13

Plevna Avenue, north-west London, was a broad street where late-Victorian villas minded their own business behind trimmed privet hedges. The semi-detached house where Julia had grown up was two doors down from the junction with Inkerman Road, off which ran Raglan Street and Alma Terrace. They liked their battles and sieges and generals, those nineteenth-century street-namers.

Julia went round the side of the house and was confronted by the implacable bulk of an air-raid shelter. All the flowers were gone, as was the swing which she and her brother had fought over. In the beds were tender vegetable seedlings. She was early. Half past three; her father would still be with the Rotarians.

The key was under the terracotta pot beside the back door, where it always was. When she let herself in she was unnerved by the smells of her childhood. She left her things in the kitchen and went into the dining room.

Here her father had set up a command centre worthy of Whitehall. On the far wall, Fountains Abbey had been taken down and in its place was a large coloured map of the world stuck with flags. Soviet hammer-and-sickles in the Baltic states. Italian tricolours strung along the Alps. Swastikas all over Europe. The flag stuck in Paris made her flinch – France had fallen the previous week. As a visual summary of their island isolation, of imminent invasion, it was unsparing.

She wondered where her father had found or bought the flags, and then she noticed on the sideboard the paper, paints, pens and pins he had been using to make them, which struck her as typically frugal, but also almost unbearable. Guilt washed over her at the industrious way he had been combating his loneliness.

Her father arrived on the dot of four, as she was setting out the tea things. ‘Julia,’ he said, removing his mackintosh.

Even by his standards, this was far from an emphatic greeting.

‘Hello, Dad.’

He nodded at the tray. ‘Cakes.’

‘Shop-bought, I’m afraid. Not Harry’s.’

A thin smile. ‘I hope you didn’t pay over the odds.’

They had their tea in the sitting room. Nothing about it had changed in twenty years: the same Victorian balloon-backed chairs upholstered in gros point, the same herbaceous wallpaper, the gate-leg table with its ‘don’t touch’ cargo of Royal Worcester figurines. ‘Well, it’s all looking very ship-shape in here.’

He grimaced. ‘Not for much longer. Bridie’s leaving.’

‘Oh.’ Bridie was her father’s daily and the sticking plaster that allowed her to countenance him living alone. ‘Where’s she off to?’

‘Factory.’

‘You’ll find someone else,’ she said.

‘I doubt it.’

A little silence fell and in it she could hear her mother’s absence. Her father had loved her mother, there was no doubt about that. But she had been a woman whose need to be understood was at least as great as her need to be loved, and he had never quite succeeded in doing this. Julia had understood her, which is why she had been able to hurt her. And now, she thought, she would hurt her father, too, with a bombshell delivered in person.

‘Have you heard from Michael?’ she asked, to delay the moment. Michael, her elder brother by four years, was a mining engineer in Durban. (The favourite child, Julia believed, unaware that Michael believed the same of her. Theirs was a prolonged rivalry.)

‘Busy, by all accounts.’

‘Doris and the girls?’

‘Flourishing.’

The conversation staggered to another halt. Julia became aware of the chink of spoons in cups, of cups in saucers. Where were the words she had rehearsed? Gone.

He said, ‘If you’re going to ask me for money, the answer is no.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Julia, a pulse beating in her throat.

‘Richard paid me a visit a while ago. He warned me you might well come begging.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know full well what I mean.’

Her mouth dried. She had a clear picture of her father and her husband discussing her in this very room, the accountant and the solicitor, the two thoroughly decent men; they had always liked each other. It filled her with dread, and something much more slippery. ‘Whatever he told you, you must understand –’

‘I don’t want to hear any more about it.’ Her father looked at her with the coolness of a stranger. ‘You made your bed, you must lie in it.’ A dusky colour rose in his face, as if prompted by the word ‘bed’ and all that it implied. He got up from his seat and went to stare out of the sitting-room window through the gauze of its net curtains, the blackout blinds drawn up under a floral pelmet.

‘Please, Dad, I need your help,’ she said to his back, which had disgust written down the length of it.

No answer.

‘Richard wants custody. I can’t allow that.’

‘Thank God your mother’s not alive to see this,’ he said. Then he turned. ‘I must say, I find it inexcusable that when you needed a smokescreen for one of your illicit encounters you should tell your husband you were visiting me.’

On the doorstep she cried, offending all the net curtains in the street. On the train she cried, causing a rustling of newspaper.

‘I can’t believe Richard would do that.’ Julia was steadier now, but only just.

‘Why are you surprised? These highly moral men have no grey areas.’

The blackout was in place and Dougie was drawing little sketches for Nell. George the cat had joined the Local Defence Mouse-cat-eers, the Home Miaow, and was armed with a frying pan and cricket bat to defeat the Nazi rats parachuting down from the London skies.

Today another leaflet had been pushed through the letterbox: ‘If the Invader Comes’. They were to keep calm, that was the gist of it. ‘If’, Julia thought, was the authorities’ way of saying ‘when’. The Germans were twenty-one miles away.

‘Isn’t Nell a bit young to understand this?’ she said, peering over his shoulder.

‘Oh, Barbara will explain it to her.’

Julia winced at the name of the wife. Thin blue airmail envelopes arrived from her at irregular intervals. She knew where he kept them; in fact, she’d read them, searching for clues about this other woman, searching for evidence that the marriage was over. All she had learned was a great deal about life in Toronto, where Barbara had an administrative job in provincial government. It sounded dull.

She began pacing up and down. ‘Richard always seems to be a step ahead of me. I don’t like it.’

‘Sinclair,’ said Dougie, putting down his pencil. ‘He’s a lawyer. You need to prepare yourself for more of the same. You should have put your father in the picture weeks ago. That way he might have been more sympathetic.’

‘I doubt it.’ Another circuit of the room. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Something will turn up.’

‘Yes, Mr Micawber.’ She was regretting leaving her rings behind: that had been a gesture she could ill afford.

He reached for her and pulled her on to his lap. ‘Why are you dressed as a governess?’ He fingered the collar of her suit jacket.

She rubbed her nose. ‘These are my tidy clothes.’ The idea had been to look as little like a harlot as possible.

‘Well, make yourself untidy,’ he said, releasing her. ‘We’re going out on the town.’

‘What’s the occasion?’

‘I’ve something to tell you.’

‘This Sancerre is very good.’ Dougie mopped his mouth.

Julia gazed round. The grill room was bright and dark, mirrored and panelled, populated by officers and their wives or girlfriends. ‘Stardust’ tinkled on the piano. She wondered what Dougie had to tell her that could only be said in a hotel – an expensive one. He’d ordered lobster.

No row, she told herself. Don’t bite the hand that takes you out to dinner, even if it doesn’t pay the legal bills. ‘Stardust’ became ‘Melancholy Baby’.

‘Is something the matter?’ said Dougie. ‘You look like you’re in pain.’

Julia realized she was flexing her fingers and stopped. Whenever she heard a piano it made her hands hungry.

But she was saved from having to explain this by the entrance of a brunette in a silver lamé gown who made every head turn and chatter die on lips. The woman was halfway across the room when she was apprehended by a hotel functionary of some kind and escorted out.

‘No better than she should be’ was Dougie’s amused observation.

She had never consciously noticed him noticing another woman before, not with such evident relish. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s a prostitute.’

‘Now there’s a job I could do.’

‘Don’t be cynical, Sinclair. It doesn’t suit you.’ Dougie put down his glass. ‘Shall I tell you my news?’

‘Go ahead.’

The Ministry was moving them to Denham, he said. Studios just outside London, where the film units for the army and the air force were already located.

‘You should see the resources they’ve got – the equipment, the labs. One could be in Hollywood.’

Dougie was tearing a bread roll into smaller and smaller pieces (he did the same thing with bus tickets). ‘And they’ve finally found us a producer. Chap called Hugh Trevelyan. Cambridge, a little before my time. I met him this afternoon. He used to be a screenwriter, done a bit of editing and directing, too.’

‘Agreeable?’

‘Kindred spirit.’

It was nothing short of miraculous, Dougie thought, given that it had been Cheeseman who had done the choosing.

The lobster arrived with fuss and finger bowls.

‘There’s a script he’d like me to take a look at.’ Dougie cracked a claw.

‘I’m to have a free hand and as much stock as I want. Worth celebrating, don’t you think?’

‘Will it mean more money?’ Hope flickered into life: it was a rationed commodity these days.

‘Try being a little more enthusiastic.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t you understand how important this is to me?’ He gestured at the room with his crackers. ‘Take a look around. What do you see? Uniforms. Most of them wondering why I’m not in one. This is my chance to make a proper contribution.’

‘I know, it’s very good news. I’m pleased for you.’

‘Money isn’t everything.’

It is when you haven’t got it, she thought.

A little later, shellfish and Sancerre had done the trick. They played the Face Game.

It was one of Dougie’s theories – one of many – that if you paid attention you could spot faces from art, from history, all around you every day. Archetypes. Throwbacks. And the famous – whose faces, after all, were not copyrighted. The librarian with the high forehead and pale, hooded eyes who looked like a Renaissance contessa, the eighteenth-century squire behind the counter at the post office, the Roman sentry punching tickets on the tram. And scores of Ronald Colmans. ‘They do seem to pop up everywhere.’ She, of course, was a Modigliani, which she had learned was a compliment.

‘Over there,’ said Dougie. ‘Velásquez.’

She turned and saw a sallow-skinned, long-faced woman with fine black eyes.

‘Bang on.’

‘Your turn,’ he said as the waiter refilled their glasses.

The waiter had one of those complexions that was both doughy and ruddy, and an unfortunate haircut.

‘Bruegel,’ she said, when he had gone. ‘He only wants a jerkin and hose.’

Dougie bit his lip. ‘So he does.’

‘Third table from the window: Brunel.’

‘Hang about. You’re not giving me a go.’ He squinted over her shoulder. ‘Mmm, no side whiskers.’

‘True, but he is smoking a cigar.’

‘He is. Bonus point. You’re too good at this.’

Julia twiddled the stem of her glass, spilled a little. ‘The astrologer in the Daily Telegraph says we’re to expect the invasion next Tuesday.’

‘I’ve never believed a word I read in the Telegraph,’ said Dougie. ‘And I’m not going to start now.’

‘Perhaps if we’re invaded I won’t need a divorce.’ More wine was spilled.

‘Time I got you home, Sinclair.’ Dougie signalled for the bill.

‘Will we be invaded? Do you think?’

‘Anything’s possible. Although, thanks to Churchill, I think a negotiated peace is looking less likely.’

They were standing waiting for a taxi when Brunel and his party came out of the hotel. One of them advanced up the queue to tap Dougie on the shoulder.

‘I happened to notice that you and your companion were staring at my friend.’

‘Were we?’

‘Quite rudely, I’d say. I’ll have you know he brought his entire battalion safely out of France. Not a man lost.’

‘In which case, I should very much like to shake his hand.’

‘We were merely remarking on his resemblance to Ronald Coleman,’ said Julia.

‘Yes,’ said Dougie. ‘We thought it quite striking.’

On the way home in the cab, her head lurching on his shoulder, Julia calculated that the evening had cost half of what she owed the lawyer.

There was a thudding. It came from inside her skull and from beneath the floorboards.

Julia opened her eyes. This was a mistake. The light hit her like a blow. Dougie had already left – for Denham, she remembered, as if through a fog made of iron filings – and the blackout had been taken down.

Thud, thud, thud.

Her first thought was that the invasion had come and there were Germans at the door. Her second thought was that it was the milkman wanting payment (his bill was weeks overdue).

Her next thought was that it was Mrs Tooley hitting her broom handle on the ceiling to announce a visitor. Which it was.

‘Coming!’

The visitor, making her way up the stairs in a hat worn at an angle that spoke of years of pinning headgear just so, was Fiona. She drew level, drew breath, hand on heart – pure theatre: there were not many stairs, nor were they steep.

‘Don’t tell me. You happened to find yourself in the vicinity.’

‘Darling. I thought I’d left it long enough.’

Only later did Julia wonder what her friend meant. ‘Long’, as in since they had last seen each other? Or, as in long enough after daybreak for any respectable person to be up and fully clothed?

As it was, she was only too conscious of her dressing gown, tangled hair and bare feet. Beyond her, the shabby, unaired flat. The den of iniquity.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’

Julia opened the door further and beckoned her to come through. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’

When she returned, she found Fiona standing in the middle of the sitting room taking in the paintings on the ochre walls, the bursting bookshelves, the overflowing ashtrays, the cat attending to its toilet. Her eyes – habituated to pretty views and amusing cushions – flitted here and there, her curiosity a pungent perfume.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ Julia removed a stack of newspapers from one of the club chairs.

Fiona considered for a moment, then perched on the edge. ‘You must love this man very much.’

‘You’ve no idea.’

‘Oh, I think I’ve an inkling.’

‘How about some tea?’ said Julia.

‘That would be wonderful. You clearly could do with a cup.’

Julia brought in the tray and apologized for the biscuits. ‘They’re rather stale, I’m afraid.’

Fiona said, ‘Where’s the piano? Upstairs?’

‘Richard won’t let me have it.’ Julia set down the tray. The teapot slopped and the lid chinked. ‘He wants a divorce and custody of Peter.’

Fiona, clearly resisting the urge to pour, allowed her cup to be filled, but not before noting its interior brownness. ‘Gosh, that’s grim.’

‘And expensive.’

‘Are you quite well, darling?’

The aspirin Julia had swallowed in the kitchen, her mouth held under the gushing tap, was having no effect and a vein in her temple pulsed spikes of pain into her skull.

‘I’ve no regrets, if that’s what you’re asking.’ This was mostly true.

Fiona’s hat was very smart. Her linen dress too, the pistachio colour flattering rather than bilious, as it would have been on most people.

‘I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been so worried about you. Just that brief note to say where you’d gone and why, then nothing for weeks.’

‘Sorry. I’ve been a bit distracted.’

‘Haven’t we all?’ said Fiona. ‘Defence Area, Invasion Area, Restricted Zone – they can call it what they like, but it’s no picnic living on the front line, let me tell you. They’ve mined the beach and put these ghastly concrete cubes like giant sugar lumps all over it.’

Julia’s attention drifted. ‘Picnic’ and ‘beach’ had been enough to remind her of the day she’d met Dougie, a day she often revisited with a kind of wonder at life’s strange accidents.

Fiona talked on. The evacuees had been sent packing. Major Lees had constructed some sort of dug-out in the woods on the high ground beyond the church, fully equipped with tins, camp beds and whatever weaponry he’d been able to commandeer – bottles in socks and pitchforks, mainly. ‘It’s supposed to be hush-hush, but everyone knows about it.’

If Fiona knew about it, thought Julia, this was understood. Had the censor been listening, he would have clapped his hands over his ears by now – or over her mouth.

Had she heard that Richard had formed up a detachment of Local Defence Volunteers?

She had not heard. A pause. ‘How is he?’

Fiona gave her a look she had last seen on the face of her chemistry teacher returning a D-minus homework. ‘How do you think?’

Julia felt heat travel up her face. Her head pounded. ‘I still don’t understand what prompted him to go looking for the letters.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘What do you take me for? I wouldn’t dream of it.’ There was the noise of a train and the sashes rattled in their frames. ‘He was bound to twig at some point, the way you were mooning about.’

Julia stared into her cup. ‘Why did you come? It’s a long way for a social call. I might not have been in.’

Fiona lit a cigarette and fanned the smoke. After a time she said, ‘Ginny’s up the duff. Airman. Trainee airman. To be honest, I came to town to do a little shopping in advance of the wedding. I admit the detour from Oxford Street might have been a bit of an impulse but frankly we could all be speaking German next week, so I thought why ever not?’

In the light from the window you saw what you normally didn’t: the grey hairs among the red, the fine lines around the mouth, the blurred looseness along the jaw. The frock, the hat, the nail polish looked more like armour now.

‘I’m going to be a grandmother. Isn’t that the limit?’

It would indeed be a blow, thought Julia. ‘You’ll redefine the role.’

‘Perhaps. Toby’s a sweet chap, actually. The young know how to seize the day, and who can blame them? I’ve been thinking “Marmee”.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Julia.

‘Marmee, the mother in Little Women. “Granny” is so terribly ageing.’ Fiona smoothed her skirt and got up from her chair. ‘Well, I’d better be on my way.’

‘Must you?’ said Julia.

‘Yes,’ Fiona said. ‘The mother of the bride’s outfit awaits. Dear old John Lewis. Whatever would we do without it?’

‘Quite,’ said Julia, who could no longer afford to shop at John Lewis, or any other Oxford Street department store.

At that moment she was overcome by a longing, not for her home – not precisely – but for certain, unremarkable things: a tablecloth edged with a Greek-key pattern, a Wedgwood vase she had liked to fill with early blossom and late chrysanthemums and the toys her son refused to play with any more and which leant crookedly against each other on the top of his chest of drawers – a knitted lamb called Lamb, a painted wooden dog on wheels and his teddy, named by him with a three-year-old’s self-absorption, Peter Richard Compton. From another time and place these things asked how she could have abandoned them. The question pressed a bruise in her mind.

When she came back to herself, Fiona was staring at her.

‘Are you going to tell Richard you’ve seen me?’

‘Why should I do that?’ Fiona drew on her gloves. ‘Next time I must meet this man of yours.’

Julia, who could not imagine introducing Dougie to Fiona, said he worked very long hours.

Very long hours, thought Fiona, remembering the ‘long hours’ Geoffrey had put in with various secretaries at various roadside inns. Men couldn’t change their spots any more than leopards could – and a man who was prepared to steal a woman from her husband might well be a man who made a habit of it. ‘So long as you’re happy, darling,’ she said, trying without much success to keep the irony out of her tone.

Distance inserted itself between them. Julia waited for an invitation to the wedding or an offer of financial assistance. Neither came.