For a few minutes the fire-watchers live up to their name—four dark figures stamped against a moonlit sky, standing sentinel on the roof of the cathedral while the edges of the city begin to curl up and burn.
SEPTEMBER 20, 1914
The restaurant is dark and noisy. Harriet pauses in the doorway, trying to get her bearings. The last of the daylight leaks past her, and the people seated in the darkened room look over to where she stands with the door still open behind her.
They are two different places, thinks Harriet, stepping into the building. Outside, under the windy sky. Inside, with the tables holding a wreckage of glasses, the tilt of flame in the grate. One place is solitary. One place is social. Harriet is not sure which world she prefers, but Owen has already spotted her and is waving her over to a table in the corner where he sits with his parents.
Harriet can tell, even before anyone speaks, that the evening isn’t going well. Owen’s father has his hat on his lap, fingers worrying the brim. Owen’s mother stirs her tea in tighter and tighter circles.
“Harriet,” says Owen, his voice overflowing with relief. He springs to his feet and pulls a chair out for his wife. “I thought you’d never get here.” His fingers brush Harriet’s shoulders as she sits down, and even in that small touch she can feel his desperation.
“Have you ordered?” she says brightly. “Has anyone looked at the specials?” There’s a board on the wall at the end of the room with the daily specials chalked onto it in thick white letters.
Harriet knows that Owen’s parents don’t approve of what their son has just done, or of his marrying so young, but it still seems rude that they are sullen and unhappy every time the four of them have a meal out together. It isn’t fair. Harriet presses her leg against Owen’s under the table, and he presses back.
“Well, I’m famished,” she says. “I hope there’s steak and kidney pudding tonight.”
“Mummy,” says Owen. “What will you have?”
“I haven’t had much of an appetite lately,” says Owen’s mother. She clatters her teaspoon down on her saucer.
“Nothing?” says Owen. “I know you like the liver.”
“And you also know that I can’t eat when I’m upset. You know that very well.”
“Emily,” says Owen’s father sternly, as though reprimanding a child.
There’s a silence during which Harriet tells herself not to blurt out something she’ll regret later, but she is only partially successful.
“Owen is doing this for all of us,” she says. “And I’ve never been more proud of anyone.”
Owen’s father looks over at Harriet, and then at his wife. “She’s right,” he says. “If I was young enough I’d be in uniform myself.”
Harriet tries to carry Owen over the threshold. He had car ried her across the night before and done a better job of it. For someone so thin, Owen Marsh is surprisingly heavy, and Harriet sways and stumbles as she struggles with her hus band into the sitting room of their rented flat on Berkeley Road. Last night he had carried her slung in his arms like a sleeping child, but she can only manage to clasp him around the waist and shuffle him along, a few inches off the ground.
“You’ll never make it to the bedroom,” says Owen. They’re both drunk. After Owen’s parents had left the restaurant, Owen, in his new uniform, had been stood a pint by practi cally everyone in the room.
“Of course I will,” says Harriet, but she promptly drops him by the fireplace and then falls on top of him.
It is Owen’s last night at home. In the morning he is to be shipped out to Europe. He will travel by train and ship to France and receive basic training there, behind the lines, before being sent into battle. Britain has only been in the war for a month, and Harriet and Owen have only been married for two. It all seems very fast. But she believes him when he says it will all be over by Christmas, and she is proud of her husband’s ardent patriotism.
“Did a spaniel buy me a drink?” asks Owen. “Tonight when we were out, was that a spaniel in the corner by the bar?”
“Dogs have no money,” says Harriet. “And no pockets to keep their money in.”
“He had a spaniel nose, all turned up at the end.”
“The end?”
“What?”
Harriet and Owen start giggling, and then fall asleep on the floor of the sitting room, flopped over each other like puppies in a litter. They wake to the dark and start to make love where they lie, on the patch of carpet in front of the cold fireplace.
The wool of Owen’s uniform is stiff and unyielding. The buckle on his belt requires two hands to undo. “I hope I never have to get out of this in a hurry,” he says.
Their bodies fit together perfectly. When they kiss, their chins notch exactly against one another. It seems miraculous to Harriet that she has been given this much happiness, and even more miraculous that she is learning to take it for granted.
Owen kicks away the last pieces of his uniform and rolls on top of Harriet, squashing the breath out of her. Over his shoulder she can see the sky lightening in the window, changing the shape of the darkness every few moments. Now it looks like the mane of a lion. Now it looks like a sail.
Owen’s skin is soft and he smells of cigarettes and stale beer. Harriet licks his shoulder and then bites it, making him flinch. He has made the mistake of pinning her before she has removed her panties, and he is exerting great effort to do this now but not getting much result.
“Help me out,” he begs, leaning his forehead, exhausted, against Harriet’s. “Your uniform is even harder to get out of than mine.”
In the morning, Harriet makes tea while Owen shaves. She brings her cup of tea from the kitchen, stands in the doorway of the bathroom, watching him. He is a careful shaver, thorough. At eighteen he has only been shaving for a few years, and he still treats it as though it is a privilege. He dips the razor in the basin of hot water after every stroke. Every few strokes he pauses to regard himself in the mirror, turning to the right and then the left to make sure he hasn’t missed a hair. He is beautiful, with his dark hair and blue eyes, and Harriet thinks that he is much more beautiful than she is, and this thought suddenly makes her afraid.
“Your tea’s getting cold,” she says.
“How do I look?” Owen turns toward her, holding the dripping razor. He hasn’t finished dressing, wears the trousers of his uniform but is bare-chested, his skin flushed from the steam in the bathroom.
“Lovely. Like a rose.”
Owen grins. “Flatterer. How much time do we have before my train?”
Harriet grins back. “Now it’s your turn to carry me over the threshold.”
They have decided to treat the morning like an ordinary morning, but they can’t find their usual banter as they walk to the station. Owen’s hand is clammy in Harriet’s, and she keeps tripping on the pavement. Her head hurts from the drink last night and the brightness of this morning. She barely sees where they are going.
The station is noisy, lively with soldiers and their families. There’s a small military band playing at one end of the platform, and the train is already in, hissing and shaking like a live thing. The soldiers on board are whooping from the open windows, raucous with nerves and emotion.
Harriet grips Owen’s hand tightly in her own. She had thought there’d be more time than this in which to say goodbye.
There are flags hanging above the station platform, above the cluster of families, each family encircling a young man in uniform.
“I wish your parents had come,” says Harriet.
“I don’t.”
“But it’s wrong for them not to see you off.”
“It isn’t, if one of them doesn’t want me to go. Besides, the war won’t last long. Everyone knows that.”
Owen suddenly glances around in alarm at all the people on the station platform. “Harriet,” he whispers. “I’ve never even been to Europe.”
Harriet looks down at the kit bag he carries in his hand. She had
slipped a pair of her panties in this morning, while he was busy shaving—those panties he had struggled so hard to take off her last night. Despite her anxiety it makes Harriet smile to think of Owen finding them there when he is in France.
“Do you love me?” she asks, but the train whistle blows and Owen doesn’t hear the question. Or maybe he does. He drops his bag and embraces Harriet so passionately that she can’t ask him again. For a brief moment she holds on to him. His body feels so thin and fragile under the bulk of his uniform. Then he sprints down the platform, looking for an open carriage door. The train pulls out of the station with one long, last blast of the whistle.
Outside the station, Harriet realizes that she doesn’t quite know how to get home. Coventry is Owen’s city, not hers, and they have only been living here since they married in July. She hasn’t been to the station before, has always relied on her husband to navigate for them. Now Harriet stands at the corner of Eaton and Park, not sure which way to turn. She’s too shy to ask the people pushing past her, so she looks up, finds the spire of St. Michael’s, and heads toward that. The spire is the tallest shape on the horizon, and if she walks to the church surely she will recognize a landmark in the central section to guide her home.
Maeve rubs the back of her neck and thinks that the closer one is to something, the less one really sees of it. She lays her pencil down. She’s getting a crick in her neck from looking up at the medieval spire, and she has realized she’s too close to it to draw it properly. But if she’s entranced by something, Maeve wants to be right next to it. She doesn’t want to back up and allow other objects to fill her vision.
What a tease perspective is. She should have stuck with one of the arched windows.
She crosses the cobbled street to get a better angle on the spire and, sure enough, a young woman soon blocks her view of it.
“Pardon me,” says the woman. “I wonder if you can help me? I’m looking for Berkeley Road.”
The woman is roughly the same age as Maeve. She has dark hair pinned up under a straw hat decorated with flowers, and she’s wearing a pale yellow dress, silk stockings, and shiny black shoes. She looks dressed up for a wedding.
“Sorry,” says Maeve. “I’m not from here. I’m a visitor, same as you.” She has come to Coventry to stay with her old school friend Charlotte, only to find out too late that Charlotte has invited Maeve to act as a cover so that she can spend all her time with her suitor, a soldier named Frederick Pearce.
“But I’m not visiting,” says the young woman. “I live here. We moved north a few months ago so my husband could go into business with his father. The bicycle business,” she adds. “He signed up, and I was just at the station, seeing him off.”
It is a lot of information to give to a stranger. The young woman seems close to tears.
“You must be worried,” Maeve says. They are perhaps the same age, but the young woman seems childlike, vulnerable. “I think I can help you out. I’m sure I remember seeing your road on my way down here.” Maeve has lost her feeling for the spire anyway. She can always start again. She snaps her sketchbook shut and tucks her pencil behind her ear.
Harriet smiles at the gesture. “You look like a carpenter.” She likes the easy gestures of this woman, the way she wears her hair bobbed short.
“Well, good,” says Maeve. “I like being mistaken for someone useful.”
They start off down Broadgate. The street is busy with shoppers. Maeve has no idea where Berkeley Road is, but she always tries to act with more confidence when she feels uncertain. She has successfully manoeuvred through her life thus far by doing this, so she strides out, forcing Harriet to break into a trot to keep up.
They pass a row of Tudor shops, each one supporting a top storey of black timbers and white plaster. There is a line of people outside the butcher’s, and several delivery carts pulled by horses moving slowly down the street.
“Oh, look at that,” says Maeve as a motor bus clatters by. “A double-decker. I haven’t been on one yet, have you?”
The motor bus has only this year been introduced onto the medieval streets of Coventry. It is such a recent addition to city life in Britain that it is still a shock to see one.
“Shall we?” says Harriet, and the two young women look at each other and grin, grab their skirts and break into a run, chasing the bus down Broadgate until it stops. They clam ber on, laughing and digging into their purses for their fares. “Berkeley Road,” says Harriet.
They sit up top, in the open, under the bright sky. The bus lurches into gear and they shriek with delight, clutch on to the seat-back in front of them.
It seems to Harriet as though they are flying through the streets of Coventry. She throws her head back and watches the clouds, the blue blur of the morning. She can still feel the press of Owen’s body against hers, the taste of their last kiss. She doesn’t even know the name of the woman sitting beside her, but it doesn’t matter. Owen will be home by Christmas. She is young and in love. Harriet, reckless with feeling, whoops from the top of the bus, the way the soldiers had sung out as the train pulled away from the station. It feels, for this moment, that it is she who is leaving Coventry, not Owen.
Maeve can’t believe how high up they are, level with the top storeys of the buildings lining the road. She can catch glimpses of the furniture in the rooms above the shops. In one room she sees a painting of a horse on the wall. In another room she watches a woman hurry across to the window to stare out at the bus clattering past. It is as though Maeve has become a giant in a children’s story, thundering along the ground, as tall as the tallest tree.
Harriet and Maeve tumble off the bus, giddy from their adventure. Maeve leads them around a corner, down a street, around another corner.
“There,” she says triumphantly, and sure enough, when Harriet looks up she sees the sign for Berkeley Road.
“Would you come and have a cup of tea with me?”
“I’d love to,” says Maeve, “but I have to meet my friend Charlotte for my daily briefing.”
“Your what?”
“It’s a long story.” Maeve looks at Harriet and realizes that she hasn’t done anything for ages that was as much fun as the ride in the double-decker bus, that these days in Coventry have been lonely ones for her. “Oh, bugger Charlotte,” she says. “She’ll just have to wait.”
It feels strange to Harriet to walk into the flat and know that Owen won’t be there, that she can’t expect him back at the end of the working day. Suddenly the rooms seem full of him, and she pauses uncertainly before entering the kitchen.
“Do you think the war really will be over by Christmas?” she says.
“Why not?” Maeve likes the simplicity of the flat. There’s no clutter. The only photograph above the fireplace is a wedding picture. She follows the straight line of the mantel to the straight line of the window ledge to the straight line of the worktop. “No one wants a war.”
Harriet fetches the tea things. When she goes to the cupboard to get the cups, she sees Owen’s teacup from this morning still sitting on the worktop. Perhaps she shouldn’t have supported his decision to join up? She could have stopped him from going. He would have listened to her if she’d told him not to enlist. But all the young men were enlisting.
Maeve comes into the kitchen. “Your hat,” she says. She reaches up and straightens it, her hands resting for a moment on Harriet’s shoulders.
The touch calms Harriet. She closes her eyes, opens them again. The feeling of uncertainty has passed. She removes her hat, puts the dirty teacup from this morning into the sink, and places clean cups, a teapot, and a few slices of cake on the tray.
They drink their tea by the front window, side by side on the settee, as if they were still riding up high on the bus.
“What were you doing when I interrupted you this morning?” asks Harriet.
“I was drawing.”
“What?”
“St. Michael’s spire.”
“Will you
show me?”
Maeve hesitates. She has never shown anyone her drawings. She’s not sure that she wants to. It’s her private world. And the work isn’t finished.
“Please,” says Harriet, and she seems so genuinely interested that Maeve reaches into her bag and brings out the little sketchbook.
“It’s no good,” she says as she opens the book. “The perspective is completely off.”
Harriet looks at the detail on the church spire, detail she has never noticed herself. Each piece of stone has been drawn by Maeve as either shadow or light. Her talent fills Harriet with wonder and admiration. The church looks more alive in the drawing than in reality.
“It’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s even more beautiful than the real church.”
“I should be off,” says Maeve, but she is flattered by Harriet’s response. She tears the sketch from her book, passes it over to Harriet. “Keep it,” she says. “I’d like you to have it.”
Harriet holds the drawing in both hands, looks at it carefully. “Thank you,” she says. “Will you come and see me again?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow perhaps?”
“Or the day after. No later than that.”
“You’ll remember how to get here?”
“I got us here this time, didn’t I?”
When Maeve reaches the road, she turns and waves. Harriet waves back from the upstairs front window. It is not until Maeve is at the corner of the street that she realizes they never exchanged names.
Charlotte has already eaten her lunch by the time Maeve gets to the café on Broadgate.
“I waited,” she states. “And then I didn’t.”
Maeve has always admired the cavalier attitude of Charlotte Benson, but today it merely seems selfish.
Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle Page 23
