by Juliet West
Dor reaches into her overalls pocket and pulls out a tin of Nut Brown. There are five cigarettes in there, some a bit ragged and some fatter than others because Dor is still getting the hang of rolling them.
‘Got a light?’ she asks. ‘They won’t let us take matches in the factory.’
‘Should think not.’ I look at the yellow gunpowder under her fingernails.
‘I have washed them, you know,’ she says. ‘This is as clean as they get. Don’t worry – I’m not going to explode on you. Then again . . .’ She lifts her backside from the chair. ‘Nah, let you off this time.’ She sits back into the seat, laughing.
I strike a match to the end of her cigarette, pretending to be cross. ‘Whenever are you going to learn to be ladylike, Dor? No wonder Len dropped you.’
‘I was always a lady with him,’ she says, winking. ‘A perfect lady.’ She holds her cigarette with her wrist bent outwards, takes a drag and blows out the smoke with her lips all pouty like a film star. Then her shoulders slump and suddenly she has a sulk on. She didn’t want to be reminded of Len, of the fact she’s single again.
‘You’ll soon find someone else, Dor.’
‘Fat chance when there’s nothing but granddads and invalids left in the whole of bloody London.’
‘Seemed to me there were plenty of decent fellers down on the Isle of Dogs.’
Dor sits forward in her seat. ‘That right?’ she says. ‘Dockers, you mean?’
‘Cafe is full of them. I wasn’t taking much notice, of course, but it struck me that some of them were younger men. Dock work is protected, you know.’
Dor gives me one of her dry smiles. ‘I do know, lovey. That’s what your George told you, wasn’t it, until he took it upon himself to join up anyway. What was her name? Pavlova?’
‘Pandora.’ She’s got me back for mentioning Len. ‘My point is, Dor, there are still plenty of men out there. You want to come down the cafe and see for yourself. I’ll give you extra sugar in your tea if you promise not to show me up.’ As soon as I’ve said it, I wonder whether I should have kept quiet. I’m not sure what Mrs Stephens would make of Dor.
She laughs and stubs out her cigarette. ‘I might just wander down there next week. Best behaviour, I promise.’
I can’t sleep for the song circling in my head, droning in time to Teddy’s snores. It’s Dor’s fault for reminding me of Pandora. I try my usual trick for dropping off, which is to recite the rhymes from Barter’s: ‘Let all your letters slope alike and equalize your distance/Attention pay to form and size and you’ll need slight assistance.’ It’s no use, though – the tune keeps coming back – so I give in to the memory, the words of the song they struck up at the music hall that night, ‘We Don’t Want to Lose You, But We Think You Ought to Go’.
November 1915, it was, a cold night nearly a year ago. The children were playing outside before tea: Teddy just walking, toddling around with his chubby legs, holding on to Alice’s pinafore and covering it in mucky fingerprints. George seemed excited when he came back from the sawmill, and there was an ale moustache above his lip. It wasn’t like him to go drinking after work. His jacket was slung over his shoulder, and his waistcoat was opened so that you could see his saggy braces.
‘Get your glad rags on, Hannah, love,’ he grinned. ‘You and me’s going out tonight. Free sing-song down at the Queen’s.’
‘You what?’ I dropped a half-peeled potato back into the bowl. ‘What about the children?’
We were living in Poplar then. Two rooms in a basement in Alton Street, clean and not too damp.
‘One of the girls upstairs will mind them.’
I hadn’t been to the Queen’s since before Teddy was born. Hadn’t done much at all except clean and cook and mind the children and worry about Dad.
‘Go on, then. I’ll knock and see if Mary’s about.’ I tugged at the bow of my apron and I felt a little giddy as the strings came free.
It was dark as we walked to the Queen’s, the street lamps all dimmed and no sign of the moon. In front of us, a couple giggled, arm in arm. George reached out and held my hand. I squeezed his fingers and thought that life wasn’t too bad.
‘Perfect night for a Zeppelin,’ said George.
‘Thanks. Just when I was starting to enjoy myself.’ I looked up into the darkness. You don’t see them until they’re upon you, fat black ghost ships, droning in the sky.
‘Nah, we’re all right. It’s been quiet for a few weeks. Reckon we’ve scared the Germans off. The war’s going our way.’
It was odd to hear George express an opinion like that. He was generally quiet about the war or politics or union matters, never chatty at all, in fact, unless you got him started on different types of hardwood or the best way to fit a chine to the end of a barrel. Still, I hoped he was right about the war, and I tried not to look too closely as we passed another street-corner shrine, the wilting posies and the chalked-up names of dead sons and husbands.
When we arrived, the theatre was nearly full. We sat near the back, George on the central aisle and me next to him, with a girl I’d known from school on my left. Mabel Murray was her name, and she was a year or so older than me. At school Mabel always had terrible breath, which she tried to mask by sucking humbugs. Now she smiled and her teeth were brown as boot leather, and sure enough, there was the whiff of humbugs.
‘Hannah White!’ she said.
‘Hannah Loxwood now.’
Mabel raised her eyebrows, took a sidelong glance at George and then settled back in her seat. ‘We’ll soon sort the men from the boys,’ she said. She opened her hand to show me a fistful of white feathers, then nodded towards the red velvet curtain across the stage. There was a soldier standing by a little door at the side of the stage. He was a high-up, I guessed, because his uniform was bright with medals and stripes. He was beaming out at the audience, ever so friendly-looking. The side door opened and several more soldiers marched out, the one at the front banging a drum. There was no spotlight on these soldiers; they just filed into line and stood on the auditorium floor in front of the orchestra. Evidently we were in for a patriotic night. Bloody impossible to escape the war.
The theatre fell silent as the curtain rose and there at the centre of the stage was the most glamorous woman I’d ever seen, all done up in sequins and feathers, beautiful shiny hair with a diamond clip that made you blink, it was so dazzling. The compère came onto the stage in his bow tie.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a rare treat for you tonight. Please welcome our special guests of honour from the London Regiment. And not forgetting our very own . . . our ravishingly talented . . . Pandora Pavelle!’
I looked at George and of course his eyes were popping. This Pandora Pavelle didn’t leave much to the imagination. She started the show with ‘God Save the King’, then disappeared into the wings. We all sat down and the next act came on – a sword-swallower who somehow guzzled a bayonet. A second-rate magician followed; then Pandora was back, draped in a Union Jack this time and holding a small tin shield across her chest. She started on the patriotic songs: ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and then a new one I’d heard drifting from the pubs and sung in the crowds when the recruits marched down Poplar High Street: ‘We Don’t Want to Lose You, But We Think You Ought to Go’. Whether that’s the title or not, I couldn’t say, but that’s the line you remember. One of the dancers strutted onto the stage with a board showing all the words, so that the audience could sing along.
It’s easy for us women
To stay at home and shout,
But remember, there’s a duty
To the men who first went out.
The odds against that handful
Were nearly four to one,
And we cannot rest
Until it’s man for man
And gun for gun.
And every woman’s duty
Is to see that duty done!
During this last song the soldiers put up trestle ta
bles at the front of the stage, the chorus girls still singing behind them. Then Pandora Pavelle waltzed right down into the audience and began inviting the men onto the stage. Dozy cow I must be, because I took a moment to clock what was happening, namely that the men were supposed to walk up to the trestle tables and sign up for France there and then. I elbowed George, ready to raise my eyebrows, to grumble at the cheek of it, but he was too busy watching Pandora walking slowly down the aisle, smiling and beckoning, arse swaying, the tin shield now strung on a strap across her shoulder and her pink cleavage quivering above the sequinned bustier. One by one the men stood up and filed onto the stage – even a few clapped-out old boys and a tiny chap with a built-up shoe who was never going to stand a chance. I recognized some of them – Ernest Taylor from the chandler’s near North Street and Tom Steer who once went out with Dor. Occasionally you’d see a man shake his head at Pandora, mutter something you couldn’t hear, and every time that happened Mabel twitched her fistful of feathers.
I felt smug at that moment, knowing we’d got a free night out but George wouldn’t be signing anything because he was already doing his bit down at the docks. Starred occupation, crucial for the war effort. We couldn’t care less if Mabel dropped him one of her stupid feathers.
What a fool I was.
When Pandora touched George on the shoulder, he couldn’t get out of his seat quick enough. He said nothing to me, just a too-hard squeeze of my knee as he stood to attention. His chair seat flipped upright and I felt the vibrations shudder down my back. Off he went, following Pandora up the aisle, while the orchestra reprised the national anthem to round off the night.
Mabel leaned in towards me and the brims of our hats clashed.
‘Good on ’im,’ she said, nodding towards George. He was in the spotlight now, pen in hand.
I looked at her and I thought I had never seen anyone so grotesque. She was like a wild animal with her blazing eyes.
And so it was all decided. We would give up Alton Street and I would move in with Jen and Alec – for company, and to economize. It was what families did, George said, and Jen would help with the children, which would be nice for her, wouldn’t it, seeing as how she didn’t seem to be popping out any of her own.
Now, here we are. Squashed up in the back bedroom. Teddy stirs and I turn to face him, propped on my elbow. I stroke the softness of his right eyebrow. Little Teddy, don’t ever be a soldier.
5
The smooth water shivers as he sinks his cloth into the washbowl. Outside, a blackbird sings, though dawn is still an hour away. He rubs pomade into his palms and attempts to tame his hair. Perhaps Sonia has a pair of scissors he could borrow. He resolves to ask her, next time they pass in the hall.
The photograph of Esther is propped on a small shelf under the mirror. She is seated on a straight-backed chair, a vase of wilting marigolds on a table at her side, and a space behind the chair where he should have been standing. When he had arrived at the studio an hour late, another family was busy brushing up and straightening clothes in the full-length glass. ‘Your wife left several minutes ago,’ said the photographer’s assistant, his smile disdainful as he handed a comb to a fussing young mother.
Now the damp of the lodging room is leaving its mark. The photograph has curled at the sides, casting an extra shadow on Esther’s face. It troubles him to see the shadow, because there was nothing Esther liked more than to sit on a park bench, tilting her face towards the sun. He remembers the day they met – Victoria Park, Whit Sunday 1910, a few days after the old king’s funeral. Most of the girls at the picnic were dressed in black, but Esther was wearing a pale blue shawl over her navy dress. She seemed different to the others and he was glad when Arthur introduced her: a cousin who’d recently moved to London from Leighton Buzzard, a secretary for the GPO. He liked her low, straight eyebrows, her intelligent smile, and it didn’t seem to matter that she looked older than him. Esther was different. She was interesting.
He takes the photograph down from the shelf and tries to smooth the curled edges, but the shadows persist, so he slides Esther into the brown envelope in his trunk, alongside her death certificate and the bracelet he is saving for little Maddie.
He dresses quickly, making as little noise as possible because he would hate to wake Sonia. She was busy last night, he couldn’t help hearing. He ties a white neckerchief in a loose knot, then buttons his waistcoat. At the window, he rubs a pane of misted glass with the hem of his jacket. The blackbird is still singing, a puffed silhouette perched on the lopsided rowan tree that grows on a patch of green next to the baths. The bird stiffens suddenly, sleeks down his feathers and flies off towards the church.
At Beaumont’s yard, he joins the queue of men at the gate.
‘Mornin’,’ says Bryn, and there is that tone again, the sarcastic edge to his voice. ‘Read anyfing good lately?’
Shears, one of the older men, snorts a laugh.
‘Give us a poem, then.’
He smiles, tries to think nothing of it. They’re a friendly lot, in the main. Don’t mean any harm. Still, he knows he’ll never fit in here, same as everywhere else.
Aunt Winch had a word for him. ‘Queer,’ he once heard her say. ‘He’s a queer one all right. I blame Lady Tolland for turning his head.’
He wonders about that summer in Dorset. It would have been better, perhaps, if he had never gone, if he had run off down his mate Robbo’s shed when Aunt Winch had told him to pack his best short trousers and a set of clean underwear because they were going on a journey. But he had wanted to go on a journey, of course he had. He’d never been further than the seaside on a charabanc.
Aunt Winch no longer worked for Lady Tolland, but as she was once a favourite, she had been asked to accompany the lady on a visit to the country. They would be staying with Lady Tolland’s sister close to the Devon border. They were to travel by train, and he was old enough not to be a nuisance. He could even help carry the bags.
Lady Tolland and Aunt Winch sat in a first-class compartment, while he travelled in second class, bread and drip tied up in a handkerchief and a Red Ralph book he’d swapped with Robbo slotted into the pocket of his shorts. The woman in the seat opposite sighed when the train pulled out of Waterloo and crunched hard on a boiled sweet. He took out the Red Ralph story.
He’d read the book twice by the time the train reached Basingstoke. Then there was nothing for it but to sit staring at the soft hills, the dribbles of rain swerving around the window glass as the train swayed along the track.
At Salisbury, Aunt Winch woke him with a tug on his ear.
‘Wipe yer mouth,’ she whispered. ‘Drooling like a baby, you are. Now listen, Lady Tolland says you’re to come and see her. Says she’s bored, though I don’t know what good you’ll be to her. Best behaviour, now – don’t go showing me up.’
He followed his aunt into the private compartment where Lady Tolland sat with her hands clasped in her lap. Her black dress looked creased and dusty, and the hem was coming down. He wondered why Lady Tolland still mourned her husband, the man who had caused such a scandal. Perhaps the black dress was the only one she could afford.
‘Ah, young man. How are you enjoying the journey?’ The gold brooch at her throat glinted as she spoke. A tiny pearl was missing from the cluster in the centre.
‘Very well, thank you, ma’am.’
‘And how have you been occupying yourself?’
‘I read me book and then I fell asleep.’ Aunt Winch glared at him. ‘My book. Ma’am.’
Lady Tolland laughed. ‘Quite. I have also finished my book. It’s too sad when a book comes to an end, especially a book that one has enjoyed. Don’t you agree?’
He nodded. ‘Oh yes, ma’am. But you can always read ’em again. I read ’em a hundred times over.’
Lady Tolland looked thoughtful. She reached into a large leather portmanteau resting on the seat beside her.
‘I have an idea. Shall we swap? I will lend you my book and you may
lend me yours.’
Aunt Winch cut in. ‘Oh no, ma’am. It’s only a grubby old penny horrible he’s reading. It’s not what you’d call . . . li-tritch-er. As it were.’
He wanted to laugh at the way Aunt Winch’s chin poked forward when she spoke to Lady Tolland. Her words came out differently too – a fake accent, pretend posh. It curled his toes to hear it.
Lady Tolland raised her eyebrows at Aunt Winch and he noticed there was the trace of a smile on her pale lips. She pulled a thick bound volume from her bag. ‘I must say this is rather horrible, and it cost a lot more than a penny. Mr Hardy’s latest, quite chilling. How old are you now, boy?’
‘Nearly twelve.’
She paused for a moment. ‘So tall – I thought you were older. Still, I believe you may be just old enough. Here.’
She offered the book, but as he reached out, she drew her hand away. ‘Our agreement, remember? You must fetch me your book first.’
He pulled the worn copy from his shorts pocket. The paper on the narrow spine was torn, and there was a streak of grey fluff stuck to the cover. He brushed the book before offering it to Lady Tolland. The fluff stuck fast, but he handed it over anyway.
She smiled as she read the title aloud. ‘Adventures of Red Ralph. How exciting, and just as I was drooping with boredom. Thank you very much.’ She handed him her book.
‘And here is my side of the bargain.’
He took her book with both hands and stared at the cover. Jude the Obscure. He said the title aloud and then repeated it in his head. He did not understand the meaning of the words, but he liked the sound of them: Jude the Obscure, heavy and rhythmic, rolling with the carriage.
‘Manners,’ Aunt Winch mouthed.
He bowed and thanked Lady Tolland, backed out of the compartment and hurried down the train to find his seat.
How exhilarated he felt, how important, as he sat with the heavy book opened on his lap, ‘Mr Hardy’s latest’, and the woman opposite sniffing as if she couldn’t care less.