Later that summer, I was put under a curfew, which I ignored. Youth Labour meetings went on until late. Young socialists are world-class gabbers, and so here I was inching along a stone wall in the last of the evening light, shoes in one hand, the other gripping the ivy-covered bricks of the house, when I came to our tenants the Gasks’ window, and was forced to pause. Small things rustled in the black leaves. I bent carefully so as not to fall backwards into the damp grass and inched my feet side to side along the ledge. The maisonettes were split-level; the Gasks’ study was next to my bedroom although their sitting room was upstairs. I had to pass a wide expanse of glass looking directly into the study to reach safety. The Gasks were the sort who still regarded the absence of blackouts as the ultimate freedom and never drew curtains that could be left open. I hoped neither of them had pressing deadlines that might keep them at the desk tonight.
The window was tall and as I crept along the ledge, leaning in a little to grip the upper frame, I was stretched as far as my small body could manage. My heart thudded. Though it was dark in the room but for a light spilling from the landing I dreaded being discovered like this by our wonderful neighbours, spread out like a butterfly under a pin as I took each wide careful step towards my own window. Hurrying a little, I lost my footing for an instant and righted myself, paused, looked properly inside the Gasks’ study where there was, I knew, a little black desk. It was scratched and old and not quite level, and on it sat a glossy black typewriter, the thrilling clatter of whose silver-edged keys I often heard from my own room next door as I fell asleep at night and woke in the morning. I could see the typewriter and the desk, a lumpy shadow on top of a flat surface, as my eyes adjusted. Then I could see them very well; the room was brightening. The door next to the desk swung towards me and I took two long reckless steps towards my own window.
I made it, but I could not help lingering at the very edge of the Gasks’ window, peering in from the side, a strange night-time creature of the heath clinging to the frame, as Mrs Gask, in a daring trouser suit with a silk scarf tied around her cropped hair and knotted at her bare neck, sat down at the typewriter and turned on a bright chrome lamp. She peered myopically for a moment at the sheet of paper then began to type quickly with two fingers, pausing now and then to read what she had written, nod, continue. I committed the image to memory, a grown-up woman typing by lamplight late at night, and took the last step to my own window.
On the sash of my locked window was a nail file. I jimmied it gently between the frames and flicked the lock open, the window instantly slipping down an inch with a thunk. I drew up the lower frame very slowly and stepped through onto my bed, which gave out a tiny squeak. My window rattled as I closed it and hurried under the covers, trying to silence my breathing, just as Mother opened the door. ‘Hannah?’ I concentrated upon each breath, letting it in and out in increments, slow and quiet like a sleeper, though my heart was quick, my brow damp against the pillow.
After the following week’s meeting, as I sailed down from the window to the bed, leg outstretched, Mother flung the door open, observed me bounce for a moment on the mattress, hot-faced in the light from the hall. ‘Hannah! We agreed. Ten o’clock! It is not safe. How many children must be murdered for you to be home by dark?’
I remained on the bed, where I was the taller for once. ‘But I am not a child. And I cannot simply leave the meeting halfway through. I have been elected secretary of the branch and I shall do my job!’
‘No, Hannah. You will be home at ten or you shan’t leave the house at all.’
‘How dare you! I shall speak to Father about this.’
Mother closed the door, leaving me standing on the bed in the dark, the window open to the late summer night. Where is Father? I stormed silently. Listening in the sitting room, newspaper in his lap? He would never ask me to give up my position. After weeks of lobbying I had managed to oust the elderly and entirely ineffectual membership secretary and I could not abandon my duties now. This was where I was supposed to be. It was what I was supposed to do.
It was hours before I slept. I gave up believing that I would manage it. I could not, before I had hauled Father out of bed to demand he state his own position. He! He was the one who had just last week accompanied me to Speakers’ Corner, carried a crate from the shop for me, hushed anyone who dared to interrupt as I gave my first rather haranguing attempt at a stump speech on, as he had suggested, birth control. But I slipped under, eventually, my reading light still shining on the book open on my stomach. The next I knew there was daylight on my eyelids, a light hand on my shoulder, Mother leaving the room, turning off the lamp on my bookshelf as she went. By the time she reached the doorway the viciousness was fully awake in me. ‘It is because you have no intellectual life of your own, isn’t it? That’s why you torture me.’
Mother’s hand reached behind her for the doorknob. She hesitated for a narrow instant and was gone, the knob unwinding, the latch clicking gently into its groove.
At dinner the following night I sat, chewing my beef slowly, saying nothing, as the boys enthused about a new footballer whose exploits had captured the hearts of boys and men the length and breadth of the land. I waited for Father to speak. He and Mother remained silent throughout the meal though the boys did not notice. They were wild about their new hero. Geoffrey, somehow, had got hold of a hand press some time before and printed a weekly rag made up largely of gossip about the people who lived on our street. Though his portraits were thinly disguised, they were clearly recognisable, and Father had told him never to let copies circulate among our neighbours. The sketches were a little cruel but rather funny. He was stashing the money under a floorboard for Lord knew what venture. After bolting down his food, he hauled Benjamin upstairs to help him write a special feature, to be entitled: ‘The Most Skilful and Modest Footballer England Has Ever Seen’ or some such. I pushed my own chair back.
‘Not you, Hannah,’ Father said.
I sat heavily, sighing, as I heard the boys dragging the press along the floor above. It was just about the longest day of the year. Outside the window the oak was dark green and voices drifted in from the heath.
Well then, I thought. I will set this straight. I will make Father understand.
Mother stacked the dishes, not looking at me, and took them out to the kitchen, leaving me alone with him at the table.
‘You will come home from the meetings at nine o’clock.’
‘What? No, Father, no. They never finish before ten. How can I?’
‘Then you leave early.’
‘I will lose my position! I worked so hard—’
‘You must have safety, Hannah! This precious Labour Party needs the blood of young girls now?’
‘You have gone mad. There has been one murder—in Stepney, mind you—and the whole of London has lost its head.’
‘She was the same as you. Young girl walking around the city alone. Thinking what could happen? Then dead. Like that. You must not be stubborn. Not attractive, Hannah.’
‘Attractive? What do I care about that? Father, really.’
‘There is a solution. You know it.’
‘No.’ I would not look at him. Mother was in the kitchen, washing the dishes. I heard the clink and slosh intermittently, between the volleys of our argument.
‘Hannah, it is so simple. I wait outside for you. You finish when you like. I will be there. No matter if it’s eleven, twelve. I may get cold, yes. Boring. Daughter busy turning into Bolshevik. But Mother can sleep tonight. I can sleep tonight.’
‘I cannot, Father. I cannot. I do not require the protection of a man.’
‘This thing is not because you are a woman. This is because you are a child. My responsibility. My daughter.’
‘Father!’
‘Then you are home at nine. That is all. We agree.’
The sound of Mother at the sink had stopped, though she had not come out of the kitchen. ‘Happy, Mother?’ I called as I thundered out of the dining
room and into my bedroom.
When I returned from work the next day everyone was out. I opened the door to my room and stared. The bed had been moved away from the window to accommodate a table. It was the little black desk of the Gasks, on which thousands of words of newsprint had been produced. I ran across the room and laid my hands on its surface, nicked and scuffed as though each story written atop it were the result of some violent struggle. If I did not have my hands here lying on its cool surface, could not see the light falling from the window reflected in its shiny black paint, I would not believe it. Was this some trick of my parents to make me amenable? A sharp pain knocked at my ribs.
I took a soft leather notebook from under my pillow and a fountain pen from the bookshelf, knowing even as I did it that it was a bad idea, placed them carefully at the centre of the desk, beneath the large white-framed windows open to the trees of the heath and the summer sky. A writer’s desk, here, in my room.
On the street a motor vehicle rumbled for a second or two before cutting out. Mrs Gask was out there, calling to the driver. I ran down the stairs, out of the open front door and onto the street where Mrs Gask was standing next to a van with its back doors open. ‘Mrs Gask,’ I called out to her. ‘Your desk. It is in my room!’
Mrs Gask turned and took my hands in her own. ‘Yes, Hannah dear. It is a gift from William and me.’
‘But why don’t you need it? You are not—giving up journalism?’
‘Oh, Hannah. Your face. We would not disappoint you so. We are going to Paris for a while, and all about. The Daily News wants stories from the Continent, peacetime dispatches from our neighbours, that sort of thing.’
‘It is the most wonderful present. And you and Mr Gask will have such a time! I am almost eaten alive with envy.’
‘One day it will be you, Hannah dear. You are a much cleverer young woman than I ever was. Do you know, my French is appalling, in spite of all you’ve tried to teach me.’
I thought I would cry right here on the street with the removalist looking on. ‘I shall miss you, Mrs Gask. We could never have such nice tenants as you and Mr Gask again.’
‘And we will never again have such kind landlords. What a joy you are, dear Hannah. What a clever, determined young lady. Goodbye and good luck.’
Mrs Gask thrust forth a hand for me to shake. I offered my own briefly and ran inside before I could disgrace myself. In my room the desk was as I left it in its perfect position beneath the window. The pages of the journal flapped against one another in the breeze.
The next morning, when Mother came in to wake me, I groaned under the covers.
‘What’s wrong, little one?’
‘Don’t feel well.’
Mother laid the back of her hand across my forehead. Her long pale fingers, always cool. ‘Goodness. You are burning up. Stay in bed. I’ll bring you tea.’
When she had gone I pulled the hot-water bottle from under the covers and threw it under the bed.
As I drank my tea, Geoffrey appeared at the door in his school uniform, glowering. ‘What’s supposed to be the matter with you?’
‘Spanish flu. Go to school.’
‘Do you want to buy a copy of the Heath Herald to read in bed? Special edition.’
‘I don’t like football.’
‘There’s a fairly devastating exposé of the goings-on at number twelve.’
‘Oh, all right then. There’s tuppence on the dresser.’
He took the coin, left a thin newssheet in its place.
‘Geoffrey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s Benjamin?’
‘Playing out on the heath.’
‘Oh.’
I looked at him, made an effort to fix his face in my memory—not the scowling version, rather how he looked when he too was playing on the heath, running, smiling, curls pulled back by the wind. Or now, that look of grim satisfaction when he had just made a sale. As he went out I put the picture aside and thought through my morning.
After an age the house fell silent. Father left early to visit his shops, of which there were now three. Mother called in Benjamin and the boys went off next after the usual whining and scuffle with Mother over combing hair, brushing teeth. There had been a commotion when Benjamin thought he’d twisted his ankle after sliding down the banister but he was all right after Mother made him sit with ice on it for a while. He had actually broken his arm once sliding down the banister but he never would stop. I wanted to go out for a look at him but it would seem odd when I was supposed to be bedridden. Then at last Mother, who came in quietly with the basket over her arm, told me she was going to walk across the heath to the market at Golders Green and asked if there was anything special I would like her to bring back.
‘No, thank you, Mother,’ I said quietly as she kissed my brow. I could not look at her as she left, even to remember later.
I listened for a moment to the quiet of the house. When you listened it was never so quiet as you thought. There was the water gurgling in the hot-water system, the loud tick of the clock in the hall, a schoolmaster shouting at a class of boys cross-country running on the heath. Come on then, Hannah, I told myself. I pushed off the covers, beneath which I was fully dressed, and reached under the bed for my brown leather case. It was heavy. On top of it was yesterday’s edition of the Ham and High. There was the address circled in red. A Mrs Windsor in Willow Road. I unclasped my case, laid the Ham and High and Geoffrey’s Heath Herald on my clothes and refastened it.
I stood before the desk for a moment, case in hand, the high-stacked clouds billowing over the pond, and leaned forward, rested my head on its cool painted surface. Go, Hannah. The case was heavy. It banged against my legs on the stairs. At the door I snapped my key quietly onto the bureau and stepped outside.
As I lugged my case along the empty street under scudding clouds, the work of carrying it warming me in spite of a chill breeze, I must have been sad, mustn’t I? I was not an entirely heartless young woman. But that is not the feeling I remember as I walked away from our lovely house that accommodated everybody I loved. I felt a pure, sweet burst of energy, to be moving, to be out in the world, to be on my way.
Part II
Emil
THE NORTH SEA, 1929
Strange to ride as a passenger aboard this empty steamer. No shift to prepare for, hours to kill to Bremen, shuffling about the ship like a wealthy old tycoon deprived of the cabarets and pretty waitresses and cool heavy linen.
Emil sat on a stool he had brought up onto the first-class deck from his cabin, sliding around a little in the spray, the only furniture on the broad gleaming road of decking that stretched away fore and aft. His body was cold inside his coat but his face was warm in the morning sun that had dropped a silver blanket over the sea as they ploughed east towards Germany. A dark figure appeared against the glare, rounding the prow, growing larger along the shining road. There was something in the walk he knew: the little bob after impact. A roundish man, bouncing towards him. A cheerful walk. It was Meier, a young engineer he had met in Ireland when he went over with Siemens for the hydro-electric scheme at Ardnacrusha. The sight of his walk, the round stomach and face, fat-lipped smile, took him back to that place before the years at sea, the solitary weeks, the rough chaos of furloughs at port. His marriage to Ava was new then. He carried the knowledge of his fine, bright-haired wife across the sea like a medal in his pocket. The secret of how he had discovered her at a dance in Düsseldorf and talked her into marriage within a week. And Ireland, a wonder, that light after the night voyage falling on his new-feeling skin, dawn on the dock at Dún Laoghaire, the ride into Dublin and the streets filled with musicians, beggars and priests from some unfolding story—even Ireland just a place in the big world now, just another he had seen.
He stood, held out his hand. ‘Meier!’
‘Ah, Becker. It is you! I saw your name on the roster when I boarded in England but did not believe it. You look well.’
‘And you
, Meier. Where have you been all this time? Did you stay on in Ireland?’
‘I did. I saw the opening, and the lights going on in the towns. It was a true marvel. And now, since August, I work on the ships. It is a quieter life than we’re used to, Becker.’
‘Until you reach port. But you’re right. I have never read so much in my life.’
‘You always were the intellectual. Let me guess. Kant? Nietzsche?’
‘The fellow before me left a lot of murder mysteries, in several languages. I am now able to commit the perfect crime in Paris, Berlin or London.’
Meier leaned over the rail, his face rosy in the autumn sun, his thinning hair trailing shipwards in the wind. He drew a hipflask from the pocket of his greatcoat, offered it to Emil, who took a draught. ‘Irish whiskey. That takes me back.’
‘What else is a man to drink? I am ruined for schnapps forever. It doesn’t warm you in the same way. You know, Becker, I’m remembering the last time I saw you, you devil. Wasn’t it that night . . . ?’
Emil smiled at the sea. He knew what Meier was talking about. It was the night they had crept through the workers’ camp, between huge tents that emitted the sounds of men sleeping and talking, down to the project. He and Meier had climbed across the scaffolding onto one of the massive pipes set out over the dam, sat astride it, drinking whiskey for perhaps an hour, this man talking about Irish girls, the exact and detailed ways in which they differed from Germans. He remembered that Meier’s enthusiasm seemed untempered by actual experience. Then the boy had dropped the bottle. It fell into the blackness beneath them for long seconds before shattering on the stony bank below. The guard dogs went off and they had scrambled along the slippery pipes with splayed legs and outstretched arms, snagging on bolts, giggling, uncoordinated, suddenly frightened of falling—that bottle had taken a long time to hit the bottom—then scurrying through camp, chests on fire, to the engineers’ barracks. The chains of the dogs clattered behind them; the Alsatians were wild for a catch.
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