‘Go ahead,’ he muttered, without enthusiasm. Willie squinted: it was a familiar jawline. ‘I know your face but you’ll have to help me out.’
‘Lancing College.’
‘Of course.’ Yes, he did know him. Had known him. ‘Wicker? Wickers?’
‘Wicklow. Augustus.’
‘Forgive me, brain shot in the war, as it were.’
Wicklow arranged himself on the opposite chair and Willie tried to recall what he knew of him. A great tedium always came over him when confronted with grown men wearing the tie of his old school. It was impossible not to be immediately reminded of the flying buttresses of the old Gothic building that pierced the clouds on the top of a wave of South Downs. Smells came back: spotted dick, cold tea, cut grass and behind the smells a half-resurrection of childhood fears: a hunger that would never abate, endless nits in the hair, getting lost and never finding a way back.
Wicklow ordered a gin and bitter from Theodore. Judging by the shimmer of his shoes and the sprightly look about him, it was clear that he was earning more money than Willie, or had at the very least emerged from the war the victor, possibly even a hero, certainly in charge of his own navigation.
‘Do you have a wife here with you or are you alone?’ Willie said.
‘Fly solo, indeed.’
Willie wriggled in his chair, crossed and recrossed his legs. There was a discomfort about this place; different to Cairo, where comfort could always be found.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Field research,’ Wicklow said enigmatically.
‘Are you staying at the Fast?’
Wicklow didn’t answer and Willie sneaked a look at his watch. It was nearly midnight. Wicklow began to chat, amiably enough, about life under what was still military administration in Jerusalem. Have you met Captain Mackay, the new British Inspector of Antiquities, yet? He’ll call in on you soon, no doubt. Major General Sir Louis Bols is here too. You’ll be hearing from him and Willie really had no choice but to surrender to the company. Without warmth, they remembered old acquaintances; Harold Piffard in particular, the crank in the sheds at Old Salt Farm, inventing more and more elaborate flying machines, clapping wings on to the most dubious-looking birds. It was Piffard who had created the Rumpety, a queer contraption made up of wires, cloths and sticks. Willie had asked to be his apprentice.
‘I can see how you ended up being a pilot,’ Wicklow said, ‘and you were in Salonika, Cairo?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Herr Slonimski is about to begin.’ Wicklow nodded in the direction of the concertina player who met Wicklow’s eye, and continued to play. It was so dark now that it was difficult to identify the shapes against tables, the spine of a chair, the shunting of a man’s back, an arm that might hold anything: a gun, a loaf of bread, unwanted gifts. The music was tender and disturbing and Willie drained his glass. This would be the last one.
It occurred to him that Wicklow was very briefed up on the comings and goings of Jerusalem; he watched his old school friend rub his moustache and constantly look over at the musicians. Willie reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the photographs he had taken from Eleanora’s darkroom.
‘What do you make of these?’ he said. As he did so, he noticed the curtains behind the stage flicker. There was a bulge, which stopped for a moment, and then filtered along the web of fabric. A bare foot poked hesitantly from the bottom of the curtain and he saw Prue emerging from the edge of the drape, wearing a white nightgown. She came out from the side, crouched for a second and then jumped off the edge of the stage. Nobody else in the dark bar seemed to notice her.
Wicklow rubbed his moustache as he held the photographs up and examined them. He sniffed, took out a cigarette and lit it without offering one to Willie. The top photograph was of the line of soldiers wearing sun helmets.
‘Rasul’s?’
‘Think so.’
Wicklow placed the photograph in front of him and picked up another one, realising something he hadn’t noticed before: that there was a line of corpses on the ground, five of them.
‘Do you know McLaughlin? Lofty?’ Wicklow asked.
‘No,’ Willie said, the lie making him lick his lips. Wicklow looked at Willie steadily.
‘That’s him.’ He put his finger on to one of the photographs. Willie looked down at it. In the distance it was clear that a village had recently been bombed or shot at; there was a cloud of dust in the air and three men were standing in a row on the edge of a precipice. In the corner of the photograph, a man was lying on his stomach over the wall, his head hanging down; and standing over him, one boot on his back, pointing what looked like a gun, though it was not clear, was Lofty. Willie recognised the shoulders, the shape of him.
‘I’ve heard Khaled Rasul will be back soon,’ Wicklow said, not looking at Willie. Willie took a sip of his whisky.
‘He is a good man, but he is involved in a project. I understand. He’s rather got it under his skin that Lofty is up to . . . no good.’
‘Well, judging by this picture, he is up to no good.’
Wicklow wrinkled his nose. ‘It is true he has methods. Rasul has been following Lofty around, photographing him. He’s built up some what you might call revealing pictures.’
‘Well I can quite understand it,’ Willie said. ‘His behaviour is appalling.’
Wicklow’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dear boy, do you know how many members of the British gendarmerie we have? Eighteen. Eighteen British, half of them Irish, in charge of a few hundred of the local men. There is a limit to what can be achieved. In these circumstances I think he does very well. The people here see Ashton and his superior Storrs as in charge. As responsible. For everything Lofty does.’
There was silence.
Wicklow tapped his watch. ‘I rather thought you might be in a position to talk to Eleanora about her husband’s photographs. To help him be convinced to stop taking them?’
Willie coughed. ‘Why would you think that?’
The dancing couple were sitting down now, heads close, arms knitted. Willie turned to look across at Prue again. She had flattened herself against the wall and was moving, slowly, around its edge. She looked like a ghost. Why was a child, in her nightgown, free to roam a bar like this? She was holding her doll by its hair and, for a moment, she looked at him. Then she was gone through the door. His stomach made a loud and disruptive growl, the result of downing whisky with no lining of food. A surge of nausea. Something happened in his eyes: they gave up the ability to focus. His body was fading.
Willie turned to ask Wicklow what he knew of Ashton and his daughter, and another question surfaced beneath that one: How had Wicklow known Willie was in Cairo, and Salonika? But Wicklow was gone, and had taken Rasul’s photographs with him. Theodore smiled, nodded at Willie as he stood up and made his way from the table. Steadying himself. He had not drunk like this for a long time now. Like the old days of Shepheard’s or Groppi’s in Cairo. Like the bar at Lake Prespa near Salonika.
Shoreham, 1937
When Skip was a baby, just six months old, I handed him to an Irishwoman who was sitting on a bench at Victoria station with her own three children. I had been watching her smiles, her continued kindnesses towards them: dabbing running noses, pulling them into her bright, patterned dress and squeezing them. I held Skip out in his bundle of blankets. Perhaps she thought I needed a hand with my tickets or my luggage because she automatically took him from me, pulled the blanket down, peeped and ahhhed at his face. When I asked her to keep him I believe she thought about it for a moment and something in me lightened, but then she frowned at me, gave him back.
Here comes Mrs Deal along the shingle path, laden with parcels, wearing a yellow mackintosh which even I might say is very bright for a vicar’s widow. The only woman in Shoreham who speaks to us and whenever I see her I have the same terrible thought: she lost her only daughter to tuberculosis, and this after losing her husband too.
I wave at the window
and call out behind me, ‘Skip, it’s Mrs Deal.’
He is curled up in the chair near the wireless, reading his bird book, whispering under his breath: raven, jackdaw, nutcracker, magpie, hooked bill, webbed feet, posture upright. I open the door.
‘Not stopping,’ Mrs Deal’s voice is high and piped, ‘but the postmaster’s boy asked me if I would bring you these.’ A postcard and a letter.
I am embarrassed because I am wrapped in my nightclothes – a flimsy negligée – with mascara on my cheek, eyes glued together, hair good only for bird nesting and I wonder if I smell of sex, but then I remember that I did not see Billy last night. I look at the clock; I can’t believe that it is eleven in the morning. As well as the post, Mrs Deal has a bag of fleecy white Shetland wool which she shows me with pride.
‘There’s some spare, if you’d like to try your hand at a shawl?’
‘Knitting is not quite my thing, Mrs Deal,’ I smile.
Skip jumps up. ‘Is it from Daddy?’
And it is. The postcard is from Piers. On its front is a picture of a cat, sitting on a wall. It is stamped Paris and the message is: Yearning to see you both! Here, then Stockholm, Venice, back 14 Nov when we WILL TALK. Kiss beast for me. Piers. He writes notes as if everything that happened between us didn’t happen. I put it on the table message-side down, intending to put my teacup on it later, but Skip hovers. No choice but to give it to him and the way he follows the curve of his father’s handwriting with his finger, tracing the marks, wishing him here, makes me feel very tired.
‘You will stay for a minute, Mrs Deal?’
Her eyes are all concern. I know I am a mess. I slept badly after the visit to the Warnes. Mrs Deal, who is a person who watches one closely, examines my face. She is a very thin woman, with rather a hunch in her shoulders as if she is fending off trouble through the curve of her back, much too ready to please, a teeny bit interfering, but kind, so kind. She picks up a tea towel and immediately is off, rubbing at cups and making tea, owning and stamping all over the cupboards and claiming my kitchen for herself as some women cannot help but do.
‘I won’t stay long. Just a quick cup.’
She sets the kettle on the hob and I wilt on to the chair; my head is a raging, banging drum.
‘You seem always to be coming to my rescue, Mrs Deal.’ She makes a tutting noise of dismissal and smiles at me.
‘How is that map, Skip?’ She is the type to speak to a child as if he is another adult.
‘Rather well, Mrs Deal, would you like to see it?’
‘I certainly would.’
Skip unravels his Map of the Entire World with great ceremony. It is made up of any paper he can get his hands on which is then carefully hand-stitched by himself, using my thickest cotton, so that what he has, now, is a quilt made of paper and Skip talks Mrs Deal through the contours of his invented land. When I first met Mrs Deal it was the same: no judgement, just a clear white kindness, like a child who suddenly hands over her toy or half of her food. Skip and I were caught in a hailstorm and the sting of the sharp white stones made him cry. She opened the door to her chalet and summoned us, Quick, inside, ushering us through to a warm, comfortable-looking front room where it appeared there was a tremendous sort-out of wardrobe in process because all the chairs and any imaginable space were covered in piles of men’s jackets.
‘I’m sorry about the mess in here. We’re considering some bits and pieces for the Distressed Gentlemen’s collection in Brighton.’
She did not introduce herself, but shooed a cat and moved heaps of tweed out of our way. The room was crammed with nursing chairs and books, everything swathed in a yellow or green or golden velveteen. She wrapped Skip up in a blanket, gave him a hunk of bread and even rummaged in a drawer and produced for him a box of tin soldiers. I was surprised when tears came up, pricking the rims of my eyes. I suppose I was sentimental over the kindness, or the homeliness of the room; the Michaelmas daisies in glass jars on the window ledge. She gave me a handkerchief with no fuss. It’s your house: the sense of home. I can’t begin to explain to you why it makes me so sad. And she had said: ‘I’ll tell you a secret: oh, I run the various societies, and I am always very busy with my projects, but I don’t belong in Bungalow Town.’
‘How wonderful,’ Mrs Deal is now saying to Skip. ‘Talk me through it.’
I listen to Skip explain the shapes, scribbles and textures of his never-ending map and it astonishes me that the names come from places in my own life, mingled with his. I suppose they are words that have always been familiar to him, spoken in a thousand conversations around him since he was a baby. He runs his finger along the key which I wrote out for him, under his instruction. Cecilia. Shoreham Harbour. The Redoubt. The Hiding Place. Jerusalem. New Shoreham. The Island. Beach. The Hotel Fast. The Russell Hotel. The Aerodrome. London Bridge. Norfolk Swing Bridge. River Adur. His own personal geography.
‘This is the river,’ he says and his face is bright and wide.
‘What is this?’
‘The road of towers: a bell tower, a clock tower and The Tower.’
‘Excellent. I’ve always thought there should be more than one tower to a town.’
I can see that the letter beneath the postcard from Piers has Margot Eaves’s handwriting on it. It will be another pep talk. Mrs Deal is still looking at Skip’s map. She has exactly the right way with him, in tune, not patronising, and I am grateful.
‘Would you like to see my new pet?’ Skip says to her.
‘How intriguing,’ she says, ‘what can it be? Yes please.’ Looking pleased with himself, Skip moves to the door.
‘Put your wellies on,’ I say. ‘It had better not be something disgusting.’ He raises a mysterious eyebrow and then runs out of the door. The shells clatter to remind me of their existence. I look out at the sea: along the peak of the shingle a row of gulls stand aimlessly. Far out on the horizon it is possible to see a fret gathering.
‘He’s a treasure,’ Mrs Deal says, soft and low.
‘Mrs Deal, can I ask you something?’ I feel, without quite knowing how or why, as if we have something in common. Loneliness, probably.
‘Of course, dear.’
‘We went to a birthday party not so long ago.’ I rub my forehead with my palm and she nods at me, all encouragement, setting down the teacups. I let her mother me.
‘It was a celebration at the fishermen’s club for a little boy called Walter. They rolled in a large barrel and released marbles; all the children ran running and chasing them but Skip wouldn’t play.’
Mrs Deal smiles at me and nods. Go on, go on. The barrel lid had been pulled off and out poured unimaginable numbers of cat’s-eye marbles. Blue swirls and white swirls, cat’s eyes and dead-black ones clattering across the wooden floor. All the children at the party ran around, screaming and trying to catch as many as they could. A cake was brought out, seven candles blazing, and the birthday boy made his wish. Billy had forced us to go to this party, even though we did not belong there. Not a single one of the sour-faced mothers spoke to me. Skip, too shy to catch a marble, went outside alone. A moment later there was a shout and I ran out. A group of children were laughing down by the shore and Skip had been pushed into the water, only as far as his ankles; his shorts had been pulled down along with his johns so that his bottom half was naked and boys were flinging globs of river mud at him. The ringleader was the birthday boy, Walter. I ran into the estuary and dragged him out, yelling at the children who disbanded as soon as I appeared. All I say now to Mrs Deal is:
‘It didn’t work. We did not integrate very well, and I am not sure that Billy understood.’
‘Billy is a hothead, and you know – I suppose? – that the boy Walter is his son, though he never married the mother? But he means well. He is kind, I do believe that.’
I look at Mrs Deal to see if she is speaking in a malicious way, but I don’t think so. It is just a clear, helpful imparting of what I should have guessed and what I suppose I was asking h
er. Yes, Billy was standing behind the boy Walter as he blew his wishes into the world. What was it I said to my own father? I’m averse to the thought of children growing up and all the adult relations around them being a lie. Look at me now. Straightening her glasses, Mrs Deal pours the tea, and we drink it in silence. I pull Margot’s letter towards me.
‘It is from Margot Eaves. She wants my work for her exhibition.’ I rip it open and it is just as I suspected. There is a cut-out piece of text from a magazine and a picture of me but I am not interested in reading it. I let it float to the table but Mrs Deal says, ‘May I?’ And she reads it aloud:
We might say that the work of Prudence Miller née Ashton allows us to look at things a different way. At first we feel we are being put in a room with a photograph album of her life. The staircases of her childhood, the self put forward through the spiral shapes, a prism of her existence to date, her time in Jerusalem, her training later at the Slade. Perhaps in the end there is no mystery to her because she takes the intimate and puts it outside. It is possible that people have missed the significant dimension to this work . . .
‘Oh I do insist you stop, Mrs Deal.’ She smiles at me and continues to read it to herself. I go to the window to watch the idiotic gulls.
‘I told her, I can only work if she leaves me alone.’ I think of William Harrington; a cold feeling comes down on me.
‘You know,’ Mrs Deal says, almost shy. ‘I would really like to see your work. I walk past your fishing hut every day and I wonder.’
I pause and resist; it is not the best time. I am rather struggling with it all. I’ve lost my own thread, I’ve been interrupted. Thoughts of the past have tripped me up, but something in me drops because she is the closest to a friendship I have here and, although Billy is soothing in his way, I miss the company of women.
‘If you would like to, of course.’ She looks so pleased. We wrap ourselves up in our coats and then run against the wind which is determined to force us in the opposite direction. I call out for Skip in case he is close, but he is not. He is probably over at the café or the fishermen’s jetty. Gulls bob on the waves like paper boats.
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