1940
SERVANTS’ STAIRCASE, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
Livy and Christian set off down the empty back staircase, and every step echoed. Here there were no carpets to soften the noise of everyday life, and the shape and materials of the long staircase made the acoustics harsh and ugly. The door slammed behind them, the noise reverberating off the stone. Christian put down the mop and bucket on the first turning step. The steps were of lead-coloured grey stone, their centres smoothed by a century of comings and goings.
‘I’ll just show you the other rooms quickly,’ she said. ‘Then you must leave me to mop the stairs.’
‘I’ll mop them for you, if you like.’
‘I’m perfectly capable. But thank you.’
Livy put her hand to the smooth surface of the wooden bannister: the stair spindles were metal arabesques. Designed by Henry, she had no doubt: in fact, she was sure she had seen a sketch for them in pencil, in one of the notebooks. Christian was half a step behind her. She stopped; he stopped. As the sound of their footsteps faded into silence, she felt the sense of him behind her.
‘There’s a bathroom to the right, the firewatchers fill their buckets there sometimes,’ she said. ‘But the other service rooms are shut off. The blackout is left up, permanently.’
‘I don’t mind the darkness if you don’t,’ he said.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned to the left to lead him into the shut-off rooms, and stopped. She felt a sudden obstruction there. She didn’t want to step forwards, into the rooms which had been closed off. These past weeks, she had kept to a few places: the vaults, the Stair Hall, the other public rooms. Not the darkness. And it was Christian who was making her step forwards, into the shadows. For a moment she thought about turning back, about telling him to go, that he could not make her do it.
‘Livy?’ he said, behind her.
She stepped forwards.
The ghost of the light from the staircase helped them find their way into the dust-sheeted rooms, thick blackout material over the vast windows. Strange forms loomed out at them: dust-sheeted desks and chairs.
‘This was a scullery,’ Livy said. ‘In 1841. And the next room was a small dining room for the director. But they’re both offices now.’
Christian squinted in the gloom. ‘Not much ornament here.’
‘And no gold leaf.’ They said it in unison, and glanced at each other. She saw his smile in the shadows.
‘Can you make it out?’ she said. ‘These offices are painted in a certain shade of institutional green. Not 1841 original, I’m sure.’
‘But the windows are large, and beautiful.’
She stood back, and let him absorb what he could in the low light. When he turned and smiled, she smiled back.
‘Did you see on your way in downstairs,’ she said, ‘one of the slabs of pink marble in the Stair Hall has cracked, and a corner has come away. It’s just bricks beneath, you know – London stock bricks and mortar, lined with marble panels an inch thick.’
‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ he said, his hands in his pockets. ‘I told you this place isn’t entirely what it seems.’
‘I think it’s rather beautiful, the damage,’ said Livy, remembering the distaste on Jonathan’s and Bill’s faces when they’d seen it. ‘It’s sad the piece of marble has broken, but to see the underside of the building – its humility, in a way – it rather makes me love it more.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I quite agree. I want to get into the bones of things. See what other people cannot. It’s why I love architecture: seeing beneath. I try and remember that, when I’m feeling tired and bitter.’
She saw the trace of it in his face: the curl of his lip. She knew it must mask some deeper, darker distress. Still, that strange openness she felt with him spurred her on.
‘What is it like? Seeing how the landscape changes every night?’
Christian thought of the bomb recorder’s notebook: a slim burgundy Carlton cash book, ruled up to account for other things. Dates, locations, everything as dry and precise as possible.
Approximate damage: unsafe until shored up
Rescue service operations: searching for casualties
Casualties: 2m/2f (walking). Succeeded in recovering the body of a female
He closed his eyes for a moment, and thought of the right thing to say. ‘When I mark a house as still usable, it’s a kind of triumph. There may be cracks in it, a window out, but it’s still standing. It’s still a home. When you see a map, and the street is coloured in black . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I pretend it’s not real. One must put a wall up. I can’t imagine – I used to enjoy using my imagination. Before the war. It was what I did the most, daydreaming. But now, I actively suppress it. It seems to me it’s a quality that is no longer helpful. Everything I see – I try to forget it.’
‘What do you do to forget it?’
He took another step towards her, and she could see the shine of his eyes in the darkness. ‘I think about you, sitting on a picnic blanket with me in Hyde Park, before the war.’
She stood there: frozen. There was a foot between them. He did not advance; he did not touch her.
‘Do you want me to tell you, what it was like?’ he said.
She said nothing.
‘You were curious about everything,’ he said. ‘You had ambition. You wore your hair,’ his eyes moved over her face, ‘much shorter. In a bob. Pinned. A plain, dark suit. Sensible shoes. You didn’t want to be beautiful. You wanted to be taken seriously.’
She had the sense he was getting closer to her, and yet he had not moved.
‘But your smile,’ he said. ‘The first time I saw you. It was your smile, which halted me in the office doorway. The world was fine as it was, before you. That is, I thought it was. But when you came into it, you made it brighter. You made it come alive, Livy. Alive in a way it had never been before. Vivid.’
The room had narrowed. The space felt unfamiliar, unsafe. Her and him, in the darkness. She turned away from him, putting her hand out to the wall to steady herself. She felt torn between wanting to run away and wanting to know more; she hardly knew whether she wanted him to come closer to her. But all around her she was edged with a thin line of terror. Surely he must see it, she thought? Surely it must halo me, bright white in the darkness? everything crackled with it.
‘Livy,’ he said.
‘If we keep on walking this way, we’ll come to the entrance Hall,’ she said briskly. ‘At the end of the corridor, that door opens onto it. As I said, the service rooms form a ring around the public rooms. It’s symmetrical, and logical.’
She turned and walked on, hearing his footsteps behind her. After a moment, he caught at her hand, and the movement was enough to turn her to face him. He took hold of her shoulders. She felt the burning heat of his hands through her blouse.
‘Do you remember?’ he said. He drew close to her, and she knew then that he wanted to kiss her, but that something was stopping him. ‘You must remember.’
She read it in his eyes: I won’t, unless you know who I am.
She put her hands on his chest. For a moment they stood there, cocooned in this kind of strange embrace. But the space between them felt uncrossable, and her hands curled into fists.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’
He let her go then, absolutely, as though relinquishing her. Let her go, and stepped away from her.
Livy felt tears in her eyes and she did not know why. She had not cried once since the day of the bombing: she had felt frozen, suspended in aspic. But now the feeling that rose in her was terrifying. She wanted very much, in that moment, to die. Just as she had for a moment on the top step of the staircase, after Jonathan had told her about the diamond. And it was a kind of crime, she knew, to feel that way, when so many other people were dying with no choice in the matter.
‘I must go,’ she said flatly. ‘I have things to do. The diamond.’ She wanted to be back in the Committee Room, reading the letters written by Henry, searching for the woman in the painting. Working out mysteries and puzzles. Burying herself in someone else’s past. She turned, and began to walk swiftly towards the door which led to the entrance Hall.
‘One more thing.’ Christian raised his voice. ‘You are a strong person. Warm, kind. Not fragile, not anxious, not broken. You will recover. You are strong. Livy?’
But she had gone through the door, and he heard it bang shut behind her.