Wake
Page 26
Everywhere she looked she saw youth. Young people kissing one another everywhere, in various states of abandon; a couple wrapped around each other, the girl sitting on a wall, skirt hitched up, cutting into her white, bulging thighs. It felt as though, while she was in that factory, staring at machines and files, the world had left her behind. For two years she had sat at a bench, or at a desk, and looked only at what was in front of her. Now she would have to look up.
She skirted the square. Flags. Everywhere. Vendor after vendor, standing by little gray tables that had sprouted like mushrooms in the rain. A large, sweaty man in the midst of buying a job lot handed one to her. “There you go, love.”
She stared at it, and then back up at him.
“You all right, love?”
When she didn’t reply, he lost interest and began throwing the flags out to the appreciative crowd. She looked at the tiny flag: it was made of paper and wood and not much bigger than her palm, the end a sharp point, like a toothpick. She pushed the pointed end deep into her thumb. She felt the pain of it, but not enough, not nearly enough. She pulled it out again, and blood welled from the hole she had made. She smeared the blood across her mouth.
“Do what ought to have been done in 1914!”
A man beside her was selling lavatory paper. It had the kaiser’s face imprinted on each perforated section. Evelyn blinked; for a moment thought she was imagining it. “Do what ought to have been done in 1914!”
“Honey.” There was a touch on her arm.
A young man in uniform stood in front of her. He was tall, his accent American or Canadian. “You okay?”
His face was broad and young and smooth; sweat stood out on his forehead. Was he really so young? It didn’t seem possible for someone to be so young.
“Can I kiss you, honey?” he asked. “Can I give you a victory kiss?”
She said nothing, and so he pulled her toward him and kissed her. He opened his mouth and she could feel his tongue, taste beer, smell the thick wet khaki smell of his uniform and his sharp, salty sweat beneath. When he pulled back she saw that there was blood on his lip, and for a moment she thought that she must have hurt him—had bitten him—but then she remembered it was her own.
“Come on,” he said. He took her hand and she let him lead her across the road, through the standing traffic, past a woman covered all over in Union Jacks, who was riding a bicycle down the pavement, screaming, blind drunk, with two soldiers running along on either side. She followed him toward the church on the square, toward Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields, where the steps were clogged with people, sitting, standing, sheltering from the rain. The young soldier pulled her around the side and down some shallow stone steps to where it was cool and arched and echoing and there was no one else.
“Here,” he pushed her against a pillar. She felt the rough stone of it, pressing into her back. “Let’s do it here.” He began pulling at her blouse, not unbuttoning it, just tugging it out of her skirt and then passing his hands beneath it, under her camisole, until his hands were over her breasts. He leaned his face into her neck. She turned to the side, against the cold pillar, as he hitched up her skirt. He pulled down her knickers. She stepped out of one leg of them, letting them fall around her ankle to the floor. When he pushed himself up inside her she gasped.
She could hear the banging of the drums outside, the rattle and the screams and the singing, and the rasp of his uniform against her blouse. She lifted her face, up to the vaulted ceiling. It was over in five or six thrusts, and then he pulled away, turning from her to button himself. He looked like a child when he turned back. Part of her wanted to put a hand on his arm, to tell him it was all right. Part of her wanted to laugh.
They walked out together, and then, without speaking, as if they had already decided that this was what was to happen, they parted on the street without a word. She walked on, toward the river, away from the church, down Northumberland Avenue. The crowds kept coming toward her, ceaseless, swarming over the bridges from the south, packed tight now, a heaving, boozy mass. A song broke out near her, and the people started to sway, and the swaying spread until it was everywhere.
Finally she made it to the Embankment, where all along the length of the river the boats were moored, their sirens hooting. There was a crowd near to where she stood, gathered around a young boy who had shinnied to the top of a lamppost. At first she couldn’t make out what he was doing, and then she saw he was scraping away the blackout paint. The lamp was lit, and there was an exultant cheer. Then another lamp blazed into life, and another, until there were lights all the way along the Embankment, all the way along the river.
She pushed her way to the low wall where she stayed, gathering her breath. She could feel the cold, slippery residue of the boy in her knickers. Her stomach rolled in disgust. She stared out over the river, at the water orange in the lamplight, and thought that she could easily climb the wall, climb it and jump. That no one would notice. That they were all looking up, at the future, and their places in it. And for a brief moment, she thought that she was brave enough, that she might have to courage to do it, but the moment passed, and she was still standing, staring out at the river, at the lit orange rain was captured there, as if time had stopped, and the rain was only held there, suspended, and wasn’t falling after all.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Fred is dressed smartly, in his hat and suit. Walking beside him, Hettie feels strange. Hollow. Like she used to after she was ill, when she was a child. That first day of getting up, and going back to school, walking on cotton wool legs, when everything would look different: The house she lived in. The people she passed. The street.
Today the street is deserted, and the people are all gone. The houses have an anxious look, as if unsure their occupants will ever return.
They will.
Today, she doesn’t want the houses to be blown up, or the streets torn apart. She wants the bricks to be solid and sheltering. She wants things not to change. She wants her father not to be gone and the gardens to stay innocent and the heliotrope flowers to mean only summer and not swollen skin and quick, quick death. She wants there not to have been daughters lying down for man after man in their fathers’ houses in villages in France. Or women on their last legs, waiting for the queues of men to end. She wants the sad parade of men at the Palais to disappear, or to be whole, or patched together again. She wants Ed to be unbroken. And Fred. She wants her brother back.
But she knows in this warm, sun-bright morning, that none, or not all, of these things are possible. That Ed is right. That you cannot go back.
But her brother is beside her. He has done as she asked, and come with her today. And they are walking, the two of them, their steps in time, side by side, one foot in front of the other. One in front of the other, walking down the street.
As they near the bottom of the street Hettie can hear the murmur of the crowd from Hammersmith Broadway. People are lining the road, three deep on either side. All of the shops are closed, their awnings still rolled, their shutters drawn down. Motorcars and omnibuses have pulled over to one side and parked. The clock on the little island in the middle of the road reads a quarter to eleven.
She and Fred skirt the back of the crowd, looking for a place to stand. But as they move further forward, to where the crowd is getting thicker and more difficult to pass, she can sense Fred’s rising unease.
She reaches out and taps him on the arm.“Is here all right?” she says to him. “I don’t think I can go any further in.”
He looks down at her gratefully. “Yes.” He nods. “It’s fine.”
They take their places. The crowd is already silent: hundreds of faces facing hundreds of faces across the empty street.
. . . . . . . . . . .
They move through the crowd until they are wedged so deeply in among black backs that is seems as though they might never move again.
She turns back to Ivy. “I suppose it will have to do,” she says, with a brightness she doesn’t feel. They should have stayed where they were. They could breathe there at least, and they had a view. It had been her idea to move.
Just then there’s a scuffle in the crowd up ahead. Something is happening, closer to the front. For a long time it’s not clear what, until voices start shouting, “Clear a space! Clear a space!” A narrow gangway is carved from the crowd, and two men carry out a young woman, feet first. The woman’s hat falls off her lolling head, and Ada stoops to pick it up. She doesn’t know what to do with it then, so she places it down on the woman’s chest. The hat is a modern one, pretty, one of those that look like bells, with a small spray of white fabric flowers on the rim.
She touches the young man on his arm. “Will she be all right?”
“She’s fine. Just had a funny turn. Didn’t you, Mary?”
The young woman is stirring now. “It’s all right,” says the man, leaning down, “We’ve got you, Mary love.”
In the wake of the commotion the crowd churns and shifts back into place, then heaves suddenly from behind, as though people at the back had decided to push, all together. For a moment it seems that they will topple, like dominoes, until, as though on a wave, the part of the crowd where they are standing surges forward. Ada and Ivy hold on to each other, and to their flowers, as they find themselves traveling toward the front.
When the crowd has stopped moving, they are standing close to the barriers and have a clear view of the street: of the backs of the policemen, holding back the crowd, legs spread, arms behind their backs, the tips of their helmets shining in the sun; of the large expanse of empty road beyond; and then, on the other side of that, of all the many faces, ranged, expectant, staring back.
Beside her, Ivy is shaking. Ada touches her arm. “You all right, love?”
When Ivy brings her head up it’s clear that she has been laughing. She nods, wiping her eyes. “Couldn’t help it,” she whispers back. “How about that, then? Someone wants us to see.”
“That was funny, all right.” Ada steadies herself, leaning forward. Most of the people on the other side are women, similar in age to Ada and Ivy, dressed in mourning, all of them wearing hats. To their right, though, stand a young couple, their young son between them, holding their hands. The man is speaking to his wife and boy in a low voice. “Look at the windows,” he is saying. “Look up at the roofs.”
Ada follows his finger, and what she sees astonishes her. Every window up above is packed with faces, and there are indeed people on the roofs: young men, mostly, though there are women, too, sitting in dangerous-looking positions on windowsills and out on the edges of small balconies. She taps Ivy on the arm and gestures up.
“Gracious.” Ivy shudders. “Rather them than me.”
In the distance, now, they can hear the slow, dull beating of the drums.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The funeral cortege passes a young Irishman. He took the boat train over from Cork yesterday, landed at Southampton, and made his way here. He told no one at home he was coming—said he was going to visit his sister in Wexford. Things are changing in Ireland. It was necessary to lie.
The young Irishman joined up in 1915 and fought for Britain, but then, after the Easter Rising, he was spat at in the street whenever he was home on leave. Fucking Tommy, they’d say. Dirty fucking Tommy.
He is a Collins man now. A Sinn Féin man. He knows well whom he fights for. And there will be fighting. Of this his has no doubt. The lord mayor of Cork died while on hunger strike in Brixton prison not three weeks before.
And yet—he had to come. He had to lie and to come. For the lads he fought with and who died beside him, sometimes in his arms. Who, like him, were lied to, but fought like heroes nonetheless. Whose lives were thrown away, in their thousands, for scraps of land. He cannot forget them. He will not.
I’ll remember you, he thinks, and as the gun carriage, with its coffin and its dented helmet, pass him by, he closes his eyes.
Nothing will bring them back. Not the words of comfortable men. Not the words of politicians. Or the platitudes of paid poets.
“At the going down of the sun, we will remember them.”
No.
I will remember you when I pack my pipe.
I will remember you when I lift my pint.
I will remember you on fine days and on black ones. In the summer light I will remember you.
He opens his eyes and watches the military men march past. He knows who they all are; he read their names in the papers: field marshals, admirals, and generals. With a shock of recognition, he spots Haig; he’s close enough to see the gray in his mustache. He would like to spit on him.
He knows the king stands somewhere not far from here. He has a sudden image: of a man, a bomb strapped to him, running from the crowd. A strike at the heart of empire. It would be easy, easy. He shakes his head. Not yet, he thinks. Not yet.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The sound of the drumming approaches, and with it a whisper travels through the crowd: He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming. There’s a surge from behind and Ada holds on to the barriers. Her breath is constricted; ribbons of sweat roll down her back. She wishes she hadn’t tied herself in so tight. If she faints now, then who will carry her out? Behind her, the crowd churns and then settles again.
“Try to keep your feet wide,” says the young man beside them. “Don’t worry. They won’t move again now. That’s it. You’ll see.”
Coming up the street toward them are four enormous chestnut horses, their hooves deadened by the straw-strewn pavement, and as the horses draw nearer, almost in one movement, as though it were rehearsed, all the men in the crowd bare their heads. The young man beside her holds his hat against his chest.
Behind the horses come drummers, their drums covered in black fabric. The sound of their beat is hollow, muted. Pipers come behind them, their pipes making a thin, high tone on the still air. Behind there is space, a gap, then, six black horses drag a carriage, their eyes blinkered, coats gleaming. It bears a single coffin, a tattered flag draped over it, the colors faded, as though it has spent too long in the sun.
On top of the flag Ada can see the dented helmet of a soldier. It is the same helmet that Michael wore. For a stunned second she thinks it is his—that it is the helmet that was tied around his neck the last time she saw him, as he lumbered off down the road in the pale spring sun, bouncing against his back so that she was worried it would bruise him; and for that second she is convinced that the body in the coffin is his. Then there’s the sound of a woman’s sob, sharp and uncontrolled. It echoes off the buildings on either side of the road. Then there’s another sob, and another, and in the crowd opposite, hundreds of handkerchiefs appear, stark white against the black. Beside her Ivy is convulsed with silent tears.
And then she understands: They all wore that helmet.
All of these women’s husbands, brothers, sons.
The cortege passes them, moving down to the Cenotaph. Ada watches it slow. Sees it come to a stop.
There is a hush before the silence, a settling.
And then the chimes begin.
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. . . . . . . . . . .
Breathless, Evelyn reaches the top of the hill. In exhilaration she sees that no one else is up here, no one is sitting on her bench. They have all been sucked down into the great gray magnet of the city below. The air is so still that below her, the smoke from chimneys rises straight up into the air. It is a truly beautiful day.
She hears the chimes of eleven begin. The bells of Primrose Hill, of Camden Town, and further into the city—many, many bells, chiming together and apart. As the silence falls, she can see it almost, traveling like a long rolling wave, up to where she sits on the hill.
Then, what she thought was silence gives way to something else. Something surprising. It is the sound of a city without people. Without walking, speaking, running people; without buses, without cars, factories, offices, docks; but it is not silence, not here on the hill, not at all. She can hear the wind, lifting through the last brittle, tenacious leaves; hear the crows, calling to one another in the trees, and then, in the distance, other calls: the calls of the animals from the zoo. She hears the chattering of monkeys, the muffled roar of a big cat. She didn’t expect this. It makes her smile.
Up here, there are still patches of mist clinging a little in the green hollows. Up here is land that has never been built on.
And this, too, is the city, she thinks.
And here she is, sitting on a bench in the sun.
It reminds her of another morning, a morning in summer, inside the flat in Primrose Hill, with the window open and the heat of the day outside. Lying beside Fraser, listening to the sounds of the city below. The feel of the sun through the window, hot on the soles of her feet. The close, warm smell of the man that she loved. Then standing, and stretching, her feet cool against the tiles of the floor, turning to him. Shall we go outside?