The blonde held out her hand and took his. He allowed her to do it without resisting. He couldn’t think what else to do.
‘Come on,’ she inveigled.
Her voice was even softer now.
‘Never mind the train. This is more important.’
He was vaguely aware of cries of encouragement and ‘well dones’ coming from somewhere. Was it the other women? Suddenly he pulled his hand away and said, ‘No really, sorry I can’t. Not today. I will in November. Honest.’
It struck him how outrageous the whole conversation was. Why should he be having to justify himself to her? The blonde’s face suddenly contorted again.
‘Coward,’ she said, spitting out the word. ‘Coward.’
Lewis moved to the right, to try to get round one of the tips of the horns but yet another woman moved to block his way. He was hemmed in by the women and now there was a curtain of onlookers beyond that.
‘Coward,’ the blonde spat again, and then taking a white feather about five inches long from her pocket, she pushed it into Lewis’ lapel.
‘Please, I must go,’ he said, as he tried again to get past them. He was conscious now of the feather in his lapel. He could see it on the edge of his vision. He would have tried to push his way through the women, but how was he to do that? They were women – he couldn’t lay hands on them; he couldn’t push them.
‘Coward,’ said the blonde again, still blocking his way, still looking up at him with eyes full of hatred. The other women took up the word and began to chant ‘Coward! Coward! Coward!’ The well-built woman turned to face the crowd and tried to get them to join in, directing them like an orchestra conductor. He attempted again to get past them, this time by turning away from them and going off to the side, but again there was a woman there. She had a man’s face and dull hair.
‘My son is in France,’ she said, looking at him with hatred on her face.
It occurred to Lewis that he should say, ‘So you’re his father, are you?’ to the woman but fear chased the thought out of his head again.
‘Come on now, ladies. Leave this poor lad alone.’
The middle aged man who spoke had a florid face, mutton chop whiskers and wore a top hat and morning coat. Lewis felt a strong hand take his arm and somehow steer him past or through the women. Suddenly they were behind and the man was saying, ‘You should be alright now, son. Go and catch your train.’
The man’s breath smelled of mints.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Lewis had begun to say, but already he was wondering what the man must think of him. ‘I’m not eighteen yet,’ he blurted out. ‘When I’m eighteen I’m going to enlist.’
‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me, lad.’
Lewis wasn’t sure exactly what this meant – whether the man believed him or not.
‘If I had a son I’m not sure I’d be keen to see him go.’
The words didn’t really make Lewis feel any better.
‘Stupid bloody cows,’ the man added. ‘Get along now and catch your train.’
Lewis turned to go.
‘Oh,’ said the man, reaching for the white feather and pulling it from Lewis’ lapel, ‘you won’t be needing this.’
The man placed the feather on the air, and let it go. It began to float softly to the ground. Lewis thought he should have said thank you again, but he was in too much of a hurry to get away from anybody who had witnessed what had just happened. His face burned as he made his way to the platform where the train was waiting. The words ‘Cornish Riviera Express’ were written on a wide band along the edge of the roof of each carriage. Lewis just wanted to be by himself, to find a compartment with nobody else in it, to escape.
But it wasn’t going to be possible. It was high summer and, even with a war on, people were going to the West and to the sea. The delay the women had caused him meant that many of the compartments were full. Eventually he found a seat in one of them, wedged between a fat woman and a young man in his twenties. Lewis put his bag on the rack overhead, took out his newspaper and buried his face in it.
Carriage doors were slammed, whistles blew and there was a hissing of steam. The train pulled out of the station and began to pick up speed. He wondered whether any of the other people in the compartment had seen what had happened in the station. It had been a huge commotion and he thought it most unlikely that somebody here hadn’t witnessed it. What if somebody remarked on it to him? And even if nobody did remark on it, and even if nobody had seen, surely they must all be wondering why he wasn’t in uniform. His face burned so much so that his eyes stung. He realised that he was sweating. He wanted to stand up and take off his jacket but was too embarrassed to do it and draw any further attention to himself.
It was a long time before he was actually able to read his newspaper. Even though he tried several times, the words refused to have any meaning. The incident in the station still consumed him, crowding everything else out of his mind. Finally, the gentle rhythm of the train seemed to calm him a little. He turned to the War news.
‘Determined British Bombardment’ ran the headline. ‘The activity which has prevailed for the last three days has now assumed the character of a definite and determined bombardment of the enemy’s positions along practically the whole of the British front’.
Lewis had been fifteen when the War had started. He had been as excited as everyone else about it, suddenly taking to reading the papers assiduously and following the troop movements on a map of France that had come free with one of them. Now, nearly two years later, he had come to the conclusion that a lot of what was in the papers was sound and fury, signifying nothing. Things happened, but ultimately nothing happened – except that lots of men seemed to die. There were no advances, there was no sense of progress towards an objective. For almost all of 1915, he had lost interest. But when 1916 dawned, his interest was renewed. He would be enlisting at the end of the year, so now he wanted to get a sense of what was going on and what it would be like.
Between what he had heard yesterday afternoon in the garden and what he was reading here, it sounded like something big was up. But some of the phrases in the paper made his blood run cold. ‘Gas Attacks Claimed To Be Unsuccessful’. ‘Liquid Fire On Verdun Salients’ was a headline and beneath it, ‘A series of very violent local attacks, preceded by intense bombardments and accompanied by jets of liquid flame, was directed by the enemy against the principal salients of our line.’ Maybe whatever was happening now would be successful and he would never have to face these things.
Lunchtime came and went. Margaret had made sandwiches of fresh white bread, thick, delicious ham and mustard for the journey. But he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by standing up to get them, or by eating them with all these people around him. So he sat there hungrily while all the other occupants of the compartment either ate the food they’d brought themselves or went off to the dining car. Outside the day was glorious and the train rattled along through the green countryside. Later, whether from hunger or the heat of the compartment or the shock of what had happened in Paddington, he felt a terrible weariness and wanted to sleep. But he didn’t want to fall asleep with all of these people around him, so he struggled to stay awake. The train passed through Devon and into Cornwall, but Lewis could take no pleasure in it.
The train pulled in to Truro in the late afternoon. Lewis was relieved to escape the compartment. Maybe in doing so it would help him to escape what had happened in London. The sun was still very hot. While he waited for the next train he finally ate the sandwiches.
4
‘Fowey – last stop.’
Lewis had dozed. The motion of the train and the heat inside it, coupled with everything that had happened earlier, had overtaken him in the end. He got up hastily, took his bag from the luggage rack and got off. A few minutes later, he was standing outside Mrs Middleton’s guest house.
It was a fine three-storey building painted pink with two bay windows on the first floor. The front
looked out onto the river. Lewis entered and found an attractive, middle-aged woman bustling around behind a wooden counter. Her hair looked like it had been newly done, she wore fresh make-up and was smartly dressed. It was the first time Lewis had ever checked into a hotel or boarding house by himself.
‘Mrs Middleton?’ he asked.
Her face blossomed into a warm smile.
‘Ah, you’ll be Mr Friday. I’ve got your room all ready, sir. I think you’ll like it – you’ve got a river view. I’ve given you one of our nicest ones since you’re staying with us for so long. Now, if you’ll just fill in your details in my book.’
She turned a large ledger towards him and handed him a pen.
‘How was your journey?’ she asked, as he wrote.
‘Fine, thank you,’ he said. Then added, ‘Tiring.’
‘Yes, London is a long way,’ she said.
You’ve no idea how far, thought Lewis. He finished writing and turned the book back to her. Without looking at it, she said, ‘And you’re all paid up, bed and breakfast and evening meal, for the first two weeks. After that you can just pay me a week in advance as you go. That alright?’
‘Oh yes, that’ll be fine, thank you.’
‘Now, if you’ll just follow me, sir.’
The stairs had a bright red carpet with yellow and green flowers on it and creaked occasionally as they went up. A smell of meat roasting came from the back of the house. As if reading his thoughts, Mrs Middleton said, ‘Dinner will be at seven, so you’ll have time to freshen up. It’s every evening at seven so if there’s some evening when you’re not going to be here, just let me know that morning before you go out, won’t you?’
‘Of course. Thank you. Though I can’t imagine a situation where that might arise.’
‘Well whatever you say, but just in case. Best to be on the safe side’s what I always say.’
They reached the second floor and walked along a short carpeted corridor. Then she opened a room with the number ‘6’ on the door and walked in ahead of him.
He was thankful to put the bag down. The room had a large window which overlooked the estuary. The top pane was down, the bottom one up and a tiny, warm breeze, smelling of salt and fish and the sea, stirred the net curtain.
‘I hope it’s to your satisfaction,’ said Mrs Middleton.
He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do to verify this, so he parted the curtain and looked out the window at the water and the gentle hill opposite.
‘It’s lovely,’ he said, ‘really lovely.’
It was as though he had passed a test, because now, suddenly, he wasn’t ‘Mr Friday’ or ‘sir’ any more.
‘Here’s your key, my darling – there’s a room key and a key to the front door. Not that you’ll need the second one. Our door is hardly ever locked. No, no need for that, you’ll be as safe here as if you were in God’s pocket. Now, I’ll give you time to freshen up and then I’ll see you at dinner. We all eat at the one table – well, that is, you do – my guests, and we’ve got a full house, so lots of interesting people to meet.’
With that she went out and closed the door.
Lewis’ heart sank at the mention of more people. He had hoped it would be more like a restaurant where he could have sat at a table by himself. Still, time to think about that later.
The room was furnished with a bed, a wardrobe, a washstand with a jug and bowl, a dressing table and a kind of desk. There was a spacious feel to it. On the walls were tinted prints of three English cathedrals – Salisbury, Wells and Winchester. Lewis leant on the window sill and looked out. There was a narrow quayside and then a flight of stone steps, just like the ones Dad had described, leading down to the river. A number of small boats bobbed around on the river. Most of them seemed to be rowing boats while one or two had a single mast in the centre and one had a triangular sail raised. Turning back into the room he bounced onto the bed and stretched out on it. It was very comfortable.
Opening his case, he took a framed photograph from it. The photograph was of a woman in her mid twenties. She was looking directly into the camera with an expression of great determination on her face. Lewis placed it on the bedside table. Then he took his diary from his case. The cover was dark green with a red embossed label on the front with the words ‘Lett’s No. 9 Diary 1916’ touched out in gold. He opened the marbled inside front cover, flicked through the pages and found today. Then he began to write everything that had happened.
Dinner at a table with a group of strangers turned out to be quite pleasant and not at all the ordeal that he had feared. Mrs Middleton had been so friendly towards him and he found that this was always good for his own confidence. He felt he was fitting in to this new world. That was the thing about shyness – you felt you didn’t belong. And so you didn’t want to draw attention to yourself. It was so stupid, of course, because by being shy, you drew enormous attention to yourself.
The other guests were all holidaymakers, but since Mrs Middleton had fed the children at an earlier sitting, there were only adults at the table. Also, since the guest house was quite big there were actually three long tables in the dining room. Lewis sat at a table with six others. Happily, the issue of his Army service came up almost immediately and, this time, in a very pleasant way.
There was a couple in their fifties, and as soon as Lewis sat down, the man said, ‘So – you’re on your own young man. Finished school, are you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Lewis, ‘I’m eighteen on the tenth of November and I’ll be joining up then.’
‘I say, well done, young feller. That’s the spirit. So you’ve got a few months to enjoy yourself before you go.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Wine, women and song, eh?’
‘George!’ said his wife admonishingly.
But she was smiling. Lewis could see she adored her husband.
‘Do you think I’ve come to the right place?’ asked Lewis.
He wondered if the man would think he was being too cheeky.
‘Of course, you have. No place like Cornwall, is there, Mrs Middleton?’
The landlady had just swept in from the kitchen carrying a large tureen of soup.
‘What’s that, m’dear?’
‘Our brave young man here will be going off to France in November. I was telling him that there’s no better place than Cornwall to enjoy himself before he goes.’
‘No, no better place at all,’ she agreed.
She reached in over their heads and placed the tureen on some cork mats in the centre of the table.
‘Now – help yourselves, m’loves.’
‘George – call me George’ – turned out to be a bit like Lewis’ Dad. He did just what Dad would have done – involving everybody in the conversation, asking just enough about them to appear interested but not nosy. When the wine came, he got the table to drink a toast to ‘brave Lewis’. Lewis enjoyed the evening immensely and the memory of the morning in the station began to fade. He was exhausted when he finally fell into bed and slept the sleep of the dead.
Next morning, he was up early and came down to breakfast just after seven. The dining room was deserted. Everybody else seemed to be lying in, but Lewis was anxious to go off and begin exploring. Mrs Middleton was already up and about and Lewis ordered from her. As she brought in a plate of delicious smelling sausages, bacon and eggs, she said, ‘I don’t know if you needed to know about the church, Mr Friday, it being Sunday and all, but the first service is at eight. You should just be able to make it after you’ve eaten. If you want to, that is, of course.’
Church had been the farthest thing from Lewis’ mind, but he took Mrs Middleton’s remarks as an instruction rather than information. After breakfast, he headed out the front door following the directions she had given him.
The air smelled of tar and rope and tidewater. At this hour birds still owned the town. Overhead seagulls laughed shrilly or ba-ba-barped. On a slipway, swans preened themselves while mallards moved among the
m or sat concentrating silently. Ahead of him in the street, two seagulls were having a tug-of-war with a brown paper bag. The contents suddenly spilled out and they dived into it, oblivious to Lewis as he stepped past them. He went down to the quayside before going into the church. There, on the top rail of an iron railing, a dark coloured bird sat, looking out at the estuary and the low sun, singing beautifully.
It was just before eight as he entered. A small crowd of mostly elderly people was scattered around the seats. The organist was playing. The interior was cool and had a musty, watery smell to it. Lewis took a seat midway up the church just to the right of the centre aisle. He hadn’t really intended to do this, this morning but he had already resolved – once the trip itself had been decided on – that he would explore every junction in the road, every seemingly interesting doorway, every seemingly random event that happened. As Mrs Middleton had opened this particular doorway, he had just stepped through.
As the congregation waited for the vicar to emerge, Lewis heard, from behind him, the sound of heels on the paving stones of the church. He glanced to his left and was just in time to see a woman walk past. He felt a tiny gust of perfume as she did so. He saw the curve of a cheek, an eyelash and heard the rustle of the material of her dress. In contrast with most of the other occupants of the church, she was brightly dressed. She was slim and wore a white, long-sleeved dress that came down to her calves. The sleeves were made of see-though, lacy material so he could see the outline of her arms. Beneath the wide brim of her hat with its orange ribbon, her hair was blonde and tumbled onto her shoulders. He watched her hips as her heels clicked on the flagstones. She chose a pew not quite at the front and six rows ahead of Lewis. She stepped in. He watched as she knelt, bowed her head and stayed like this for several minutes. Then she sat back on the seat with her spine very straight and waited with everybody else for the vicar to appear.
Lewis watched her for the rest of the service. The hat covered much of the back of her head so that only a few curls of golden hair peeped out here and there. There were the tiniest of indentations on each of the shoulders of her dress. He assumed these were from the straps of whatever she wore underneath. He wondered what her face was like and willed her to turn so that he could see it. He wondered whether she was alone – or had a husband – and whether he was at the Front. And did she have children? And where did she live? From the brief glimpse he had had of her, he thought she might have been in her thirties. She sat, knelt and stood at the various points during the service but always with her head facing forward. He thought she might be singing the hymns instead of mouthing them as Lewis was doing, but it was impossible to tell from the back. Only when the vicar spoke from the pulpit did she turn slightly to the left where the pulpit was, but even then her hair obscured any view he might have had of her face.
Starlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 1) Page 3
