27
I went down the stairs barefoot the next day, Saturday, thinking that we could make pancakes for breakfast and pretend it was Shrove Tuesday – I had a little sugar and a lemon to squeeze over them. Pondering whether I had enough powdered eggs, I heard the postwoman arriving. ‘You’re up early,’ she said, as I opened the door.
‘So are you.’
‘My job, though,’ she chuckled. ‘Sorry, looks like bills.’ She handed over two brown manila envelopes before touching her cap and leaving. I put the malignant envelopes on the little table in the hallway for Nick. He could deal with them. It was then that I noticed something was missing.
A framed photograph that my friend Sally had taken of us as we had left our wedding ceremony wasn’t in its place on the wall, even though the hook that had held it was still there. I searched around for the photograph and quickly spotted it on the floor by the coat rack. It couldn’t have just fallen, certainly not to where it was now. It was a little strange, but I didn’t think much of it.
As I bent down to pick it up and replace it in its spot on the wall, however, I noticed something underneath. It was a short white cigarette butt, the tobacco burned away. Nick’s brand had a sky-blue band around the white, and there was none on this one. I had thoroughly cleaned the hallway just yesterday too, and was certain it hadn’t been there then. Had someone smoked it and dropped it there, placing the photograph over it to ensure that it was found? It was said that the Secs did such things to disturb and intimidate. Or perhaps it was nothing and I had simply missed the cigarette when cleaning. I held it in my fingers, my pulse racing.
The waiting room of the South London Hospital seemed to cater to everyone without the right connections. Nick could probably have had me seen at Guy’s alongside Party members if I had asked him, but I wanted to keep my visit to myself for now, because I was there to find out what had caused my miscarriage and I wanted to know whether it was good or bad news about having another child before I told him. He was doing his usual Saturday-morning surgery, so I hadn’t had to come up with an excuse for where I was going.
There was a mass of people waiting at the chaotic reception desk. If there had ever been a single queue, it had long since broken down into an unruly shambles of young and old: aged women with walking frames crying at the back because they were too frightened of the pushing and shoving; young men forcing their way forward with hard looks; girls holding shrieking babies. Sometimes the nurses would wave at a young soldier who stood smoking by the doors, and he would amble over, bored, and push one or two of the young men outside, telling them they wouldn’t be seen. After getting to the front and putting my name down, I was directed to a hard bench, where I waited to be called. I sat watching the sea of people constantly change yet remain somehow the same.
Three hours later – I wished I had taken a book with me – my name was shouted out and I was directed to a cubicle formed of curtains within a large room with a dirty floor. There were ten other examination booths; all were occupied and in some I saw women in various states of undress attempting to cover themselves as best they could with blue sheets. Yes, it was in a bad state, but it was free, I reminded myself. It was free for everyone in need.
A tall, slim man with untidy white hair hurried into my cubicle, checking a sheet on a clipboard. He had a harassed air about him. ‘I am Dr Clement,’ he said in a French accent. I guessed he was one of the refugees from ’40 who hadn’t returned to their ravaged land. ‘May I have your name?’
‘Jane Cawson.’
‘Good, now what seems to be the problem?’
‘I had a miscarriage.’ It was the first time I had pronounced the words, and I hated every one.
‘Oh.’ He sat down and looked grave. ‘I am sorry. When did it happen?’
‘A month ago.’
‘I understand,’ he said, thoughtfully, noting down some details on an index card.
‘I want to know what caused it.’
‘What caused it?’ he repeated.
‘Yes. I want to have another child so I want to know.’
He looked a little troubled. ‘Please tell me the details of the pregnancy.’
I told him, keeping my voice low so that it wasn’t shared with the occupants of the adjoining cubicles. At the end, he took off his glasses. ‘Mrs Cawson, it is probable that nothing was the cause of the miscarriage. I am very sorry. It is something that happens sometimes. It is not your fault. It just occurs.’
‘Has it … damaged me?’ I asked.
‘For becoming pregnant again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there are tests.’
‘I would like them, please.’
‘Of course. I will first take a blood sample and a urine sample to see how healthy you are in total.’
He searched through a desk and found a jumble of instruments, including a hypodermic needle that he cleaned and sterilized in a jar of liquid. He fitted it to a syringe, rolled up my sleeve and drew out a line of my blood. ‘Good,’ he said, holding the tube up to the light. He labelled it and put it on his desk. ‘Now, here is a pot for the urine.’ He wrote on an envelope and placed a small glass phial inside it. ‘Please hand it in at the desk outside and make an appointment to come back on Monday, I will examine you properly then.’
On my way back to that seedy print studio in a Soho backstreet, feeling my way through the thickening smog, I tried to guess what I would find there. There was no indication that it related to Nick and what he and Lorelei had been involved in. It was something personal to her. Something involving a man named Crispin, whose name had appeared on the envelope containing the negative. But still I wanted to know.
Inside the shop, the man with green tattoos on his neck greeted me. ‘Got it here,’ he said, reaching under the counter. He handed me a paper bag and I drew a print from it. It was so confusing. The face on the picture was one I knew, and yet it had changed almost beyond recognition.
The thick-framed glasses were unknown to me. But the face. You could hide Lorelei’s red curls under a side-parted gamine wig but you couldn’t disguise her delicate face. ‘That do you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, hardly able to speak. ‘Thank you.’ I began to leave but, as I was crossing the threshold, I turned to speak to him. ‘By the way, do you know anyone called “Crispin”?’
‘ “Crispin”?’ He paused. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘All right. Thank you.’
Outside, the woman opposite was in front of her shop again, still smoking. She was even more striking-looking than the previous day, with immaculate make-up, a silver cameo choker on her neck and a large glittering mother-of-pearl comb in her hair. And, even though she was wearing a simple sort of white dress, there was something about the way she wore it. ‘You’re very glamorous,’ I said, before I could stop myself.
She hooted with laughter. ‘Nice of you to say that, love.’ She reached out and took my hair in her fist, rubbing it between her fingers. ‘You know, you could be a pin-up if you just paid a bit more attention to your make-up and did something with this. A wave. Bit of a tint. I’ll do it for less than a quid.’
I looked behind her and realized that her shop was a hairdresser’s. ‘Like yours?’
‘If you like.’ Nick and I were going to the theatre that evening, and I thought it would be jolly to have my hair done for it. I was about to step in when something caught my eye: a line of men marching past the end of the street, clad in overalls. It was a work party of Germans on their way to dig up the road. Their guards were armed with guns and batons, and we watched them pass, some looking dejected, some angry and swearing in German. There were rumours that the Department of Labour was considering taking our own reported Parasites and putting them into these work details so they would learn the happiness of labour – I hoped that was just talk, though. ‘Don’t feel sorry for them. Not one bit,’ said my new friend, watching them coldly. ‘Me brother was at D-Day. He saw them shooting his mates on the ground after they had surrendered.’
People were often reticent about D-Day. Some claimed that it was Blunt himself who had supplied Stalin with our plans, and the Soviets had passed them on to Hitler so that our offensive would fail. The Red Army, they said, had stayed out of the War precisely so that we and Germany would knock each other to pieces, and they could then sweep through Europe when we were both so weak that we could hardly stand. Blunt didn’t come across as that underhand, but how could you really tell?
The work party began to dig up some of the ruts in the road and shovel the dirt on to wheelbarrows. ‘Your brother came back all right, then?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. He was a POW in Holland. Got home eventually.’ It had taken six months for many of the POWs to make it back under their own steam, the Soviets not being too keen on the return of even the ragged remnants of our army. We had never been told what became of those who had surrendered to the Japs in Burma and Ceylon. She led me inside. ‘Anyway, it’s all over now, isn’t it? So let’s get you settled in. For a night out, is it?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to a show with my husband.’
‘Lovely.’
I sat for an hour as she tinted and teased my hair into the same French twist that she wore. After that, she spent another five minutes redoing my rouge. ‘Don’t worry, no extra charge,’ she said. ‘Oh, and me name’s Stephanie. Next time you come, ask for me.’
‘All right.’
She continued to fuss over me. ‘So what was it you wanted over there, anyway?’ She tipped her head towards the print shop opposite.
‘I found their details in an old address book of mine. I couldn’t remember why I went there.’
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘I see.’ She clearly didn’t believe me. But she just as clearly had a grudge against her neighbour. ‘I could tell you some stories about that place.’
‘Could you?’
‘Oh, I could. They print all sorts there, they say. Dirty postcards; snide papers; magazines they say are French, though the girls in them are about as French as I am, and I’m from sodding Whitechapel, if you’ll pardon the expression. Should wash me mouth out with soap ’n’ water. Call me a gossip if you must but just telling what I’ve heard. Can’t shoot me for that.’ She stood back and flexed her back. ‘Now it’s seventy-five new pence, or have you got something to swap?’
‘Not really.’
‘Nothing? What’s your job?’
‘Oh. Pity,’ she said sympathetically as she went back to my make-up. ‘Seventy-five new pence, then.’
I handed over the coins and left, bidding her goodbye. The few cars on the road crawled through the smog at the same pace as the pedestrians, with their headlights shining to make them look like giant insects. A motorcycle, one that seemed to have been salvaged from the War, drove through the wet gutter, spraying dirty water over my legs. I absent-mindedly stopped to brush it off my stockings and noticed footsteps some way behind me.
I turned through a narrow alleyway that I thought must cut to the next road, though it bent a little in the middle so you couldn’t see through to the end. The steps behind me turned down it too, echoing off the high walls of the buildings that hemmed us in. There were rumours that on days likes these thieves would walk beside their victims to slash through the side of handbags, grab their purses and then just walk off in the mist. We only had rumours, though, because the government hushed up news of most crimes.
I walked a little faster, but I tripped and my feet slithered when I came to a pile of rubbish and broken bricks that spanned the path. As I picked my way over them, the steps behind mine slowed. I glanced back. I could only make out a shambling figure close to the wall. Hurrying now, I squeezed past a dumped bedframe lying on its side, only to stumble on something that spun out from under my foot, making me drop my bag in the gloom. I wanted to leave it and bolt away, but it held my purse, so I had to nervously scrabble about for it. The figure stopped. I heard his silence.