I arrive at Victoria with a crocodile handbag stuffed with cash and my trunk packed with clothes and jewellery, wearing a deep-blue coat as if I’ve brought a piece of the Mediterranean with me. The murky gloom of my city is at first a shock, but I’m deliriously happy to be back.
You are on the platform in a blue Air Force uniform.
‘You’re not really here,’ I say, squeezing and pinching you as we kiss. ‘You can’t be. Nobody knew I was coming.’
‘Do you like my uniform?’
‘No. The opera cloak and the Harlequin costume were melodramatic but they suited you. The idea of you as a soldier –’
‘A pilot.’
‘An anything that takes orders. Anyway, why join up now? There might not even be a war.’
‘I like to be ahead of the game.’
‘Where are we going?’ I ask as we get into a taxi.
‘I’ve bought a little flat in St James’s Square.’
Before I have time to notice what your flat is like we’re on the bed in a private universe of tongue, skin and touch. You’re inside me again, and we’re both murmuring words of love and need.
Late that night I wake to find you asleep on my shoulder. Our clothes are heaped all over the floor in the dark like a stormy ocean, and my heart is churning. I slip out from under you and wander naked around the flat. It’s tiny, just a double bed behind a Japanese screen, a miniature living-room and bathroom and a kitchen in an alcove where I make myself a cup of proper tea. It never tasted right in Italy.
‘Come back, Jenny.’ I’m amazed by the need in your voice. ‘Did you miss me?’ you ask when we’re in each other’s arms again.
‘Sometimes.’ My pride reasserts itself. ‘But I enjoyed living by myself. I had plenty of friends and I read a lot, went for walks and swam – it was a good life.’
‘Jenny the contemplative nun.’ He laughs. ‘You must have been bored stiff.’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘That’s why wars happen, of course. People just get bored with ordinary life. It’s so bloody dull going to the same job every day, sleeping with the same man or woman, living in the same house for twenty years. So people create ideas like heroism and patriotism and pretend another group of poor sods are evil just so that they can entertain themselves by killing them off.’
‘That’s outrageous! Hitler is evil. We can’t just let him take Europe over. You seem to forget I’m Jewish, although I kept very quiet about it in Fascist Italy. I know what you mean by propaganda – as a matter of fact I left Italy because the authorities were trying to make use of me. But now I’m back, if there is a war I’ll do my bit.’
‘Will you, Jenny? Am I your bit? Everyone loves us pilots, you know.’
‘Will you really fly? It might be dangerous.’
‘Not for me, silly. Have you forgotten?’
‘I’m not sure what I want to remember about you.’
Later that morning you leave for a training camp in Oxfordshire. Or so you claim. I stay on in the tiny flat. No other interior in my life has contained me so embracingly, like a mussel in a shell. Even after war is declared I feel safe there, alone during the long periods when you’re flying.
One evening during the first April of the war I go to Hammum’s Turkish baths in Jermyn Street. Outside, on the pavement, there’s a tramp asleep on the hot air that blows up through the grating. I step over him – remembering my father who died drunk and homeless on the streets of Whitechapel – without any guilt. We who reinvent ourselves, moving freely from class to class and age to age, can’t afford to be sentimental. Inside, down in the steamy basement, the all-night baths have become a smart place to sit out air raids.
‘Jenny!’
I smile into George’s face as I lie. ‘I don’t think I know you. Are you a friend of my mother’s?’
‘You must be Virginia. I’m George Dumphry. What on earth are you doing in London?’ We’re squeezed together in the narrow tiled entrance.
I’m so pleased to see him that I can hardly keep my hands off him, but I try to look demure. I haven’t yet decided on a personality for my daughter. ‘I’ve borrowed a flat around the corner from a friend of Mummy’s. She wanted to stay in Italy.’
‘You look so like her – when I first met her, twenty years ago. Quite extraordinary.’
‘I know. Everybody tells me that.’
‘But is she all right, all alone in Rapallo? Shouldn’t we try to get her out?’
‘She says she won’t budge. She’s got lots of friends in Italy. I don’t think she’ll be badly treated.’
‘Well, if you say so. She always was pretty good at looking after herself. How grown-up you look, my dear. You can’t be more than – eighteen? Too young to be alone in London.’
I smile. I’ve decided to be vague about my age and notice that George is looking his. ‘I’ve never been to a Turkish bath before. Would you mind showing me what to do?’
George looks after me chivalrously. Later, when we meet in one of the rest rooms, the eroticism of our situation disturbs him. I sit beside him on the marble bench, wrapped in a towel with a great expanse of flesh visible, touchable, desirable. He can’t help staring to check my uncanny resemblance to myself – the mole on my upper right arm, my sharp collarbones and long toes. I try not to laugh at his amazement.
‘You’re married now, aren’t you, Mr Dumphry?’
‘Yes. Very much so. Molly and I have two children. Christopher’s still at school, and Helen’s not much younger than you.’
‘Are your family in London?’
‘No, much too dangerous. They’re in Brighton. I organize shows for ENSA.’ He watches me watch the half-naked men. ‘Curious upbringing you must have had on the Riviera.’
‘Yes, I suppose I did.’
Later we have dinner together at a restaurant opposite the Ritz, the San Marco, a tiny replica of the Doge’s Palace.
‘Do you have theatrical ambitions, Virginia, like your mother?’
‘I think I’m too shy to go on the stage.’ No need to, really, when my whole life has become a performance.
‘I often come here. I love the décor, don’t you? Specially that little Venetian balcony with no way up, and the table exquisitely laid for a supper nobody will ever eat.’
In his fantasy I know George is sitting up there with his Jenny, who isn’t me. And I project you up on to the balcony. Chatting to George, I miss you horribly. I long to talk to you or at least about you – George is one of the few people who still remembers you – but how could I explain? I still feel deep affection for him, but he makes me feel a bitch, whereas, compared with you, I always feel good.
‘Tell me about Molly. Is she beautiful?’
‘Oh dear, are you going to report back to your mother?’
‘Of course. I’ll have to send a full description in my next letter, only it’ll probably be censored. Well? Is she?’
‘Molly is – quite short, with wavy strawberry-blonde hair and a sweet smile. She’s a good cook and very maternal and loyal …’
‘The complete opposite to my mother, in other words.’
‘Well, yes. And she adores me and I adore her, and I know she’ll never leave me.’
‘Whatever you did?’
‘Of course I try to be considerate.’ He beams with the happiness of the securely loved. As if his ego has been polished and varnished. Perhaps she does it with a duster and a brush each morning.
‘I hope she won’t mind your having dinner with me.’
‘Of course not. I’m practically your uncle.’
‘London seems to be full of my practical uncles and fathers.’
‘I dare say.’ He laughs uncomfortably.
‘One of them has lent me this dear little flat in St James’s Square. Would you like to come back for a cup of beastly chicory coffee?’
‘No thank you, my dear. I must try to get back to Brighton tonight, the trains are so erratic.’
George parts from me with barely disguised rel
ief as if he has escaped from a carnivorous fawn.
My longing for you is visceral. I stare up at our flat from the pavement, and my heart ticks like a bomb when I see the light is on. Meeting George has crystallized my feelings for you; it was fun to flirt with him and eye all those men’s bodies, but I know that what I feel for you is real passion.
You sprawl in the armchair beside the gas fire, still in your flying jacket. I run to hug you, kneeling on the floor. When the gas fire scorches my dress I unbutton it and climb into the chair with you. ‘You didn’t tell me you were coming tonight. I just had dinner with George.’
‘How was he? Still daft?’
‘Still sweet. And I’ve been missing you so much. Let’s go to bed.’ As I lead you there, I say happily, ‘I get sick of pretending to be my own daughter. It’s only with each other that we can be ourselves.’
‘Whoever that might be.’
‘Leo, darling, I think it’s so wonderful that you’ve joined the war effort. You can do so much, with your powers. Where have you just flown back from?’
‘I can’t really …’
‘Of course, it’s all hush-hush. Sorry, I forgot.’
In the dark room in the dark city we sink into the black-out of love.
I often relive those first happy years of the war. Can’t bear to turn the page, to remember the rest, never have since I killed Virginia off.
Until September 1940 the war’s a stage where you and I perform: the brave pilot and his sex bomb, dancing seductively. The Ritzkrieg. London is hardly bombed during that first year, and, although I realize people are dying, they are outside our magic circle. Eternal youth doesn’t do much for your public spirit.
London feels cosy, almost like a village. Shopping in Peter Jones one day I hear two women talking about Flossie and Blossom and realize they’re talking about the huge blimps that hang over Chelsea. In St James’s Square my neighbours dig allotments and argue about whether or not to melt down the distinguished railings to help the war effort. I want to believe that barrage balloons and allotments will beat Hitler, and I’m happy to call it the phoney war like everyone else.
For years my personal map of London has cut off at the City. I rarely think about my childhood and never with any nostalgia. My sister Lizzie is posed for ever, a little girl in a white night-dress in a room so cold that condensation freezes on the cracked windows. Yet when I hear about the bombing of the East End on the radio one morning my convenient amnesia reverses. Lizzie sprouts breasts and a middle-aged face that stares at me reproachfully.
I find the note from my sister I so callously ignored in Rapallo and go off to search for her. Because transport is so haphazard I walk, and by the time I arrive in Hoxton my feet are bleeding. Exhausted, I try to orientate myself in an unmappable wasteland of craters, barbed wire and rubble. London’s intestines have been ripped out, exposing a crazy biology of drains, sewers and foundations where the mutilated countryside gapes through ruined houses. The earth that the buildings smothered breathes again but only to groan with pain. As I watch rescue workers carry dozens of corpses out of the bombed houses I give up my idea of searching for Lizzie. I weep for the sister I never knew I loved as dust rises in the autumn sun, glazing the scene red like a painting of the desert.
On the long walk home, my eyes streaming with dust and grief, I visualize the destruction of the rest of my city. I’ll never again look at a building without seeing it uprooted; behind every house on every street is its ghostly bomb site. The ritual precautions of the black-out seem like the game small children play, when they shut their eyes and pretend they can’t be seen. Finally I understand what this war means. Everyone is saying the Nazis will invade now.
The next day I volunteer at the Women’s National Auxiliary Council of the YMCA. They ask me to run a mobile canteen, and I’m pathetically grateful to be of use. At first I’m horrified by the dismal food I serve: meat pies, slab cake, sausage rolls and jam tarts. It’s all grimly unappetizing and cold, but the demolition squads are so hungry they seize on it with whoops of joy as they light up the cigarettes I also bring. Only the tea is hot, stewed in an urn in the corner of my van. After a few weeks I’m ravenous enough to eat the most brick-like meat pie and no longer speculate about what’s inside.
Between October and November London is bombed every night and sometimes there are nine raids in a day. I’m thankful to be in my van instead of shivering in a cellar, and I enjoy joking with the other women and flirting with the men. In my green overall, up to my ankles in a sludge of swilling milk and tea, bumping through the devastated back streets from bomb site to bomb site, I feel a part of London life and death.
One afternoon I’m on a bomb site behind Holborn, where spring in the form of grass and weeds and wild flowers already nuzzles the ruins. A couple of ARP wardens, middle-aged men who survived the Great War, have found a crate of ancient beige lace camiknickers in the bombed-out cellar of a shop. They’re throwing them at each other, and when we drive up, late as usual, they throw them at us. Soon half a dozen of us are standing around on the rubble and broken glass, screaming with laughter. We’re looting, depriving His Majesty’s Government of rotting bloomers as our spontaneous party makes us forget the war for a few minutes.
I flirt with all these men and sometimes have a few drinks with them but always make it clear that I’m going home to my flyboy. Whenever you come home on your unpredictable leave we spend blissful nights together.
July 1944, just after D-Day. You’ve sent a telegram to say you’ll be back tonight, and at one in the morning I’m waiting for you in a frenzy of love. Whenever a plane flies overhead I imagine you piloting it and feel mingled pride and lust. Sprawling by the gas fire in my oyster satin night-dress I only want to love you with all my heart, without any more doubts or suspicions or complications.
I fall asleep, and when I wake up you’re standing over me. We make love on the floor before moving over to the bed where we are still hungry for each other. I think of the Italian word for cunt: fica. Yes, I feel like a fig turned inside out: wet, soft, ravenous flesh. We make love again and again until daylight glows behind the red curtains and you fall asleep inside me.
I slide out from under you, my muscles contracting as if they want to hold you inside me for ever. You turn on to your side, and I stare at you. Your brown hair is very short and your cheekbones are prominent in your tanned face. Your shoulders and arms are muscular, and your mouth twitches as you mutter in your sleep. I long to eavesdrop on your dreams. I want to live simply with you in kindness and trust. If I could do that, perhaps I’d give up all this nonsense about eternal youth. But you wouldn’t want me unless I was young.
I make a cup of revolting Camp coffee and some toast and sit by the gas fire, looking at our clothes strewn all over the floor. Mechanically, I tidy them. As I lift your flying jacket documents slide out of the pockets and I look at them idly, smiling with affection as I flick through your small blue canvas logbook, with its record of every flight you’ve made. In your passport photograph you look absurdly young and goofy. The ordinariness of these documents touches me. Then I notice another passport and another logbook, with German on their covers; and that one, surely, is Russian, and that other passport is Japanese – multiple Leos stare up at me, round stamps like halos celebrating your heroism. Uneasily, I shuffle the documents like cards. When you were the Great Pantoffsky you used to do card tricks, and I wonder what tricks you’re playing now.
I pile all your documents on the mantelpiece, let you sleep until eleven and then bring you breakfast on a tray. You wake up and stretch, displaying your slim powerful naked torso. I nuzzle your shoulder and lick your nipple. Then, although I’m weak with desire, I pull back.
‘I naïvely thought you were just in the RAF.’
‘Breakfast! How lovely! You’ve given me all your jam ration, noble girl. I’ll bring you some more.’
‘Where from? Germany? Russia?’
‘You’ve been snooping in my
pockets.’
‘They fell out. Are you angry?’
‘Not at all. There’s far too much anger around. You people take war so seriously, as if it makes any difference who kills whom. It’s all just an expensive excuse for reducing the population and trying out new weapons. I had such fun yesterday, flying above the clouds somewhere over Poland. Now I’ve got my wings I can go anywhere; ironic really when my own were confiscated aeons ago. You should come with me one day, my darling. I often think of you in my lonely cockpit.’ You press my hand on your cock under the sheets, but I draw back.
‘Do you? But, Leo, I thought you were flying for us.’
You roar with laughter. ‘Us! Them! Why should I restrict myself to one nation, when each of them has its propaganda machine? And how persuasive they all are! Civil wars are the most entertaining, when you can play off father against son, friend against friend. I thoroughly enjoyed Spain. And revolutions give one unique scope for creativity. My favourite was the French one, which finally persuaded me you people are far more interested in death than in any aspect of life.
‘I try to keep an open mind, to see both sides of every argument. Some days I love Communism. It’s so logical and so hilarious when people are surprised it doesn’t work. I get on awfully well with Stalin; we have long talks into the night. And Hitler also has loads of charisma. I like a man who’s got the guts to make really vast mistakes. There’s nothing like a bit of Fascism to improve a country’s infrastructure; after all, he did reduce unemployment from six million to three hundred thousand in six years. And how attractive America is, that clean-limbed look combined with the utter corruption of their public life – and Italians are so charming, they make Fascism quite sexy – no, no, I couldn’t just stay in the dreary old RAF.’
‘But you must be killing people. Our people.’
‘They would have died anyway. I had no idea you were such a chauvinist.’
‘I saw what the Luftwaffe did to the East End. Dead and wounded everywhere, a whole chunk of London destroyed. My streets. My sister’s probably dead.’
‘Don’t look at me like that, Jenny. I’m not responsible for all this. I might join in with gusto – oh, all right, I do – but the collective madness is already there: bombs being hurled like fireworks; aeroplanes diving to oblivion; young men queuing up to die. It’s all a game and the players love it, gambling their lives away for a few seconds of excitement. Why would there be wars all the time if people didn’t want them?’
Loving Mephistopeles Page 4