by Sarah Waters
Then Fraser grew a little calmer. He glanced over his shoulder again and whispered, ‘All right. I think she’s gone up now. Come in, though, for God’s sake! Before a policeman or somebody spots us.’
And then he moved back, and put aside the black-out curtain, so that Duncan could climb in.
Ah, Miss Langrish,’ said Mr Leonard, drawing open his door.
Kay gave a jump. She had been going softly up the darkened staircase, but a creaking board must have given her away. Mr Leonard, she guessed, had been sitting up alone in his treatment-room, making his night watch, sending out prayers. He was dressed in his shirt-sleeves, the cuffs rolled back. He had put on the indigo-coloured lamp he used when healing at night, and the blue of it lit the landing strangely.
He stood in his doorway, his face in shadow. He said quietly, ‘I’ve been thinking of you tonight, Miss Langrish. How are you?’
She told him she was well. He said, ‘You’ve been out, I imagine, enjoying the evening?’ He tilted his head and added, ‘You’ve seen old friends?’
‘I’ve been to a cinema,’ she answered quickly.
He nodded, as if sagely. ‘A cinema, yes. Such curious places, I always think. Such instructive places…Next time you go to a cinema, Miss Langrish, you ought to just try something. Just turn your head and look over your shoulder. What will you find? So many faces, all lit by the restless, flickering light of impermanent things. Eyes fixed, and wide, with awe, with terror or with lust. Just so, you see, is the unevolved spirit held in thrall by material sense; by fictions and by dreams…’
His voice was low, level, compelling. When she said nothing, he came closer to her and gently caught hold of her hand. He said, ‘I think you are one of those spirits, Miss Langrish. I think you are searching, but held in thrall. That is because you are searching with your eyes cast down, seeing nothing but dust. You must lift up your gaze, my dear. You must learn to look away from perishable things.’
His palm and fingertips were soft, and his grip seemed gentle; even so, she had to make a little effort in order to draw her hand away. She said, ‘I will. I—Thank you, Mr Leonard,’ sounding ridiculous to herself, her voice thick, uncertain, not at all like her own. She moved from him: went gracelessly up the staircase to her room; fumbled with the lock of it before she got the door open and went inside.
She waited for the click of Mr Leonard’s door downstairs and then, without putting on the light, crossed to her armchair and sat down. Her foot struck something as she went, and sent it rustling over the rucked-up rug: she’d left a newspaper, open, on the floor. On the arm of her chair was a dirty plate and an old tin pie-dish, overflowing with ash and cigarette stubs. A shirt and some collars that she had recently washed were hanging from a string in the fireplace, pale and flimsy-looking in the gloom.
She kept still for a moment, then put her hand to her pocket and brought out that ring. It felt bulky to her touch, and the finger on which she’d used to wear it was too slim, now, to keep it in place. When she had taken it, in the street, it had still been warm from Viv’s hand. She had sat in the cinema, staring unseeingly at the roaring, twitching pantomime being played out on the screen, turning the gold band over and over, running her fingertips across all its little scratches and dents…At last, unable to bear it, she’d clumsily put the ring away and got to her feet; had stumbled along the cinema row, gone quickly through the foyer, and out into the street.
Since then she had been walking. She’d walked to Oxford Street, to Rathbone Place, to Bloomsbury—restless and searching, just as Mr Leonard had guessed. She’d thought of going back to Mickey’s boat, had got as far as Paddington, even, before she’d given the idea up. For, what was the point? She’d gone into a pub instead, and had a couple of whiskys. She’d bought a drink for a blond-haired girl; that had made her feel better.
After that she’d come wearily home to Lavender Hill. Now she felt exhausted. She turned the ring in her fingers as she’d turned it in the cinema, but even the slight weight of it seemed too heavy for her hand. She gazed about, listlessly, for somewhere to put it, and finally dropped it into the pie-dish, amongst the cigarette stubs.
But it lay there gleaming, undimmed by ash; it kept drawing her eye, and after a minute she fished it out again and rubbed it clean. She put it back on her slender finger; and closed her fist, to keep it from slipping.
The house was still. All London seemed still. Only, presently, did there rise, from the room below, the muffled throb of Mr Leonard’s murmur, which told her he was hard at work again; and she pictured him, bathed in indigo electric light: hunched and watchful, sending out his fierce benediction into the fragility of the night.
1944
ONE
Every time Viv and her father came out of the prison they had to stop for a minute or two so that Mr Pearce could rest, could get out his handkerchief and wipe his face. It was as though the visits knocked the breath from him. He’d gaze back at the quaint, grey, medieval-looking gate like a man who’d just been punched. ‘If I’d ever thought,’ he’d say, or, ‘If someone had told me.’
‘Thank God your mother’s not here, Vivien, to have to see this,’ he said today.
Viv took his arm. ‘At least it’s not for much longer.’ She spoke clearly, so that he would hear. ‘Remember what we said, at the start? We said, “It’s not for ever.”’
He blew his nose. ‘That’s right. That’s true.’
They started to walk. He insisted on carrying her satchel for her, but she might as well have been holding it herself: he seemed to lean against her with all his weight, and every so often he let out his breath in a little puff. He could have been her grandfather, she thought. All this business with Duncan had made an old man of him.
The February day had been cold, but bright. Now it was quarter to five and the sun was setting: there were a couple of barrage balloons up and they were the only things that still caught the light, drifting pinkly, vividly, in the darkening sky. Viv and her father walked along towards Wood Lane. There was a café, close to the station, where they usually stopped. When they reached it today, however, they found women there whose faces they recognised: the girlfriends and wives of men in other parts of the prison. They were freshening up their make-up, peering into compacts; laughing their heads off. Viv and her father walked on to another place. They went in, and bought cups of tea.
This café was not so nice as the other. There was one spoon, to be used by all, tied to the counter by a piece of string. The tables were covered with greasy oilcloths, and the steamed-up window had patches and smears where men must have leant their heads against it as they lolled in their chairs. But her father, Viv thought, saw none of this. He still moved as though winded or bewildered. He sat, and lifted his cup to his mouth, and his hand was shaking: he had to dip his head and quickly sip at the tea before it should spill. And when he rolled himself a cigarette the tobacco fell from the paper. She put down her own cup and helped him pick up the strands from the table—using her long nails, making a joke of it.
He was a little calmer after his smoke. He finished his tea, and they walked together to the Underground, going quickly now, feeling the cold. He had a long journey home to Streatham, but she was going, she said, back to work at Portman Square—working extra hours to make up for the ones she’d taken off in order to visit Duncan. They sat side by side in the train, unable to talk because of the roar and rattle of it. When she got out at Marble Arch he got out with her, to say goodbye on the platform.
The platform was one that was used as a shelter in the night. There were bunks, buckets, a litter of papers, a sour uriney smell. People were already coming in, kids and old ladies, settling down.
‘There we are,’ said Viv’s father, as they waited. He was trying to make the best of things. ‘It’s another month done, I suppose.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And how did you think he was looking? Did you think he was looking all right?’
She nod
ded. ‘Yes, he looked all right.’
‘Yes…And what I always think to myself, Vivien, is this: at least we know where he is. We know he’s being looked after. There’s plenty fathers can’t say that of their sons in wartime, can they?’
‘No.’
‘There’s plenty fathers would envy me.’
He took out his handkerchief again and wiped his eyes. But his look grew bitter rather than sad. And after a moment he said, in a different voice, ‘God help me, though, for talking ill of the dead; but it ought to be that other boy in there, not Duncan!’
She pressed his arm, saying nothing. She saw the anger in him, tightening, then draining away. He let out his breath, patted her hand.
‘Good girl. You’re a good girl, Vivien.’
They stood without speaking until another train roared in. Then, ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Go on, now. I’ll be all right.’
‘You don’t want me to walk you up to Portman Square?’
‘Don’t be daft! Go on, look. And give my love to Pamela!’
He didn’t hear her. She watched him board but, the windows being all blacked out, when he moved further in to find a seat she lost sight of him. But she didn’t want him to glimpse her rushing away: she waited for the doors to close and the train to start up, before moving off herself.
Then, however, it was as though she became a different girl. The slightly exaggerated manner she had to adopt when speaking to her father—the mouthing, the gestures—fell away. She was suddenly neat, smart, guarded: she looked at her watch and went quickly, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. Anyone watching her, after hearing the conversation she’d just had, would have been baffled: for she didn’t head for the steps that would have taken her up to the street; she didn’t even glance that way. Instead she went purposefully across to the westbound platform and waited there for a train; and when the train drew in, she got on it and travelled back in the direction she’d just come from. And at Notting Hill Gate she changed to the Circle Line, and rode to Euston Square.
She didn’t have to go back to work, after all. She was going to a hotel in Camden Town. She was meeting Reggie. He’d sent her the address of a place and a rough sort of map, and she’d memorised it, so that now, when she left the train, she could go quickly and not hang about. She was dressed in her sober office clothes and a navy mackintosh and scarf, and the day had darkened properly. She moved like a shadow through the blacked-out streets around Euston, heading north.
These streets were full of small hotels. Some were nicer than others. Some were not nice at all: they looked like places that tarts would use; or they had refugee people in them, families from Malta, Poland, Viv wasn’t sure where else. The one she wanted was in a street off Mornington Crescent. It smelt of gravy dinners and dusty carpets. But the woman at the desk was all right. ‘Miss Pearce,’ she said, smiling, looking at Viv’s identification card, then going through her book for the reservation. ‘Just passing through? That’s right.’
For there were a thousand reasons, these days, why a girl should spend a night on her own in a London hotel.
She gave Viv a key with a wooden tag on it. The room was a cheap one, up three flights of creaking stairs. There was a single bed, an ancient-looking wardrobe, a chair with cigarette burns, and a little wash-basin in the corner that was coming away from the wall. A radiator, painted over and over with different kinds of paint, gave off a tepid heat. On the bedside table was an alarm clock, fastened down with a length of wire. The clock said ten past six. She thought she had thirty or forty minutes.
She took off her coat, and opened her satchel. Inside were two bulky buff Ministry of Food envelopes, marked Confidential. One held a pair of evening shoes. In the other was a dress, and real silk stockings. She had been worried about the dress all day, because it was crêpe and easily creased: she took it carefully from the envelope and let it hang from her hands, then spent a few minutes tugging at it, trying to flatten out the folds. The stockings she had worn and washed many times; there were patches of darning, the stitches tiny and neat, like fairy-work. She ran them over her fingers, liking the feel of them, looking for faults.
She wished she could bathe. She thought she could feel the sour prison smells still clinging to her. But there wasn’t time for it. She went down the hall and used the lavatory, then came back to her room and stripped to her brassière and knickers, to wash herself at the little basin.
There was no hot water, she discovered: the tap went round and round in her hand. She ran the cold, and splashed her face, then lifted her arms and leant to the wall and rinsed her armpits—the water running down to her waist, making her shiver, wetting the carpet. The towel was yellowy-white and thin, like a baby’s napkin. The soap had fine grey seams in it. But she’d brought talcum powder with her; and she dabbed scent, from a little bottle, on her wrists and throat and collarbones, and between her breasts. When she put on the flimsy crêpe dress, and replaced her lisle winter stockings with the flesh-coloured silk ones, she felt as though she was in her nightie, light and exposed.
So she went a little self-consciously down to the bar, and got herself a drink—a gin and ginger—to settle her nerves.
‘It’s only one each, miss, I’m afraid,’ the barman said; but he made the measure, it seemed to her, a large one. She sat at a table, keeping her head down. It was nearly dinner-time, and people were just beginning to come in. If some man were to catch her eye, drift over, insist on joining her, it would spoil everything. She’d brought a pen and a piece of paper with her, and now spread the paper out. She actually started to write a letter to a girl she knew, in Swansea.
Dear Margery—
Hello there, how are you getting along? This is just a word to let you know that I am still alive, despite Hitler doing his best, ha ha. Hope things are a bit quieter where you are—
He arrived at just after seven. She’d been glancing slyly over at every man who had appeared, but had heard a step and, for some reason not thinking it was his, looked up unguardedly: she met his gaze as he crossed the doorway, and blushed like crazy. A moment later she heard him talking with the woman at the desk—telling her that he was meeting someone, a man. Would they mind if he waited? The woman said they wouldn’t mind it one little bit.
He came into the bar, had a joke with the barman: ‘Just pour me a drop of that stuff there, will you?’—nodding to one of the fancy bottles that were kept, for show, on the shelves behind the counter. In the end he got gin, like everyone else. He brought it to the table next to hers and set it down on a beer-mat. He was dressed in his uniform, wearing it badly, as he always did, the jacket looking as though it was meant for someone half a size bigger. He plucked at his trousers, and sat, then got out a packet of service cigarettes and caught her eye.
‘How do you do?’ he said.
She changed her pose, drew in her skirt. ‘How do you do?’
He offered the cigarettes. ‘Care to smoke?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You won’t mind if I do?’
She shook her head, and went back to her letter, though with the nearness of him, the excitement of it all, she’d lost the sense of what she’d been writing…After a second she saw him tilt his head: he was trying to read the words over her shoulder. When she turned to him, he straightened up as if caught out.
‘Must be the hell of a fellow,’ he said, nodding to the page, ‘to get all that.’
‘It’s a lady-friend, actually.’ She sounded prim.
‘Well, my mistake.—Oh, now don’t be like that!’ For she’d folded the paper, begun to screw together the pen. ‘Don’t leave on my account, will you?’
She said, ‘It’s nothing to do with you. I’ve got an appointment.’
He rolled his eyes, then winked at the barman. ‘Why do girls always say something like that when I appear?’
He loved all this. He could spin it out for hours. It only put her on edge: she thought they must be like a pair of painful amateur
actors. She was always afraid she’d start laughing. Once, in another hotel, she had started laughing; and that had made him laugh; they’d sat there, giggling like kids…She finished her drink. This was the worst part. She picked up her paper, her pen, her bag, and—
‘Don’t forget this, miss,’ he said, touching her arm and taking up her key. He held it out to her by its flat wooden tag.
She blushed again. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ He straightened his tie. ‘That’s my lucky number, as it happens.’
Perhaps he winked at the barman again, she didn’t know. She went out of the bar and up to her room—so excited now, she was practically breathless. She put on the lamp. She looked in the mirror and recombed her hair. She began to shiver. She’d got chilled from sitting in the bar in her dress: she put her coat over her shoulders and stood at the tepid radiator, hoping to warm up, feeling the goose-pimples rising on her bare arms and trying to rub them away. She watched the tethered alarm clock, and waited.
After fifteen minutes there was a gentle tapping at the door. She ran to open it, throwing off the coat as she went; and Reggie darted inside.
‘Jesus!’ he whispered. ‘This place is crawling! I had to stand about for ages on the stairs, pretending to tie my shoelaces. A chamber-maid passed me, twice, and gave me the hell of a funny look. I think she thought I was peeping through keyholes.’ He put his arms around her and kissed her. ‘God! You glorious girl, you.’
It was so wonderful to stand in his arms, she felt suddenly almost light-headed. She even thought, for an awful moment, that she might cry. She kept her cheek against his collar, so that he shouldn’t see her face; and when she could speak again what she said was: ‘You need a shave.’