Hannah & Emil (15 page)

Just then he was almost knocked down by a truck. It braked sharply outside the building and soldiers tumbled out of the back, wheeling a mortar gun down the ramp between four of them. It shone, pristine, as though it had never seen action, had been saved the entire war for this purpose. They positioned it on the cobbles and began immediately to fire on the building. The noise in the square was astonishing, echoing amid the close walls, and then gave way to shouting and boots tramping on stone as those remaining scattered to the lanes. Emil was fixed to the spot behind the truck and the soldiers watching powdery chunks of masonry fall to the street below. A soldier lifted a bullhorn to his mouth. ‘You have ten minutes to give yourselves up to government forces. The building is surrounded.'

There was silence in the square and in the building except for a clatter of pans in a kitchen and then, after a moment of silence, a woman's voice calling to her children to come for their meal. Four soldiers had their rifles trained on the black door. There was a flutter of white above Emil's line of sight, a sheet of paper of the kind used for newspapers, but bare of print, tied to a broom. He saw a pair of pale hands wrapped around the handle at the window.

The black door inched open and out came seven men, hands on heads, lining up in front of the building. They looked as tired and thin as men in trenches. When it seemed there were no more, and they stood in a row, dark coats against pale yellow stucco, an ivy pattern spread out behind them that reached up to the roof, one of the soldiers fired, and straightaway before any fell they were all firing. One man had time to start running but was shot in the back. The men lay in front of the building. There was a shout from behind Emil. The crowd was running away down the lanes, no one here now but him, the soldiers and the heap of men. He retreated into the shadows of the nearest lane. Did they care that he saw them? Would they shoot him if they noticed him, or was that the point? That he was there, right behind them, while they shot the men. Was it all for him? he wondered, dizzy, leaning on a wall. He was still looking at the men while the soldiers, Germans, pushed the gun back up the ramp. A patch of blood was spreading from beneath one of the bodies across the flagstones of the neat Berlin square.

At the hostel he picked up his bag and left without a word. All around the dormitory men were doing the same. No one met the others' eyes. On the train he stared out the window as the city became impenetrable forest. He tried to sleep and saw it instantly, the heap of men. He was like a new soldier in the first days of the first battle, mud to his knees, lice crawling inside his collar, guns rattling his brain, in a body that had learned to resist nothing.

Hannah

HAMPSTEAD, 1924

I stood on the wooden platform in my woollen bathing suit above the glassy surface of the pond, early-morning sky reflected, clouds, an oak, and me—little, broad-hipped, bobbed curly hair—flanked by my brothers. Geoffrey was much taller than me by now and Benjamin was about the same. I was seventeen, just, they fifteen and thirteen. The girl I saw in the water was still, arms speared upwards, willing her body towards a smooth, gliding slice. Beneath her skin the cogs turned relentlessly. They never slowed, the little wheels that kept me moving forward, even when my body appeared still.

But their hands were on my back, shoving, they were strong now. And I was tumbling, flailing sideways into the cold water in an inelegant, stinging crash. When I surfaced the water was still settling around me, my skin the length of me tingling with the slap, and they were falling above me, knees hugged to chests, sublime grins. They made an almighty splash and the water, a black, still pond moments before, was once again shattered.

As soon as Geoffrey emerged I dunked him. He surfaced and pushed me down and under water the tiny bubbles clung to our thin chests and limbs, weeds swaying beneath, my legs cycling as I waited for him to leave off. I swam away from the boys, whose splashing and shouting would bring Mother out before long. At the far side of the pond I rested my head on my hands at the edge and felt the warmth of a summer morning on my shoulders. Beyond a little stand of trees that kept this part of the pond quite private Hampstead Heath sloped away towards central London. I always felt that we had moved to the country coming here, but civilised country, where you could still take a tube to do whatever took your fancy.

I contemplated the day, holding up its shape as though it were a gem whose light changed when you moved it. It was my last day at the Camden—I was a grown woman, I would find a job now in the Labour Party or the unions—and my teacher Miss Garnett had promised to take me to Harold Monro's poetry bookshop in Bloomsbury after my French exam, and then to tea. She was convinced I had the makings of a poet and intended to give me something that might inspire me as I stepped out into the world.

‘Hannah-Geoffrey-Benjamin!' Mother came out of the French windows calling our names as though they were one exasperating word. Señor Hernandez, the owner of the Spanish school who was just passing by on his daily run, holding his boots in his hand and running in bare feet, looked up at the sound of her voice. It was awful the way she came out onto the heath to call us in.

Señor Hernandez lifted a hand when he saw me lolling at the edge of the pond. ‘
Hola
, Hannah!
Cómo está?
'

I smiled. I loved Señor Hernandez, as I loved all the regular characters on the heath. He was like one of the flamingos you see now at the heath with his stick-like legs and ball knees. And his lovely habit of carrying his boots, as though they were very precious, but not quite so precious as feeling the grass beneath his feet. I raised an arm. ‘
Muy bien
, Señor Hernandez.'

He ran into the grove towards the open heath and I turned and swam towards the house where Mother stood at the French windows, her arms heaped with towels.

I think that Miss Garnett did not after all meet me that day. It says nothing of it in my diary, only that after school I was lying on my bed in a funk when Father knocked at the door. I had thrown an arm across my eyes, so that there could be no doubt about my mood. And then Father was in the room, looking down at me. I took my arm from my face, but slowly, to ensure my distress was noticeable.

‘What it is that you are doing?' He took his gold watch from the pocket of his black waistcoat, made a performance of peering at it, though it was clear he knew the time, had in fact been watching the clock until he had lost patience and burst into my room. ‘Come, Hannah. If we leave now they will be speaking still.'

‘Must we go tonight?'

‘What is this? Yes, of course we go tonight. It is Friday, the night we go. Is this my Hannah that is asking?'

‘All right, Papa. Give me a minute. I'll comb my hair.'

‘Who cares for your hair? Come, let's go.'

It was a Christian on the soapbox. I could tell by the beard and the particular quality of the fervour, even from a distance, through the crowd of men smoking. ‘Oh no.'

‘Perhaps the gentleman is soon finished. And look who's waiting.'

Behind the Christian was a tiny woman, all her dimensions reduced in perfect proportion from the usual-sized human, sheathed in a long black dress that made her look like a Victorian. Her eyes were lowered and yet she managed to give off a nervous intensity that made the skin on my arms, bare to the elbow with my school blouse sleeves rolled up, prickle in sympathy. ‘Oh,' I whispered. ‘A suffragist!' They were exquisite, those women, in their fervour—how I imagined Puritans. Not like these large, noisy women you see now with big curly hair and placards who shout a lot. I agree with them of course. They are just rather loud.

‘You see now, Hannah. It is always worth the trip, no?' He placed a hand on my back and steered me to the front of the little crowd. The men in their shirt sleeves and woollen vests moved aside to let me through. The Christian
must
be coming to the end, I thought. But then, each time the moment approached when he might stand aside, he stoked himself up again, having just thought of another reason we were all headed for damnation, his face growing redder, his fists clenched by his side. I went into a sort of trance of waiting, listening to the birdsong and the chatter of children, the murmur of the crowd behind me shifting on its feet.

The light was fading though the June twilight would be long. ‘Yes, very enjoyable speech, sir. Now we let the lady have her turn.' It was Father. There were mumbles of agreement behind us. The woman in black looked up quickly, first at Father and then at me. I held her gaze for a few seconds but looked back to the Christian before long. It seemed unsisterly to challenge a suffragist. The Christian spoke more loudly and fervently, spittle gathering at the corners of his bearded mouth, addressing a point somewhere over the tops of our heads. He had made some bargain with God: if he shouted at us for long enough he might be awarded salvation. There were more calls for him to stand down. After a few moments he seemed to return to himself, to where he was, in Hyde Park before a hostile audience. He broke off mid-sentence, stepped down from his box, picked it up and walked away down the path between the trees amid the evening strollers.

The suffragist edged forward, still looking down. She had no box and the crowd shuffled forward like a person bending their head towards a quiet speaker. I glanced behind me. As well as the workers in their vests there were a couple of university students and a tram conductor in his dark uniform and shiny brass buttons. A tramp hovered at the edge of the group, a space clearing around him.

The woman glanced about the crowd and decided to make me her audience. There were no other females. She was older than she had looked from a distance, at least thirty. An old maid, I thought, as I gave her an encouraging smile and nod. No, I corrected myself, an independent woman. As I shall be.

The suffragist began to speak but one would only know because she was moving her lips. The breeze in the summer leaves was enough to drown her out. ‘Speak up, love,' came a call. ‘It ain't a mothers' meeting.' Father turned and gave the man a glare.

When she spoke again it was much more clearly. She had a strong voice, now she dared use it. I was thrilled, though it was not an unusual speech. I had heard it in substance before, and read it in the pamphlets Father brought me. The woman talked of wartime, of the heavy work the women did in the munitions factories, of how they drove carts around the streets at dawn to hold their husbands' milk rounds, how they toiled in the fields for the nation's food. They were pushed aside without a thought when the men returned. Some resorted to prostitution to survive. A man at my shoulder let out a piercing whistle, throwing the woman off her stride and making me jump. She looked away from me, blushed a little. ‘And still no vote for women under thirty,' she pushed on. ‘As though after all we have done, we are but children.' Here she fixed her eye on me very definitely and I returned her confidence with a clear nod.

She did not speak for more than ten minutes, put off by the response to the Christian perhaps. Some of the men, including Father, cheered and clapped but a good number jeered. I applauded until my hands stung. The woman looked at the ground, unsure how long to stay, and then quite suddenly walked past the crowd, within a foot of me, disappearing behind us into the evening.

We stayed for another, a miner from Derbyshire whom the men loved, but I had lost concentration. My earlier dark mood had receded. Finely dressed ladies with prams or beaux walked along the pathways, glancing out from under their hats to see who was watching. It was wonderful: the presence of men all around me, their working-day scents, mysterious and lovely, Father at my shoulder, always close, separating me from the crowd and yet offering me the licence to be here. If I had the power to reclaim a moment, perhaps it would be this one.

‘So, Hannah, we put a stop to your mother's worry?' Father said as the light faded and the men began to disperse. ‘Time for our supper, I think.' On our walk through the park to the tube the flat light of the Serpentine flickered beyond the trees; Father said, ‘Democracy, Hannah. This is what it is. The people speak directly to each other. Here, with the police walking by! And you know my Hannah—you are ready now. You are ready to take the stage!'