by Anna Hope
The slow break of his smile.
I loved you, she thinks. I loved you, Fraser.
In two weeks, she thinks, I will be thirty.
She breathes in, catches the faint scent of the earth, feels that same sun, the unexpected blessing of it—on a day in November—warm against her skin.
I am alive, she thinks. I am alive. I am alive.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Beside her, in the silence, Hettie can feel Fred standing, held rigid.
She wants to ask him whom he thinks of. Who peoples this silence for him? Whose are the names that he calls in the night?
She cannot believe that she has not wanted to ask this before.
Facing her across the street are hundreds of men, their hats held to their chests, and hundreds of women. Many of them, both men and women, are weeping; and if hundreds stand here in Hammersmith then they are everywhere, all over this city, all over this country, and beyond, across the sea, in France.
And what of the girl with the long brown hair? Where is she now? Standing on a street like this? In a village somewhere? Is her hair still long? Or has she cut hers, too? And the other women, the older women, the women who sold themselves over and over again. What has become of them?
They don’t seem so very far from her somehow.
And Ed?
It is hard to think of him. It scrapes her heart.
Is he, too, standing on a street like this? Somewhere not too far away? Is he with his family? Or is he where she left him, bruised and alone?
She hopes not.
Beside her, Fred shifts. Hettie looks up. His face is calmer, his body less rigid. She reaches up and slips her arm through the crook of his elbow. At first, he flinches, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t brush her off; he simply brings his hand down, to cover hers. They stay like that, arm in arm. She looks back at the faces, ranged across the street.
Bearing witness. This is what they are doing. They are witnessing one another, all of them. This is why they are here.
. . . . . . . . . . .
As the silence stretches, something becomes clear. He is not here. Her son is not inside this. And yet it is not empty; it is full and loud with grief: the grief of the living. But her son is not here.
A bugle sounds, the “Last Post,” tinny and distant from where they stand. As the final note dies away, the crowd exhales. For a long moment people stay where they are, as though reluctant to move. Then, very faintly at first, in the distance, comes the sound of traffic, the hum of life resuming, increasing. A known sound, and yet it sounds like an affront.
Where they stand, at the front of the crowd, no one has yet moved. Then, there is an easing; the crowd loosens, people are moving now, along the back of the pavement.
“Where are they all headed?” says Ada.
“To the Cenotaph,” says a young woman to her left, holding a spray of lilies. “To lay their flowers for the dead.”
“Shall we go, too, then?” Ivy says.
Ada turns. The queue is already twenty people wide, people shuffling forward step by tiny step. It will take hours to reach the end of the road.
“Do you want to?” she says to Ivy.
“Yes.”
She hesitates. “Do you mind if I don’t? There’s somewhere else I want to go.”
She doesn’t elaborate, and Ivy doesn’t push her—doesn’t ask where, just gestures to the flowers in her hand. “Shall I lay those for you, then?”
“Yes, please,” she says. “You’ll be all right?”
“I’ll be fine.” Ivy nods, takes the daisies from her.
“They could do with a drink.”
“Me, too. A stiff one.” Ivy smiles. “When I get home. You come and find me if you like.”
“Thanks,” Ada smiles. “I might just do that.”
They hug briefly.
“Go on with you now,” says Ivy, giving her a gentle push.
It is hard going at first, moving against the tide of people, but once she has fought her way to the back of the crowd and is able to find a bit of space to breathe in, Ada turns, to see if she can see Ivy in the crowd to wave good-bye.
It is then she sees him.
He is standing twenty paces away from her, his pregnant wife and little girl by his side. A small man: shoulders held against the world, pinched, pale blue eyes; thin little mustache barely covering his lip. He is standing in the queue for the Cenotaph. He has a bunch of blue flowers in his hand. He hasn’t seen her yet.
She takes a step toward him. Just then, he looks up and he sees her. His hand tightens on his daughter’s arm. The little girl cries out and twists from his grip.
At first, from the horrified look on his face, she thinks that he will leave his family and run. But he doesn’t. He stands his ground, his face settles, and he holds her gaze. He seems to grow taller, as he pulls his daughter close again and holds his pregnant wife by the arm.
She doesn’t call out to him. Doesn’t go toward him. She just nods, as though to someone that she once knew, and then turns, and walks, slowly, steadily, the other way.
. . . . . . . . . . .
After the funeral is finished, after the congregation has gone, after the king and queen and the prime minister and the mothers who lost all their sons, and the mothers who lost all their sons and their husbands, too, have gone. After the young girl who has lost nine brothers—killed or missing—and wrote especially to be asked to come, and the hundred blinded nurses and the MPs and the lords who have lost a brother or a son have gone. After all of these have gone, Westminster Abbey is closed for a brief time.
Four wooden barriers are erected, and four lit candles are placed around the grave. They are expecting crowds.
A young chorister, relieved of his duties for the day, steals out of the room where his companions are changing from their robes. He doesn’t tell anyone where he is going. The door into the nave has been left ajar. The young boy slides around it. No one is in the vast, echoing church. The candles are the only light. Above him the roof stretches into infinite space. He walks over to the wooden barriers, his heart thumping. Earlier, during the ceremony, from where he was standing in the choir, he couldn’t see the coffin. Now he wants to see.
He ducks beneath the barriers, and on hands and knees crawls to the edge of the hole. In the grave, quite far down, he can see the casket, covered with a flag. From here, the candlelight hardly touches its red, white, and blue.
He thinks of his brother: of the last time he saw him, in his uniform; how tall he looked, how fine. He can remember him clearly, even though he was small then—can remember how much he wished that he were old enough to join him in the war.
War. Something in the word makes him shiver. A good shivering. The sort that tells him that some day, when he grows up, he might get his chance.
Then, the great doors at the end of the abbey are opened again and pale November light floods the floor. The boy gets to his feet and crawls under the barriers, darting back into darkness. Before he slips away, he sees, coming toward him, a great procession of people, two abreast, flowing across the abbey floor.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Evelyn stands in front of the mirror, holding a dress up to her chin, turning skeptically in the light. It is a deep red. She hasn’t worn it for years, but it is well cut. She supposes it will have to do.
Behind her Doreen appears in the doorway, flushed from the outside air, her arms folded across her chest. “Going out?”
“Oh God. I don’t know.” Evelyn flings the dress down on the bed and sits beside it. “I’d forgotten what a fandango it all is.”
Doreen sits down beside her on the bed, looking amused. “Am I allowed to ask where it is you’re going?”
Evelyn reaches for her cigarette case. “Dancing. Supposedly.”
Doreen raises an eye
brow. “Whereabouts?”
Evelyn takes a deep drag. “Hammersmith.”
“The Palais?”
“Mmmm.”
“And with whom … ?” Doreen smiles.
Evelyn tips her head back. “A man.”
“Well,” Doreen’s smile spreads. “That’s a good start at least. What flavor of man might he be?”
“From work. He’s a man from work.”
“Well, isn’t that a turn up for the books.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” says Evelyn, quickly, crossly.
“’Course not.” Doreen is still smiling.
“What?” says Evelyn. “What? Stop looking at me like that.”
But Doreen doesn’t stop. So Evelyn stands up, lifting the dress and holding it up to her chin. “What do you think?”
. . . . . . . . . . .
Ada gets off the bus a couple of stops before home and walks down empty streets toward the canal. The mild sun is still hanging in the sky, and as she walks down the lichen-covered steps to the towpath, she feels a lift. She has always loved it down here, ever since she was a girl, when she used to come with her father to feed the ducks—loved the weed and water smell of it, the rampant scramble of green by the side of the path. She turns left, feeling the sun on her back, then tucks herself into the side to wait while a barge comes under the bridge. The bargeman lifts his cap to her. “Afternoon.”
His boat is a shock of color, painted brightly in yellow, red, and blue. His bridled, blinkered pony’s breath is sweet in the afternoon air.
She passes under the bridge and sees the gas towers ahead, half full, their latticework etched gray against the sky. Nearing the allotments, she can smell woodsmoke. As she turns up the path that leads along the backs of the gardens, two fat wood pigeons take to the air. She passes windfall apples, crisp, browned brambles, and empty, neatly tended plots.
Soon enough, she sees him. He has his back to her, kneeling by a bed, trowel in hand. She stays just outside the gate, watching as he bends forward, worrying something out from the soil. His jacket is off; he is in his shirtsleeves, and patches of damp bloom beneath his arms. There’s a small pile of vegetables beside him on the ground. To his right, a low bonfire burns. She bends and opens the latch gate, taking a couple of steps toward him. He doesn’t turn at the sound, although she knows, from the way he stills, that he has heard her. He stands slowly, wiping down his hands, and walks over to a table where he lays the trowel out. Only then does he turn.
“Hello.” She is the first to speak.
“Hello.” He reaches up, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“Been standing there long, then?”
“I just arrived.”
He nods. “It’s not like you to come down here.”
“Well.” She holds her arms across her chest, self-conscious, dressed as she is in her mourning. She reaches up and takes the hat off, smoothing her hair. She holds the hat in front of her, looking around at the other plots. “There’s not many people about.”
He shakes his head. “No one all day. I thought I’d take advantage of it. I got a lot done. Set up for the winter now.”
She can see that the beds have been freshly raked and covered over with netting that is pegged into the ground. A large pile of cleared brambles and leaves waits to go on the fire. There’s an air of quiet calm and order to it all.
“There’s another squash just come through.” Jack points to the vegetables on the ground. “Thought we’d seen the last of them.”
The squash sits surrounded by a small, muddy pile of vegetables. A bright orange, streaked with yellow and green, it is an even deeper color than the one he brought her on Sunday. He goes to the fire and kneels down beside it, leaning in and raking the embers until they glow with heat.
She comes to stand opposite him. “Were you here, then?” she says slowly, her throat dry. “Is this where you were last night?”
He looks up at her and nods once, slowly.
Relief floods her. “Where did you sleep?”
“Shed.”
“Were you warm enough?”
“I was pissed enough.”
She laughs at that. The air between them eases a little. She steps closer to the flames, holding her hands up to warm them. “Can I put some leaves on?”
He looks up at her, surprised, and gestures yes.
She goes over to the pile of the leaves, gathers an armful of their red and yellow and brown, and throws them onto the flames, which lick them, until they catch and flare briefly, beautifully, before curling and spitting in the heat. Gray smoke curls into the still air. She breathes it in.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She looks across at him. His gaze is steady, watching the leaves burn, his face warping a little in the flames. His cheeks are reddened and his eyes look swollen, as though he has been staring into the fire for a long time.
“No,” she shakes her head. “It’s me who should say that.”
“I’m not so sure.” He looks up at her now.
“I didn’t see you,” she says. “All this time. I was looking somewhere else, for something else, and I didn’t see you anymore.”
He takes this in. Takes her in. Nods, as if acknowledging the truth of it.
“You go up to town, then?” he says.
“Yes.”
“On your own?”
“With Ivy.”
He grunts. Sits back on his heels, a challenge in him. “And was it worth it?”
Was it worth it?
She doesn’t answer immediately. She thinks of the crowd. The press of so many bodies, so close together, the smell of them: of the silence, stretching: the noisy silence of grief. Of the boy, his wife, and his daughter and his blue flowers. Of turning away from him, and the feeling as she did so, as though she’d had her hand balled in a fist, held tight for years, and opened it, only to find that there was nothing inside. “Yes,” she says. “It was.”
He nods. “Well.” He pushes himself to his feet and walks over to the remaining brambles and leaves, turning with a great armful, which he throws into the fire, where they pop and crackle, their thin stalks twisting and coiling in the flames, flaring briefly high, and then fall, and the blaze is quiet once more. He picks up his jacket and pulls it on. The sun is setting over the gas tower behind him, the sky purpling with evening light.
“Jack—”
“What’s that?”
She goes to him then, and he lifts his arms to embrace her. She puts her head against him, her ear against his chest. She can hear his steady heart. She breathes him in. He smells of woodsmoke, his day’s work, and of himself.
. . . . . . . . . . .
At the station exit, Evelyn stops a young couple, “Excuse me. Do you have any idea where the Hammersmith Palais might be?”
The girl, dressed smartly in a cloche and woolen coat, stares at her as though she were touched in the head. “It’s right here,” she says. “We’re going there, too.”
They emerge to a queue that stretches fifty deep away from a building that looks like a tram shed.
“Thank you,” says Evelyn, mortified. Bloody hell.
She doesn’t want to stand near them, not on her own, not at the back of the queue, only to have them take pity on her and try to make conversation. “I just, must– go and buy some cigarettes.”
She ducks into the little kiosk at the side of the station and buys a packet of Gold Flakes, then takes them around the side and lights one up.
What in hell’s name is she doing here? She peers back around the corner. The young couple have already disappeared from view. People are streaming from the station to join the queue, which has lengthened until it is stretching down the block toward her, but it appears to be moving quickly, at least and no one at the top seems to be being turned away. She finish
es her cigarette and grinds it out under her heel, and then, almost as if she isn’t really doing it at all, Evelyn walks a couple of paces to join the line in the back.
They are young, most of them, horribly young.
She fingers her collar, aware of the red dress under her coat.
She has lost too much weight—it no longer fits. She wishes she weren’t wearing it, wishes she had never put it on. The color is all wrong: too red. Whoever thought of wearing red? And it will gape. She knows this with a sinking certainty. She has no bust anymore and the dress will gape.
She wants to go home.
Is she early or late? She cannot tell. Will Robin be inside waiting for her? She cannot see him out here. Will he see her first? Or will she have to stand there, looking for him, trying to find him among this crowd? How in the hell are these things done? They should have arranged a place to meet, at least. Suddenly she’s not even sure she can remember what he looks like, and everyone in this chattering, excitable queue looks so horribly young, and this is why, this is exactly why, she doesn’t come out: because places like these are for the young, for those who have yet to understand that pleasure is not their right.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Hettie can hear the chatter of the crowd massed outside as she files into the Pen and takes her place as Grayson stalks the line.
There’s a strange feeling about tonight—something bubbling under the surface. It’s in everyone: in the boys, sitting opposite them, in Grayson, as his eyes sweep up and down, in the barely contained excitement of the girls.
The Palais is looking its best. The cleaners have polished the floor to a deep shine, the glass panels are gleaming, and the dust has been dusted from the Chinese lamps. The doors at the back of the stage open, and the band files out. A ripple runs through the Pen as the musicians lift their instruments and start warming up. Hettie and Di and everyone else sit a little higher in their seats.
The trumpeter does a little solo, a little scale, ending in a trill. There’s a confidence in the band, a swagger tonight. Still, Hettie’s not sure she wants to hear jazz. She’d like some music to match her mood, this sweet-jagged melancholy mood that she’s had all day. This mood that, walking here, felt like carrying some precious liquid: something newly distilled that she didn’t want to spill: that was reflected back to her in the faces of the people she passed, in the last of the day’s unexpected sun.
