While England Sleeps

by David Leavitt

  From the desk, the journal stared up at me indictingly. Had I forgotten it on purpose?

  An unaddressed envelope sat on the kitchen counter. I tore it open. It contained a week’s rent in cash and the following typewritten inventory:

  Goods used during stay and not purchased by me (or jointly):

  6 packets tea

  2 bars soap

  1½ boxes tooth powder (rounded off to 2)

  4 Wall’s sausages

  2 boxes ginger biscuits

  1 pair black socks

  1 teacup (to replace teacup I broke)

  1 copy Howards End (coffee spilled on page 143)

  Each of these items was neatly displayed on the countertop.

  I think, now, that I can imagine exactly how Edward must have sat as he read the journal: bolt upright, his back arched, the way he always sat when he read, as if he were in church. At one and three-quarter minutes a page, it would have taken him at least two hours, which meant that around the time I was being welcomed by Philippa’s mother he would have just finished, he would have stood, stretched his legs and had a piss, before taking out his ledger and calculating exactly how much he owed me. Perhaps he had a nap then, or went to the pub and got drunk, or perhaps it was then that he headed out to the little grocery shop on the corner to buy the necessary provisions. (For the socks, the teacup and the copy of Howards End he would have had to go farther afield.) Next—or perhaps this was the morning, Sunday morning—the packing, the typing out of the note on my typewriter, the careful arrangement of the things he’d bought on the kitchen countertop. (I can’t be sure, but somehow I assume this arrangement was careful.) Or perhaps I have the order wrong; perhaps he shopped first and cleaned later. Most likely he cleaned at night. One does, when the night is long. He cleaned with a vengeance, as if to scrub all traces of himself from these rooms. He scoured the tub and mopped the floor. He even bleached the lovemaking stains out of the old coverlet.

  Or tried. For at some point in that long day I walked over to the bed and, turning on the reading lamp, examined it. In fact, the biggest stain was still there—significantly faded, detectable only by careful examination, but still there. If you shone a bright light on it you could see it: vanilla-colored, about the size of a penny coin. If you ran your fingers over it you could feel it: a patch of scar tissue, pocked and risen, bumpy like a message in braille.

  Chapter Eleven

  I stayed home that night. I didn’t go out and search for Edward; instead I listened for his footsteps. I might as well have walked to Upney, for all the pacing I did in that narrow flat, but I never stepped out the door. Why, I ask myself now, when this was my only chance to save him? All I can offer by way of an explanation is a memory of profound, almost paralyzing ambivalence. Yes, Philippa had forced me to confront the foolishness of my delusions; yes, I now recognized it was Edward whom I loved. And still I was afraid of what it would cost me, what people might say about it, this improbable union between writer and ticket taker, Richmond and Upney; worst of all, most frightening of all, two men. So I did nothing. For the eight crucial hours when I might—might—have done something, I did nothing.

  A loud rapping noise jolted me from sleep. I leapt up, my heart racing, though whether with hope or dread I couldn’t say.

  “Edward!”

  But it turned out only to be pipes knocking.

  I looked at the clock: half past five. I got up, drank some tea from the cup Edward had bought, washed my face with the soap, put on the new socks. “Only Connect” said the Howards End, so at eight I went down to Earl’s Court station.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  At the ticket office, the stationmaster, an old man with long whiskers, regarded me through steel bars. “Phelan’s quit, he has. Didn’t give any notice, neither, just a letter saying his back pay could be sent to his mum and he was very sorry for the trouble. Left me a man short at the rush hour. He’ll never work for London Transport again, I can tell you that.”

  “Cheap day return to Upney,” I said.

  The old man issued the necessary ticket, and I climbed onto a train packed tight with humanity, hats and noses and beard stubble and perfume and tweed. It was a very slow trip—or perhaps it just seemed slow—the train disgorging and taking on more masses at every stop. Finally we passed the last City station; we were now heading into East London, Plaistow and Barking and Becontree and Dagenham, and suddenly it was the platforms opposite that were full to bursting, the population of my own train having thinned out to just a handful. We were men and women who, like the train we rode, went against traffic, who worked nights, or had bedridden parents to tend to, or were on our way home after waking up in the flats of strangers—the westbound trains, in their normalness, seeming to go backward, to our view, though of course it was they, and not us, who were going forward, into the urban day. I closed my eyes. I was imagining I could join them, head home from this nightmare, toward Richmond, childhood, the light playing on the river. My mother, alive, with Nanny and Caroline: three women drinking coffee in the garden . . . then I opened my eyes again. We were pulling into Upney station.

  I got out. Without Edward I had no idea how to negotiate the route to his mother’s house, but as luck would have it, the ticket collector knew the Phelan family and gave me directions.

  At Lil’s house I rang the bell. No one answered. I rang again.

  Anxious footfalls sounded against linoleum.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sarah, is that you? It’s Brian Botsford, Edward’s friend.”

  No answer.

  “Please let me in.”

  The door opened a crack.

  “He’s not here!”

  “Do you know where he’s gone? Is your mum here, or Lucy?”

  “He’s not here!” Sarah nearly shrieked.

  She tried to shove the door shut. I pushed back. “Sarah, please—”

  “Let him in,” I heard Lil say.

  Slowly the door creaked open again. Sarah stepped aside to make room for me in the narrow hall. By the entrance to the kitchen, Lil stood in her dressing gown, her hands on her hips, her hair chaotic.

  “What do you want from us?”

  “I’m looking for Edward. Is he here?”

  “Here!”

  “Yes. Or if he’s not—do you know where he is?”

  “As if you don’t!”

  “I don’t.”

  She looked at me in puzzlement.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said again. “He cleared out of the flat this weekend while I was away. I assumed he’d come to you.”

  “You drove him to it!” Lil cried.

  “What do you mean? Drove him to what? What are you saying—are you telling me he’s done himself in?”

  “Done himself in—that’s a laugh! He might as well have!”

  “Where is he, then?”

  “Right now? I should imagine right now he’s in the middle of the channel crossing.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, even though I did.

  “He’s gone to Spain,” Sarah said softly. “He’s gone to save democracy in Spain.”

  Lil turned and walked back through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  I stopped being young.

  Somehow I found my way back to the underground station, and the flat, where I fell into a stuporous sleep.

  When I woke it was teatime. A stubborn vine of cold late-afternoon light creeping through the closed curtains; the smell of bacon coming down from upstairs, along with the muffled drone of a wireless tuned to the BBC, cups clinking, old women chattering as they sorted through the day, who said what at the grocer’s and what Mary wore to her daughter’s wedding and the frost.

  I stood and, like an infant on unreliable legs, stumbled to the lavatory. Where was Edward now? Near the frontier? The new language would daunt him. I imagined nervous soldiers stepping from their truck to have supper in some cheap restaurant; the dim light, a toothless old woman in th
e kitchen. Strange food is placed before him—he would like to ask for something else, but he doesn’t know how; and so he gamely cleans his plate, though the seasonings make him long for his mother, for beef and biscuits and tea, and really, he thinks, swallowing hard, it isn’t so bad, is it? Rather—interesting.

  That is how he was raised: to clean his plate.

  Or was he thinking about me?

  Of course he would record it all dutifully in his little notebook, every meal he ate once he stepped off English soil.

  His grand adventure, remembered in lists.

  A week passed, then two weeks. I saw no one except the child I tutored. Philippa gone, Edward gone. Even Nigel had stopped writing to me—lost, no doubt, in his efforts to rescue his own beloved boy.

  I turned down every invitation I received, until the invitations stopped coming. Most evenings, instead, I went cottaging. It became a ferocious addiction, that search for sex, for the soft, stroking hand that alone might bring a temporary relief. Or I’d show up at the house in Richmond, surprising my sister: “It’s not often we’re honored with a visit from the likes of you!” she’d say, trying to disguise her pleasure at seeing me. Of course she sensed something was wrong, but didn’t know how to broach the subject.

  “Might I sleep here tonight?” I asked her one evening. She seemed surprised but pleased, as did Nanny, who felt my head for fever before I went to bed. I remember lying awake, that night, in my childhood room, craving some comfort its old familiar walls could not give me, though outside the trees rustled familiarly, there was the familiar sound of foghorns out on the river, as well as the familiar smells: camphor, candle wax, my mother’s face powder, its sweet aroma somehow still lingering.

  Had Lil begged him to stay, her voice hoarse with rage?

  If only I hadn’t left the journal! (Or had I meant to?)

  I pulled the pillow tight over my head, like a vise.

  Aunt Constance rang. “My poor dear! Edith Archibald has told me what happened with Philippa! The impudence! I made no bones about what I thought to Edith; she at least was in tears, as she should be. Such a stupid woman! Do you still have the ring? We shall certainly be able to return it for credit. Now in the meantime, there is a lovely young lady who has recently come to work for my publisher. Shy, but a good girl. What would you say about a little dinner at the Lancaster next month, just the three of us . . .”

  Anyway, was it my fault?

  The facts: Edward was an adult, capable of making his own decisions. His genuine political convictions could not be underestimated as a motive for joining the brigade; nor could Northrop’s influence. Edward was a hero, braver and better than I. Risking his life because of Spain was democracy’s last best hope.

  Just as Edward was my last best hope.

  And if I hadn’t fucked Philippa, gone cottaging, lied to him, left the journal about—what else?—he would have gone anyway, wouldn’t he?

  Wouldn’t he?

  I managed, on certain days, almost to convince myself of it.

  Christmas and New Year’s passed. I have no memory of them. In January, however, I gave up both my pupil and flat and moved back to Richmond. As I recall, I spent most of the winter sitting by the wireless, listening for news about the war.

  Once on Dartmoor Walk I met a chap whose brother was in the brigade. He promised to find out anything he could for me about Edward, as well as to keep me abreast of developments on the front generally.

  At the battle of Jarama, the International Brigade clashed with Moors fighting on the Fascist side, and most of them were slaughtered. I thought I didn’t want to know if Edward had been among their number.

  Then the letter came.

  Chapter Twelve

  February 25, 1937

  Altaguera

  Dear Brian:

  Please forgive this interruption of your no doubt busy life. I would not be bothering you except as I can think of no one else to turn to at this moment when I find myself in quite a difficult situation here in Spain. To cut to the heart of the matter, things have not been as I was led to believe they would be by John Northrop. Training in the brigade was rigorous, even brutal. Still, it was nothing compared to what followed. To sum up, I have seen battle. A shell exploded twenty feet from me that nearly took off my arm. I escaped with merely a flesh wound and the local medic tells me I am lucky to be alive. In addition I had to watch fellow brigadiers—my friends—die next to me by the dozens. I also believe I may have killed or wounded a man fighting on the Fascist side—a thought that is repugnant to me.

  We live under horrible conditions, with insufficient blankets and clothing; never in my life have I been so cold. In addition, food is scarce, and what we get nearly inedible. Disease is rampant in the barracks. We do not have anything close to sufficient weaponry. The Republic itself is quite divided up between Communists and Anarchists, and supports actions I cannot condone, specifically the murder of priests and other barbarities. Northrop and the other brigade leaders excuse these actions. Because the Fascists are aristocrats, they say, they must be held to a higher standard. I am a peasant, at least in their view. Am I therefore less than human?

  In the event, I contacted Northrop hoping that he might help me to leave. He would not give me the chance, insisting rather that I must stay and that I would be grateful to him. But why must I give up my life for the victory of the Republic? In any case, I cannot go home, as the brigade has confiscated my passport, issuing a worthless brigade passport in its place.

  I realize I left England rather suddenly, and in doing so no doubt caused you distress. Suffice it to say that I had the misfortune to come upon your journal and commit the unpardonable sin of reading it. No doubt by now you and Miss Archibald are engaged and I am the last thing on your mind. Nonetheless I am facing a difficult dilemma and know no one else who might be able to help me find a way out of it.

  I should add that meeting the people of the Spanish culture has been a most edifying experience, bringing me into contact with things I never could have known in Upney.

  In the event, any pity you might be able to muster for your old friend at this hour would be greatly appreciated. Again, let me apologize for the inconvenience I may be causing.

  With very warmest regards, I remain yours sincerely,

  Edward Joseph Phelan

  I put the letter down. Nine o’clock in the morning, the old house quiet except for the sound of a maid polishing silver. Outside, boats on the water, sunlight filtering through clouds and spreading itself out over the river, and in my chest a wild trembling, half terror and half joy. The letter, having been sent to Earl’s Court, then forwarded, had taken several weeks to reach me. Yet I did not think: was Edward still alive? I thought: Two weeks ago he was alive, scarred but alive. He wrote this letter. Two weeks ago he still lived.

  It is odd, given my earlier ambivalence, that I never doubted for a minute what I had to do.

  I rang up Emma Leland. I rang up the chap from Dartmoor Walk. I rang up everyone I knew who might possibly be able to get me an address for John Northrop, until finally I was put in touch with a brigade organizer from Putney, a fellow named Chambers, who had an address where he thought Northrop could be reached. The telegram—sent that afternoon—informed him of my desire to come to Spain as quickly as possible. If he still wished me to write a pamphlet, I was at his disposal . . .

  Chambers called that afternoon. Northrop had wired him from Altaguera, the brigade’s base, to tell him to thank me for the telegram and ask if I might consider going to Spain right away: apparently a position had been found. As for my request to join the Party, the pertinent card had been issued; I had only to sign the proper forms.

  I assented immediately, having no idea that years later, in a different country, that letter—unearthed—would prove the undoing of my career.

  Travel arrangements were finalized. Northrop, Chambers said, would meet me in Barcelona upon my arrival; at that point, having been briefed, I would be sent on
to the town of —— to continue on my own. Couldn’t I go directly to Altaguera? I asked. What would be the point? Chambers said. Altaguera was the opposite direction. Oh, of course, I said, not wanting to reveal my real motive; once I arrived in Spain, I decided, I’d find a way to Altaguera, and Edward.

  It was the winter of 1937, and I was twenty-three years old.

  Shadow of an Umbrella

  Chapter Thirteen

  Barcelona. Mountain and water.

  I took a room at a pension in the old part of the city, off the Ramblas. It contained a sagging bed with a threadbare white spread; a table with a short leg; a cold-water sink; a chair; a chicken-scratched armoire; and a calendar reproduction of Velazquez’s Las Meninas. The floor tiles were old, the same shade of gray as gray hair. My windows opened onto a street so narrow almost no light came through them. Only if I thrust my head out and looked up could I see a sliver of sky and make a guess as to what the weather would be like.

  Barcelona’s geography is itself a metaphor; the poorest people live downtown, by the port. Then, as the long avenues steepen toward Mount Tibidabo, the apartments grow extra corridors and bathrooms, the shops fill with elegant clothes, the people’s faces take on that ruddy look faces have when people have always been well fed, warm and clean. Some streets are so steep, there are escalators on the pavements.

  Downtown, by contrast, was a delirium. On the Ramblas, elderly whores, their cheeks and lips painted crudely as clowns’, offered sex for a few pesetas. A transvestite with huge false eyelashes winked at passersby and thrust out a breast as hard and spherical as a coconut. Another whore, in a tight red dress, flitted through a café, singing and periodically shoving her breasts (real) into the faces of gawking foreigners.

  On the Ramblas, I passed booths where you could buy orchids, houseplants, chickens and parrots, dogs and cats and mice. There was a booth where a monkey wearing a bow tie picked envelopes that told your fortune out of a jar. There was a swallower of flaming swords and an elderly flamenco dancer and a contortionist who could tie himself into a bow.