The Undertow

by Jo Baker

  She reaches out to the doorjamb.

  “Back in the year fourteen, fifteen. We were—” He moves closer to her. “Mrs. Hastings? Are you well?”

  But the world contracts, goes tiny. She feels him lift the basket from her grip, takes her arm.

  “Mrs. Hastings. I am sorry.”

  She tries to shake her head, but everything spins and she just sinks. He puts his arm around her, turns the key. He lets them in.

  She is in the parlour. Her head rests against the wing of the chair. He stands in the window, looking out, through the net curtains, the fog, the street beyond. She blinks, stirs herself. He turns at the sound. She goes to push herself up, but her head reels. He comes over to her, puts his hand over her hand, where it rests on the arm of the chair.

  “Don’t get up.”

  She looks up at him. He lifts his hand away from hers, moves back a step.

  “You’ve had a shock.”

  The room is cold, dim, lit only by the cool light from the streetlamp outside. Her basket, with its three cakes and newspaper and bag of muddy spuds, is set beside her seat. She sees his worn boots on the green rug of the parlour floor. His suitcase is tucked in beside the card table, where they never play cards: the picture book lies on the green baize surface, with a red poppy, bought on Remembrance Day, laid on top if it.

  He stands, looking at her, his hat still on. He smiles. It must be difficult for the men, she thinks, to just keep on going on, through the days and weeks and years, through the emptinesses, the absences, the threads left trailing off in mid-air. To know there are people looking at you, resenting you, angry that you’re alive, when the man they love is dead.

  Her hat is pushed askew by the high back of the chair. She reaches up to take it off. She stabs the pin back into the felt, lets the hat drop onto her basket. She touches her hair.

  “Do sit down, please,” she finally thinks to say.

  He looks round a moment, then sits down in the other chair, facing her across the window.

  “You were with him, then,” she asks, “on the Goliath?”

  She is very conscious of the act of speaking, of forming the individual words.

  He nods.

  She leans forward and picks up the poppy. She rolls its wire stem between her fingertips, watches its paper head turn from side to side, a slow negative. They fade so quickly, real poppies, if you pick them. They can’t survive long indoors. They shed their petals, fall apart, dust the windowsill with fallen stamens, pollen.

  “He said, William said, that if he didn’t make it through, I should find you. He gave me the address, so I could come and see you, and pass his message on.”

  “There was a message?”

  Sully clears his throat. “He talked about you a lot.”

  The word comes out dry and dusty: “Oh?”

  A pause; then, “He said that you were beautiful.”

  Amelia blinks down at the poppy; it blurs and smears through the wet. “Oh.”

  “I didn’t believe, him, of course.”

  She looks up at him.

  He smiles at her. “I thought it was just the kind of thing men say.”

  She tries to smile back.

  “He missed you,” he says. He seems to hesitate a moment, rubs at the side of his nose. “He was desperate to get back.”

  He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, and takes something out. He holds it out towards her, and for a moment she just looks at it, a blur of bright blue and yellow. A postcard.

  “He wanted me to make sure you got this.”

  She puts her hand over her mouth.

  “Go on,” he says, reaching it closer to her. “It’s for you.”

  She leans forward and takes the card. It is a precise, piercing, miraculous pain. Her eyes swim. She looks down at the picture, the yellow city, the blue-inked sea and sky. Across the top, in neat small print, The Grand Harbour, Malta.

  “When did he—?”

  “On the way to Gallipoli. So …”

  So he never got the chance. She turns the card over. His sloping, careful copperplate.

  Thank you for your letter, she reads. She blinks away the swimming wet. The words fracture, fall apart—

  longing

  the child

  I thought

  you

  you

  Yours

  She runs her thumb over the pencilled name. William. It smudges slightly.

  “Can I fetch you something, Mrs. Hastings?”

  She closes her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s been a shock for you.”

  Her breath comes and goes, comes and goes.

  “Mrs. Hastings?”

  She shakes her head, presses tears away. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need for sorry, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “Won’t you take your hat off, Mr. Sully?”

  He lifts off his Homburg and reaches round to set it down on the card table. It lands with a soft thump on top of the picture book. She is starting to her feet, about to protest, but then she sees, with an inward twist, the exposed stub of his ear.

  He sees her see, and grimaces.

  “Oh,” she says. “You poor thing.”

  • • •

  When Billy bundles into the kitchen at teatime, his hands and face and knees are icy and he’s grubby from playing out in the street. He and Stanley Dunlop have a ropeswing slung from the lamppost on the corner, and they’ve been scuffing round and round on the cobbles, and swinging up into the air. It hurt the sore bits on his hands, so he tugged his sleeves right down and wrapped his arms around the rope instead, and he got the wool all stretched and snagged and little bits of rope-hemp stuck in the knitting, and he’s thinking he might just get away with it if he can stop her from noticing it today, because if you leave it long enough the sweater could go back to normal on its own account and he can brush the little bits out if he has to. The blood on his shirt is a different matter: he can’t do anything about that. But he is so hungry—hungry as a lion—and she promised him a special tea since it was his first day of work, and that outweighs the worry about the clothes.

  He hurries over to the sink to wash his hands before she has the chance to get cross about that too. He’s half aware that there’s someone extra in the kitchen, sitting on the far side of the table with his back to the dresser; he assumes it must be one of the Clack boys popped in for a lend of something from his grandpa. But even in passing he did notice that there was cold ham, and buttered bread, and mustard set out on the table. He’s scrubbing his knuckles with the grey-green soap, eager for his meal, when he notices the way Ma’s talking, all of a fluster and chatter, not like her at all, and that Grandpa isn’t saying anything, has somehow taken a step back—sitting at the range and just looking at the flames, and not saying a word: so it’s not one of the Clack boys.

  Billy turns round, hands dripping, to see who it is.

  The One-Eared Man, the nasty-mouthed man from the morning. He smiles at Billy.

  “Hello there, son.”

  Billy looks from him to Ma. She’s looking at the One-Eared Man all smiling. Then she turns to look at Billy. Her expression is warm and bright.

  “This is Mr. Sully,” she says. “He was a friend of your father’s.”

  Billy folds ham onto bread, and bites into it. His jumper is tickling his bare belly, because his shirt is soaking in the scullery. She’s made very little fuss about it, considering. Hadn’t even given him the look when he’d spun her a line—that he’d tripped on a paving slab and knocked his face on a lamppost. He can see it in his mind’s eye, a Stan Laurel trip and teeter and thump, and him sitting on the ground, face crumpling, scratching his head. She hadn’t even really seemed to listen. Just tugged him out of his jumper and shirt, dumped the shirt in the sink, and handed the jumper back to him.

  Billy watches the One-Eared Man talking to his ma. He doesn’t seem to remember Billy from that mornin
g. And Billy’s not going to bring it up—there are words that can’t be said in front of Ma; there are things that she is better off not knowing. But he knows. He knows what the One-Eared Man said to him. The kinds of things the One-Eared Man will say, in certain circumstances, if he thinks he can get away with it.

  He eats his vanilla slice, and the One-Eared Man has a bakewell, and Grandpa has a macaroon, and Ma says that she isn’t hungry, and that is perhaps true, because she’s all flushed and funny, maybe going down with something. He hopes not, because nothing’s any good when Ma is ill.

  The One-Eared Man has brought a postcard from his father. Billy’s ma lets him hold it. The handwriting is the same as the other cards, but then that’s how they teach you to do it at school: his own will be like that by the time he leaves. Grandpa holds the card a while, too. His eyes get shiny and he rubs at his nose like it’s itchy. His ma gets the picture book from the parlour, and takes the postcard off Grandpa, and fits it into place, the final postcard, this one softened and worn from being carried around for all these years.

  “And still there’s so many spaces,” Ma says, turning the blank leaves till she reaches the end.

  Then she stirs herself and has the One-Eared Man look through all the pictures with her, and he keeps telling stories, Oh I remember, I remember, but if you really listen they aren’t really about Billy’s father at all, they’re about the One-Eared Man.

  After a long half hour of this, Billy has run out of patience.

  “Why didn’t you die?” he asks.

  His grandpa looks up, looks from Billy to his ma. His face is all grin apart from the mouth.

  “Billy!” his ma exclaims.

  “But why didn’t he?” Billy turns to his ma. “If Father died, then why didn’t he?”

  “For goodness’ sake!” She turns to Sully. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “Amelia.”

  “Amelia.”

  Billy feels his cheeks go pink and hot.

  The One-Eared Man fixes his gaze on Billy. “I was rescued. Picked up out of the water by the Cornwallis. It all happened so quick, son, there was no getting out if you were below.”

  Billy folds his arms. “If my father was below, why weren’t you?”

  “I was on light duties, recovering from wounds.” The One-Eared Man reaches up to touch the stump of his ear: “This, son. This saved my life.”

  Grandpa sniffs, turns back to the fire. Billy’s ma lifts the teapot.

  “Tea?” she asks, to deflect attention.

  But Billy thinks, this is not fair: if the One-Eared Man was a stoker, then the One-Eared Man should have been down there, with Billy’s father, in the dark, stoking. The One-Eared Man should have died too, or they should both have lived. And if his father had survived, and was here, now, at home with them, Billy’s pretty sure this Sully fellow wouldn’t be.

  Billy doesn’t like it, not one bit.

  His ma brings him up to bed, and says what a day it’s been, him starting work and now this, and aren’t they lucky to have Mr. Sully here to see them? And even though she’s right there, she’s somehow far away too. She waits while he says his prayers. Billy clamps his hands beneath his chin.

  As I lay me down to sleep

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep

  He squints up at her, one eye open, one eye closed, and says, “When is he leaving?”

  She’s looking off across the room, towards the curtained window. “What’s that, sugar?”

  “He’s brought a suitcase.”

  “Oh, he just came to tea. He’s not staying here.”

  Billy nods. That’s all right then. Goes back to his prayer.

  And if I die before I wake

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  “Don’t you think it’s wonderful, though? A postcard from your father, after all this time?”

  He drops his hands. Looks up at her. She is all pink and glowy. She is never pink and glowy. It must be wonderful, if it makes her feel like this.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  She drops a kiss on his forehead. “Now go to sleep.”

  He stays awake though—listening to the voices through the floorboards. To his grandpa climbing the slow stairs, hours earlier than usual, and pausing at his door.

  “You all right, old fellow?” the old man whispers.

  “Yes, Grandpa.”

  “Good, good.”

  Billy listens to the old man make his way to his own room. He can hear the chink of the ewer, the clank of his belt buckle as he washes and undresses. Then the creak of bedsprings, and then again, as he turns to get comfortable. Lying down makes his lungs trouble him: he coughs hard, wet coughs. From downstairs, Billy can hear the dark rumble of the One-Eared Man’s voice, though he can’t make out the words. Next door the old man falls asleep—Billy can hear the thick, phlegmy breathing. He lies awake until he hears his ma and the One-Eared Man in the hallway—the man saying how wonderful, what a delight, though the circumstances of course, what a smart young man Billy has grown up to be, what a lucky man William was in this, if not in other matters. Quiet affirmations from his mother. The opening and closing of the door, and a farewell in the street. It is only then that Billy turns onto his side and lets himself soften into sleep.

  The next day, after school, when Billy gets back from climbing trees in the park and being shouted at by the parkie, the One-Eared Man is there.

  He stays to tea again, talking about himself, and eats three eggs and half a loaf of bread as Billy watches, biting his lip, wanting to ask what there will be to eat tomorrow.

  In bed, Billy lies awake, hot and seething, listening out for the voices in the hall, the opening and shutting of the door that means he’s gone. Why is she being so kind to him? Why is he allowed to eat up all their food? He can’t make sense of it.

  In the morning, loading up the bike at Cheeseman’s, he yawns so widely Mr. Cheeseman boggles his eyes at him and asks if he’s been burning the midnight oil. Midnight oil must be really beautiful, Billy thinks; blue as ink and rich as treacle and full of shivering colours. He says sorry, shakes his head clear of cobwebs, and swings up onto his bike and lets the cold November morning clear his head, and for a while is lost in the joy of the bike, and speed, and the buffetting of the cold damp air. But on the High Street he spots the One-Eared Man trudging along, collar up, hat down, slumped over to one side with the weight of his suitcase. He looks like he could have been walking all night.

  And that evening, while the One-Eared Man is pretending to read the paper, and Grandpa has taken himself out for a walk down to the wharves to see what ships are in, even though it’s November and dark and freezing and he could have done that earlier on his way back from the factory, she gestures Billy into the hall and asks him quietly to give her the money from Cheeseman’s round.

  “No,” he says.

  She looks startled. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I’ve not been paid yet.”

  “When will you be paid?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I think. I don’t know, really.” In fact, he hadn’t even thought about it. He’d forgotten that it was the point.

  She turns to get her coat. “I’ll call round there and ask for it now.”

  Billy catches her arm. “Don’t.”

  She glances down at his hand, then back up at his face, her eyebrows raised. He releases his grip.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “I should think so.”

  He scuffs his toe into the matting. “But, please don’t, Mother.”

  “Mr. Cheeseman won’t mind.”

  “It’s not that,” Billy says. Though it is partly that. But it’s more that she doesn’t care what Mr. Cheeseman thinks of her going round there asking for wages before they’re due, and she doesn’t care because it’s for the One-Eared Man. Billy shuffles, resentful, conscious of his smallness and youth, and queasy with the sense of not being quite so very important a
ny more.

  She slips an arm down her coat sleeve, tugs the yoke up onto her shoulder. “Then what is it?”

  “It’s him,” he says, and gets suddenly hot and flaps his arms around. “It’s that man. He’s, I don’t know—”

  “Shush.” She glances back to the kitchen door, leans in close to hiss. “For goodness’ sake.”

  “Why’d you like him so much?”

  “He was your father’s friend.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “What?”

  Billy straightens himself up to her. “I don’t.”

  “Do you think he’d lie?” She flinches back, coat still hanging half off. Her throat is going blotchy.

  “He can say anything,” Billy says. “How can we know that it’s the truth? We only have his word for it.”

  “No we don’t, Billy. We have your father’s word too; the postcard, you remember? He entrusted Mr. Sully with it.”

  “That’s what he says.” Billy shrugs. “He’s a liar, though. Bet he is.”

  She smacks him, open palm whack on the bare back of his leg. Her coat swings round like a pigeon’s tail, grey and shabby.

  He rubs at the sting. It doesn’t hurt, not really. His eyes water. It’s just the suddenness, the shock.

  “A little respect, Billy.”

  “He just eats our food and drinks our tea and sits in our warm—” his voice is rising, almost a wail “—and I don’t like it. I don’t want it any more.”

  “That’s enough. I’m not standing for this.”

  Her voice is like a water biscuit, parched and brittle. She fumbles her other arm into her sleeve, plucks the buttons through the buttonholes one after the other. Her lips are set. She doesn’t look at Billy.

  “Why now?” Billy asks. And it makes sudden, brilliant sense. “It’s been years and years. Why didn’t he come before?”

  Then she looks at him.

  “I see him walking the streets,” Billy says. “First thing, when I’m on my rounds.”

  “So what? What are you suggesting?” But she’s faltering now, he sees it, presses harder.

  “That he’s got nowhere else to go.”

  Her lips press tighter. “He’s here because of your father.”