by Lissa Evans
‘Do I look all right?’ she asked, half to herself. ‘This is that brand-new lipstick you found dropped on the Heath last year. Rose Blush.’
It looked orange to Noel. ‘So where’s the corporal taking you?’
‘I don’t know, he didn’t say.’
‘And are you going in the lorry?’
She didn’t answer that one. Noel tucked the bundle of quiz questions into the pocket which already contained the letter. ‘Have a nice time, anyway,’ he said, stiffly.
‘Thank you.’ She reached out a hand to pat his shoulder, and then changed its trajectory and picked a piece of lint from his scarf. ‘I hope you haven’t made the questions too difficult. Mrs Claxton keeps on saying to me that she’s praying that the team from the local council wins.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the bomb-hole in the road outside the chapel’s been there since last July, and the gulley next to it’s still half blocked with rubble so that when it rains it all overflows into the chapel porch, and you don’t want the clerk of works drawing up his repairs list and thinking, “Oh yes, the Methodists. I hope they’re enjoying their prize of two bottles of home-made wine and a side of bacon sent by Mr Orchard’s niece in Canada.”’
‘I see.’ Noel pulled on his mittens. ‘Do you think Mrs Claxton’s comments to you are in the nature of a hint?’
‘A hint? What sort of hint?’
‘Is she hoping that your quiz-collating nephew might find a way of ensuring that the council team wins?’
‘No, of course not!’ said Vee, sounding, and possibly even feeling, a little shocked. There was a pause. ‘Could you?’
‘I suppose, theoretically, I could rearrange the question order so that the council team get fewer on, say, chemistry and more on the subject of popular entertainment. Or I could give them “rivers of England” as a Geography sub-category, while the lay preachers get “rivers of the African sub-continent”. And so on. It would be quite easy.’
‘Oh.’
Their eyes met in the old, complicit connection; fleetingly, they were the Vee and Noel of the grey suburbs, breath not quite steady, pulses running a touch fast, the world a little sharper and brighter than usual as they rattled their fake charity box, ears strained for the policeman’s footstep.
‘No,’ said Vee, reluctantly. ‘No, we shouldn’t. It’s not as if it’s for anything really important, is it?’
Noel shook his head. The disappointment was slight but palpable.
Ten minutes after the Drill Hall doors had been opened, not only was there nothing left of the buffet, but the empty plates looked as if they’d been licked. Noel had tried the strawberry jelly and found that it tasted slightly of glue, but its sheer novelty was such that small children had carried pieces away in their cupped hands, unsure as to whether it was food or a plaything. The meat-paste sandwiches had tasted of nothing at all, but one elderly man had taken five, folded each like a small book, and inserted them into his trouser pockets.
‘If everyone has finished eating,’ called a large woman from the stage, ‘could you be seated for the entertainment?’
At the tombola stall, Noel was eyeing the prizes to see whether it was worth venturing a shilling or two. The large tin of pears in cream was calling to him. He knew exactly what he would be cooking for the savoury part of the Christmas Day menu, but the pudding was still lacking in pizzazz. ‘I’ll take three tickets, please.’
Mr Jepson seemed strangely reluctant to sell them to him. ‘Three? Are you sure?’
Noel fished another sixpence from his pocket. ‘Four, then.’
‘No, I mean, are you sure you want them now? Wouldn’t you rather wait until the interval?’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, just to … to even things out.’ Jepson seemed to be attempting to convey something important, using only his eyebrows.
‘Hurry up,’ said the woman behind Noel in the queue. ‘I want a good seat.’
‘How about if I take one now,’ said Noel, carefully, ‘and another couple later?’
‘Yes, good idea.’
‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one?’ said the woman, as Noel unfolded his ticket.
As he took his place in the audience, he scrutinized the tin of scented talcum powder (French Lavender) that he’d won. As far as he could ascertain, it had never been opened; if he sanded off the rust spots, it might make a good present for Vee.
The trouble with being given flowers, thought Vee, was that now she’d have to carry them around all evening. And it wasn’t just a buttonhole, it was a whacking great bunch of pink-and-blue silk gardenias. She had kept it on her lap during the Tube journey, and then clutched in one hand as they’d exited at Leicester Square, emerging into jostling darkness, absorbed into a near-invisible crowd that swayed and heaved like a turning tide, almost lifting Vee off her feet. She’d gripped the corporal’s sleeve as he steamed through, and by the time they’d reached a pub he knew of, along the Strand and down a flight of steps by the river, the bouquet looked as if summer had come and gone.
‘What can I get you to drink?’ he asked.
‘Just a lemonade, please.’
The place was packed, but she was able to watch her companion’s progress all the way to the bar, his head bobbing above the others’ like a buoy. Most of the customers were GIs – they were so clean-looking, thought Vee, and so smart, their uniforms might have been made to measure, smooth fabric stretched across well-fed bodies, everything gleaming, even their skin, even their teeth. The few visible Tommies looked used-up by comparison, grey and juiceless, uneasily jingling the change in the pockets of their sagging khaki, trying to stop their girls’ gaze from wandering over to the Yanks.
Vee edged one buttock on to a window seat, taking a moment’s respite. As she’d waited, nervously, for the corporal to ring the doorbell, she’d wondered what would be expected of her over the evening ahead – would she be required to talk or to listen? Most men, in her experience, were either tongue-tied, so that conversation had to be pushed along like a stalled motor-car, or wedded to one particular subject to which they returned at every single opportunity, so that the main problem was not that of thinking of topics, but of remaining awake so as to make the right kind of appreciative noises during a round-by-round account of a boxing-match that had taken place in 1923. Corporal O’Mahoney (‘Call me Mario’), however, had not only talked non-stop from the moment he’d arrived, a stream of stories and jokes, but had peppered his speech with questions, so that she’d had to stay on the alert – no, ‘Hampstead’ had nothing to do with ‘Ham’ so far as she knew; yes, she’d often seen squirrels on the Heath; no, she had never killed and roasted one – and then the train had stopped in the tunnel just before Camden Town and the lights had first flickered and then failed and Mario had immediately started telling a ghost story about a haunted garment factory where mysterious weeping was heard and a sewing-machine whirred in the darkness, and his deep rasp of a voice was so compelling that when the lights in the carriage suddenly came back on, everyone was leaning forward with slackened jaws, and there was an actual groan of annoyance when the carriage jolted into the station. ‘Tell you the end on the way home!’ Mario had shouted towards the exiting crowd, and there’d been grins and waves.
‘Can’t you tell me the end now?’ Vee had asked, as the train doors closed again.
‘Haven’t thought of it yet.’
‘You were making it up?’
‘Every word. You ever see a ghost?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Only a couple.’ And he’d headed off on a tale about a box of doughnuts and a set of footsteps in the snow, and Vee had realized that her nervousness had dissipated because she didn’t have to do anything, it appeared, only hold on to her hat and enjoy the ride.
He came back from the bar with a lemonade, a gin and French, two beers and a whisky.
‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ said Vee, when she realized that the gin was for her.
&nbs
p; ‘Why’s that?’ He’d already downed the whisky.
‘It was the way I was brought up, I suppose. Methodist.’
‘That like a Baptist?’
‘Like a Baptist but … without the baptizing.’
‘And they think drinking liquor’s a sin?’
‘No, not a sin, exactly. Frowned upon.’ Regarded, even by those Methodists who hadn’t actually signed the pledge, as an activity dangerously close to enjoyment.
‘I’m not frowning,’ said Mario, pushing up his cap so she could see his forehead, broad and pock-marked. ‘You see me frowning? If you take a sip, I won’t even peek.’
She wet her lips, just to be polite. It wasn’t as unpleasant as she remembered.
‘I’m a Catholic,’ he said. She nodded. When he’d paid for the Tube tickets she’d seen a picture of Jesus Christ in his wallet, one of those illustrations in which the Saviour was exposing His pierced heart with an oddly simpering expression. The corporal took the wallet out again now, paused momentarily over the painting, and then thumbed through and took out a couple of photographs. One showed a crowd of people standing in front of a shop, smiling at the camera.
‘This is our bakery, it’s called Bernardi’s – Bernardi was my grandfather’s name – but they call it Fat Pat’s because you put on ten pounds just looking in the window, and that’s my ma and pa’ – he hovered his forefinger above the photo – ‘those are my brothers, Michael, Pat junior, Iggy, Paul, Francesco, and their wives, and my sister, Carmen.’ Great cheerful slabs of men with the same large features as Mario, and buxom, shining women.
‘And this is my godson’s First Communion – those are cousins, mostly.’ A scrubbed small boy stood in a room full of yet more people with Mario’s chin.
‘Goodness – how many of you are there?’
‘A million. Maybe two.’ He grinned, drained one of his beers and reached for the second. ‘You got a big family?’
‘No.’ Only a mother and a grown son that she never saw; she felt the usual twist of the heart at the thought of Donald, that rosy, roaring baby who had patted her face and gurgled and grown into a young man who’d had no further need for her, who had brushed her off like lint from a coat. ‘Just my nephew,’ she added. Who wasn’t really her nephew, of course. She took another tiny sip of gin as the pub door opened yet again, admitting a ribbon of cold air and at least a dozen sailors. The noise level rose, so that she could hardly catch what Mario was talking about. Behind her, two girls were having a shouted conversation about someone called Dolly, while over Mario’s shoulder she could see a fair-haired GI nibbling the neck of a brunette, while the latter placidly checked her lipstick in a compact mirror.
‘You even been there?’ asked Mario.
Vee realized that she hadn’t heard a single word of the previous sentence. She shook her head, since that was probably the correct answer; she’d never been anywhere.
‘Nothing but stones, miles of little stones,’ said Mario. ‘In the US, we’d call it a driveway!’ She could tell from his expression that this was a punchline, and she gave an unconvincing neigh of laughter, just as the brunette snapped her compact closed. The girl’s gaze flicked in her direction and lingered critically for long enough to allow Vee to feel like the oldest woman in the world.
‘Hey,’ said Mario, ‘how about we go for a walk?’
‘A walk?’ She sounded like a dolt, repeating the word, but who went for a walk after dark in December, with the wind snapping at your ankles like scissors?
‘Just a little stroll somewhere quiet,’ he added, and she felt a premonitory lurch of the stomach. The infectious looseness of American morals had been the subject of many dark discussions at the knitting circle, especially the ability of GIs to turn Nice Girls Who Ought To Know Better into Little More Than Street-Walkers at the wave of a pair of nylons. Also notable, apparently, was their willingness to extend appreciation of the female form to those who would normally consider themselves exempt. Mrs Ogden had had her thigh stroked in the blackout while queuing for a bus, and had shone her torch into the face of the perpetrator, to discover that he was approximately the same age as her grandson. He had appeared completely unabashed, saying ‘Good evening, ma’am’ with exquisite politeness before offering to carry her shopping.
‘Are you drinking this?’ asked Mario, indicating her gin. Vee shook her head. ‘What it is,’ he said, leaning his huge head in towards her, his voice dropping to a low rumble, ‘is that I have to ask you something.’ Almost absent-mindedly, he downed the gin.
‘Oh,’ said Vee. ‘Can’t you ask it here?’
‘It’s kind of private,’ he said.
‘Right. Only it’s perishing out, I can’t think how I’ll ever keep warm.’ Which sounded, she realized instantly, exactly like a phrase from a lurid newspaper article about good-time girls; she might as well have snapped her garter and named her price. Fortunately, the corporal was lighting a cigarette, and didn’t see her wince.
‘All right, then,’ she said, buttoning up her coat. ‘Just a quick one.’ God almighty, and now she sounded like Max Miller. ‘I mean, a walk – I mean, a quick walk – that’s what I meant.’
‘You OK?’ he asked, squinting through the smoke at her.
‘Yes, I’m very well,’ she said primly, and followed him out into the polar wind.
Noel amused himself during the entertainment by composing caustic imaginary reviews. Mr Harry Wallford, of Wallford’s Plumbing Supplies, performing under the stage name ‘Happy Hal’, made a number of jokes that would have been commendably topical were it still 1939. The exception was one about the recent bomb plot to kill Hitler, the final line of which – ‘It blew his trousers off!’ – resulted in audience consternation and the hurried removal of a small child from the hall. Happy Hal had been preceded on stage by a trio of singers, The Treble Clef (… they’re all tone deaf) and followed by the Dorita Juveniles, the protégées of Mrs Claxton’s daughter, Dorita, who ran a Saturday ballet school (… I think we can safely say that the dying swan has never before felt quite as definitively dead). After that came Junior Master of Dexterity, Nigel Dunville, whose card tricks were performed with a minuscule pack that had clearly come from a pre-war cracker (… is it the Jack of diamonds, the ace of spades or an indecent photograph of Mata Hari? No one beyond the front row could possibly know …), and then Mr Reddish came on stage, cloaked in a maroon rug that Noel had last seen in the lumber room at home, and wearing a tie knotted round his head into which he’d stuck a couple of feathers. From the wings came a dull, repeated thud which was either Redskin war drums or Nigel Dunville hitting an upturned bucket with a sink mop.
Mr Reddish lifted his eyes towards an imaginary horizon, and matched his delivery to the low, steady rhythm.
‘By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and—’
The floor shuddered and there was a noise like a quarry blast: a cracker-snap of explosive preceding the long, distant roar of falling rock. A woman yelped. Chairs toppled as people rose. ‘East, that was,’ said the man in front of Noel. Someone opened a door and the rumble rose briefly in volume and then slid gradually away, to be replaced by the noise of a bus changing gear as it tackled the long rise of Pond Street. People began to sit down again. ‘Miles away,’ muttered a man, dismissively. ‘I’d say that was Islington.’ Attention shifted back towards the stage, where Mr Reddish was still reciting, one hand cupped to an ear, his features bunched in an attempt to convey delicate wonderment:
‘Something in the hazy distance,
Coming nearer, nearer, nearer,
Was it Shingebis the diver?
Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah?
Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa …?’
‘Excuse me,’ whispered Noel, exiting the row and walking rather hurriedly towards the door that led to the cloakrooms. In the
corridor beyond, he found a coat cupboard, and he stuck his head inside and pressed his face to the heavy folds of a duffel coat until he’d stopped laughing. He could hear applause from the hall, and a piano playing the opening bars of ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’, and he turned the other way and opened the kitchen door to find Mr Jepson sitting alone with a book and a cigarette.
‘You’ve caught me AWOL,’ said Jepson, looking rather guilty. ‘I’ll be back on the tombola at the interval.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘Great Expectations.’
‘Which bit?’
‘I’ve just reached the death of Magwitch.’
‘You had a child once,’ said Noel, in hushed tones, as if whispering to a dying convict, ‘whom you loved and lost. She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful.’
‘And I love her!’ said Jepson. ‘Well remembered.’ He stroked his moustache, which he seemed to do in lieu of smiling. ‘I really ought to read something more modern – there’s interesting stuff being published – but it’s always the old friends that call to me from the bookshelf. Any news about where that rocket landed?’
‘Someone mentioned Islington,’ said Noel. ‘I was talking to the librarian at Hampstead during the week and she said that nobody wants to read anything at the moment except Trollope and Mrs Gaskell. Incidentally, I put my Latin under your door – I picked a piece from the Evening Standard about fuel. I had to absolutely cudgel my brains to come up with a translation for “gas fire”.’
‘What did you decide upon?’
‘Aer calidus ignis. “Hot vapour fire”.’
‘That sounds a decent attempt. I’ll look at it when we get back. Aer calidus ignis …’ he repeated, fingering his moustache.
He’d been a lodger at Green Shutters since the beginning of the year, arriving with a canvas rucksack and a heavy cold. Noel had been initially doubtful.