plughole. If I try to pull away, I might lose hold of Alice or Teddy. There’s no choice but to stay in the swirl, file down the spiral stairs and press ahead into the shadows. It has to be the tunnel.
We keep walking for a few hundred yards, and then the movement stops.
‘Keep moving!’ someone shouts.
‘Can’t,’ comes a yell. ‘It’s full from the Greenwich side!’ We stand for ten minutes or so, crammed tight, and then somehow the crush relaxes and we have a little space to breathe. People sit on the ground, laying out jackets if they have them, or just settling on the grime, brushing aside the dust and the debris: the top of a broken bicycle bell, a mouldering carrot stalk, scraps of wood from a smashed crate. A woman starts playing a mouth organ, ‘Oh! Oh! Antonio’, and her friends all sing along.
‘Shut that row,’ someone shouts, but the singers laugh and carry on.
Anywhere but the tunnel – I’d rather be anywhere but here. If a bomb fell on the river, could it crash right through the water, crack open the ceiling? I daren’t look up. Alice and Teddy don’t seem frightened; their eyes glitter with excitement. When Alice says she’s hungry, a woman delves in her shopping basket and produces a bag of monkey nuts. ‘Here, take these,’ she says. ‘My treat.’ The children eat them greedily, splitting open the soft shells and pushing the nuts into their mouths.
Sound is peculiar in this tunnel; it’s hard to decipher. Is it gunfire I can hear, or the tap of a walking stick? Then a loud boom, not gunfire this time. The ground shakes and the mouth organ stops. A bomb for sure.
Is Daniel at work? Is he sheltering in the dock vaults, or is he at home, sitting it out with Sonia and Mrs Browne?
Is he thinking of me?
I lean against the cool tunnel wall, tilt my head back and shut my eyes. For a few moments I allow myself to think. And what I think is this: I can never make it right with George; the betrayal can’t be erased. What’s done is done. So why shouldn’t I go to Daniel again? Once, twelve times, eight hundred times . . . what is the difference?
Two more bombs and then the rattle of gunfire.
I feel more certain with the crack of each bullet.
25
It is the last day of August. The sun has set, but the heat of the afternoon still pulses in the air. Ten weeks now since she came back to him. Ten Fridays.
Tonight they are meeting away from his lodging room: they are risking a trip to Greenwich instead, while the evenings are still warm. He waits for her by the park railings at the top of King William Street. A jackdaw struts in the gutter, pecks up a squashed crust and then flies to the eaves of a butcher’s shop. Three pale black fledglings demand their share of the crust, squatting and screeching until the mother abandons them for a nearby chimney.
When Hannah arrives, they greet each other with a guarded nod. The pavements are busy and they don’t want to be noticed. He falls into step with her and they walk along Stockwell Street, up the hill towards Lady Tolland’s house. He is wearing his gardening clothes, the heavy boots and the brown jacket with one button missing. She follows him silently down the dark passageway at the side of the house, and he unlocks the gate that leads through to the garden. In the passageway – alone, finally – he kisses her against the cool brick wall.
Trees and shrubs edge the garden boundaries, but still they must be quiet. Sound floats on a night like this, high on Greenwich Hill. The casement windows of neighbouring terraces are open to the evening breeze; from a nearby house there is the chink of fine glass. Laughter.
They walk to the end of the passageway and down the garden until they reach the shed by the raspberry canes. Pushed against the side of the shed is a broken bench, the wooden slats weathered and rough. He sits on the bench and pats the space next to him, but she remains standing.
‘She won’t come back?’
‘I told you. She’s in Dorset for the duration.’
Their whispers hang in the half-light of the London dusk. She looks towards Lady Tolland’s house, the white paint peeling from the brickwork.
‘Imagine, all this . . . one old lady. Imagine if we lived here, Daniel. You and me, and all our children.’
‘They’d have a bedroom each.’
‘And we’d have our own bathroom. A white enamel bath. Rose oil in the water.’
‘One day, Hannah.’ He looks around the garden, the hidden strip of overgrown lawn between the two beds of raspberries. Summer raspberries, autumn raspberries, both heavy with fruit. One crop is almost finished, the other just beginning. The canes are leaning towards each other like a guard of honour, green leaf epaulettes, ripe red medals.
He takes a key from under a water trough near the shed. The padlock has been recently oiled and the catch jumps open with one quick turn of the key.
‘I bought in some supplies.’ He reaches into the shed and pulls out a small bottle of port wine and a penknife. ‘We’ll have to drink from the bottle, I’m afraid.’
‘Fine way to treat a lady,’ she smiles.
They sit together on the bench. One of the slats is missing from the seat. Lady Tolland has asked him to repair it, but she has not given him any money for the timber.
He flicks a corkscrew from the penknife and uncorks the bottle. ‘Ladies first,’ he says, handing the wine to Hannah. She drinks a mouthful, then passes it back to him. Tiny flies close in on the neck of the bottle. Daniel swats them away, but they are persistent.
Shouts drift up from the pubs at the bottom of the hill. They have not been to a pub together since that February day in Blackheath. They’ve not been anywhere, other than his room, until this evening.
‘Alec has gone now?’
‘Finally. Left for the training camp on Wednesday. Jen’s taken it bad.’
He passes her the bottle again. She drinks a few more mouthfuls, stands the bottle on the uneven brick path and looks up at the quiet sky. Stars are beginning to flare. They seem brighter, from up here.
‘I feel like I’m in another country,’ she says. ‘The air smells different. Sweet. Not Tate and Lyle sweet. Proper sweet.’
‘It’s the jasmine,’ he says, standing to pick a sprig from the climbing bush that twines round the lower branches of the apple tree. ‘Here.’ He puts the jasmine to her nose; she breathes in and then sighs. ‘Heaven.’ He tucks the sprig into her hair and kisses the lobe of her ear, her cheek, her neck. She slips off his waistcoat, unbuttons his shirt and spreads her hands across his chest, traces the bird-shaped scar.
Daniel leads her to the raspberry canes, to the strip of lawn under the canopy. The ground is soft after the wet August weather. They sit together on the unmown grass. He picks a fat raspberry and she opens her mouth to eat it. He unfastens her blouse, then takes another raspberry, crushes it against her throat and licks the juice as it runs between her breasts, onto the lace of her chemise.
From the bottom of the hill comes the sound of singing: a music-hall tune.
She removes her clothes slowly, until she is wearing only her chemise. He lies back on the grass, his arms around her back, and she lowers herself onto him. They sigh together. He looks at her beautiful skin, white as apple flesh, and he cannot help himself.
Afterwards she kneels by his side and there is panic in her eyes. The sprig of jasmine from her hair is crushed under her knee. He wonders if kneeling will be enough, a question of gravity, nothing more. If only. She rinses herself with rainwater from the trough, the movement of her cupped hand terse and quick.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, but she doesn’t reply, just carries on cupping water from the trough. It trickles down her thighs, forms a lazy puddle on the path.
Of course she is an
gry with him: he has broken a promise. She knows all about the bus ride. He promised her he would always jump off one stop early. They had joked about it. ‘Take me up the Mile End Road’, or ‘A return to Cockfosters, please.’
She puts on her drawers and fastens her stays, buttons up her blouse and skirt. He dresses too and sits back on the bench. He wants to light a cigarette but decides to wait.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers again. ‘What are the . . . the . . . ?’
‘The chances? I couldn’t say.’ She picks another sprig of jasmine and inhales the scent. Her shoulders soften. ‘Let’s not talk about it, not tonight.’
‘No, you’re right.’
She sits down next to him, and as he puts his arm around her, she shivers a little. Night has fallen now, and on the breeze comes the lightest chill of autumn. The seasons seem to be passing so quickly.
‘I’ll call into the house before we go. Need to borrow something.’
‘Borrow?’
‘Just a book. We have an arrangement, a mutual agreement. Lady Tolland lets me use her library and I look after her garden. She gives me books, sometimes, if they don’t take her fancy.’
‘She don’t pay you a penny, then?’
‘A tin of shortbread at Christmas.’
‘Why can’t you go to the lending library? There’s one near the cafe.’
‘I do go, occasionally, but they’re wall to wall with those terrible old novels: Mrs Henry Wood, Ouida. Lady Tolland’s tastes are more . . . varied.’
They sit for half an hour, talking in hushed voices, dreaming about the life they could have together. A cottage in Dorset, that’s what he wishes for them, a cottage in the Marshwood Vale. He describes the house, its yellow stone walls and slate roof, a stream flowing nearby, the water so clean you can bottle it. They would have their own garden: chickens, a pig, sunflowers soaring from the flowerbeds.
‘My dad used to grow sunflowers,’ she says. It’s not often she mentions her father. ‘I used to watch them from my bedroom window. I thought that if I watched long enough, I’d see them grow.’
‘And did you?’
