Thursday, November 11, 1920
Jack isn’t there when she wakes; Ada knows this without opening her eyes, and when she pulls herself up in bed, even in the dark room she can see that his side of the blanket is smooth. Last night she stayed awake as long as she could, imagining him in the pub, drinking himself blind, rolling his cigarettes, speaking of her to the other men.
My wife.
My mad bloody wife.
Or worse.
But the empty space beside her fills her with thin fear. He has never, not in all their years of marriage, spent the night away from home.
Where did he go, then, when the pub closed? He must have found a bed somewhere. A thought comes to her, jolting her forward, as though someone has passed electricity through her back. What if he was with someone else? Another woman? A woman who had given him what she hadn’t, or wouldn’t, or had forgotten to? She thinks of the way he looked at her, last night; the contempt in his twisted face. You’re not a real wife. You’re a ghost. You’re nothing but a fucking ghost.
She knows that there are ways to find women. Easily. A man has only to look. How much would it cost? Less than her ten shillings? Her ten shillings to speak with the dead?
She had been ready, though, last night.
Too late; she had been ready too late.
She pulls the covers off and gets to her feet, goes over to the curtains, and pulls them back a little way, peering out into the darkened street. Most of the windows have their curtains drawn, and though the sky to her left is a faint trace lighter, the dawn looks to be a way off still. The houses are all shuttered, except Ivy’s window across the road, where a small light burns. The curtains are open and Ada can see her, in her bedroom, moving about. From this angle she can see only half of her face, turned away. One heavy arm is lifted behind her back, fastening her stays. When she has tied them, Ivy reaches over and picks something up from her bedside table and puts it in her mouth. Her teeth. Ada steps closer to the window as Ivy disappears, and although it seems wrong to be watching her like this, unguarded, unaware, she stays where she is, willing her to return.
When she comes back, Ivy is moving stiffly, all in black, in a high-necked old-fashioned dress from a different time.
Ada knows just how that dress feels, knows how heavy it is, how it smells. She has a similar one, packed in a chest at the end of her bed; she last wore it for her mother, twenty-three years ago.
Ivy lets down her hair and begins brushing the long white sheet of it, then twists it into a rope and pins it in place. She looks pale and aged and heavy, but, standing at the window, Ada can see the young woman she used to be: Ivy laughing, pregnant, holding her baby son in her arms, her small daughters clinging to her skirts.
Ivy finishes with her hair and walks over to the window, looking to the sky, as though to assess what the weather has in store. The sight of her—of her black dress and white hair, her upright carriage, dressed in mourning for her son—is so still, so arresting, that it makes the hairs on Ada’s neck stand up.
And Ada turns, hurrying now, and lights the paraffin lamp by her bed. She brings it back over to the window, signaling out into the dark. She sees Ivy start, look across. The two women regard each other across the street. Ada lifts the lamp to her face. “Wait,” she mouths. “Wait for me.”
Thin remnants of mist drift over the streets as Evelyn leaves the flat, but she can already see the clouds separating to show the blue behind them and feel the surprising presence of the sun. She heads south toward her brother’s house. He will not have left yet, she is sure of that; she has risen early to be sure to get him at home.
But however early she may be, the streets are already filling with black-clad people, walking toward town. They want to get a good position for the ceremony, she supposes. Good luck to them. Rather them than her. Still, there is a new-swept feeling about the city. Something of hope. The paths in Regent’s Park look as though they have been sluiced clean. When she reaches the terrace of houses where her brother lives they are lovely in the morning light, which strikes off the cream stucco, turning them a mellow gold. She takes the rattling lift to the fifth floor, where Jackson, her brother’s man, greets her at the door.
“Good morning, Miss Evelyn.” He looks surprised to see her. “Are you here to see Captain Montfort?”
“Yes, I am.”
“He’s just getting dressed.”
She walks past him into the dim hall. “Really? Then I suppose I’d better wait in here.” And before he can do it for her, she opens the door to the living room and steps inside. The curtains are pushed wide and the bright morning is flooding the large room. She feels obscurely cross that her brother should be up already. It’s as though he has beaten her to something, small but significant, like the games they used to play when they were children; the sort she always hated to lose. The room, however, is in some disarray, the carpet rolled back and the table pushed to one side, as though someone were just about to sweep the floor. The door to her brother’s bedroom is closed.
“Ed?” she calls.
“Eves? Coming. Just give me a minute.”
She circles the low table. She’s never much liked this flat. It used to belong to their father, who lived here when he was in town. They used to visit as children, she and Ed, on trips up to the zoo with their nanny. They would be ushered in to greet him and stand, stranded in the middle of the floor, their nanny retreating to a safe distance, waiting for their father to make a pronouncement on their height, or the weather, as though they were the children of a family to whom he was distantly related and about whom he was distantly concerned. In those days the low table came up to her waist. The flat is Ed’s now, and has been for years—ever since the middle of the war when their father retired.
The door to the bedroom opens and Ed stands there, hair freshly slicked, wearing a sober black suit. He is tying a black tie. Two medals are pinned to his chest, three stripes on each. “Eves.” He crosses the floor toward her. “Glad you decided to come.” He looks tired, as ever, the shadows beneath his eyes deeper and more purple, and as he kisses her she can smell alcohol and toothpaste mingled on his breath. It is strange, she thinks as she pulls away; he always smells of it, has done for years now, but she has never yet seen him drunk.
She shakes her head, impatient. “I’m not coming.”
“Oh?” He pulls his tie tight. “Why not?”
“I can’t think of anything worse.”
“Really?”
“I think so, yes.”
He finishes with his tie and puts his hands up. They are shaking a little, she notices. “I’m sorry to hear that. But let’s not get into anything now, shall we? Not today?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re reacting rather extremely.”
“Well, the whole thing disgusts me.”
“Disgust is a strong word.”
They are into it already.
“Really? This is supposed to make it all right, is it? This burial? This pulling a body from the earth in France and dragging him over here? And all of us standing, watching, weeping? Clapping at the show?”
“All right, Eves.” He sighs. “Tell you what. Why don’t you fix us both a drink?”
“What sort of a drink?”
“Whiskey should do it.”
She thinks about making a comment about the hour, but from the smell of him, it’s immaterial, and besides, she herself has hardly slept. Whiskey seems like a good idea. She crosses to the cabinet and pours out a couple of generous measures, hands a glass to Ed, and takes hers to the open window, where she lights a cigarette. Below, on the road that skirts the park, is a steady stream of people, moving right to left. She takes a sip of her drink. Above the terraces opposite, the sun continues to burn away the clouds. The people move in a sudden, bright light. She sees a few of them pause and lift their faces to the sky. She checks her wristwatch. Eight-thirty. She takes a swift drag of her cigarette. “I went to see Rowan Hind yesterday. The man you swore you couldn’t remember.” She turns to him. “He lives in Poplar. Have you any idea where that is?”
She sees her brother’s eyes stray to the clock on the table beside him. It angers her. “You’ve plenty of time.”
“I’m meeting Father at half past nine.”
“You’ve still got plenty of time.”
“The crowds—” There’s a twitch of skin at his jaw as he grits his teeth. “All right,” he says. “Go on.”
“I went there yesterday. To Rowan Hind’s house.”
Ed nods.
“He told me something I think he’d been wanting to tell someone for a long while.”
“And what was that?”
“It was about a private called Michael Hart.”
Her brother’s eyes flicker.
“Who was shot by firing squad in 1917.”
He takes a mouthful of his drink. A strange expression crosses his face. She cannot read it. It is gone before she can even try. He holds the whiskey in his mouth before swallowing it down. “Yes,” he says. “That’s right.”
“What do you mean, ‘Yes, that’s right’?”
“I mean yes, I remember. I was there.” He says nothing more, just stands perfectly still, legs slightly apart, glass held before his chest, his body tense with a sudden military bearing she has forgotten he possessed.
“Is that all? Is that all you’re going to say?”
“What, Evelyn?” He opens his hands. “It’s hardly a secret. It’s there in the military records, for anyone to see. Now why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”
She swallows. “He told me that you sent Private Hart out on a burial party.”
“Did I?” His jaw twitches again. “Well, I’m sorry, but I really don’t remember.”
“Rowan said that he was in a dreadful state. That his company had been decimated.”
“Rowan?” He looks incredulous. “It’s Rowan now, is it?”
She cracks her thumbs into her palms.
“Is that what Private Hind said?”
“Yes.”
“Well.” He gives a tight smile. “You’ve obviously been talking to the highest authority, Evelyn. Well done. You’ve found your little private in Poplar and you’ve constructed your little story and you’ve made up your little mind. And I have much better things to do than to spend precious minutes changing it for you. So, if you’ll excuse me.” He turns and goes into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
She stares after him, astonished. She kicks the table in front of her. The pain brings tears to her eyes. She goes over to the door and knocks on it. After a few seconds he comes out again. He looks as though he is barely containing himself.
“I’d really rather you’d leave, Evelyn. It’s getting late and I have to go.”
“Why didn’t you write to his mother?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you write to his mother? Michael Hart’s mother—Ada, she was called Ada. Did you know that? Why wasn’t she told?”
“I think I probably wrote to his mother that her son died of his wounds. Which was the truth.” He pushes past her, over to the cabinet.
“How can you live with yourself?” she says, under her breath.
“Excuse me?” He speaks quietly, his hand on the decanter.
“How can you live with yourself?” she says again, louder now. “How can you put on your medals and strut about like a fool when all the while you have blood on your hands?”
“You stupid, fucking bitch.” He flings the decanter at the wall in front of him, where it shatters into a thousand tiny shards and a dark stain spreads, horrible, on the wall. He turns to face her, his hands clenched into fists. “I’m not your scab, Evelyn. I’m not your fucking scab, here to be picked away at.” He is shaking. “You know what your trouble is?”
“What’s that, then?” She feels as though cold water is being poured down her spine.
“You are bitter,” he says. “And you’re alone. You’ve loved one person, in your entire life, and he was taken from you, and that was a desperate, desperate thing to happen and I’m so sorry. And I’ve always been sorry. But many people suffer much worse and remain decent human beings—perhaps even better human beings than they were before. But you’ve used that one death as fuel ever since to hate the world.”
“No, I haven’t. You’re wrong.”
“What, then? What don’t you hate? Go on, Evelyn. Tell me.” His face is twisted. “What don’t you hate?”
“I didn’t use to hate you.”
For a moment he looks stunned, but then shakes his head, almost laughing. “For God’s sake, Evelyn. You’re utterly bilious. Look at yourself. You poisoned yourself in that ghastly factory and now you’re poisoning yourself in that horrible job. And I fail utterly to see where this moral high ground comes from—you, who worked stuffing shells.”
“That was different.”
“Was it?” His lip curls. “Of course it was, Evelyn. Of course. Go on, why was that?”
She opens her mouth. “I—” Closes it again.
He shakes his head. “You look for the ugly and the rotten and you find it everywhere, and then you spend the rest of your time shoving it down everyone else’s throats. And do you know what? Do you really want to know what? It’s utterly selfish. Because all you care about is prolonging your own pain. Have you ever, Evelyn, just once, stopped and faced the fact that Fraser’s death was something that happened to him, rather than something that happened to you?”
At first, she cannot tell which is stronger, the anger or the grief. The anger wins. “How dare you? Don’t you dare speak like that to me.” She storms across the room and hits him, as hard as she can, across the face. Her hand is half open and the blow is awkward, but when she pulls her hand back the pain feels astonishingly good.
“Come on, then.” He grabs her wrists. “You want to hit me? Do it properly then, for Christ’s sakes, come on.”
Something surges in her, and then they are fighting, and he is hitting her back, and she is aware, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this is what she wants. That this, too, feels good. But then he has stopped—has moved away from her and is crouched in the corner of the room, and she is on her hands and knees gasping for breath.
A terrible noise fills the room.
His back is shaking. It is a moment before she understands that he is weeping. That her brother is crying in awful jagged sobs.
“Ed,” she says. “Ed?”
He doesn’t hear. He is lost in it.
“Eddie?”
A burst of cannon fire comes from outside. It rattles the windows in their sockets. Instinctively, Evelyn falls to the ground.
They walk a couple more paces forward. The bus, which they had to wait so long to get on, since every one that passed them in Hackney was already full, dropped them off at the top of the Charing Cross Road. The conductor, red-faced and sweaty, shouted the news to the packed, expectant lower deck: “Can’t get you any closer than this, I’m afraid. Trafalgar Square’s already closed.”
It has been slow going, in this thick crowd, walking in their heavy, unaccustomed clothes. Ada’s hat, decorated as it is with flowers and marbled fruit, is heavy, too. The morning was proving so warm that they had to stop a little while ago and take off their coats, and as well as their coats, they both carry flowers, like all of the women around them, cut from their gardens before the sun was up. Ivy has the last of her roses, Ada, late-flowering Michaelmas daisies in her hands. But the morning has taken its toll on these, too, and they are beginning to wilt.
“We must be nearly there now,” says Ada, more in hope than certainty. She has no idea where they are. The road they are on is opening to a great square, but in the packed crowd, it is impossible to see far in front—impossible to get any bearings at all.
“Oh, my goodness.” Ivy grips Ada’s arm. “Look!” She points to a large building with a tower topped by a bristling metal orb. “I know that place,” she says. “I went there once.”
“What is it?”
“The Coliseum. I saw a variety there, years ago. Bill took me when we were young. Oh, it’s ever so nice inside.…” Ivy’s face is pink with remembrance. “We saw these performing seals. And these swimmers, in tanks. Oh gosh, it was something. You should have seen it, Ada. You wouldn’t have believed it!”
The sight of the theater seems to liven her up, and Ivy scans the scene in front of them with renewed vigor. “Let’s go over there.” She points to the steps of a large church to their left. “If we climb up there we might see a little bit more.”
They push their way through the heaving crowd. The church steps, which are already thick with people, still have a little space at the back and they are able to squeeze their way through. The view is extraordinary: Spread below them the square is entirely black as far as they can see. Buses and motorcars are stranded in the middle of roads that are full of barely moving people, so it looks as though the vehicles are trapped in a river of tar.
“That’s Nelson,” says Ada, pleased to be able to recognize something herself. The base of the column is thick with people. No stone can be seen.
“Doesn’t look like much is going to be coming past on the road here, does it?” Ivy looks worried, confused.
Ada feels the edge of panic. “Where shall we go, then? Shall we stay up here? We don’t even know where it’s supposed to be coming past, do we?”
They look back to where they have come from, from where people keep coming. Soon that direction will be immovable, too. A sound, low and rumbling, like distant thunder, reverberates off the buildings, disturbing the crowd.
“What was that?” Ivy grips Ada’s arm.
“I don’t know. It sounded like guns.”
“You think everything’s all right?”
People are looking around, whispering, looking for confirmation, for comfort from their neighbors.
“It’s fine.” A tall, well-dressed man standing nearby addresses the crowd. “It’s cannon fire. That’s the beginning of the procession. They’ll be leaving Victoria soon.”
“Where’ll they come from, then?” Ada turns, glad to find someone who knows something at last.
“Over there.” The man points ahead of them. “That’s the Mall; Buckingham Palace is at the end of that. They’ll come out of that arch and turn down Whitehall.” He points to a wide street, a little closer to where they stand. “Then they’ll head down to the Cenotaph and the abbey from there. You won’t get close to the Cenotaph, of course, that’s tickets only, but you might get a place on the corner there if you’re quick. We’ll be staying here. My mother doesn’t like the crowds.”
Behind him, a young woman and an older woman nod hello, and two quiet children look at Ada with grave gray eyes.
“Thank you,” says Ada.
The man lifts his hat. “Good luck.”
They stare out at the multitudes, the slowed black human tide.
“Do you think we’ll get there?” asks Ivy doubtfully.
“That’s what we came for, isn’t it?” says Ada.
“You’re right.” Ivy nods, steeling herself. “Come on then. Let’s go.”
Eight soldiers from the Grenadier Guards enter the railway carriage and drape the coffin with a tattered Union Flag. The flag has been used many times before, as an altar cloth, at one of the makeshift services before battle, at Vimy Ridge, High Wood, Ypres, Messines, Cambrai, and Bethune. The soldiers place a steel infantry helmet and a webbing belt on the top.
The cortege forms—massed bands, pipes and drums, the pipers in their kilts, the gun carriage, the pallbearers: field marshals, admirals, generals. Then, behind them, a thousand ex-servicemen ready themselves, six abreast. In all the great vaulted space of the station only the odd clink of a buckle and the stray small scratch of cloth can be heard.
Then, from Hyde Park, a battery of nineteen guns fires a salute. The soldiers stand to attention. The echo of the guns lingers in the air as the band plays Chopin’s Funeral March, and the cortege starts to move.
Standing in the crowd, just at the entrance to the station gates, a young man watches the cortege move past.
He is thinking of his best friend. The boy he grew up with on the streets of Battersea. He was eighteen and a virgin when he died; his life pooling onto the ground around him. The white shock on his face. A hole where his groin should have been.
The young man closes his eyes. He can feel the skin on his face tighten in the unexpected sun. Why him? Why was he spared? He wasn’t the best of them. Nowhere near. He could reel off a list of better men. He can’t even get a job.
But he has a wife—a girl who waited for him—whom he married just after the war. And a child now, too. A little girl. He watches them sometimes, when they don’t know he is looking. They are like miracles, the pair of them: the smooth intactness of them. He loves to listen to the hushed voice of his wife as she rocks their child to sleep.
He thinks of what he will do tonight, when he gets home. He will kiss his wife, he thinks, he will give thanks for her, and then he will bury himself inside her, as far as he will go.
When the rumbling has passed, Evelyn lifts her head.
Her brother is sitting on his heels, his back to the wall. His face is lumpy and raw with tears.
“What was that?” she says.
“It will be a part of the ceremony,” Ed says. “I’m sure.”
“More guns?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Can’t they think of a better way to honor the dead?”
He opens his hands.
She wipes her sleeve across her cheek. Her hands are stinging. “How could you do it?”
Ed sighs. He tips his head far back, as if the answer might lie somewhere above. A raised red weal stands high on his left cheek, and Evelyn sees now that he has a painful-looking bruise, too, on his right eye.
“It was the most terrible piece of line,” he says. “We’d been wading in mud for months. And once someone goes, it spreads. At least, that’s what the generals thought. By the time they got their hands on it, that was it. It was 1917. The Russians had gone; the French were turning. They were absolutely terrified of mutiny. By the time I got back from that clearing station it was already in the hands of the tribunal. There was nothing that I could do.”
Evelyn nods. She can see that. “But why pick him? Why pick him to fire on his friend? It seems so—cruel.”
“Standard practice, I’m afraid. It was meant to keep the men in order.”
“And did it work?”
He looks away. “I should think it probably did.”
“What about his mother?”
“Whose? Hart’s?”
“Yes.”
“We were told not to write the truth. And anyway, you really think the poor woman needed to know?”
“I think it was her right.”
“Her right? I’m not so sure about that.” Ed looks down at his hands. “What about Hind?” he says. “Do you think he’ll ever go back there? Tell her?” He glances back up.
“I think if he was ever going to do that he’d have done it by now.”
“And did he tell you? Where she lives?” Her brother’s face is tight.
She shakes her head. “I thought about asking. But it’s not my place, is it? Not my story to tell.”
“Then why did he want to see me?”
She looks at her brother. Takes a breath. “I think he wanted to understand. But when he’d finished talking…he didn’t ask me. Not for your address. Not anything. And I would have given it. But once he’d spoken of it once, and someone had listened, I think that seemed to be enough.”
Ed nods slowly.
The air between them finally stills.
He takes two cigarettes from his case and hands one to her. She leans in to his light. They smoke in silence for a while.
“Do you want to know something, Eves?” he says eventually.
“What’s that?”
He shifts back against the wall and wipes his face with his hand. “In a minute,” he says, “when I’ve finished this cigarette, I’m going to get up and go outside and walk as far as I can get toward the Cenotaph. And I hope that I am going to watch as they do this thing. I want to. And whatever you may think, I think it’s a fine thing.”
He rubs the point in between his eyes. It is the gesture of an exhausted man. It reminds her of someone. It reminds her of Rowan Hind.
“This might make people feel better, and it might help them to mourn. It may even help me. But it won’t put an end to war. And whatever anyone thinks or says, England didn’t win this war. And Germany wouldn’t have won it, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“War wins,” he says. “And it keeps on winning, over and over again.”
He draws a circle in the air with his cigarette, and it’s as if he is drawing all of the wars, however many thousands of them, all of the wars past and all of them to come.
“War wins,” he says bitterly, “and anyone who thinks any differently is a fool.”
Hettie sits on the edge of her bed, staring out into the small, sunlit room. She has been up since first light, has hardly slept. Her nose is blocked, eyes swollen, her chest scraped jagged and raw. She is sure her brother must have heard her crying through the walls.
Last night, walking home from the tube, her coat wrapped tight over Di’s dress, she’d prayed that she might be lucky, that by some glorious stroke of luck her mother wouldn’t be in.
But she wasn’t lucky. It was not a lucky day.
She could feel the air, the anticipation keen as a blade as soon as she opened the door. Her mother was out of the kitchen before she had the chance to hide. “Go on, then,” she hissed. “Tell me. You just tell me. What lies do you want to tell me this time?”
“I’m sorry, Mum—I—”
“You’ve been out since yesterday afternoon. Where’ve you been?”
“Di’s.”
“Don’t you lie to me.” Her mother came toward her, stopping halfway down the hall, her hand held to her mouth. “What’ve you done?”
“Nothing.” She shrank back from her.
“You have. I can see it. Take off your hat. What have you done?”
It was only then Hettie realized that her mother was talking about her hair.
So she pulled off her hat and raised her chin.
Her mother turned pale. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
“It’s that friend of yours, isn’t it? That filthy little friend?”
“No,” said Hettie. “It was me. I wanted to. It was all my idea.”
“Don’t you answer back to me.”
And her mother slapped her, then, hard across the cheek.
Hettie puts her hand to it now. Her face is sore. Everything is sore. It is as though she has shed her skin and there is only the soft painful inside left.
She takes a deep breath and looks down at her hands in her lap. In the room next door she can hear Fred stirring in bed. Soon he will go out for his walk. She hasn’t got much time.
She stands up and goes quietly downstairs. Her mother is in the kitchen, sitting with a cup of tea. Hettie stands in the doorway and watches her. The bowed shoulders, and her face, unguarded, collapsed into its contours of disappointment and loss. It is not a face Hettie wants to inherit.
“Is there anything in the pot?”
Her mother looks up, surprised. She nods.
“Enough for two more?”
“I expect so.”
Hettie takes a tray and two cups and pours out the tea, adding sugar and milk.
“What are you doing?” says her mother.
“I’m taking it to Fred.”
She can feel her mother’s incredulous silence follow her as she takes the tray out of the room. She climbs the stairs, puts the tea on the floor, and knocks on her brother’s door.
She hears a rustling inside.
“Fred?” she says quietly. “Are you awake?”
Hesitant footsteps, and then her brother opens the door in his pajamas, his hair ruffled from sleep.
“Here.” She bends down and holds out the tea. “For you.”
He looks down at it, back up at her. Blinks, then reaches out and takes it. “Thanks,” he says, his pale eyes questioning.
“I want you to do something for me, Fred,” says Hettie. “Say yes. Please.”
The sun is surprisingly warm, surprisingly bright. Though the street she stands on, the one bordering the park, is quiet, to her left, down on the Euston Road, Evelyn can see a great moving mass of people. She turns away from them, taking the entrance to Regent’s Park. But she doesn’t escape the crowds; they come toward her, relentless, families carrying picnic baskets, children in their mothers’ arms, women, everywhere women, old, tired-looking women, their hair pinned beneath hats from another century; younger women, their hair shorn and their black skirts short. The same fixed expression is on all of their faces, as though they have sewn themselves in, as though they are determined not to spill before the appointed time, the time that the newspapers and the politicians have decreed for mourning. Eleven o’clock.
Evelyn stares up at her brother’s window, then pushes her way against the tide, heading up the hill instead. They have a long way to go, these people—a long slow walk until they are able to spill.
The eleventh of November.
Two years since the end of the war.
It was still a shock when it came, at the fag end of 1918.
She was in the office, filing invoices, when she saw a boy from upstairs come running onto the factory floor below. She saw him shouting, his arms moving up and down. From where she sat she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw its effect on the people below: saw them stand as one—the stunned pause as they looked at one another and then walked out and left their machines still running. She left what she was doing and went down the steps, and by then she could hear the shouts, echoing up the stairwell: “It’s over; we’ve won. It’s over; we’ve won!”
It was a damp, foggy day, and outside there was confusion, women milling around, their voices ringing—shrill and useless. No one seemed to know what to do. They were screaming, shouting, crying, hugging one another. Others simply stood, staring into the distance.
She saw a woman she knew from her days on the factory floor, beckoning her from inside a taxi. Six or seven women were already crammed into the cab and there was barely room, but she climbed inside, half-sitting on someone’s lap, her face jammed up against the window as rain splayed across the glass.
The women kept stopping the taxi to try to buy champagne, but all of the shops had sold out, and in the end they gave up and bought bottles of cheap, acrid white wine and drank it leaning out the windows, despite the rain, singing the raucous songs they had learned on the factory floor. They were heading for Trafalgar Square, but the taxi could only get as close as the Marylebone Road, and so it stopped there and the women piled into the street. It was already nearly impossible to pass through the crowd, and Evelyn lost the other women immediately; but it was easier to move alone and she managed to push her way along Oxford Street, where the traffic was at a standstill, and then further down toward Soho. The pubs of the West End were packed; everywhere people were spilling out onto the pavement and streets, heedless of the rain. Drunken faces lurched in front of her. She passed an older woman, her long hair lank and loose, hanging on to the coat of a young soldier. “It’s down to you,” the woman was slurring. “It’s all down to you.” She fell to her knees in front of him, holding out her bottle of stout. The young man, embarrassed, was trying to pull himself away from her grip.
Evelyn pushed through the swaying crowds to the Charing Cross Road, where paper fluttered down from office windows as though the buildings had been turned inside out—and then onto Trafalgar Square. The sound of the celebration was a roar here, the traffic at a standstill, and people were dancing, stamping on the pavement and on the roofs of cars, running round and round in circles like broken mechanical toys.
Everywhere she looked she saw youth. Young people kissing one another everywhere, in various states of abandon; a couple wrapped around each other, the girl sitting on a wall, skirt hitched up, cutting into her white, bulging thighs. It felt as though, while she was in that factory, staring at machines and files, the world had left her behind. For two years she had sat at a bench, or at a desk, and looked only at what was in front of her. Now she would have to look up.
She skirted the square. Flags. Everywhere. Vendor after vendor, standing by little gray tables that had sprouted like mushrooms in the rain. A large, sweaty man in the midst of buying a job lot handed one to her. “There you go, love.”
She stared at it, and then back up at him.
“You all right, love?”
When she didn’t reply, he lost interest and began throwing the flags out to the appreciative crowd. She looked at the tiny flag: It was made of paper and wood and not much bigger than her palm, the end a sharp point, like a toothpick. She pushed the pointed end deep into her thumb. She felt the pain of it, but not enough, not nearly enough. She pulled it out again, and blood welled from the hole she had made. She smeared the blood across her mouth.
“Do what ought to have been done in 1914!”
A man beside her was selling lavatory paper. It had the kaiser’s face imprinted on each perforated section. Evelyn blinked; for a moment she thought she was imagining it. “Do what ought to have been done in 1914!”
“Honey.” There was a touch on her arm.
A young man in uniform stood in front of her. He was tall, his accent American or Canadian. “You okay?”
His face was broad and young and smooth; sweat stood out on his forehead. Was he really so young? It didn’t seem possible for someone to be so young.
“Can I kiss you, honey?” he asked. “Can I give you a victory kiss?”
She said nothing, and so he pulled her toward him and kissed her. He opened his mouth and she could feel his tongue, taste beer, smell the thick wet khaki smell of his uniform and his sharp, salty sweat beneath. When he pulled back she saw that there was blood on his lip, and for a moment she thought that she must have hurt him—had bitten him—but then she remembered it was her own.
“Come on,” he said. He took her hand and she let him lead her across the road, through the standing traffic, past a woman covered all over in Union Jacks who was riding a bicycle down the pavement, screaming, blind drunk, with two soldiers running along on either side. She followed him toward the church on the square, toward Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, where the steps were clogged with people, sitting, standing, sheltering from the rain. The young soldier pulled her around the side and down some shallow stone steps to where it was cool and arched and echoing and there was no one else.
“Here.” He pushed her against a pillar. She felt the rough stone of it, pressing into her back. “Let’s do it here.” He began pulling at her blouse, not unbuttoning it, just tugging it out of her skirt and then passing his hands beneath it, under her camisole, until his hands were over her breasts. He leaned his face into her neck. She turned to the side, against the cold pillar, as he hitched up her skirt. He pulled down her knickers. She stepped out of one leg of them, letting them fall around her ankle to the floor. When he pushed himself up inside her she gasped.
She could hear the banging of the drums outside, the rattle and the screams and the singing, and the rasp of his uniform against her blouse. She lifted her face, up to the vaulted ceiling. It was over in five or six thrusts, and then he pulled away, turning from her to button himself. He looked like a child when he turned back. Part of her wanted to put a hand on his arm, to tell him it was all right. Part of her wanted to laugh.
They walked out together, and then, without speaking, as if they had already decided that this was what was to happen, they parted on the street without a word. She walked on, toward the river, away from the church, down Northumberland Avenue. The crowds kept coming toward her, ceaseless, swarming over the bridges from the south, packed tight now, a heaving, boozy mass. A song broke out near her, and the people started to sway, and the swaying spread until it was everywhere.
Finally she made it to the Embankment, where all along the length of the river the boats were moored, their sirens hooting. There was a crowd near to where she stood, gathered around a young boy who had shinnied to the top of a lamppost. At first she couldn’t make out what he was doing, and then she saw he was scraping away the blackout paint. The lamp was lit, and there was an exultant cheer. Then another lamp blazed into life, and another, until there were lights all the way along the Embankment, all the way along the river.
She pushed her way to the low wall, where she stayed, gathering her breath. She could feel the cold, slippery residue of the boy in her knickers. Her stomach rolled in disgust. She stared out over the river, at the water, orange in the lamplight, and thought that she could easily climb the wall, climb it and jump. That no one would notice. That they were all looking up, at the future, and their places in it. And for a brief moment, she thought that she was brave enough, that she might have the courage to do it, but the moment passed, and she was still standing, staring out at the river, at the lit orange rain captured there, as if time had stopped and the rain was only held there, suspended, and wasn’t falling after all.
Fred is dressed smartly, in his hat and suit. Walking beside him, Hettie feels strange. Hollow. Like she used to after she was ill, when she was a child. That first day of getting up, and going back to school, walking on cotton wool legs, when everything would look different: The house she lived in. The people she passed. The street.
Today the street is deserted, and the people are all gone. The houses have an anxious look, as if unsure their occupants will ever return.
They will.
Today, she doesn’t want the houses to be blown up, or the streets torn apart. She wants the bricks to be solid and sheltering. She wants things not to change. She wants her father not to be gone and the gardens to stay innocent and the heliotrope flowers to mean only summer and not swollen skin and quick, quick death. She wants there not to have been daughters lying down for man after man in their fathers’ houses in villages in France. Or women on their last legs, waiting for the queues of men to end. She wants the sad parade of men at the Palais to disappear, or to be whole, or patched together again. She wants Ed to be unbroken. And Fred. She wants her brother back.
But she knows, in this warm, sun-bright morning, that none, or not all, of these things are possible. That Ed is right. That you cannot go back.
But her brother is beside her. He has done as she asked and come with her today. And they are walking, the two of them, their steps in time, side by side, one foot in front of the other. One in front of the other, walking down the street.
As they near the bottom of the street Hettie can hear the murmur of the crowd from Hammersmith Broadway. People are lining the road, three deep on either side. All of the shops are closed, their awnings still rolled, their shutters drawn down. Motorcars and omnibuses have pulled over to one side and parked. The clock on the little island in the middle of the road reads a quarter to eleven.
She and Fred skirt the back of the crowd, looking for a place to stand. But as they move further forward, to where the crowd is getting thicker and more difficult to pass, she can sense Fred’s rising unease.
She reaches out and taps him on the arm.“Is here all right?” she says to him. “I don’t think I can go any further in.”
He looks down at her gratefully. “Yes.” He nods. “It’s fine.”
They take their places. The crowd is already silent: hundreds of faces facing hundreds of faces across the empty street.
They move through the crowd until they are wedged so deeply in among black backs that it seems as though they might never move again.
“Well, this won’t do, will it,” hisses Ivy. She is so close that Ada can smell her breath, slightly sour, the musty mothball smell of her dress, the roses she carries, and then, behind that, other bodies: thousands of them and thousands of other rapidly wilting bouquets. For a second, in the overwhelming, rank-sweet smell of the crowd, Ada feels she may faint. She steadies herself, twisting her neck to try to see around a tall man in front of her, but all she can make out is backs and heads and hats. They must be fifteen people away from the front at least. It is impossible to even see the barriers, the crowd is so deep. No one seems to want to speak it out loud, but plenty of people are grumbling about it under their breath.
She turns back to Ivy. “I suppose it will have to do,” she says, with a brightness she doesn’t feel. They should have stayed where they were. They could breathe there at least, and they had a view. It had been her idea to move.
Just then there’s a scuffle in the crowd up ahead. Something is happening, closer to the front. For a long time it’s not clear what, until voices start shouting, “Clear a space! Clear a space!” A narrow gangway is carved from the crowd, and two men carry out a young woman, feet first. The woman’s hat falls off her lolling head, and Ada stoops to pick it up. She doesn’t know what to do with it then, so she places it down on the woman’s chest. The hat is a modern one, pretty, one of those that look like a bell, with a small spray of white fabric flowers on the rim.
She touches the young man on his arm. “Will she be all right?”
“She’s fine. Just had a funny turn. Didn’t you, Mary?”
The young woman is stirring now. “It’s all right,” says the man, leaning down. “We’ve got you, Mary love.”
In the wake of the commotion the crowd churns and shifts back into place, then heaves suddenly from behind, as though people at the back had decided to push, all together. For a moment it seems that they will topple, like dominoes, until, as though on a wave, the part of the crowd where they are standing surges forward. Ada and Ivy hold on to each other, and to their flowers, as they find themselves traveling toward the front.
When the crowd has stopped moving, they are standing close to the barriers and have a clear view of the street: of the backs of the policemen, holding back the crowd, legs spread, arms behind their backs, the tips of their helmets shining in the sun; of the large expanse of empty road beyond; and then, on the other side of that, of all the many faces, ranged, expectant, staring back.
Beside her, Ivy is shaking. Ada touches her arm. “You all right, love?”
When Ivy brings her head up it’s clear that she has been laughing. She nods, wiping her eyes. “Couldn’t help it,” she whispers back. “How about that, then? Someone wants us to see.”
“That was funny, all right.” Ada steadies herself. To their right stand a young couple, their young son between them, holding their hands. The man is speaking to his wife and boy in a low voice. “Look at the windows,” he is saying. “Look up at the roofs.”
Ada follows his finger, and what she sees astonishes her. Every window up above is packed with faces, and there are indeed people on the roofs: young men, mostly, though there are women, too, sitting in dangerous-looking positions on windowsills and out on the edges of small balconies. She taps Ivy on the arm and gestures up.
“Gracious.” Ivy shudders.
In the distance, now, they can hear the slow, dull beating of the drums.
The funeral cortege passes a young Irishman. He took the boat train over from Cork yesterday, landed at Southampton, and made his way here. He told no one at home he was coming—said he was going to visit his sister in Wexford. Things are changing in Ireland. It was necessary to lie.
The young Irishman joined up in 1915 and fought for Britain, but then, after the Easter Rising, he was spat at in the street whenever he was home on leave. Fucking Tommy, they’d say. Dirty fucking Tommy.
He is a Collins man now. A Sinn Féin man. He knows well whom he fights for. And there will be fighting. Of this he has no doubt. The lord mayor of Cork died while on hunger strike in Brixton prison not three weeks before.
And yet—he had to come. He had to lie and to come. For the lads he fought with and who died beside him, sometimes in his arms. Who, like him, were lied to, but fought like heroes nonetheless. Whose lives were thrown away, in their thousands, for scraps of land. He cannot forget them. He will not.
I’ll remember you, he thinks, and as the gun carriage, with its coffin and its dented helmet, passes him by, he closes his eyes.
Nothing will bring them back. Not the words of comfortable men. Not the words of politicians. Or the platitudes of paid poets.
“At the going down of the sun, we will remember them.”
No.
I will remember you when I pack my pipe.
I will remember you when I lift my pint.
I will remember you on fine days and on black ones. In the summer light I will remember you.
He opens his eyes and watches the military men march past. He knows who they all are; he read their names in the papers: field marshals, admirals, and generals. With a shock of recognition, he spots Haig; he’s close enough to see the gray in his mustache. He would like to spit on him.
He knows the king stands somewhere not far from here. He has a sudden image: of a man, a bomb strapped to him, running from the crowd. A strike at the heart of empire. It would be easy, easy. He shakes his head. Not yet, he thinks. Not yet.
The sound of the drumming approaches, and with it a whisper travels through the crowd: He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming. There’s a surge from behind and Ada holds on to the barrier. Her breath is constricted; ribbons of sweat roll down her back. She wishes she hadn’t tied herself in so tight. If she faints now, then who will carry her out? Behind her, the crowd churns and then settles again.
“Try to keep your feet wide,” says the young man beside them. “Don’t worry. They won’t move again now. That’s it. You’ll see.”
Coming up the street toward them are four enormous chestnut horses, the sound of their hooves deadened by the straw-strewn pavement, and as the horses draw nearer, almost in one movement, as though it were rehearsed, all the men in the crowd bare their heads. The young man beside her holds his hat against his chest.
Behind the horses come drummers, their drums covered in black fabric. The sound of their beat is hollow, muted. Pipers come behind them, their pipes making a thin, high tone on the still air. Behind there is space, a gap, then six black horses pull a carriage, their eyes blinkered, coats gleaming. It bears a single coffin, a tattered flag draped over it, the colors faded, as though it has spent too long in the sun.
On top of the flag Ada can see the dented helmet of a soldier. It is the same helmet that Michael wore. For a stunned second she thinks it is his—that it is the helmet that was tied around his neck the last time she saw him, as he lumbered off down the road in the lightening morning, bouncing against his back so that she was worried it would bruise him; and for that second she is convinced that the body in the coffin is his. Then there’s the sound of a woman’s sob, sharp and uncontrolled. It echoes off the buildings on either side of the road. Then there’s another sob, and another, and in the crowd opposite, hundreds of handkerchiefs appear, stark white against the black. Beside her Ivy is convulsed with silent tears.
And then she understands: They all wore that helmet.
All of these women’s husbands, brothers, sons.
The cortege passes them, moving down to the Cenotaph. Ada watches it slow. Sees it come to a stop.
There is a hush before the silence, a settling.
And then the chimes begin.
Breathless, Evelyn reaches the top of the hill. In exhilaration she sees that no one else is up here, no one is sitting on her bench. They have all been sucked down into the great gray magnet of the city below. The air is so still that below her, the smoke from chimneys rises straight up into the air. It is a truly beautiful day.
She hears the chimes of eleven begin. The bells of Primrose Hill, of Camden Town, and further into the city—many, many bells, chiming together and apart. As the silence falls, she can see it almost, traveling like a long rolling wave, up to where she sits on the hill.
Then, what she thought was silence gives way to something else. Something surprising. It is the sound of a city without people. Without walking, speaking, running people; without buses, without cars, factories, offices, docks; but it is not silence, not here on the hill, not at all. She can hear the wind, lifting through the last brittle, tenacious leaves; hear the crows, calling to one another in the trees; and then, in the distance, other calls: those of the animals from the zoo. She hears the chattering of monkeys, the muffled roar of a big cat. She didn’t expect this. It makes her smile.
Up here, there are still patches of mist clinging a little in the green hollows. Up here is land that has never been built on.
And this, too, is the city, she thinks.
And here she is, sitting on a bench in the sun.
It reminds her of another morning, a morning in summer, inside the flat in Primrose Hill, with the window open and the heat of the day outside. Lying beside Fraser, listening to the sounds of the city below. The feel of the sun through the window, hot on the soles of her feet. The close, warm smell of the man that she loved. Then standing, and stretching, her feet cool against the tiles of the floor, turning to him. Shall we go outside?
The slow break of his smile.
I loved you, she thinks. I loved you, Fraser.
In three 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 seems 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.
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 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 someday, 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 eyebrow. “Whereabouts?”
“Hammersmith.”
“The Palais?”
“Mmmm.”
“And with whom…?” Doreen smiles.
Evelyn tips her head back. “A man.”
“Well,” Doreen says as her 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 turnup 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 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 is 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 it seems no one at the top is being turned away. She finishes 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 seems so 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.
The doors open and the punters flood the floor. Part of her recoils. She doesn’t want this delicate feeling trampled on, not just yet.
But the floor is already packed. Though the band has not yet started, some people are dancing, and small eddies of movement show where people are doing their own little rags. Hettie’s eyes light on a tall, fair man, wearing evening dress, standing alone. His eyes scan the crowd, looking for someone. Then, as if he has felt her staring, the man turns his head her way. When she looks again he is crossing the floor toward the Pen. An elbow digs her in her ribs. “There you go, Het,” says Di beside her. “Now you’re away.”
The man is heading straight for her. A slight hesitancy interrupts his stride, a small roll, as though he has one leg longer than the other.
False leg.
The man comes to a halt just in front of where she sits.
“Hello,” he says. He has an open face. A friendly smile. He reaches out and touches the metal gate with a finger, seeming to test it for strength. “Bit barbaric, this, isn’t it?” He gives it a little rattle. “Why do they need to keep you locked up, then? Are you dangerous?”
She raises the ghost of a smile. She has heard the jokes already—heard them all.
“Do they ever let you out?”
“Sixpence,” she says, pointing to the booth. “Over there.”
“So I can release you for sixpence? That’s cheap at the price.”
The man turns, but then, as though something has just occurred to him, he turns back, hands in his pockets, a quizzical look on his face. “That is,” he says, “if I may?”
Is he laughing at her? She cannot tell. “Of course,” she says. “That’s my job.”
As he goes away from her, she sees again the slight pause, the tiny hesitancy in his stride that gives him away. He hides it well, she thinks, that leg; if you didn’t know how to look you might not be able to tell.
“He’s nice,” says Di, leaning in. “How’d you manage to score that?”
Hettie shrugs. She can tell Di’s trying to be nice. She’s been nice to her ever since Hettie arrived earlier and just shook her head when Di asked her how it had gone Tuesday night. She hadn’t pressed it, either, when Hettie had to explain that she hadn’t brought the dress with her—that she’d gone down to the Broadway for the silence instead.
Di frowns now, putting her hand on Hettie’s arm. “Are you sure you’re all right, Het? You’re ever so quiet tonight.”
“I’m fine.”
The fair-haired man is back in a minute with his docket. “There we go.” He holds it out to her. “They say I’ve to give this to you.”
Hettie takes it from him, puts it into her pouch, and lets herself out of the little gate. They stand, facing each other, he with his hands in his pockets, she with her arms behind her back. He makes no move toward her. They stand this way for a long moment, until she grows hot and cross. “Don’t you want to dance?” she says eventually.
“Dance?” He raises his eyebrows. “Is that what you do? You just looked so forlorn, sitting there, that I thought I ought to set you free.”
She glares at him.
“Sorry,” he says, smiling. “Only joking.” He takes his hands out of his pockets. “What’s the next dance, then?”
“It’s always a waltz. First and last.”
Behind the man, she can see that the band has finished tuning up. The performers are straightening their ties, adjusting their music, and sitting forward in their seats. The conductor comes out from the wings to cheers and scattered applause.
“First and last,” says the man, nodding, as if this is important, somehow, to note. “And how long are you free for?”
“Just one dance.”
“And then what happens? Do you turn into a pumpkin? Or do I?”
“Then I go back in there.” Hettie points to the Pen, where Di has been hired now, too, and where just three girls are left.
“Ah.” He makes a small grimace. “I see.”
All around them, couples are taking their places on the floor, and the raucous hubbub is dying, giving way to something else—an excited, expectant hush.
“Well, then,” says the man, opening his arms. “I suppose I’d better make this count.”
She lifts her arms and their palms touch, very lightly. His right arm circles her waist. “I hear the band is very good,” he says.
She wonders how he will manage, dancing, with that leg.
The conductor lifts his baton, and the music begins. The band plays a low, pulsing beat. It is not an ordinary waltz. It is slower than usual and sounds mournful, a little strange. All around them there’s the swish of cloth and the sound of feet on wood as couples start to move.
For two or three bars the man she is with does nothing. Then, just when she is thinking that he is going to stay that way all night, he pulls her a little tighter, leading her off, spinning her out across the floor. He leads well; his hold is firm, and his shoulders are open and relaxed as they turn around the room to this oddly accented beat.
The band stays with the strange, pulsing count for a long time, until its strangeness and hesitancy start to seem natural, a living thing, a fractured heartbeat. They stay on the beat until a lone trumpeter stands and starts to play over the top.
Inside, everything is surprisingly lush and surprisingly Chinese; indecipherable signs are painted onto hanging panes of glass, and storks and pagodas repeat in patterns over the walls. It should be crass but it’s surprisingly pleasant. Evelyn sees a sign for the ladies’ cloakroom and goes inside, even though she doesn’t really need the loo, but then she has to wait, in a torturous queue, while girls primp and preen themselves all down the long mirrored wall. When a stall finally comes free she locks herself inside, takes her brush from her bag, and pulls it through her hair. She wants to turn around and leave. This is no place for her. She should never have come.
Out of the stall, she faces herself reluctantly in the mirror, pulling at the dress so that it doesn’t gape around her chest. Why, oh why, is she wearing it? Because she had nothing else, that’s why. But if she moves, if she dances, then it will gape. That much is fairly clear. Perhaps she shouldn’t dance, then? She’s probably forgotten how anyway. And she certainly doesn’t know how to dance to anything new. She’ll probably only embarrass herself. She should never have come. She should never have come.
She hands her coat to the cloakroom attendant and takes the stub, then goes through the double doors into a vast hall, packed with swirling dancers. Large colored lanterns hang suspended from the ceiling, filling the room with their pink and blue and yellow light. In the middle of the polished dance floor is a funny sort of miniature mountain, water pouring down its sides, and over on the far side of the room, under what appears to be an approximation of a Chinese temple, is the band: twenty or thirty musicians in white suits.
So this is what a dance hall looks like.
All around the dance floor are tables. Evelyn decides that she will walk once around them, checking to see if Robin is sitting at one, and if she has not seen him by the time that she has done a circuit, she will turn around and leave.
She passes a little cabin selling drinks to her right. She joins the small queue, waits her turn, then, “Gin and orange, please,” she says to the uniformed girl behind the bar.
The girl rolls her eyes. “No alcohol,” she says, pointing to a sign dangling below her. NO ALCOHOL WILL BE SERVED. BY ORDER OF THE MANAGEMENT.
“Well,” says Evelyn, eyebrow raised. “What do you suggest instead?”
“Tea, or fruit cup.”
“Shouldn’t fruit cup have gin in it?”
The girl stares at her.
“I’ll have a fruit cup then, please.”
“Twopence,” says the girl, sloshing the drink into a cup from a large vat to her right.
Evelyn takes her fruit cup over to a table and puts it down briefly so that she can light her cigarette. She is standing close to the band, near the conductor as he comes out onto the stage, and as he lifts his baton and the band starts to play, she begins walking around the dance floor, keeping her gaze as light as possible, trying not to miss any of the tables, trying not to appear as though she is looking; but Robin is nowhere to be seen.
When she has traveled halfway around the room, the thought occurs to her that he may well not have come. It has been days since they made this arrangement. He may have forgotten. Is it only her arrogance that supposes that he will be here—that he will be waiting? Does she even want to see him at all? She stops, turning to lean against the barrier and look out over the floor. There must be four or five hundred couples moving out there, and yet, despite this, the move and shuffle of their feet is light; despite this, she can still hear the single trumpeter over the top, playing his solo, while the band keeps up a fractured, pulsing rhythm underneath.
The man is an extraordinary dancer. As Hettie spins in his arms to this halting, sad music, with his palm splayed on her back and the steady, sure step of him keeping time, she can feel herself, her skin, her blood, right to the smallest part. And the parts of her feel different, charged, rearranged.
She is not the same as she was.
It is Ed. It is as though some of his brokenness has entered her. It is Fred, and standing with him in the silence and the sun. It is the thought of those women in France. It is the sadness of this waltz.
But though she can feel all of this sadness, something is holding her up; it is this man. It is in the way he holds her, in the steady but constant distance between them—a distance he doesn’t seem to want or need to cross. The way he makes her know from his movements that he wants to dance with her, and that dancing is enough.
The trumpeter stops, his last note lingering in the air, and the music is slowing now, coming to a close.
“Thank you.” The man brings her gently to a stop. “That was a very fine sixpence indeed.”
She wants to ask to dance with him again; she wants to tell him that she would happily dance with him all night, wants to ask him how it is that he can dance so beautifully when he—
But the man has seen something over her shoulder. His face has changed, and color touches his cheek. He releases her with a funny little bow. “Excuse me,” he says.
Every part of him is concentrated on something just behind her head. She knows without turning that it is a woman; that it is the woman he has come here to meet.
Of course he has come here to meet someone. Of course.
Hettie bites her disappointment down and turns to see.
A woman stands, in a red dress, on the far edge of the dance floor. She is leaning on the barrier, staring out and smoking a cigarette. She has wavy brown hair cut short to her chin. She is not too small and not too tall, and she is beautiful. Not beautiful in the manner of those women who want people to stare; this woman looks as though she would be happy if no one were to look at her at all. The woman reminds Hettie of someone, though she cannot think of whom.
The woman has not yet seen him looking at her, and so the man’s face is still unguarded, and his eyes are free to roam. Hettie watches him. Perhaps, she thinks, this woman will sense that she is being stared at, and will turn to meet this man’s gaze.
She wonders if this woman thinks of this man the way he so obviously thinks of her. She knows, without even thinking it properly, without even really forming the thought, that this man loves this woman. And she knows, too, that this man is a good man; that he is a good man to love.
Hettie steps away from the man, moving back toward the Pen, so that when the woman turns she will not be in the way of her view.
The woman turns…