by Clare Harvey
They pound their fists on the metal door, shouting to be let in, as the skies crack orange-white and the air thumps and screams. The shelter door begins to open and he tugs her hand, pulling her inside, into the safe darkness. But just then she notices two spots of light by the top step and catches the edge of a howling sound. A dog, left out in this raid. Hang on a sec. She twists away, lets go of his hand, starts up the steps. It will only take a moment to rescue the poor thing.
As she does so the night rips open with a monstrous roar.
‘Miss Fitzlord?’ A voice loud and sudden in her right ear. She opened her eyes and jerked up her head. ‘Yes. How can I help, Mr Handford?’
‘A waste of decent steel,’ he said, placing the motor housing she’d been working on upon the table in front of her, crouching next to her uneaten dinner.
‘They’ve all come back from the inspectors as substandard.’
She pushed her palms over her eyelids, feeling the warmth, and pulled them away. He was still there. ‘I followed the drawing,’ was all she said.
‘You can’t have done, or they wouldn’t have been picked up by quality control.’ He was standing next to her. She couldn’t see his face without craning her neck up and around. But she could sense him: the air warmer down the right-hand side of her, the faint scent of his maleness: pipe smoke and sweat and shaving cream. Violet Smith was staring across the table at them, blowing smoke through her little rounded nostrils.
Zelah was so tired. She knew she’d followed the drawing, but was it worth the argument? Wouldn’t it be easier just to say sorry, it won’t happen again, and accept the dock in her pay packet for spoiling precious material and factory time?
Violet Smith was watching, waiting, and so were the group of card players at the next table. I’m the welfare officer, Zelah thought. I’m covering for Mary McLaughlin, but I’m still the welfare officer, and if I roll over and let myself be bullied by management then the other girls will think they have to do the same. She reached for the housing. It was still warm from where he’d carried it from the shop floor in his hands. She picked it up and stood up, chair legs dragging on the tiles. ‘Perhaps there could be an error in the drawing?’ she said, turning to face Mr Handford. She saw the muscles in his jaw twitch before he responded.
‘Are you saying I’m wrong?’
‘I’m saying it could be my fault, but it could equally be something missing from the technical drawing, and perhaps we should check?’ she said. Check our facts before barging in on someone’s dinner and making accusations in front of their colleagues, she added, silently. ‘As soon as my break is over I shall be more than happy to come to your office, and hopefully we can sort this out,’ she said.
He gave the briefest of nods, his brows making a deep ‘V’ in his forehead. ‘Very well, Miss Fitzlord. I shall expect you in my office at half past.’ And he was gone.
Zelah ignored the gawping and the gossip that erupted as soon as the canteen door shut behind him. She sat down and laid her head back on her arm. Ten precious minutes left. She closed her eyes again, and her mind drifted back to the minutes before the Plymouth raid began:
At that moment she has never felt so alive. The waxing moon spreads a milky pathway right across Plymouth Sound. Her hand is in his and her head on his shoulder, and the stars seem to sway like the hips of the singer in the restaurant. It feels as if they’ve known each other half a lifetime, instead of just a few short hours. How serendipitous it seems that they’ve met, like that, today of all days, as she is starting her new life in Plymouth. There is an exquisite pause and she knows he is going to turn and kiss her and she will let him, in the moonlight, with the gentle lapping of the waves.
But instead, he tenses, draws breath. ‘Can you hear that?’
She listens. A sound, far away, beyond Drake’s Island, out towards the southern horizon, like a distant drill.
The drilling clang of the bell announced the end of the meal break. She lifted a leaden head and pushed herself out of her chair, dropping off her dirty plates on the trolley by the door and heading along the corridor to the stairs.
‘They’ll all have to be scrapped,’ he said, not even looking up at her as she entered his office. He had the housing holding down the technical drawing like a paperweight. His dark hair fell forward, like a crow’s wing. He could pass for someone younger than – she realised she had no idea how old he was.
‘Can I look?’ she said as she reached the desk. He straightened up. His unlit pipe was clenched between his teeth. She caught his eye. What was that expression? Irritation or hostility? She’d begun to think that people were unfair about him after the hostel hop, that he wasn’t arrogant, just awkward. But perhaps she was wrong to have given him the benefit of the doubt.
‘See?’ His forefinger jabbed at a point on the drawing. She looked from the thin black lines to the cylinder of tooled metal that lay on top of it. Zelah had made fifteen of them tonight already. Surely they couldn’t all be wrong?
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, moving in for a closer look. The air was thick with the thrumming vibrations of the factory floor. The electric strip light was hot-yellow above them. She was certain she’d followed the drawing correctly. But she’d almost been late clocking on, because of the Agnes Donoghue issue. Had she double-checked that the lathe was calibrated? The musty smell of the paper mingled with the scent of him as she leant in, and her forehead grazed his.
‘I’m sorry,’ they said in unison, springing apart.
Zelah felt herself flush, brushed her hands against her overalls and looked out through the glass office window to the open mezzanine beyond. A clerk with victory-rolled hair and smudged lipstick swayed past, carrying a stack of files. Zelah inhaled and turned back to face Mr Handford. He’d removed his pipe and thrust his hands into his pockets.
‘It’s because you’re overtired,’ he said. ‘You’re working too hard. Let me find someone else to do the McLaughlin girl’s work now she’s gone.’
‘But she’s coming back.’
‘Is she really?’
‘I promised I’d keep her job open for her.’
‘Has nobody ever told you that you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Miss Fitzlord?’
‘But I can keep this promise. We discussed it. You agreed that I could cover her shifts until she’s able to return.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t have agreed.’
Zelah put her hands on her hips ‘Mr Handford—’ she began.
‘You’re clearly suffering from overwork and I expect you to take tomorrow night off,’ he interrupted.
‘I can’t possibly.’
‘I insist.’
‘I have too much to do.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not your decision. This is a management edict.’
‘But what about your production targets, Mr Handford? You need one hundred of these by Tuesday. Who’s going to do them if I don’t?’
He looked so angry she thought for a moment he was going to lob the motor housing at her head. ‘You need a break, Miss Fitzlord. You’re taking the night off and I’m taking you to the cinema,’ he said.
‘Oh, are you, Mr Handford?’ she said. ‘Is that some kind of management edict, too?’
Laura
The air tasted damp. Clouds were scudding white-grey like herded sheep across the skies. The weather could come in suddenly, up here on the hills. Laura glanced at the paper she had taped to the board on her lightweight easel. She hoped it wouldn’t rain, not now she’d lugged everything up here. It was the first time she’d dared leave the hotel since Harold was taken ill. But he was on the mend, now, the doctor said. His fever was coming down.
She looked down at the British Camp Hotel, below her in the dip in the ridge line. She’d already drawn in the outline of the buildings in the faintest of soft pencil, with the waving hills ribboning away beyond. How much of the detail to include, though? The cars parked outside looked like stag beetles, shiny and black – how to g
et that effect in watercolour without drawing the eye away from the nuanced wash of the landscape backdrop?
She unscrewed the lid on the water-filled jam jar and opened her paintbox. Apart from those cars, which she might very well leave out, everything else fitted perfectly: an easy composition for a morning sketch. Landscapes, that was the answer, she’d decided. She could stay here with Harold for the remainder of the war and paint landscapes and she’d written to K to say as much the other day.
Laura prepared her brush with a wash of primrose yellow, which would capture perfectly the sunshine on the white-washed walls of the hotel buildings far below. But just as she did so, the sun dipped behind a cloud, and the wall colour was suddenly pale mauve. It was most irritating. She waited, paintbrush poised, for the sun to emerge, hearing the occasional twitters of birds and smelling the spritz of greenness of the hillside. Was spring on the way?
The hotel bill would be due soon. But Laura thought perhaps the hotel would be happy to have a beautiful watercolour in lieu of payment, for the time being. After all, that was what Munnings used to do, in Cornwall, before the last war. The sun was still behind that blasted cloud. Laura waited, recalling their Cornish days. Before the last war she and Harold had had many happy years in Newlyn. She’d painted tramps and children, in the garden, and by the sea. She remembered the golden sun-kissed skin of girls draped on clifftops, and nights singing sea shanties in public houses with Munnings and his entourage. What larks! The last war had ruined it, of course. In point of fact, things had started to turn sour even before that, when Munnings persuaded the delectable Flora to marry him – the foolish old goat. Laura shook her head at the memory, calling out to the swirling spring winds: ‘Terrible, just terrible!’ Before Flora’s suicide and the Great War, Cornwall had been pure as the primrose yellow she held on her dripping brush. Afterwards it was purple-grey and red at the edges, like the pulped eye of a boxer.
And her marriage had been like that, too, after the last war: inflamed and wounded, she remembered. Was it really all my fault for going away? Laura thought, watching the yellow droplets from her brush spray into the wind. We had no money. What choice did I have but to accept the commission to paint those soldiers in their Surrey barracks?
As she watched and waited, Laura noticed the hotel’s front door open, and insect-small figures emerge, and get into the black-beetle cars. She heard the faint, faraway growl of engines starting, and saw the cars move off, turn out of the hotel car park and roll down the hill.
The cars had all gone now, but still the sun would not come out. And Laura thought that maybe she should give in and paint the blasted hotel in shadow. It would have an altogether more brooding feel, not at all the sunshine-and-optimism chocolate-box feel she was aiming for, but still. Laura sighed and dipped the brush in the jar, watching the yellow paint swirl away like a wish. She shivered. The wind was getting up. She could hear it rush through the trees that bordered the twisting path that led downhill to the hotel, branches jostling like a crowd on race day.
She wiped the brush on her work apron and looked at the palette. A mauve wash for the wall instead. She wiped the brush over the watercolour tablet and shivered again. The wind really was picking up now. Never mind. She’d painted in worse weather than this. The trick was to keep your eyes looking and your hand moving and simply not to dwell on the physical discomfort of it.
She swept her brush over the paper – a beginning, at least – but even as she did so, she felt the wetness hit the back of her neck like sea spray and heard a rumble of thunder coming in from behind her, beyond Giant’s Cave. Raindrops spattered against her just-started sketch. Damnation. She snapped the watercolour box shut, screwed the lid back on the jam jar and set about removing herself from the hillside before the storm struck in full.
She was panting as she lugged her easel through the front door and into the lobby, nearly bumping into Rosie, who was carrying a cup of beef tea. ‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ Laura said. ‘Is that for Harold?’
‘Yes, Missus Knight, but don’t trouble yourself—’
‘No trouble. I have a free hand.’ Laura wedged the easel under one armpit.
‘Well, if you’re sure?’ Rosie said, smiling.
‘Quite. I’m sure you have plenty of other things to be getting on with.’ The cup wobbled on the saucer as she took it.
‘Thank you, Missus Knight.’ She turned to go. ‘And I nearly forgot to say, there’s been a telephone call for you, whilst you were out.’
‘Was it the doctor?’
Rosie shrugged. ‘Mr Peterson said that if I saw you to tell you there was a telephone call and he’s taken a message.’
‘Thank you, Rosie, dear.’
The girl bobbed her head and walked back along the corridor. There was the steamy rush and the smell of old bleach and burnt toast as the kitchen door opened and closed, and the girl disappeared inside. Laura continued across towards the reception desk where Mr Peterson was half-hidden behind a copy of The Citizen: ‘Simultaneous RAF Attack on Three Countries’, said the headline. He hadn’t seemed to notice Laura’s presence, even though the cup and saucer clinked as she set them down on the high counter in front of him. She cleared her throat.
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Mr Peterson said, lowering the paper. ‘Sounds like we’ve got Adolf on the back foot. Have you heard?’
‘Yes, good news,’ Laura said. ‘But Rosie just mentioned something about a telephone call?’
‘Ah, yes, didn’t know where you were.’ Mr Peterson’s bulbous nose wobbled as he spoke, making his wire-rimmed spectacles bounce up and down. His moustache twitched like a rabbit’s whiskers. ‘It was that Clark fellow again, I took a message.’ He put the paper down and rootled about behind the counter. ‘Here we are.’ He sniffed and pushed the spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose with a nicotine-stained forefinger. He held out an index card with scratchy writing on it. Laura asked if he could possibly read it out – his writing was hopeless. ‘He says to tell you that landscapes are out because he’s got Nash on those for the foreseeable, so it’s the Nottingham gig or nothing and could you let him know at your earliest convenience because there’s another artist in the frame.’
‘Thank you, Mr Peterson,’ Laura said. She pursed her lips and tapped the edge of the saucer. Why Nash? Why not her? And who else could possibly be in the running for the Nottingham job? She sucked her teeth and watched the surface of the tea ripple as she tapped. There was the sound of a vehicle drawing up outside the hotel, then, and Kipper rushed out from behind reception, yapping wildly.
‘Ah, yes, he’s a terror for the postman,’ Mr Peterson said, pushing himself up. ‘Enough, boy, shush now.’ He came out from behind the counter and picked up the dog. ‘I meant to mention,’ he said, holding the struggling mutt at arm’s length as if it were a filthy dishcloth, ‘your last two months’ bills are overdue.’
‘It had completely slipped my mind, what with Harold’s illness; I’m so sorry,’ Laura said, even though she knew fine well what the date was and had been hoping Mr Peterson might have forgotten.
‘Ah yes,’ Mr Peterson said, bending down to put Kipper behind the counter and clicking the latch shut behind them both. ‘Can’t afford to let matters slip, I’m afraid. Not with things being the way they are.’
The front door opened then, a damp blast at Laura’s back. She turned. The postman, cocooned in an endless brown scarf, held out a stack of mail. Laura left the tea on the counter and took it from him. Right on top was a large cream envelope addressed to Mr and Mrs Knight. Laura left the rest of the post to Mr Peterson and plucked that one off the pile. The postman gave a muffled ‘Good morning’ and the front door slammed shut.
Laura tore open the envelope. But there was no comfort to be had. It was a bill from the doctor, for Harold’s treatment, plus the call-out fees. How much? For a moment she thought she must have misread. Her mind whirred with arithmetic: the doctor’s bill, plus the two months’ hotel bill, and there were the burs
t pipes in the St John’s Wood house to fix, too. There wouldn’t even be enough money left for paint, at this rate. Dear Lord, what a start to the day.
Laura sighed, slipped the bill in her pocket, grabbed the easel, and picked up Harold’s tea. It would be cold, now, and he’d complain. She sighed again and walked off down the dark corridor towards the stairwell. Her feet tramped on the floorboards and her mind questioned itself: well, what are you going to do now, Laura?
Chapter 8
Violet
‘Hurry up!’ The banging on the bathroom door came again. Violet couldn’t quite recognise the voice, it sounded cockney though – could be Edna – someone waiting to come in and beautify themselves ready for the weekly hop. They’d been promised airmen, again. Did they always promise airmen? Vi wondered, letting her big toe inch out of the scalding water and touch the blessed chill of the cold tap. She took another swig from the bottle of gin as she did so. ‘What the heck are you doing in there, anyway?’
‘Getting clean!’ Vi yelled back. The half-empty gin bottle clinked against the side of the bathtub. ‘Getting clean,’ she repeated in a lower voice, taking another mouthful of gin and wincing.
Hot baths and ‘mother’s ruin’. Perhaps it was just an old wives’ tale. But what else could she do – sit around pretending the problem didn’t exist? If she did that, she’d end up like her big sister Bea had, having to pretend the baby was just another younger sibling – and who’d buy that story, with Ma sick in bed and Pa still away in North Africa? – or worse, having to go to the sluts’ home and give the damn thing up, like Mary McLaughlin. No. No. No. She swilled the gin around in the bottle.