Good Hope Road: A Novel (44 page)

It was another mild winter, following on the heels of the one before. When you were hungry, however, so starved that your stomach seemed to be stuck to your spine, and the only covers you had were sheets of hoarded newspaper, even the mildest of winters cut to the bone. Connor sat up, blinking in the half-light. He stretched his arms, groaning as the muscles in his shoulders protested, stiff with cold. He needed to take a piss, but stayed a while longer in the swaddle of newsprint, loath to leave the relative warmth. The wind battered the walls again. ‘Goddamned . . .!’ Pushing the door of the shack open, Connor ventured outside.

Fog hung over the icy river, ballooning in the wind. Fog over the escarpment too. Thinner inland, parting here and there to reveal the lopsided shapes of the shanty town. His stomach growled. An image rose in his mind, of sausages cooking fatly over a fire, and he remembered that he’d been dreaming about them before waking so abruptly. A pan of sputtering links, the delicious smells as they browned . . . He sucked in his breath, so hungry he felt almost faint. There was the mineral taste of blood in his mouth. Connor hawked and spat. His teeth had become worse, he knew, his gums frequently bleeding, his breath so rank at times it turned his own stomach. He spat again in disgust, trying to clear the taste from his mouth, then shuffled towards the bank. A stand of weeds, stripped of leaves and coated in transparent, glass-like ice. Unbuttoning his pants, he aimed a stream of urine right at its heart, the steaming yellow flow washing away all the delicate beauty of the ice.

‘Happy New Year,’ he muttered to himself.

The sound of the morning reveille rose into the dawn, as behind him, the camp began to stir.

It was yet another junk-pile veteran camp, one that nobody had bothered to name this time, cobbled together on a patch of wasteland below Riverside Drive in New York. About eighty veterans had struggled here through the months following the evacuation at Anacostia, scratching out a living from selling pro-Bonus literature, and panhandling. There were only so many soft touches in the city, however, and now, at the very start of 1933, Connor, and so many like him, found themselves at the end of their ropes once more.

When word came later that day of a second organised march to Washington, Connor met the news with disinterest. Gradually, however, as talk of the march continued, his optimism began to stir. It was a new government after all. Maybe it would work this time around? One more march, to press their demands.

He rinsed his mouth with the last sip of coffee as he mulled it over, swirling the liquid about to make the most of its scant flavour. His stomach growled again, so loud that it startled him.

Connor joined the march in Philadelphia where nearly two hundred veterans had assembled. They set off hopefully on foot, on the one-hundred-and-forty-mile hike to Washington. Hardly anyone paid heed to this second Bonus March, however, all eyes trained instead on President-elect Roosevelt. Only six marchers were left by the time a lone reporter from Washington found them, gaunt and exhausted, thirty miles from the capital in Elkridge, Maryland. Five were huddled on the kerb, over a meal of bread and water. The sixth stood, clutching the American flag.

A New Deal, the President-elect promised the country, on the wings of economic reform and a balanced budget. On 30 January, he celebrated his fifty-first birthday with a grand party at the family home in Warm Springs, Georgia.

That very same day, Adolf Hitler was appointed the new Chancellor of Germany.

Spring came early that year, in a tumult of brightness and early-spawning trout. Everywhere, a sense of anticipation as the nation counted down with increasing fervour to the inauguration of the new president. The ice that had bound the hands of the town clock melted, the sound of the bell startling all of Raydon as it tolled once more. It was the earliest in the season that this had ever happened, as far as anyone could remember. As if time itself were buckling forward, hurtling towards the New Deal.

‘Even the maples been in a rush this year,’ old Asaph commented.

‘Ayuh, and mud seasons’s going to be something awful,’ Jeremiah prophesied gloomily.

The date of the inauguration drew closer. Special committees worked day and night in preparation for the throngs of spectators expected to descend on the city. Connor had been sheltering in a flophouse since the aborted march. He was perilously close to running out of even the few cents required to pay for his squalid quarters, when he found work fastening the rows of loudspeakers that would broadcast the inaugural address.

An army of carpenters, handymen and construction workers hammered away, erecting stands and podiums on the grounds of the White House, the Capitol and all along Pennsylvania Avenue. Connor paused in the middle of lashing a loudspeaker to its pole, gazing down at the avenue as he stretched his arms. A memory, of soldiers in gas masks, horses stepping smartly through rubble. He froze for an instant, then resolutely turned away and resumed his task.

It occurred to him that the first words of the new president would flow through the very loudspeaker that he, Michael Liam Connor, was fastening. Buoyed by the prospect, Connor began to whistle, under his breath at first, then louder, cheerfully adding to the cacophony that filled the city.

‘Did you see this, Ellie?’ Madeleine pored over the magazine, fascinated. ‘The gowns sound beautiful.’

Ellie shook her head in disapproval. ‘I don’t see how all these inaugural galas are supposed to help the country,’ she said archly.

Madeleine smiled, still preoccupied with the article. ‘My father would say that this is
exactly
what the economy needs. More people spending . . .’ She continued to read, picturing the drape and fall of the blue velvet dress that Mrs Roosevelt was going to wear at the inauguration. ‘Listen to this – “the dress is of crystelle velvet in a shade of hyacinth that has been named Eleanor Blue in Mrs Roosevelt’s honour. The three-quarter-length, wraparound coat is of a dark-blue but not quite navy tint, that has, at Mrs Roosevelt’s suggestion, been named for her daughter, Anna.” I wonder,’ she mused aloud, ‘if Carla Dalloway might stock some material in these colours soon?’

Jim walked in and Madeleine jumped up, setting the magazine aside. Winding her arms about his waist, she reached up to kiss him on the neck. ‘Let’s attend the inauguration.’

‘What?’ He laughed. ‘No.’

‘Jim, the papers are all calling it an absolutely historic moment. There’s going to be bands and firework displays and more parties and receptions than you could possibly imagine.’

They left the room, Madeleine still trying to convince him. Ellie paused in her dusting to rake a disapproving eye over the article. She shut the magazine, shaking her head again over the extravagance of it all.

‘Still, I like her,’ she said stoutly to nobody in particular as she beat the drapes. ‘That Mrs Roosevelt and I, we share the same name after all.’

Madeleine continued to badger Jim about a visit to Washington. The papers were estimating that there would be more people attending this time than at any previous inauguration. Didn’t he want to be there, right in the middle of it all? Besides, it could be
years
before Eleanor Blue and Anna Blue made it to Clara Dalloway’s store in Raydon.

‘Anna what?’ Jim asked bewildered.

Finally, he took her to the cellar, and showed her the trunk, hidden behind a huge mahogany bed. He ran his hands over the jumble of antique silver inside, the creamers and tureens that he’d quietly been selling, a piece here, a piece there, to tide them over these past few years. A tray had gone last summer towards funding his and the Major’s visit to Washington. Madeleine leaned against the wall, shocked.

‘Are we short of money?’

His lips tightened. ‘No. No we’re not, but all the same, this is a working orchard. The yield each year is what it is, and we sell what we can sell, only prices haven’t exactly been high of late, have they?’ He shut the trunk, feeling strangely ashamed, and already regretting the impulse to share it with her. ‘We’re not going,’ he said curtly.

She nodded unhappily. ‘What’s this?’ In a bid to change the subject, she picked up a helmet lying on the floor. ‘There’s a hole . . .’ she began, then realising what the neat, round aperture in the helmet was, flung it from her with a sharp cry of distaste. Turning, she stormed back up the stairs, not entirely understanding the sudden prick of tears behind her eyes.

Jim picked up the old Boche helmet from where it lay rocking on the floor. A stiff, closed-off expression on his face, he dusted the helmet against his corduroys and replaced it atop the trunk.

Feeling bad about the way she’d handled things, Madeleine set aside all notions of a visit to Washington DC, masking the twinge of disappointment she still felt. ‘It was only an idea,’ she said, smiling to Jim. All he did was nod non-committally in response, continuing to be cool and distant with her in the days that followed, still smarting over the way he’d opened himself up and how small she’d made him feel.

Upset by his reticence and suddenly restless, the silences of the house and the stark, winter-bound orchard filling her with claustrophobia, Madeleine decided to go home to Boston for a week. Jim dropped her off at the train station. ‘Have a good trip,’ he said, pecking her swiftly on the cheek. She nodded. He waited on the platform until the train pulled out from the station. She watched from the window as he strode away, craning her neck until he was lost from sight.

The whirl of inauguration-themed parties in Boston cheered her up, although she missed him constantly. To her surprise, more than dancing and carousing with her set, what she found most stimulating was the sparkle of conversation, the prolonged and animated political discussions she found herself increasingly drawn towards as her father and his cronies debated the new president and the changes to come.

All the same, if she were to be entirely honest, Madeleine admitted to herself, the highlight of her visit had to be the discovery of fat bolts of Eleanor and Anna Blue, freshly ordered in from New York along with rolls of velvet in the most delicious colours – Lanvin Red, Chianti Violet and Georgia Peach.

The 32nd President of the United States was sworn in on Saturday 4 March. He began the day with a short prayer at the Church of the Presidents, the historic St John Episcopal Church. Light filtered through the richly coloured windows over the family and entourage, as Reverend Endicott Peabody, who had married the Roosevelts almost three decades earlier, led the service.

‘O Lord, our Heavenly Father, most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour to behold and bless thy servant, Franklin, chosen to be President of the United States.’

Later, a fanfare of trumpets, the Marine Band breaking out into ‘Hail to the Chief’ as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped on to the platform. A massive roar erupted from the gathered crowd, the largest on record for a presidential inauguration, a hundred thousand voices echoing from the buildings, ricocheting off loudspeakers, amplified through the airwaves to be heard halfway across the world. The radio announcers briefed their listeners on the proceedings, and President Roosevelt went on air. All of America listened, gathered about their radios. With them, a sizable chunk of the civilised world, hanging on to every word.

The voice of the new president was calm but firm as he addressed the nation. ‘There is nothing to fear,’ he began, ‘but fear itself.’

Madeleine returned, her face lighting up when she saw Jim. He’d missed her deeply too, her absence an invisible weight he seemed to carry about no matter where he went. Both were equally eager now to lay their discord, unarticulated as it had been, to rest.

She kissed him tenderly that night, cupping his face in her hands. Pressing her lips softly against his forehead, over each summer-bleached brow, his eyes closing as he submitted to her administrations. Over the contour of jawline and thrust of Adam’s apple, delighting in the quickened sound of his breathing as she ran her tongue delicately along the side of his neck. Laying proprietary claim to the hollows above each clavicle, to the firm line of shoulder and the thin, silvered lines where the skin had stretched – football training, he’d said when she’d asked. She trailed her fingernails down his chest, gently circling the taut nipples. Lower still, over firmly muscled waist and abdomen, lower, caressing the turgid swell of him, fingers moving from root to stem.

Gripped with a wild, fierce ardor, he flipped her on to her knees, raising her haunches in one fluid movement as he straddled her from behind. She was startled at first by this abrupt switching around of power, muscles tensing at the animal urgency of his entry, but as he began to thrust inside her, Madeleine arched her back and shuddered, a primal spasm that passed seamlessly from her body to his, deepening the intense physicality of their connection as she gave in, gave herself wholly to him, burying her face in the pillows as she cried his name out loud.

Raydon • 1933

ust as old Asaph had predicted, the maples were early that year, the sap running freely all that spring. It slowed eventually, the candied air giving way to the fresh scent of new grass pushing its way through the mud. Wood and pasture alike were stippled in bright, jaunty green. Barn walls were fortified and fences creosoted, relieved of winter sag. The horses were let out early to pasture. They turned frisky, even the oldest and most staid among them, whickering in delight over this first forage after months of hay and grain. They tossed their manes, kicking up the yellow heads of dandelions as they cantered through the paddocks, shedding the shag of their winter coats in handfuls of fluff.