Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Author’s Note
Read on for an extract from The Ballroom
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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www.transworldbooks.co.uk
Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Anna Hope 2014
Anna Hope has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448170036
ISBNs 9780857521941 (hb)
9780857521958 (tpb)
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
For my parents, Tony and Pamela Hope
wake /weIk/
1 Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep
2 Ritual for the dead
3 Consequence or aftermath
THREE SOLDIERS EMERGE from their barracks in Arras, northern France. A colonel, a sergeant and a private. It is somewhere close to the middle of the night and bitterly cold. The men make their way to a field ambulance parked next to the entrance gate; the colonel sits in the front with the sergeant, while the private climbs into the back. The sergeant starts up the engine, and a sleepy sentry waves them out and on to the road beyond.
The young private holds on to a strap dangling from the roof as the van lurches over the rutted road. He feels shaky, and this jolting is not helping things. This raw morning has the feel of a punishment: when he was woken, minutes ago, he was told only to get dressed and get outside. He has done nothing wrong so far as he can tell, but the Army is tricky like that. There have been many times in the six months since he arrived in France when he has transgressed, and only afterwards been told how or why.
He closes his eyes, tightening his grip as the van pitches and rolls.
He had hoped he would see things, over here. The sorts of things he missed by being too young to fight. The sorts of things his older brother wrote home about. The hero brother who died taking a German trench, and whose body was never found.
But the truth is he hasn’t seen much of anything at all. He has been stuck in the rubble of Arras, week in, week out, rebuilding houses and churches, shovelling bricks.
In the front of the van, the sergeant sits forward, concentrating hard on the road ahead. He knows it well, but prefers to drive in the day, as there are several treacherous shell holes along it. He wouldn’t want to lose a tyre, not tonight. He, too, has no idea why he is here, so early and without warning, but from the taut silence of the colonel beside him, he knows not to ask.
And so the soldiers sit, the engine rumbling beneath their feet, passing through open country now, though there is nothing to show for it, nothing visible beyond the headlights’ glare, only sometimes a startled animal, scooting back into darkness on the road ahead.
When they have been driving for half an hour or so, the colonel rasps out an order. ‘Here. Stop here.’ He hits his hand against the dash. The sergeant pulls the ambulance over on to a verge at the side of the road. The engine judders and is still. There is silence, and the men climb down.
The colonel turns on his torch, reaches into the back of the van. He brings out two shovels, handing one each to the other men, then he takes out a large hessian sack, which he carries himself.
He climbs over a low wall and the men follow him, walking slowly, their torchlight bobbing ahead.
The frosted ground means the mud is hard and easy enough to walk on, but the private is careful; the land is littered with twisted metal and with holes, sometimes deep. He knows the ground is peppered with unexploded shells. There are often funerals at the barracks for the Chinese labourers, brought over to clear the fields of bodies and ordnance. There were five dead last week alone, all laid out in a row. They end up buried in the very cemeteries they are over here to dig.
But despite the cold and the uncertainty, he is starting to enjoy himself. It is exciting to be out here in this darkness, where ruined trees loom and danger feels close. He could almost imagine he were on a different mission. Something heroic. Something to write home about. Whatever is happening, it is better than churches and schools.
Soon the ground falls away, and the men stand before a ditch in the earth, the remains of a trench. The colonel climbs down and begins walking along it, and the others follow, single file, along its zigzag lines.
The private measures his height against the side. He is not a tall man, and the trench is not high. They pass the remains of a dugout on their right, its doorway bent at a crazed angle, one of its supports long gone. He hesitates a moment before it, shining his torch inside, but there is nothing much to see, only an old table pushed up against the wall, a rusted tin can still standing open on the top. He pulls his light back from the dank hole and hurries to keep up.
Ahead of him, the colonel turns left into a straighter, shorter trench, and at the end of that, right, into another, built in short, zigzag sections like the first.
‘Front line,’ says the sergeant under his breath.
After a few metres, the colonel’s beam picks out a rusted ladder, slung against the trench wall. He stops before it, placing his boot on the bottom rung, pressing once, twice, testing its strength.
‘Sir?’ It is the sergeant speaking.
‘What’s that?’ The colonel turns his head.
The sergeant clears his throat. ‘Do we need to go up that way, Sir?’
The private watches as the colonel swallows, as his Adam’s apple moves slowly up and down. ‘Have you got a better idea?’
The sergeant seems to have nothing to say to that.
The colonel turns, scaling the ladder in a few swift jerks.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ mutters the sergeant. Still he doesn’t move.
Standing behind him, the private is itching to climb. Even though he knows that on the other side there will only be more of the same blasted country, part of him wonders if there might be something else, something close to the thing he came out here for: that vague, brave, wonderful thing he has not dared to speak of, even to himself. But he cannot move until the sergeant does, and the sergeant is frozen to the spot.
The colonel’s boots appear at the height of their heads, and torchlight is flung into their faces. ‘What’s the hold-up? Get yourselves over here. Now.’ He speaks like a machine gun, spitting out his words.
‘Yes, Sir.’ The sergeant closes his eyes, looks almost as though he may be saying a prayer, then turns and climbs the ladder. The private follows him, blood tumbling in his ears. Once over, they stand gathering their breath, their beams sweeping wide over the scene before them: great rusting coils of wire, twenty, thirty feet wide, like the crazed skeleton of some ancient serpent, stretching away in both directions as far as the eye can see.
‘Bloody hell,’ says the sergeant. Then, a little louder, ‘How’re we going to get through that?’
The colonel produces a pair of wire-cutters from his pocket. ‘Here.’
The sergeant takes them, weighing them in his hand. He knows wire, has cut it often. Apron wiring. Laid enough of it, too. They used to leave gaps, when they had time to do it right. Gaps that wouldn’t be seen by the other side. But there are no gaps here. The wire is tangled and crushed and bent in on itself. Ruined. Like every bloody thing else. ‘Right.’ He hands his shovel to the private. ‘Make sure you light me then.’ He bends and begins to cut.
The private, trying to keep his beam straight, stares at the wire. There are things caught and held within its coils, things that look to have been there for a long time. There are tattered remnants of cloth, stiff with frost, and in the torchlight the pale whiteness of bones, though whether human or animal it is impossible to tell. The country smells strange out here, more metal than earth; he can taste it in his mouth.
On the other side of the wire, the sergeant straightens and turns, beckoning for the men to follow. He has done a good job, and they are able to pick their way easily through the narrow path he has made.
‘This way.’ The colonel strides out across lumpy ground, which is littered with tiny crosses. Crosses made from white wood, or makeshift ones made from a couple of shell splinters lashed together. Bottles, too, turned upside-down and pushed into the mud, some of them still with scraps of paper visible inside. The colonel often stops beside one, kneeling and holding his light to read the inscription, but then carries on.
The private searches the man’s face as he reads. Who can he be looking for?
Eventually the colonel crouches by one of the small wooden crosses, set a little way apart from the rest. ‘Here.’ He motions for the men to come forward. ‘Dig here.’ A date is written on the cross, scribbled in shaky black pencil, but no name.
The private does as he’s told, lifting his shovel and kicking it into the hard ground. The sergeant joins him, but after a couple of spades of earth he stops.
‘Sir?’
‘What?’
‘What are we looking for, Sir?’
‘A body,’ says the colonel. ‘And bloody well get on with it. We haven’t got all day.’
The two men lock eyes, before the sergeant looks away, spits on the ground and continues to dig.
Beneath its frosted crust the mud is softer, clinging, and they do not have to dig for long. Soon metal scrapes on metal. The sergeant puts down his shovel and kneels, clearing the mud from a steel helmet. ‘Think we might be there, Sir.’
The colonel holds his light over the hole. ‘Keep going,’ he says, his voice tight.
The men crouch low, and with their gloved hands, as best they can, they clear the mud from the body. But it is not a body, not really, it is only a heap of bones inside the remains of a uniform. Nothing is left of the flesh, only a few black-brown remnants clinging to the side of the skull.
‘Clear as much as you can,’ says the colonel, ‘and then check for his badges.’
The dead man is lying twisted in the earth, his right arm beneath him. The men reach down, lifting and turning him over. The sergeant takes his pocketknife and scrapes away at where the shoulder should be. The man’s regimental badges are there still, just, but they are unreadable, the colours long gone, leached into the soil; it is impossible to tell what they once were.
‘Can’t see them, Sir. Sorry, Sir.’ The sergeant’s face is red in the torchlight, sweaty from effort.
‘Check around the body. All around it. I want anything at all that might identify him.’
The men do as they are ordered, but find nothing.
They stand slowly. The private rubs the small of his back, looking down at the meagre remains of the man they have unearthed, lying twisted on his side. A thought rises in him, unbidden: his brother died here. In a field like this in France. They never found his body. What if this were him?
But there is no way of knowing at all.
He looks back up at the colonel. Impossible to tell if this is the body he was searching for either. This has been a waste of time. He waits for the man’s reaction, bracing himself for the expected anger on his face.
But the colonel only nods.
‘Good,’ he says, chucking his cigarette on the earth. ‘Now lift him out and put him in the sack.’
HETTIE RUBS HER SLEEVE against the misted taxi window and peers out. She can’t see much of anything; nothing that looks like a nightclub anyway, just empty, darkened streets. You wouldn’t think they were only seconds from Leicester Square.
‘Here, please.’ Di leans forward, speaking to the driver.
‘That’s a pound then.’ He turns his light on, engine idling.
Hettie hands over her ten-shilling share. A third of her pay. Her stomach plummets as it’s passed to the front. But the taxi’s not a luxury, not at this time; the buses aren’t running and the tubes are shut.
‘It’ll be worth it,’ whispers Di as they clamber down. ‘Promise. Swear on my life.’
The taxi pulls away and they find each other’s hands, down an unlit side street, dance shoes crunching on gravel and glass. Despite the cold, damp pools in the hollow of Hettie’s back. It must be way past one, later than she has ever been out. She thinks of her mother and her brother, fast asleep in Hammersmith. In not too many hours they’ll be getting up for church.
‘This must be it.’ Di has stopped in front of an old, three-storey house. No lights show behind the shuttered windows, and only a small blue bulb illuminates the door.
‘Are you sure?’ says Hettie, breath massing before her in the freezing air.
‘Look.’ Di points at a small plaque nailed to the wall. The sign is ordinary-looking; it could be a doctor’s or a dentist’s even. But there’s a name there, etched into the bronze: DALTON’S NO. 62.
Dalton’s.
Legendary nightclub.
So legendary some people say it doesn’t exist.
‘Ready?’ Di gives a blue, spectral grin, then lifts her hand and knocks. A panel slides open. Two pale eyes in an oblong of light. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m here to meet Humphrey,’ says Di.
She is putting on her posh voice. Standing behind her, Hettie is filled with the urge to laugh. But the door opens. They have to squeeze to get around. On the other side is a small entrance place, little bigger than a cupboard, where a young doorman stands behind a high wooden desk. His gaze slides over Hettie, in her brown coat and tam o’shanter, but lingers on Di, with her dark eyes, the shorn points of her hair just showing beneath her hat. Di has this way of looking, down and to the side, and then slowly back up again. It makes men stare. She’s doing it now. Hettie can see the doorman goggling like a caught fish.
‘You’ve to sign in,’ he says eventually, pointing at a large book lying open before him.
‘’Course.’ Di pulls off her glove, leans in and signs with a practised sweep. ‘Your turn,’ she says, handing the pen to Hettie.
From below comes the throb of music: a giddy trumpet. A woman whoops. Hettie can feel her heart; thud-thud-thud. The ink is glistening on Di’s signature, which has sprawled out of its box and on to the line beneath. She takes her own glove off and scratches her name: Henrietta Burns.
‘Go on then.’ The man pulls the book back, gesturing behind him to unlit stairs.
Di goes first. The staircase is old and creaky, and as Hettie puts a hand out to steady herself she feels damp wall flake beneath her fingertips. This is not what she imagined; it’s nothing like the Palais, where the glamour is all out the front. You wouldn’t think these musty old stairs led anywhere much at all. But she can hear the music properly now, people talking, the sound of feet fast on the floor, and as they reach the bottom a wave of panic threatens to take her. ‘You’ll stay close to me, won’t you?’ she says, reaching for Di’s arm.
‘’Course.’ Di catches her, gives her a squeeze, and then pushes open the door.
The smell of close, dancing humanity assails them. The club is no bigger than the downstairs of Hettie’s mother’s house, but it is packed, each table crammed, the dance floor a roaring free-for-all. Most people seem to be in evening clothes – the men in black and white, the women in coloured gowns – but some look as though they have come in fancy dress. Most astonishing of all, the four-piece band crashing through a rag on the tiny stage has a Negro singer, the first Hettie has ever seen. It’s dizzying, as though all the colour missing in the city up above has been smuggled underground.
‘Killing!’ Di grins.
‘Killing!’ Hettie agrees, letting out her breath.
‘There’s Humphrey!’ Di waves to a fair-haired man weaving his way through the crowd towards them. Hettie recognizes him from that night at the Palais two weeks ago, when he hired Di for a dance – and then another, and another, right up until the end of the night. (For this is their job: Dance Instructress, Hammersmith Palais. Available for hire, sixpence a dance, six nights a week.)
‘Capital!’ says Humphrey, kissing Di on the cheek. ‘You made it. And this must be …’
‘Henrietta.’ She holds out her hand.
He is not much older than them, has an easy handshake and a pleasant, freckled face. He looks nice, at least. Not like some of the ones Di has been with in the past. After a year at the Palais, Hettie has a compass for men. Two minutes in their company and she can tell what they’re like. Whether they are married, sweaty-guilty, sneaking out for an evening alone. That glazed look they get when they’re imagining you without your clothes. Or sometimes, like Humphrey, when they’re actually sweet. ‘Come on,’ he says with a grin, ‘we’re over here.’
They follow him, picking their way as best they can through the crowded tables. Hettie makes slow progress, since she keeps falling behind, twisting to see the band and their singer, whose skin is so astonishingly dark, and the dancers, many of whom are moving wildly in a way no one at the Palais would dare. Eventually they arrive at a table in the corner, not far from the stage, where a short man in tails scrambles to his feet.
‘Diana, Henrietta,’ says Humphrey, ‘this is Gus.’
Hettie’s companion for the evening is thick-set and doughy, barely taller than she is. His hair is thinning, his scalp shiny in the heat. Her heart sinks behind her smile.
‘May I take your coat?’ He hovers around her, and she shrugs it off. Her old brown overcoat is bad enough, but beneath it she is wearing her dance dress, the only one she has, and after a double shift at work already tonight it is none too fresh.
On the other side of the table, meanwhile, Di unwraps, revealing the dress she bought with Humphrey’s money just last week. Hettie sinks into her seat. The dress. This dress has a physical effect on her; she covets it so much it hurts. It is almost black, but covered with so many beads, so tiny, so dazzling in their iridescence, that it is impossible to tell just what colour it is. She was there when Di bought it, in the ready-made at Selfridges. It cost six pounds of Humphrey’s money, and she had to swallow her envy and smile when afterwards, for fun, they rode up and down in the lifts.
Both men stare, until Gus, remembering his manners, takes the seat beside Hettie’s, pointing to a plate of sandwiches in the middle of the table. ‘They’re rather grim,’ he says with a smile, ‘but they have to serve them with the drinks. No licence, you see. We’ll just pile them up on the side.’ He lifts them away, and she watches them go. She could murder something to eat. Hasn’t had a thing since a ham and paste sandwich in the break between shifts at six.
‘So,’ Gus pours from a bottle on the table and hands her a glass, ‘I s’pose you’re awfully good then. You pair – Humph told me – dance instructresses at the Palais, aren’t you?’
‘Oh …’ Hettie takes a sip. The drink is fizzy and sweet. She can’t be sure, but she thinks it might be champagne. ‘We’re all right, I suppose.’
They’re better than all right, really, she and Di. They’ve been practising their steps for years, in carpet-rolled-back living-rooms, singing out the tunes they’ve memorized, poring over the pictures in Modern Dancing, taking it in turns to be the man. They’re the best two dancers at the Palais by far. And that’s not boasting. It’s just the truth.
‘I’m a terrible dancer,’ says Gus, sticking his lower lip out like a child.
Hettie smiles at him. He may not look like much but at least he’s harmless. ‘I’m sure you’re not.’
‘No, really.’ He points downwards, grimacing. ‘Left feet. Born with two.’
There’s a raucous cheer from the dance floor and she turns to see the singer goading his band, urging them on. They are American, they must be. No English band she knows looks or plays like this; definitely not the house band at the Palais, not any more, not since the Original Dixies left, with their cowbells and whistles and hooters, to go back to New York. And the crowd – they’re dancing crazily, as though they don’t care a fig what anyone thinks. If only her mum could see this. Respectable is her favourite word. If she could see these people enjoying themselves she’d throw a fit.
Hettie turns back to Gus. ‘It’s just practice,’ she says, taking another sip of the drink, her body itching with the beat.
‘No, no,’ he insists. ‘I’m terrible. Never could get the hang.’ He gives his glass a couple of brisk twists, then, ‘Up for a go though,’ he says, ‘if you’d like a turn round the floor?’
‘I’d love one,’ says Hettie, throwing a quick glance at Di, whose dark head is bent close to Humphrey’s, deep in a whispered, intimate conversation that she cannot hear.
The crashing chords of the rag are fading now, and the band is moving into a four-four number, something slow. They shoulder their way through the crowd and find a spot on the edge of the packed dance floor. Gus takes her hands in his and then looks up to the ceiling, as if the mysteries of movement might be written out for him there. Then he bounces a bit, counting under his breath, and they are off.
He was right. He is a terrible dancer. He has no sense of the music, is already two beats ahead, snatching at it, not letting it guide him at all.
Listen! Hettie wants to say. Just let it move you. Can’t you hear how killing they are?
But it won’t help, so she tries to fit her feet to his awkward steps.
(They have a rule at the Palais: never dance better than your partner. You’re hired to make them feel good. If they feel good then they’ll hire you again. As Di is fond of saying, It’s all just economics in the end.)
After a few bars, Gus’s grip loosens and he looks up, delighted. ‘Damned if I’m not getting the hang of this!’ They go into the turn, Hettie exaggerates her movements to flatter his, and as the number comes to a close he takes a victory lap around the floor. ‘Humph was right!’ He beams, coming to a breathless stop. ‘You girls are really something. Damned thirsty work, though.’ He takes his hanky from his pocket and mops his face. ‘Hang on a tick, I’ll fetch us something cold from the bar.’
He disappears into the crush, and Hettie finds a spot close to the damp wall, happy for a moment to be alone, just to take it all in. A young couple squeeze past her, giggling, holding each other up. The girl is young and elegant, her body wrapped in blue silk, her long neck trailing pearls, but her lovely face is blurry, and she keeps slipping off her partner’s arm. It is a moment before Hettie realizes she is drunk. She stares after them, half expecting someone to come and tell them off. But no one seems to bat an eyelid. She’s not at the Palais now.
Just then someone knocks into her, hard, from behind, and she almost falls, catching herself just in time.
‘Sorry. My God. Sorry.’
Hettie turns to see a tall man beside her. He seems distracted, an apologetic smile on his lips. ‘So sorry,’ he says again. One hand tugs at his hair, the other grips an amber-coloured drink. ‘Are you all right? Thought you were a goner then.’
‘Yes … fine.’ She gives a small, embarrassed laugh, though whether for him or herself, she cannot tell.
The man’s eyes land on her properly, taking her in, and Hettie feels herself flush. He is a very good-looking man.
‘My God,’ he says. His smile fades, and a different, shrinking expression takes its place.
Heat stings her cheeks. What? What is it? But she says nothing, and the man carries on staring, as though she were something awful from which he cannot look away.
‘Sorry,’ he says, shaking his head as though to clear it. An echo of the smile is back. ‘Thought you were—’ He holds up his glass. ‘Drink? Must let me get you a drink. Say sorry and all that.’
She shakes her head. ‘Thank you. I’m … Someone’s already buying me one.’
She steps away, wanting to put distance between them, to find a mirror, to check that everything is all right with her face, but the man has his hand on her arm. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Pardon?’ she says. His grip is tight.
‘I only meant, are you English then?’
‘Yes.’
He nods, releases her. Is it disappointment she can see on his face?
‘Excuse me …’ She ducks away, escaping him, threading through the crowd, which is even denser now, looking for the lavatories, finding them through an archway, small and damp-smelling, a dark spray of mould clinging to the walls.
She examines herself in the mirror, breathing hard. There is nothing particularly terrible to see, other than a red blotch of embarrassment on her neck and that two of her grips have come loose and her hair is threatening to unravel. She pushes the offending pins back into the bristling porcupine it takes to hold it up. Her long, stupid hair that her mother won’t let her cut.
If you come home looking like that friend of yours, you’ll catch it. Filthy little flapper.
Her mother doesn’t know a thing. Di has the best haircut of any of the girls at the Palais. They are always trying to get her to let on where she has it done.
Hettie steadies herself against the cold rim of the sink. It’s late. She’s been on her feet for hours. The night, which had been filled with promise, is curdling somehow, and the same old doubts are rushing in. She is from Hammersmith. She is too tall. Her dress is old and she cannot afford another since she gives half her wages to her mother and her useless brother every week. She’s scrubbed cleaning petrol and scent on the armpits more times than she can count, but it still stinks and she’ll probably never have a dress like Di’s as long as she lives. She’s got to be nice to Gus. And to top it all off, her breasts stick out, no matter how much she tries to strap them down.
It is that man’s fault, she thinks, finding her eyes in the glass. The way he looked at her, and his questions. Where are you from? As though he could tell she didn’t belong here, in this club with these people who act so freely in their drunkenness and dancing, as if whatever they do, their lives will hold them up.
Come on.
She splashes water on her cheeks, checks her petticoat isn’t slipping, and stabs a last stubborn pin in her hair. The red blotches on her neck have calmed a little now.
Back out in the fray, she scans the crowd, relieved to see that the tall man has disappeared. There is no sign of Gus either, and when she finally spots him, his shiny bald head is still bobbing in the queue at the bar. Over at the table, Di and Humphrey haven’t moved. Except, perhaps, a little closer together. Hettie can see Di laughing at something Humphrey has said. They don’t look as though they’d welcome an interruption. For a moment, as she stands there alone, her fragile resolve threatens to falter. But something is happening, over on the dance floor. People have stopped moving, and the band is slowing, the instruments dropping out one by one, until only the drummer remains, keeping the beat with a lone, shivering snare. Then he, too, comes to a stop, putting his hand over the bronze discs to still them, and a hush descends on the club. Over at the table, Di and Humphrey look up.
Hettie, breath caught, steps away from the wall.
For an electric moment it feels as though anything may happen, until the trumpeter steps forward and lifts his instrument to play. It flashes in the low light. A flare of purest sound fills the room. Hettie closes her eyes, letting it in, letting it hollow her out, and then, when the man begins to play in earnest, the notes drip molten gold into the space he has made. And standing here, full of this music, it hits her with the force of revelation that it doesn’t matter – none of it, not really: she is young, she can dance, and it was worth her ten shillings just to see this place, to hear these musicians, to tell the girls at the Palais on Monday that it’s true: that there is a club in the West End, buried underground, with the best jazz band since the Dixies left for New York.
‘Are you lurking?’
She snaps open her eyes. The man from before is a few feet away, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re lurking,’ he says.
‘I’m not lurking.’ Her heart thuds dangerously against her chest.
‘You are. I’ve been watching you for two whole minutes. Two minutes constitutes a lurk.’
She can feel that awful flush creeping back up her neck. ‘I’m not, actually – I’m watching the band.’ She crosses her arms, looking away from him, trying to focus on the trumpeter’s fingers, trying to remember how good she just felt.
From the corner of her eye she sees the man push himself away from the wall. ‘You’re not one of those anarchists, are you?’ he says.
She turns to him, incredulous.
His grey eyes are steady. This time he doesn’t smile. ‘I’ve read about your sort. You go into public places like this.’ His hand sweeps over the club. ‘Hundreds of innocents. Bomb in your coat. Leave it in the lavatories. Lurk a bit, then … boom.’ He mimes something exploding. As his hands move up and away from each other, ash falls, scattering in the air. A few flakes land on her dress.
For a moment, she is too surprised to speak. Then, ‘My coat’s over there,’ she says, gesturing to the table in the corner. ‘And there’s no bomb inside. Anyway, if I were going to blow something up, I wouldn’t lurk. I’d leave.’
‘Ah.’ He nods. ‘Well, perhaps I got you wrong.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You did.’
They hold each other’s gaze. She tries to keep steady, to read him, but her compass is haywire and she cannot fathom him at all.
Then his face cracks open with a smile. ‘Sorry.’ He shakes his head. ‘Terrible sense of humour.’
Her heart skips. It is disconcerting, the smile; so sudden, as though there were another person entirely hidden underneath. He looks respectable enough, dressed in white shirt and tails, but there is something odd about the way he wears them. She can’t say just what it is. Indifference? His hair is unslicked. There are purple shadows beneath his eyes.
He reaches into his pocket, takes out a flask and offers it to her. ‘Here, have a bit of this while you wait.’
‘No, thank you.’
She half turns from him, cringing as she hears her voice in her head: No, thank you. She sounds so Hammersmith. So up-past-her-bedtime. So prim.
‘Go on. It’s good stuff. Single malt.’
His eyes are laughing now. Is he laughing at her? He is the sort of man who could talk to anyone. So what is he doing hanging around here? It feels like a trick.
She should go and find Gus; he must have been served by now.
She should.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she reaches for the man’s flask, takes it, lifts it to her mouth.
Because she’s only here for tonight, and her companion is useless and elsewhere, and her friend is otherwise engaged.
And so what has she got to lose?
She is unprepared for the sharp hit of the drink though, and she chokes and coughs.
‘Not much of a whisky girl then?’
She takes another, deeper pull in reply. This time she swallows it down. ‘Thanks,’ she says, pleased with herself, handing it back.
He looks out over the dance floor. ‘Are you here to dance then?’ he says. ‘Or have you just come to lurk?’
‘I’ve come here to dance,’ she says, as the whisky flares in her blood.
‘Glad to hear it.’ He crushes his cigarette in an ashtray nearby and turns to her. ‘How would you feel about dancing with me?’
‘If you like.’
Fewer people are dancing now, and they can walk straight out to the middle of the floor. Once there, the man holds up his hands. It is an odd gesture, not quite the gesture of a man beginning a dance, more that of a man who is unarmed. Hettie puts one hand in his, the other on his evening coat, which is fitted tight against his back. The crease of his collar touches her ear. His hand is cool. He smells of lemons and cigarettes. She feels a bit dizzy. Perhaps it’s the drink.
The soulful, gorgeous trumpet has faded now, and the band is picking up again, the music moving into a rag, a one-step.
One-two, one-two.
The floor is filling, people pressing all around them, cheering, clapping, stamping the music back into life.
One-two, one-two.
He steps towards her.
Hettie steps back.
And it’s there; it’s in that first tiny movement – the flash of recognition. Yes! The rare feeling she gets when someone knows how to move. Then the music crashes in, and they are dancing together across the floor.
‘Good band tonight,’ he says, over the music. ‘American. I like the Americans.’
‘Me too.’
‘Oh?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Who’ve you seen then?’
‘The Original Dixies.’
‘The Dixies? Damn.’ He looks impressed. ‘They were the best.’ He puts his leg between hers as he goes for the spin. ‘Where’d you see them?’
‘The Palais. Hammersmith.’ She comes back to face him.
‘The Palais? I went there once – saw them there, too!’ He looks eager suddenly, like a boy.
Hettie considers this, wonders if they danced near each other. They definitely didn’t dance together. She’d have remembered.
‘What was your favourite number then?’
She laughs; that’s easy. ‘“Tiger Rag.”’
‘“Tiger Rag!”’ He grins. ‘Crikey. That one’s dangerous. So damn fast.’
The fastest of all. Even she used to get out of breath.
‘What was he called?’ His face creases. ‘That trumpeter – Nick something or other.’
‘LaRocca.’
Nick LaRocca – the world-famous trumpeter from New York. He used to make the girls go barmy. He’d smiled at her once, in the draughty backstage corridor: Hey, kid! he said, and winked as he was doing up his bow tie. She’s had his picture above her bed ever since.
‘LaRocca! That’s it.’ He looks delighted. ‘Crazy man. Played like a lunatic.’
They are on the edge of the dance floor now, where the noise isn’t quite so loud. ‘So then,’ he says, ‘tell me. An anarchist with a love for American jazz.’
‘But I’m not—’ Their eyes catch, and something passes between them; a silent understanding. This is all a game.
‘What’s your cover?’ he says, leaning close; close enough for her to smell the whisky on his breath.
‘Cover?’
‘Day job.’
‘Oh, it’s dancing. At the Palais. I’m a dance instructress there.’
‘Good cover.’ He smiles, then his forehead creases again, as though he’s remembering something. ‘Not in that awful metal box thing, are you?’
She feels the familiar wince of shame. ‘Afraid so, yes.’
‘Poor you.’
The Pen. That awful metal box. Where she and Di sit, trapped, along with ten other girls, till they are hired, while the men without partners shark up and down, deciding if they want you, if you are worth their sixpence for a turn around the floor.
He leans back, as though to see her better. ‘You don’t look like the sort of girl who’s for hire.’
Is he making fun of her again? It could be a compliment, but she can’t be sure.
‘I’m Ed, by the way,’ he says. ‘Terribly rude of me. Should have introduced myself before.’
She hesitates.
‘Right then,’ he says with a grin. ‘You can tell me your name when I get the thumbscrews out later.’
She laughs. The dance is almost over. Over his shoulder she can see Gus standing on the edge of the floor, staring out at them forlornly, two drinks in his hands, and as the music comes to its close she is clumsy suddenly, aware of her body, of the parts where it is close to Ed’s. She takes her hands down, steps back.
‘Wait.’ He catches her wrist. ‘Don’t go,’ he says. ‘At least, not before you’ve told me your name.’ His face has changed again. The smile has gone.
‘It’s Hettie,’ she says. Because whatever game they were playing is clearly over, and, all told, she’s not the sort of girl to lie.
‘Hettie,’ he repeats, tightening his grip. Then he leans in close. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘I won’t give you away. I know how much these things matter. I want to blow things up, too.’
Then he lets her go, and turns and walks, without stopping, without looking back, through the crush of people, across the floor, up the stairs and out of the club.
The room wheels, a queasy kaleidoscope around her.
And here is Gus, crossing the floor towards her, sagged now, all jubilation spent. ‘Who was that then? Someone you know?’
She shakes her head. But she can feel him still, this Ed, this man she doesn’t know, a Chinese burn scalding her wrist.
‘You looked as though you knew him,’ says Gus. He sounds aggrieved.
Hettie is furious suddenly. With poor, bald Gus. His awkward dancing, and that half-cringing look on his face. And then, seeing that he sees this, she is sorry for him. ‘Perhaps I knew him,’ she says quietly. ‘Perhaps I met him before.’
He seems a little appeased. When she doesn’t say any more, he nods. ‘Lemonade?’ he says, holding out her drink.
‘EVELYN.’
Someone is calling her name.
‘Evelyn, turn that bloody alarm off, would you? It’s been racketing for an age.’
Evelyn opens her eyes to darkness.
She reaches from under the blanket and gropes for the clock on her bedside chest. There’s a sudden, shocking silence, until Doreen grunts on the other side of the door. ‘Thank you.’
Evelyn curls on to her side, her knuckles in her mouth, biting down, as Doreen’s slippered footsteps retreat.
She was having the dream again.
She lies there for a moment more, then takes her fist away, sits up and pulls the curtains aside. Thin light touches the face of her clock. The immovable realities of morning make themselves known. It is eight o’clock. It is Sunday, her mother’s birthday, and she has to be in Oxfordshire by lunch.
Bloody hell.
In the bathroom, the pipes clank and creak. She hauls herself out of bed, the soles of her bare feet cold against the floor, and while Doreen hums and splashes next door she dresses in the half light, choosing her least tatty blouse, her longest serge skirt, slipping into her stockings and shoes and pulling her cardy tight.
The light is stronger by the time she has finished dressing; still, she avoids her reflection in the mirror on the wall.
Outside, in the scrubby patch of grass that passes for a garden, she pushes open the door of the damp lavatory and squats, shivering as she pees, before pulling the chain and stepping out. There’s a battered packet of Gold Flakes in the pocket of her cardy and she coughs as she lights one up. She looks up at the trees, at their wet black winter branches latticing the lightening sky. As she stands there, a single, tired leaf detaches itself, twirling down on to the path. After a couple of drags she drops the cigarette beside the leaf and puts her foot over them both, grinding them into the ground at her feet.
In the kitchen, she boils water for her coffee, then pours the coarse grounds straight into her mug, taking it to the table and lighting another cigarette.
‘Good morning.’ Doreen’s smiling head appears around the door.
‘Morning.’ She dumps two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into her cup and stirs.
‘How’s you?’
‘A1, darling.’ Evelyn salutes. ‘A1.’
‘Breakfast?’ Doreen disappears into the pantry to root around.
‘God, no.’ She sits down.
‘Off to the country?’
‘Paddington. Ten o’clock.’
Doreen emerges with bread and butter. ‘Better get a move on then.’
Much as Evelyn loves Doreen, much as sharing this flat with her is the calmest, the least troubling living arrangement that she can imagine, just now, just this morning, she really doesn’t want to talk. She would rather sit here, alone, with the remains of her dream wrapped around her like a stole against the grey morning air.
Doreen pulls out a chair and begins slicing bread. She is humming. Dressed to go out, wearing a pretty frock, her cheeks scrubbed and powdered, her hair up. Though it’s hard to tell in this light, she may even be wearing rouge.
‘What are you up to anyway?’ says Evelyn. ‘It’s Sunday. Shouldn’t you be in bed?’
Doreen looks up from her slicing. ‘I’m off today, too. The man, remember. I told you last week. He’s promised to take me out of London. Said I was languishing in the smoke.’
‘Ah.’
‘I know he’ll drag me up a godforsaken hill somewhere and make me look at a view. Still …’ Doreen smiles, apologetic, flushed.
Evelyn crushes her stub in the ashtray. ‘You’re right. I do have to get a move on.’ She pulls on her coat. ‘You look lovely. You are lovely. Have a lovely time. Say hello from me.’ She goes to the door, turns back. ‘And wish me luck.’
‘Luck,’ says Doreen, grinning, holding out her buttery knife. ‘And remember, don’t let the old girl get you down.’
Evelyn stands beneath the clock, tapping her foot against the ground, scanning the Paddington crowd for her brother. No sign. She checks the departures board one last time and then heads off across the station, moving through wide slices of morning light. Irritating. It’s irritating he should be late.
The engine is spitting ash when she arrives at the platform, and she just has time to jump on the last carriage before it pulls away. She walks the length of the swaying train, checking each compartment for her brother’s tall, rangy shape, the welcome of his smile. He is nowhere though, and the train is full, but in the last carriage of second class she finds a compartment to herself.
Where the hell is he, then? They’ve had this arrangement for weeks. She feels a brief, worried contraction on his behalf, but then pushes it away. She doesn’t want to think about her brother. Her brother can more than look after himself. She wants to think about her dream. About how it begins.
It begins like this: she’s in the sitting room of the house she grew up in, and she is reading a book. The doorbell rings; she marks her place and stands, moving across the carpet to the door. Now all she has to do is turn the handle and step into the hall, and Fraser will be there, waiting for her on the other side. Her hand is over the doorknob, and she is touching it, can feel the cool brass of it sliding into her palm; she presses down, the door swings open and—
She never gets any further than this.
These are things she remembers: a morning in summer; Fraser beside her on the bed; the shifting patterns across his face.
The train rattles through a tunnel. When it emerges again into the unpromising morning, Evelyn catches sight of her reflection in the mirror above the seat. Because of the way it’s angled, slightly downwards, she can see her parting clearly. She hasn’t seen her hair in daylight for a while, and in amongst her dark hairs are coarse white ones, too many now to count.
And here is the truth of things, she thinks. Even if the dream were real, if he could assemble himself from his thousand scattered parts, if she could open the door and find him standing before her, whole, he would be horrified: she is thirty next month. She has betrayed him. She has become old.
Outside, London’s suburbs slide on. She thinks of all the people, in all the houses, waking to their grey mornings, their grey hair, their grey lives.
We are comrades, she thinks, in greyness.
This is what remains.
When Evelyn wakes, there’s a small boy on the knee of a large woman sitting on the seat in front of her. Both of them are staring. The child has a headful of orange curls and a round, pasty face. The woman turns immediately away, as if caught in the act of something shameful, but the child carries on looking, mouth open, a thin silver slug trail from nose to chin. Three more people sit in the carriage, too: a man, and two elderly women over by the door. Evelyn looks out of the window. They are pulling out of a station. Reading – halfway there.
‘That lady’s got no finger.’
‘Shh,’ says the woman with the child. ‘Shh, Charles.’
Evelyn raises an eyebrow.
‘Look out of the window, Charlie,’ says the woman in a high, strangled voice. ‘Can’t you see the sheep?’
‘No,’ says Charlie, wriggling and squirming on the woman’s lap. ‘Look.’ He appeals to the man next to him. ‘Lady’s got no finger.’ He is leaning forward now, the line of drool almost touching his mother’s skirts.
Evelyn looks down at her hand. She has indeed got no finger. Or half a finger. Her left index finger ends in a smooth, rounded stump just after the knuckle.
‘Good gracious, Charlie.’ She looks across at him. ‘Do you know what? You’re quite right.’ She waggles her stump in his direction. ‘Did you eat it while I was asleep?’
Charlie jumps back. The rest of the carriage takes a sharp breath, and then, as if in a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, everyone freezes their gaze straight ahead.
‘You can touch it if you like,’ says Evelyn, leaning towards the little boy.
‘Can I?’ the boy whispers, reaching out.
‘No!’ manages his purple-faced mother, yanking Charlie back. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Well,’ shrugs Evelyn. ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’
Charlie slumps back on to his mother’s lap. His eyes flicker from the stump to Evelyn’s face and back again.
‘And where are you going to, Charlie?’ says Evelyn.
‘Oxford,’ says Charlie, punch-drunk.
‘Perfect. Me too. You can wake me up when we arrive.’
At Oxford Evelyn waves goodbye to Charlie, changes trains and takes the branch line that leads out to the village. She still half expects to see her brother emerging sleepily from further up the train, but she is the only person to alight on the tiny platform. The small ticket window is shuttered up; a few straggling remnants of geraniums survive in the hanging baskets, the brittle skeletons of foxgloves in the beds. She walks out over the crossroads, where the butcher’s and the post office face each other with blank-eyed Sunday expressions, and passes the low, five-housed terrace that leads to the green.
There was a boy who lived here, Thomas Lightfoot, the son of one of the men who worked for her parents; her brother played with him sometimes when they were children. She always liked his name. He was the first person she knew to die. She remembers her brother telling her, one sunny afternoon in London, in the spring of 1915. He had a wife and a child and he lived and died and all before he was twenty-three. She looks into Thomas’s house as she passes now, sees a young woman through the window, back turned, scrubbing at something in the sink.
Evelyn walks on, her feet the only sound on the road, leaving the village behind, until she is passing open fields, where scattered crows pick at the stumps of the crop. The sun is out. She shuts her eyes against it, letting the light dance orange on her lids, and takes a lungful of pure air, glad, despite herself, to be out of London. Ahead of her, the low stone wall that marks the boundary of her parents’ land comes into view, behind it are clusters of high firs, branches dark against the bright sky.
She takes the road that leads behind the house, so she can approach without being seen, opening the gate in the wall and standing on the lawn. In front of her is the house, seen from the side, its Cotswold stone deep golden in the sun. As she stands there, a black-clad maid comes running out of the side entrance and scoots around a tree trunk, where she is lost from view. Soon a small cloud of smoke rises into the air. Evelyn smiles. Good for her.
She sets off across the lawn, heading for the back of the house. The grass is surprisingly long for November, and by the time she reaches the steps her shoes are soaked. She pushes the door open with her hip and swears under her breath as she reaches to unbuckle them. They are suede, thinly strapped, the only vaguely ladylike pair she owns and a rare concession to her mother’s tastes, but they are too wet, now, to wear. She kicks them off and takes them to the cupboard by the back door, where a familiar smell greets her: damp and cobwebs and the close winter-rubber smell of stored galoshes. She chucks her shoes in between the umbrella stand and an old tennis press, considers for a moment the merits of wearing galoshes to lunch, thinks better of it, then pads in damp stockings on cold flags down the corridor, past the kitchen. A quick glance through the interior window tells her that it is buzzing, with a platoon of servants scurrying to and fro.
When she reaches the end of the corridor, she stops, puts her hand to the wall.
Because once she turns the corner, she will be in the main hall, at the end of which is the glass front door, and behind the front door is where Fraser stands in her dream. And she knows it is stupid, but still—