by Anna Hope
“All right, Mum?” Ellie peers into the dusk. “Ada? Hello! You all right? I was just at Sal’s. Thought I’d pop by to see how you’re getting on.”
“We were just having a cuppa.”
“You need a bit more light in here.”
“I should be going.” Ada stands.
“Don’t go on account of me.” Ellie looks from one to the other of them.
Ada rustles up a smile. “I’ve got to get the dinner on anyway. Jack’ll be back soon.”
Ellie nods, losing interest, and wanders over to the stove, showing the baby the syrup bubbling in the pan. “What’s this then, Johnny, eh? What’s this?”
“Ivy,” Ada says. “Please. Just give me her address.”
“Ada,” Ivy’s voice is low, warning. “I’ve told you. It was four years ago anyway. A lot can happen in four years.”
“I know that. I just—”
Ivy leaves her side. She goes over to stand with her daughter and grandson at the stove. “Ada’s going, John,” she says to the little boy. “Say ta-ta.”
Ellie looks up. “Granny says say good-bye to Ada.” She lifts the arm of her son, who submits, gurgling, his mouth stretched wide, his cheeks bright red in the warmth of the stove, as she waggles his arm up and down. “Ta-ta, Ada. Johnny, say ta-ta.”
. . . . . . . . . . .
Two British undertakers walk through the winding, vaulted corridors of the château, their footsteps echoing on the stone-flagged floors.
Their names are Mr. Sowerbutts and Mr. Noades. They arrived in France yesterday, on the evening boat train. In the pocket of his suit, Mr. Sowerbutts carries a letter of introduction from Sir Lionel Earle, permanent secretary of His Majesty’s Office of Works. Six British soldiers follow them, carrying the heavy, empty coffin that the undertakers have brought with them from London. The coffin has been hewn from an oak tree that grew at Hampton Court Palace. Messrs. Sowerbutts and Noades oversaw the construction themselves. It took two weeks, in which the oak was finished, planed, sanded, and polished to the undertakers’ exacting standards. Iron girders were strapped around the wood and rings were riveted to the girders. A Crusader’s sword, given by the king, was grafted onto the lid, and the following was inscribed there in gothic script:
A British Warrior Who Fell in the Great War 1914–1918
For King and Country.
At the threshold of the chapel, Mr. Sowerbutts and Mr. Noades pause. They stare in astonishment at the floor, strewn as it is with curling flowers and leaves. The colors are extraordinary. There is something faintly disturbing, faintly pagan almost, about the scene.
The French guards salute, their boots ricocheting like a fusillade as they leave.
Mr. Noades gestures to the British soldiers behind him to set the oak coffin down. Mr. Sowerbutts grips the bag that he has brought with him from England. He eyes the plain wooden coffin waiting for them in the center of the room.
The two men were told that they might ask for anything they needed for this day’s work, but they are perfectionists. They consider themselves, with good reason, the very best; they prefer to work with their own tools.
They have been told nothing of where exactly this body has come from, nothing of how long it has been in the earth. They know only that it has been taken from the fields of northern France. They are curious. They know that the fields there are made from thick, muddy clay. But how high was the clay content? How wet was the soil?
Mr. Noades joins his colleague on the other side of the plain wooden coffin.
“Ready?”
He nods. There’s a pause, and then the two men lift the lid.
A close, musty smell escapes from the box. Not particularly unpleasant. Well past putrefaction and decay. The body is still inside the burlap sack it was wrapped in two days before. Mr. Noades takes his shearing scissors and cuts open the material from bottom to top. Both men lean forward, breath held.
Inside is a small, hunched skeleton. Small remnants of skin cling to the bones of its skull. There is a patch up near the right cheek. It looks like parchment. Another covers the chin, and a tiny bit more remains on the scalp. Muddied khaki still adheres in places to the bones; the jacket is fairly intact, though most of the trousers are missing, except around the groin, where the skeleton appears to have been bent over itself in the ground.
Five years, thinks Mr. Sowerbutts.
Four and a half, thinks Mr. Noades. Depending, of course, on the wetness of the soil.
Autumn 1915, thinks Mr. Sowerbutts.
Spring 1916, thinks Mr. Noades
Gently, they lift the remains of the man in the sack and arrange them in the oak coffin. They can do very little in the way of traditional preparation. They simply spread the bones with care, so that the skeleton is lying on its back, arms by its side.
The men carry out their work silently.
Soon, these men know, the whole of the country will have their eyes on this coffin. The very power of this coffin will depend upon every person that looks on it imagining that the body inside belongs to them.
It is strange, even approximately, to know when this man fell.
And though they have been desperately curious, all the way here, there is something diminishing, somehow, about deciding on a year, about pinning this down.
Nevertheless, as they work, each of them crosses off men they knew who served: one who was taller than this, or one who died later than this one in the war.
When the body is ready, the undertakers seal the heavy lid.
Without saying anything, each knows they will not speak of this—not of the sight of this body, never to anyone. No matter who may ask.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Evelyn doesn’t look up from her desk until the last man has been dealt with. Then she sits back in her chair and stretches. Five o’clock.
Robin is standing over by his desk, buckling up his bag with his back to her. “Shall I lock up?” He speaks quietly, without turning around.
“If you would. I just have to finish something off here.”
She takes the round of keys from her bag and puts them on the edge of her desk. She doesn’t look up as he crosses the room toward her, but she sees his hand reach in and lift them, the fine light hairs on the tops of his fingers. While his back is turned, she rifles through the papers on her desk. She cannot find what she is looking for—must have filed it yesterday.
“Well, good-bye, then.” He is standing beside her.
“Wait.” Evelyn looks up. “Listen, Robin, I’m most dreadfully sorry for leaving you like that this afternoon.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. It was my lunch. It overran.”
“Lunch with your brother?”
“Yes.”
His eyes flicker to her jersey. She remembers that she has changed—is wearing different clothes—and feels the blood race to her cheeks. There’s no way of making this seem better than it looks. She will only be digging herself a deeper hole.
“Here.” He holds out the keys in his palm. “For you.”
She puts them on the desk. “Wait, Robin.” For some reason she doesn’t want to be left here on her own tonight, not even for a minute or two. “Would you wait, just for one moment, please?”
“If you like.” He sounds surprised.
“I won’t be long, I promise.” She goes over to the ranged boxes on the wall, following them down until she reaches the letter H and then searching through the drawer until she finds what she is looking for: a small blue slip with Rowan Hind’s name at the top. She copies his address into her notebook, 11 Grafton St . … Poplar, then looks up. Robin’s tall silhouette is over by the window, hands in his pockets, staring out. Rain falls from a stooped gray sky. It is almost dark already. Evelyn feels the same strange beginnings of panic she felt a moment earlier; Doreen
will most likely be out again, and she will be going home to an empty flat. “Ready,” she says, after a moment.
He still has his back toward her, looking out of the windows.
“That rain looks foul.”
“Yes,” he says. “It does.”
“I’m not sure I’m up to braving it just yet.” She gives a small laugh. “I might make a cup of tea.”
“Fine.” He nods. “See you tomorrow, then.” He makes to go.
“Would you care to join me?”
He halts beside her desk. “For the tea?”
“Yes.”
“Er, no, thank you. I don’t much go in for consolation prizes.”
“Oh, God. I didn’t mean it like—” She stands up too quickly and her head is pounding. Her drunkenness of earlier on has shrunk to a thick, tight band across her scalp. “Actually”—she shakes her head, pressing her fingers against the desk—“I’m not going to have a cup of tea at all. I’m going to go for a proper drink. How about that instead?”
He starts to speak, but then she raises her hand.
“You know what? Don’t bother. Do what you like. I’m sorry that I asked.”
She puts on her coat and gathers her things. But Robin hasn’t moved. When she looks up at him he is smiling—a strange sort of smile she hasn’t seen before. “Actually,” he says. “I was going to say that a proper drink is just what I feel I need.”
The pub is on the corner, a few doors down from the office: one of those brown-hued workingmen’s pubs where women are rarely seen. Usually she would avoid it, but it’s raining hard, and she has no idea how far Robin can easily walk.
Inside it’s fairly quiet, just a few men, drinking on their own, hunkered down over their pints. She makes sure that she is the first to reach the bar. “I’ll have a gin and orange please, and …” She turns to Robin.
“A pint should do it,” he says, giving a brief nod to the barman.
“Gin and orange and a pint then, please.”
Robin looks across to the rain-spattered windows. “Filthy day.”
The memory of herself, half-naked, drunk, and standing by a window floods Evelyn. “Yes,” she says, drumming her fingers against the wood of the bar. “It is.”
The barman puts their drinks down, and Robin reaches into his pocket.
“No!” She puts her hand on his sleeve, and then pulls it immediately away. “I mean, let me. I wanted to make it up to you, for this afternoon.”
His eyebrows shoot up, but he half-steps away from the bar and opens his hands in mock defeat.
“Got a live one there,” says the barman to Robin, who smiles. Evelyn takes out her purse and pays with a stony glare. They turn with their drinks, and stand, awkward. Which table? Over in the corner is too intimate, by the door too drafty. She makes for an empty table in the middle of a row, slipping into the seat on the side closest to the wall. As Robin settles himself into the chair in front of her, she sees that his leg sticks out slightly: out and to the side.
I often go along to dances, in the evening.
How the hell does he manage then, with that leg?
“So,” she says.
“So.” He looks at her. And there is something different in it. Challenging. It’s the same look that he gave her in the office before.
“Was it dreadful, then?” She sips her drink.
“I’m sorry?” He looks momentarily confused.
“This afternoon.”
“Oh, no, it was fine. Though I should probably pretend it wasn’t.” He smiles, lifting his glass. “This is interesting. I’ve never had a woman buy me a drink before.”
She raises an eyebrow as she lights her cigarette. “I’m sure it tastes the same.”
He makes a great show of holding the liquid to the light. He takes an exploratory sip. “Yes,” he says. “Everything seems to be in order.”
Despite herself, she smiles. She can feel the gin from her own drink hit her blood, and the band around her head ease a merciful notch.
“Listen, I don’t suppose I could have one of those, could I?” He points to her cigarettes.
“Thought you didn’t smoke.”
“Just sometimes, when I’m having a drink. Used to smoke like a chimney, like the rest of you, but I got a bit of poison, you know, bit of gas in the lungs.”
She pushes them across the table toward him.
He lights up, takes a small puff, and then puts the cigarette down in the ashtray, where it plumes blue smoke into the silence between them.
“So,” she says, eventually, “how are you finding the job?”
“How am I finding the job?” He sits back in his chair. “Well … it’s … many things.” He turns his glass in his hands. “Harder than I thought, in some ways; simpler in others. Mainly I’m just happy to be in employment. It’s not the easiest with—this.” He gestures to his leg.
Evelyn rests her eyes on it briefly. For a moment she wonders what it looks like. The plastic instead of flesh. How it must have been, getting used to that.
“And it beats selling magazines door-to-door or matches in the street.” He leans forward, his fist around his glass. “I saw a man the other day. He had a barrel organ, and there were photographs on the side of all his children.”
“How many?”
“I counted nine.”
She lets out a low whistle.
“And beside all of that, a list of his service record.”
“Whereabouts?”
“The Somme, and others. The duration, from what I could tell.”
“God.” She picks up a beer mat and tears it in half. “They make me furious. It’s as though we’re walking around a pit, all of us. One of those awful bomb craters in the middle of the city, only a million men are inside it and no one is looking. People are just walking past, whistling, pretending not to see.”
“I don’t know about not seeing,” he says quietly.
“Well, all right.” She looks up at him. “Perhaps not that. But I just boil with fury that they should be there in the first place—reduced to begging in the street. It’s the older ones that always get me most; they stand there, in their best suits, and their hats, and they look so patient and they all have such—such dignity and we all just …” She trails off, shaking her head.
“Then why do you work for them?”
“Excuse me?”
That same look of challenge is on his face. “The people that put them there. If it isn’t the pensions service, then who is it? Surely if there were a fairer distribution, then …”
“You’re confusing the messenger with the message.”
“Perhaps. But you could always do something else.”
“Perhaps I could.” She leans back, opens her hands. “What do you suggest?”
He shrugs. “There must be many office jobs out there.”
“You know as well as I do that’s not true. Especially for women. Not now.”
Are they arguing? She’s not sure, but it feels like it; her blood is up.
“How long have you been there, then?” His tone is softer, conciliatory.
“Two years.”
“And before that?”
“Before the office, or before the war?”
“Both. You can start at the beginning, if you like.”
She gives a brief laugh. “We’d be here all night.”
“Well”—he looks down at her empty glass and his half-full one—“we could certainly have another drink.”
“Yes,” she smiles. “I suppose we could.”
He drains his glass, gets up, and goes over to the bar. His cigarette is still smoldering gently in the ashtray. She leans over, takes a couple of last drags, and crushes it out. She watches as he comes back with the drinks. It is difficult to tell from watching him walk that he has a fal
se leg; he moves surprisingly well.
“How long have you had the leg for?” she says as he nears the table, then immediately regrets it; but he doesn’t flinch.
“Three years.” He puts the drinks on the table. “Though it took a while before I had one that fit. But hang on.” He lifts a finger. “We’re not finished yet. You were going to tell me what you did before this.”
“Munitions.”
He raises an eyebrow—seems surprised. “And how was that? Hard?”
“Hard enough.” She wonders if he will comment on her finger now.
“And before that?”
“I … well.” She puts her finger and thumb from her good hand into her drink and squeezes the little slice of orange. It bobs on the surface, bumping against the ice when she lets it go. Before that I fell in love. “I moved up to London. Shared a flat. Did this and that. Thought I had plenty of time to decide, and then, the war came and …” She looks up at him. He is watching her so intently that she has to look away. “By the time it was finished I was here.” She picks up the last half of her beer mat and rips it in half again. “Well,” she says. “Your turn now. You’ve been very clever so far at making me talk.”
“I’m not sure you’ve really told me very much at all.” He smiles. “But, all right, then. Perhaps I could pretend to smoke another of your cigarettes?”
She pushes them across the table toward him.
He lights one up, but this time keeps it in his hand. “I was in university when the war broke out. I’d gone there late. Somehow I thought it would be the thing to travel first.”
“Whereabouts?”
“India, Nepal, the Levant.”
“How was that?”
“Have you ever visited?”
She shakes her head.
“You should go.”
She looks up at him. Surprised. Should I?
“I had not very much money, and I lived on not very much and I spent rather a lot of my time away from people and things. And—it was rather wonderful.”
“What did you do?”
“A lot of walking, mostly. Some climbing, too. Northern India and Nepal. I had a thought that I’d like to be attached to the colonial government, but when I was out there I decided that”—he smiles—“well, it was clear that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I thought I should do something constructive. So I took up my place at Cambridge and went to study classics.” He gives a short laugh. “God only knows why.”