by Juliet West
‘It’s too cruel, ignoring him like this, and I can’t have him writing to Sabbarton Street again. Jen’s opening my post. Says she might write to him herself.’
He drops his hand and chews the nail on his little finger. Lizzie snuffles in the cot. Daniel opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, then changes his mind and kisses my hands.
‘You’re right. You send him the letter.’
It’s after midnight and I’m on my third attempt. Daniel has fallen asleep; his breathing is steady, slower than the tick of his pocket watch lying on the chest of drawers next to a packet of damp tobacco. His eyes flicker beneath the lids. I think he must be dreaming.
My back hurts from sitting so long on the sagging mattress with my knees up and the notepaper resting on one of Daniel’s books. The pile of books gets smaller every week. He lends them to a man at work, he says. They like to discuss poetry on their fag breaks.
I read through the letter again, blushing at the lie, although it’s not a bad one. It will comfort him, in a small way.
12 Union Buildings
Adler Street
Whitechapel E.
July 11th 1918
Dear George,
I’m sorry you haven’t been getting my letters. I’ve written several times. Perhaps there’s a problem at the local office here, or else they’ve gone down with a boat. We’ve moved, as you can see. I won’t write much more in case this one gets lost too. If you still don’t hear, I will have to send a telegram.
The children are well and send their love.
Yours affectionately,
Hannah
I fold the paper in half and tuck it inside the book. Daniel rolls onto his side, facing me, and a hand comes to rest on my thigh. I look down at him and his eyes flicker open. He smiles, half asleep, and his fingers move across my thigh, the gentlest of strokes. I cannot give him what he wants, not yet. Daniel is understanding for now.
A letter drops through the box and skits across the kitchen lino. Alice dashes over to pick up the envelope.
‘It’s a Daddy letter!’ she says, hopping from one foot to the other. Her little face is so joyous my heart could break. ‘Daddy! Can I open it?’
‘Not now, Alice – you’ll be late for school. You don’t want to get a late mark, do you? Right before the holidays? We’ll open it after school. Wash your face.’
I stuff the letter into my pocket as she stamps over to the sink. I take Lizzie into the bedroom and quickly rip open the envelope. He must have replied by return. Three days, only three days since I posted my own letter! I scan down the page. It’s nothing but a list of questions: why have I gone to Whitechapel? Have I quarrelled with Jen? Is it fair on the children to move them so sudden? And then the last line: Now we are in France, our battalion has started allowing men to come to England on leave. If I’m lucky, I could be home in a week or two. If I’m unlucky, I might have to wait some time.
He could be home in a week. A week or two. He knows our address. For a lunatic moment I wonder if I can tidy away Daniel’s things, hide the baby. I dismiss the idea, then, ten minutes later when I’m walking the children to school, I resurrect it. I itemize everything in the flat, then work out where I can conceal it – the baby with Mrs Tendler, the cot in the kitchen cupboard, Daniel’s clothes in the trunk under the bed. But what if Cole Buckley has told George? George might have known all along. Might be planning revenge. My mind races, faster and faster, and I can’t control my thoughts, the wild ideas that ricochet until I think they could burst from my skull.
‘Daddy, Daddy,’ Alice sing-songs, skipping ahead.
38
The problem is how to tell her. Already it is 15th July. He will be before the tribunal in one week. Now that Beaumont’s has refused to back him, he could have his call-up papers that day. He might be in uniform by the end of the month.
Hannah was half frantic when he came home from work last night. She met him out on the landing, sobbed as she thrust George’s latest letter into his hands. If I’m lucky, I could be home in a week or two. He couldn’t mention the tribunal after that. No choice but to wait for another day.
He has lain awake since dawn. Sunlight strays through the lace curtains at their bedroom window. Sparrows chatter in the guttering. He gazes at Hannah’s sleeping face and thinks how beautiful she is, even with her face still puffy from crying and the shadows under her eyes. He had tried to calm her. ‘We’ll face it out,’ he’d said. ‘It’s better to get it over with,’ all the while knowing that when George crosses the Channel on leave from France, he, Daniel, could be sailing in the other direction.
She’s frightened about money. And for all his reassurances, he is frightened too. Hannah’s army allowance will stop when George finds out. She says she’ll take in work – ironing or shirt-finishing or sewing umbrellas – but they both know she’ll earn a pittance, and in any case she’s not strong enough. Her face is still so pale, and the headaches last for days. It’s as much as she can do to get up and down the stairs to take the children to school.
Perhaps they could afford a single room somewhere, in the tenements at Spitalfields? He shudders at the thought of Hannah there, with the whores and the thieves: vulnerable as a wren in a rookery.
Lizzie cries and Hannah starts awake. He lifts the baby from the cot and carries her to Hannah as she sits up in bed. She unbuttons her nightdress and the baby begins to feed.
‘Beautiful morning,’ he says, walking over towards the window.
‘Don’t pull the curtains. Not yet. I can’t stand it too bright.’
He sits on the edge of the bed and inhales the warmth of Hannah’s body. Today is the day. He has to find a way.
‘Let’s have our tea out this evening,’ he says. ‘We can all go to the pie shop, then the gardens over at St Dunstan’s.’
‘St Dunstan’s?’
‘Stepney High Street. Five minutes on the tram. The kids can have a run around. A walk will do us good, clear our heads.’
‘If you like.’
‘I’ll be finishing early today. Home by four.’
Her face falls. ‘Short time again? However shall we afford tea out?’
‘I’ve got a few bob put by.’ He kisses her and leaves the room before any more questions are asked.
There are eight books left in the box on the kitchen floor. On his way out, he sorts through them, leaving just one behind. Mr Layman doesn’t give the best prices – hasn’t a clue what’s valuable and what’s not – but his shop is convenient. No need for a tram fare.
He watches as Hannah chases gravy around her plate with a spoon. The mash must be cold by now. She has barely eaten a thing.
‘Do you want my leftovers?’ she asks Daniel.
He shakes his head. He hasn’t much of an appetite himself. It doesn’t help that little Lizzie is fidgeting in the crook of his arm.
‘I think Lizzie wants more of the milk and mash,’ he says. They all look at the baby. She has turned her head towards Daniel and gazes up at him with hopeful eyes. ‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’ he says to her in a gentle voice. ‘More mash, is it, Lizzie? More mash?’ She blinks and then smiles: an unmistakable smile, the first of her life.
‘Oh, look,’ says Hannah. She bites her lip and her eyes glisten with tears. ‘Bless her little heart. She’s a pretty thing. Ain’t you, pretty thing?’ Lizzie smiles again, and Teddy pulls a funny face, hoping to make his baby sister laugh.
Alice drops her cutlery on the plate with a clatter. ‘Can I have your leftovers, Mum?’ she says.
‘Share them with Teddy.’ Hannah spoons pie crust and dollops of greyish mash onto their plates.
‘Daddy will like to see her smiling, won’t he?’ says Alice. ‘He’ll be coming home just in time.’
Hannah looks down. Daniel is not sure how to react. He has never spoken of George to the children, never tried to explain anything. Hannah says they won’t understand – it’s best to say nothing at all. But he thinks Alice is cannier
than her mother realizes.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Alice,’ he says, attempting to sound casual. ‘There’s only a chance of home leave, the letter said. Nothing definite.’
‘When he comes home, will it be to Auntie Jen’s or to here?’
‘Oh . . . both, I expect,’ says Hannah. ‘Now eat up. We want to get to the park while it’s still warm.’
‘When can we go back to Auntie Jen’s? Please, Mummy. I don’t want to live ’ere no more.’
Alice looks so confused and broken it makes him wretched with pity. He has tried his best with Hannah’s children, all the while knowing his own kids are far away, having a fine time in Kent and forgetting all about him. It’s still early days, he tells himself. Still only four months since they moved in together, only six weeks since Lizzie was born. He thought the baby might bring them all together, unite them like a proper family, but so far she seems to have achieved the opposite, poor little mite. Lizzie can smile all she likes, but she has splintered their lives. Sent them all spinning.
The gardens are busy. Alice and Teddy pal up with a gang of Jewish kids and they dart around the oaks and the beeches playing a game of hide-and-seek. Mothers and nannies push babies in their prams and Daniel knows what Hannah is thinking. What she wouldn’t give for a pram. Lizzie is putting on weight and the sling is getting heavy.
‘Here, let me carry her,’ he says, lifting the baby from the swathe of grey linen criss-crossed over her chest. People will stare, he knows: a man carrying a baby. Let them stare all they like. He wishes he could link arms with Hannah – the baby in one arm, Hannah on the other – but he knows she wouldn’t like that, not with the children so close by.
They talk about George, and Hannah does her best to be brave. She tries to reason things out, echoes Daniel’s own reassurances from the previous night. George might not be home for a good while, she says. And yes, they can face it if they have to. They can face it so long as they’re together.
‘Hannah.’ He stops still and she walks half a pace in front of him. Her shoulders stiffen and she turns awkwardly to look at him. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he says. ‘It ain’t good news.’
There is a bench up ahead. He takes her elbow and guides her to it. He brushes some grass seeds from the wooden slats; then they sit together, a few inches apart, the baby on his lap.
‘Got my tribunal next week,’ he says.
‘Oh?’
‘Beaumont’s are letting me go.’
She leans forward on the bench, covers her face with her hands.
39
We leave St Dunstan’s and ride the bus back to Whitechapel in silence. Even the children are quiet, and Lizzie falls asleep in Daniel’s arms. It’s a strange sort of calm, a calm that comes when you know that the worst has happened and you might as well be dead. I wipe a smear of mash from Teddy’s chin, comb out the tangles in Alice’s hair with my fingers. I even plait a braid into her hair, though with nothing to fasten it, and the rocking of the bus, the braid soon starts to drop away. An old man looks on, smiling. He sees a happy family, and I am glad.
The gas lamps are all off now, and only one candle burns on the bedroom mantelpiece. The lace curtain is drawn across the open sash. The wind wisps through the window, playing with the curtain, sucking and billowing.
We are so high up here. So high.
We sit side by side in bed, hands clasped, until finally it is time to speak. Every nerve in my body is keen. It’s as if my voice has its own power, like I’m raised on a pulpit, reciting the Truth.
‘All this time I’ve been waiting, Daniel, waiting for something to happen. I tried to believe in fate. George might be killed, or a bomb would drop on us. And after Lizzie was born . . . I thought I was dying and I wasn’t scared. I was happy, in a way, to die. It seemed a fair punishment, for our sins.’
Daniel breathes in sharply. ‘But it’s not a sin, is it? We said it wasn’t a sin to love someone.’
‘It’s a sin to cause pain. Our pleasure causes pain. It hurts so many people. And so when I thought I would die, I felt relieved, somehow. But it wasn’t to be. Fate didn’t let me die. I wasn’t brave enough for the river.’
‘The river? Christ, Hannah, I couldn’t live without you. I couldn’t lose you—’
‘You don’t have to live without me. We have to make fate happen; that’s what I’ve realized. It’s up to us. It has been all along.’ I pause. ‘It’s the only way we can be together. It’s better for Alice and Teddy. They can go back to their nana.’
He falls silent. I think he understands.
‘And Lizzie?’ His voice is low and steady, but I can feel a tremor in his fingers as he grasps my hand.
‘She comes with us. I won’t have her in the workhouse.’
A storm rips the sky that night. We cling to each other, one body, in union. Hailstones crash down onto the rooftops and the street. I climb from the bed to stand at the open window. Giant hailstones, the size of pigeon eggs. I put out my hand to catch one and it strikes, flat and heavy in my palm.
When the candle gutters, we light another. Daniel uses the flame to light a cigarette. He stands at the fireplace, smoking. I sort through the papers in my toffee tin, the trinkets and the keepsakes, the buttons in a twist of white tissue paper.
40
Next morning he goes to Beaumont’s for his final shift. The sleepless night has sharpened his senses. The gull’s cry is louder; the engine fumes are stronger; the gravel on the pavement pricks at his worn soles. As he walks along the dock road, he remembers the passage in Tess of the d’Urbervilles when Tess thinks of all the years she has lived through her death date, ‘a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it’.
How strange to know the date of his own death.
All his hopes, his dreams of their being together lie useless and broken, frail as feathers on the tide. He has failed Hannah, failed his children.
Oxalic acid was Hannah’s idea. ‘“Found naturally in rhubarb leaves,”’ she read to him from her herb book. Her voice was determined, no hint of hysteria. ‘“A mild laxative if taken moderately, but in concentration it is highly toxic.”’ He uses oxalic acid most days at work; a few drops on a rag cleans the rust from bolts, shines up a ship’s hull like nothing else.
After his shift he calls into the post office to send a package. He is returning his last book to Lady Tolland. It is Jude the Obscure, a first edition that went missing from her bookshelves fifteen years ago. Let her call the police now.
His throat is so dry. He finds a pub on a Limehouse back-street, almost empty. The landlord looks half drunk, and when he pulls Daniel’s pint, he places it on the bar and declares it’s on the house. ‘I’m celebrating,’ says the landlord. ‘My daughter just had a baby. Our first grandson.’
Daniel smiles and looks around in case there is anyone he recognizes. Is it worth the risk? He checks himself: there is no risk. He can say what he likes now. ‘I’ll drink to that. My wife’s had a little girl.’
‘Is that so? We’ll wet both babies’ heads. Your good health!’
The certainty of death, the bizarre euphoria of the previous evening – all that dissolves as he sits at the bar drinking his pint of stout. It is surreal. Here they are, celebrating, when tomorrow his baby will be dead. Tomorrow his two children will be orphans. Alice and Teddy will have lost their mother, their little sister. He allows himself to believe, momentarily, that this pact he and Hannah have formed is nothing but monstrous fantasy. Perhaps they can find a way through the problem. Perhaps there is an alternative.
His thoughts hurtle and collide. He grips the tiny bottle in his pocket, the cork bound tightly in rags in case the acid should leak.
Self-sacrifice, Hannah calls it, not suicide. God knows it is commonplace enough. Body in the dock! – when the shout goes up, it gathers a crowd, but the interest soon seeps away, even as the corpse’s clothes dry in the br
eeze.
Hannah says she saw a drowned woman at the age of six, the body of her own aunt. But now she understands Auntie Beatrice, admires her courage.
It is the right thing to do, the honourable thing. Alice and Teddy can go home to Sabbarton Street. Sam and Maddie will be happy in Kent. Their children will thank them in the long run: the shame will be forgotten.
The alternative? He finishes his pint and sets out the likely sequence of events as though he were placing dominoes on a board. Daniel, drowning in the mud of some godforsaken shell hole. Hannah, destitute, forced into the workhouse, where her children would be wrenched from her. All of them dying, alone, apart.
He wanted her entirely, didn’t he? Nothing could be more complete.
There is no alternative.
The landlord pours him another pint and he is grateful for this small ceremony.
In the midst of life we are in death.
41
‘We’ll have a chat tonight,’ I tell the children. I sit down in the middle of the palliasse and pat the sheet either side of me. ‘Come for a cuddle with Mummy.’
They wriggle up, Alice on my left side, Teddy on my right. I feel their heads resting against me, the heat from their hair. This is good, they’re thinking. A cuddle with Mummy. A chat.
Can they feel my body trembling? I gulp a deep breath, try to chase down the wild vibration in my chest, the cry that would bellow and roar if I let it escape. I must keep my head. I must give them this tiny gift.
‘You miss Nana dreadful, don’t you?’
Alice nods. Teddy strokes his cheek with his Ducky.
‘Hasn’t it been a funny adventure, moving up here, changing schools? But if it don’t work out for the best, well . . . perhaps you’ll go back to Auntie Jen’s after all.’
Alice’s head jerks up. ‘Really?’ she says. ‘Soon?’
‘Quite soon, maybe.’ I grip them tighter to me. ‘I want you to be happy. You have to remember that. Alice, Teddy? I want you to be happy.’ They both nod and snuggle in firmer.
