The Faithful

by Juliet West

  He took his seat on one side of a wooden table and waited. His tactic, he’d decided, would be to say very little. To let her speak and see what came out. Then, once the ice was broken, he’d steer her in the direction of his hoped-for story. So, how are they treating you? Plenty to eat?

  The prisoners began to file in. A scrawny girl with dark hair scraped into a bun drew out the chair opposite him. He rose, meaning to tell her she’d made a mistake, that he was waiting for someone else, but then the girl’s mouth opened in a half-smile and he saw the chip on her tooth.

  ‘Hazel?’

  Her smile disappeared as she sat in the chair. She looked a decade older, her face too thin and her forehead screwed into a frown.

  ‘Your hand?’ she said.

  Damn. He’d meant to keep it on his lap under the table. But of course he’d stood up and now the mangled lump was on display.

  ‘Wounded in Spain.’

  ‘I had no idea. When your letters stopped. Well –’ she took a deep breath – ‘now I can see why.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not left-handed. I can still write.’

  There was a pause, a spike of silence between them.

  ‘But you chose not to.’

  ‘I’m surprised you noticed,’ said Tom. ‘I heard you were rather busy entertaining at home.’ Christ, so much for his tactic, for laying low, letting her speak. Turned out he couldn’t keep his bloody mouth shut.

  ‘Entertaining? You mean – what do you mean?’ Her eyes seemed to ignite, a flash of understanding. ‘Entertaining lovers?’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  She swallowed and looked over to the clock on the far wall. ‘There isn’t time to go into much detail, Tom. I have no idea what you’ve been told, or by whom.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘There haven’t been any lovers. What I’m going to tell you now is the truth. I swear it on my daughter’s life.’ She put one hand to her heart and sobbed.

  Tom reeled back in his chair. A daughter? So she had been about! Why, she even had a bastard to show for her efforts.

  But he was here now, so he would have to listen. He folded his arms, right over left, so that she would not stare or be tempted to show him any pity.

  Light a cigarette and keep walking. Turn south down York Way towards King’s Cross. He recited instructions as he walked. If he were a machine, it would be easier; moving parts and cogs that didn’t have to think. But his legs only grew more unsteady and his heart roared louder than the stoked furnaces in the engines beyond the high station wall. Turning into a side street, he saw a pub with its doors just opening for the lunch-time trade. He ordered a brandy and downed it at the bar, almost choking as the heat flared in his throat. Next he ordered a pint, and took it to a tucked-away table near an open door which led onto the yard. A dog was tied up, asleep in the shade of an old advertising hoarding. MY GOODNESS MY GUINNESS.

  It was the detail of Hazel’s story that made him dizzy. Only a lunatic could have made all that up. She was frantic, that was clear. Beside herself with anxiety. Not a lunatic, though. It was hard to believe she was mad.

  Impossible to stop his thoughts racing. Charles. The mother’s lover. The swine had forced himself on her, threatened to have him – Tom – arrested for rape. Told her she was a whore. It was no wonder he’d never heard from her again that summer. Girl must have been terrified. He’d thought it was the start of something wonderful, turned against her when the promised letter never arrived. He should have tried harder to get to the truth, should have persisted, shouldn’t have been so proud. And then when they did meet, when she was all set to tell him about the daughter as they sat drinking tea by the Thames, he’d boasted about Spain, took pleasure in surprising her with the news. He’d relished the opportunity to let her down, to get his own back.

  Oh, he’d softened soon enough, treasured her letters when they began to arrive. But when his mum’s letter came, pride kicked back in. He never seriously questioned the truth of Bea’s gossip.

  He swigged the pint and felt his shoulders begin to loosen. Of course he’d believed his mum. There was no reason not to: she had never lied to him before. And what if Hazel was lying again today? She was desperate, wasn’t she? Prison could do strange things to your head. There were comrades who’d been in Franco’s camps, still struggling to recover. Focus on the facts: he knew for a fact that Hazel was easy, she’d proved as much in the summer house. Slept with him – when? It was only the fourth time they’d met. There’d been no persuasion on his part, no weasel words. The sex had happened, natural as breathing. At the time he’d thought it was something beautiful and magical between them, a pact of love. Now here she was, saying he’d been right all along. It had been extraordinary, she had felt the same. She had never loved anyone else.

  The child. Jasmin. He tested the name, repeating it under his breath. She was four years old, born April ’36. He counted back again. The dates were right. ‘She has blonde hair and a dimple,’ Hazel had said, and Tom had put his hand to his own face. ‘I believe, I hope, that Jasmin is your daughter . . . but I can’t be sure. So I kept it a secret. I was ashamed. And you didn’t want children. You’d said that.’ She stared down at her fingernails.

  ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Jasmin is very ill in hospital. An accident, some kind of infection. I have to get out of here. Tom, please, if there’s anything you can do . . . Any influence you might have. I thought – with your job on the newspaper?’

  The wardress had coughed and tapped her foot on the oilcloth floor.

  That was the reason she’d summoned him, then. The daughter was ill. She believed he might be of some use.

  He went out into the pub yard and found the privy, knees almost buckling as he took a piss, the last remnants of energy draining from him. If Hazel’s story was true, then he should try to help her. He could speak to Gerald. Gerald was well-connected. Old school tie and all that, played golf with a cousin of Churchill’s. But did he want to confide in Gerald? Christ. It was tempting just to stay here, to keep drinking until his brain was flat. But he had to get back to Lewisham. There were a few questions he needed to ask his mother.

  At Charing Cross the trains were delayed; a signalling problem outside Peckham. He stood against a pillar near the tobacconist’s stand, keeping his head down because the last thing he needed was to see anyone from work. He’d swapped his day off with Gerald, said it was to take his mum to a hospital appointment.

  An older man in a tan jacket ambled up to the stand, bought twenty Viceroy and walked off in the direction of Villiers Street. The man was about his dad’s age, fifty-odd. He wore the same kind of boots, dark brown and polished to such a shine you could see the girders of the station roof reflected in the leather. Grief dropped an iron weight on his chest. His dad had been dead three years, and some days Tom found it easy to forget. Not on a day like this, though. A day when he discovered that he might be a father, that his dad might have died without ever knowing he had a granddaughter, a little fair-haired girl with a dimple in her chin.

  He waited until after tea, when they were settled in the front room. ‘I’ve been looking through my old letters,’ he said. ‘The ones you wrote to me in Spain.’

  ‘Best forgotten, I would have thought.’ Bea shook her head. ‘Dreadful days.’

  ‘Worse to come.’

  ‘Not for you, God willing.’

  ‘Do you remember writing to me about the blackshirt girls?’

  ‘Not especially.’ The click of her knitting needles slowed. The question had unnerved her, he could sense that.

  ‘You mentioned a girl called Hazel Alexander. You said she was notorious, men dancing to her tune.’

  Bea replied that she couldn’t possibly remember. It was years ago, a different time. But her cheeks had coloured, there was a hesitancy in her voice, and in that moment Tom felt certain that his mother was lying. She had lied about Hazel going with other men. Why? Had she got wind of his correspondence with Hazel, tried
to sabotage their love? My God. She was jealous! Jealous of his relationship with a better class of girl. Did she think she’d be left behind?

  Tom stood up and turned off the wireless; Elgar crackled and died. ‘Tell me why you lied about Hazel.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Tom! I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ She leaned over and dropped her knitting on the lid of the sewing basket. ‘You’ve spent too many hours up the Gaumont, gawping at films. All this melodrama –’ she folded her arms against her bosom – ‘my own son calling me a liar!’

  He crouched at her feet and put one hand on her knee, speaking in a low voice and in a tone that seemed to come from a dark place that neither of them knew existed. ‘Mum. If you can’t give me a good explanation, I swear I’ll never forgive you. You can’t know how important this is. It’s the most important––’ His voice cracked and he stood up quickly. ‘I’ll move away, I swear. Don’t expect to come to the wedding.’

  Her face paled. She was silent for a moment and her lips moved soundlessly, as if she was trying to remember something, and then she cleared her throat and began to speak in a jumble of words. ‘Hazel, you say? No, no, thinking back I must have made a mistake, got my names muddled. So many of them at HQ, it was a Christmas bazaar, I think, when we met. Perhaps Hazel might have been the wrong name – it was the friend who was a strumpet. Fancy name. Lucia, was it?’

  ‘Oh Christ, Mum.’ Tom groaned and paced over to the window, balled his hand into a fist and held it against the glass. ‘Mum, what have you done?’

  ‘What on earth does it matter?’ She raised her voice, trying to keep it strong, to mask the tremble. ‘Those girls are nothing to you. You have Jillie!’

  The air-raid siren answered, a wail that claimed Jillie’s name and seemed to twist and toy with it as they made their way wordlessly to the Anderson shelter in the back garden. Tom fumbled with the matches and managed to light a candle, then wedged the door shut with sandbags. He glanced at Bea’s face in the candlelight, caught the look of alarm in her eyes. It didn’t make sense. His mum was good with names, always had been. Now she was staring at the photograph hanging on the shelter wall – the family snapshot taken at Margate; Tom in the middle, his mum and dad either side.

  ‘You did it deliberately,’ he said. ‘Why? Why did you lie about Hazel?’

  The siren stopped but the silence was more threatening. Tom waited for his mum to answer the question. ‘I didn’t see it as a lie,’ said Bea, finally. ‘A white lie, maybe. I was trying to protect you.’

  She perched on the edge of the straight-backed chair, her eyes still focused on the shadowy photograph. Her hands were slotted under her thighs and she rocked a little, forwards and back, forwards and back. Tom stood, his heart knocking in his throat, swallowing down his rage.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘I found a letter you’d written to Hazel in your bedroom, tucked in a box of birds’ eggs. So I knew there was something between the two of you. And then I met her at the bazaar, and I saw the set she mixed with, and, well, I took against them. I’m not ashamed!’ she burst out. ‘They’re ill-mannered, for all their money, and Lucia was the worst of them, gadding about with married men. Hazel was Lucia’s friend so it stood to reason . . . I didn’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘It was none of your business,’ said Tom. ‘You should never have interfered.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see it would harm, honestly I didn’t.’

  ‘You don’t see much, do you?’

  Bea started at the crump of a direct hit, a few streets away to the west. The glass shook in the Margate photograph. Tom knew he couldn’t stay here, no matter that there were bombs dropping outside. He had to get out, get away from his mother and the oppressive shelter walls. He kicked aside the sandbags, wrenched open the door and banged it shut behind him, ignoring Bea’s cries as she pleaded with him not to leave.

  The house seemed sticky in the honeyed twilight. A trap. In the front room he lifted one of the folded blankets from the settee and held it to his nose, inhaling the faintest scent of his father. He ought to go back to Bea, ought to watch over her, but the betrayal was too great. He couldn’t forgive what she’d done. She deserved to be punished.

  Outside, the street was empty: good citizens, hiding, all. Tom strode away from the house thinking he would go to Jillie’s, but instead he started walking north, up Mounts Pond Road, across the Heath and down into Greenwich. Aircraft whined overhead. There was the sound of machine-gun fire, shrapnel rattling off roof tiles, and his thoughts turned to Spain, to Jacob and his poems. For Fate with jealous eye does see two perfect Loves. Fate! His mum fancied herself as fate all right; sticking her oar in, trying to control his life.

  A warden yelled at him to take cover, and he was forced to clatter down the steps of a basement shelter. When the all-clear sounded he was first out, on towards the river, pushing through the crowds spilling free from the foot tunnel under the Thames. On the Isle of Dogs he stayed close to the dock walls, kept heading north, guided by the reddening clouds to the west.

  Finally, he reached Limehouse and turned in to Bill’s narrow street. He tapped on the front window of the end terrace and waited until he saw Petra’s face peeping from behind the blind. She squinted and he called softly: ‘It’s Tom.’

  The front door opened and she bustled him in, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘You’re not well?’ she said. ‘Come and sit. Bill is on his late shift. His last shift too, you know?’

  ‘I heard. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come today.’ Christ. What a shameful thing. He’d been so wrapped up in himself that he’d forgotten Bill’s papers had come. He ought to leave now, couldn’t possibly burden Petra with all his troubles.

  ‘No, no. I’m pleased. The children are asleep and it’s lonely. Just my stories –’ She gestured at a book that lay face-down on the armchair. It would be a book by some Russian writer, ever so highbrow. The kind of book he’d like to read one day.

  ‘Schnapps?’

  He nodded. A strong drink was what he needed, the stronger the better.

  She poured the clear liquid into two small gold-rimmed glasses and handed one to him. He took a sip and swallowed, enjoying the burn on the back of his throat. Petra picked up the book and sat down in the armchair. How beautiful she looked under the pink-shaded lamp. ‘I think you have a story of your own?’ she said, leaning down to place the book on the floor. Tom nodded and took another sip. Why not tell her everything?

  Petra listened quietly, her face impassive even when he reached the most sordid part of the story. When he had finished speaking she put a hand out and touched the side of his arm.

  ‘Do you believe Hazel now, about her love for you – that she was always faithful?’

  He bowed his head and screwed his eyes shut. Yes, the truth was that he did believe Hazel. He believed every word. He looked up at Petra and nodded.

  ‘And do you love her?’

  ‘Yes.’ He tightened his grip around the glass. ‘But it can’t work, can it? Not when it’s such a mess. And the child. This man who forced himself upon her – the mother’s lover. He could be the little girl’s father.’

  ‘Naturally it can work, if you have enough love. Look at me. My family said they would never speak to me again if I married a goy. They love Bill now as their own son. What is the little girl’s name?’

  ‘Jasmin.’

  Petra repeated the name and smiled. ‘I hope that you can see her. That she gets well.’

  ‘I hope so too. Really.’ He sighed and pushed back the hair that had fallen across his eyes. ‘I don’t know whether I can forgive my mother. The way she interfered, slandered Hazel . . . Yet I still don’t think she’s telling the truth. I feel there’s more to it.’

  ‘Don’t seek out trouble, Tommy. Your mother has apologized. Perhaps that can be enough?’

  Tom bit his lip. ‘Hazel reminds me of you,’ he said. Petra shifted in her seat and he realized, too late, that he had emb
arrassed her. ‘No, I didn’t mean like that. Not in looks. I mean – her spirit reminds me of you. She’s different. Interesting.’

  Petra nodded. ‘Different to Jillie?’

  ‘Oh, God.’ He almost laughed. ‘Yes, different to Jillie.’

  At home he found his mother still awake, sitting at the kitchen table. Her face was blotchy and her dressing gown was buttoned up all wrong.

  ‘I’m back, Mum.’ He lingered at the threshold, watching her veined hands as she stacked and re-stacked a small pile of coins. A sudden lurch of affection propelled him forward. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry.’

  She stood to embrace him, her downy cheek soft against the stubble of his chin.

  ‘You’re safe.’ Her shoulders began to shake. ‘The fright you gave me, disappearing like that. Oh, Tom!’ she sobbed. ‘I was wrong. I should never have written that letter. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. Half-crazed, I was, with you in Spain––’

  Her tears were wet on his skin as he drew back. ‘I can’t marry Jillie,’ he said.

  ‘I know, love,’ she replied. ‘I know.’

  36

  How Tom’s face had changed in the years since they’d met. Bones sharper, eyes less trusting, a shallow crease between his brows. He had seemed taller than Hazel remembered. The injured arm – terrible to think of his suffering. Yet he was making a career for himself, a reporter, just as he’d dreamed. Hazel experienced a sudden glow of pride, then shook her head. What did Tom’s bravery and resilience have to do with her?

  He had listened to her story without making any promises, without any sign, in fact, that he believed a single word. Leaving the visiting room, he’d walked in an exaggerated straight line as if following an invisible yardstick, his spine stiff and unyielding. She’d dragged herself back to the cell with little hope, but greater understanding. One puzzle, at least, had been solved.