Unexploded (30 page)

He glanced up. An old lady at Number 6 watched them from a high window and then was gone. The November sky was pewter. The first snow was falling, falling, muffling the world. Only her eyes were bright.

She was talking. He made himself listen. Others on the street would not be ‘of the same mind’, she said, but Number 5 was neigh-bourless on one side – that was to say, Number 4 – and on the other, it shared a wall with one elderly neighbour only at Number 6. He was
on the verge of saying he’d just seen her, but Evelyn hardly paused for breath. She was sorry but the shutters would have to remain closed at both the front and back. It would be for the best if he slept in the study and lived on the ground floor only. There was bedding in the linen cupboard and a servants’ loo in the scullery. He would have to rely on the gas heaters since chimney smoke would arouse curiosity, but even so, the house would be warmer and more comfortable than a church pew in winter. He would have to enter and exit the house at the back, via the Park, keeping to the far perimeter path. ‘If anyone should see you and ask, you are to say you’re visiting friends at Number – and here,’ she said, ‘your memory should fail you. Please say as little as possible. Please sound as English as you possibly can, and please be discreet. Mr Beaumont, incidentally, is often in the Park on weekend afternoons with our son when the weather is fine. You won’t be using the front door, and I must, in any case, hold on to that key. But the big one on your chain is for the Park’s gate and the little one is for the kitchen door, which you should lock from the inside when you’re there and obviously from the outside whenever you leave.’

‘This is enormously kind,’ he said.

She pressed her collar to the white of her throat and bounced briefly on the balls of her feet. Then she extended her arm, smiled broadly, shook his hand, and wished him well. She would very much look forward to seeing the mural in the spring.

She was making herself a stranger again. Her words and tone made it clear: she hoped not to bump into him on the Crescent.

The sky had deepened to night. The wind had come up, and the flurry of snow was blowing harder now, stinging their eyes and cheeks. He wanted to draw her to him and wrap her in his ill-fitting coat. ‘There’s just one further thing, if I may,’ he said.

She huffed on her hands. ‘Geoffrey will be home shortly and I really must –’

‘It’s only that I still find myself in need of a female model, and, as you’ll appreciate, I’ve not been in much of a position to meet women of late. Nor is it a request one can simply put to a woman standing at a tram stop. In spite of my impropriety earlier’ – he grinned his charming best – ‘I understand your position entirely. But I wonder if you or your husband might put me in touch with the other woman who attended the concert at the Camp that night. Or better still, perhaps you or your husband might intercede on’ – he raised his eyebrows comically – ‘the Artist’s behalf.’

‘The other woman …?’ she said.

‘At the back of the stand that night …’

But women weren’t permitted at the Camp. Geoffrey had made that point more than once. No female visitors, no female staff.

Otto let his eyes linger over the detail of her: the lustrous brown top of her head; the berry red of her coat; her small, bare hands; the bright energy of her in the snow-shaken night. His heart would have to survive on such details, like a wretch thieving food. Yet the bleaker he felt at the imminence of her departure, the jollier he sounded. ‘In the row just ahead of me. I assumed she worked in the laundry or the cookhouse? Whatever the case, she had exceptional posture. Those benches left much to be desired but that woman’s back never slumped once throughout the concert.
That
, you see, is an underrated quality in a model: a sitter who can actually sit! And while hers isn’t the sort of figure I actually require for the mural’ – his gaze sharpened – ‘it is always good to draw from life, at the start of things at least, and in any case, I need to – what is the phrase? – limber up.’

She was grateful for the blackout, for the darkness that covered the tumult of her face. Even as she listened, nodding, hardly hearing
what he said, her world was plummeting, like a gold-caged lift down a dark shaft.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Gottlieb. I’m afraid I couldn’t say who she was.’

It was all she knew, all she could hold in her head: Geoffrey had not given her up after all.

That day, he’d smelled it, even before he’d looked up from the contracts on his desk: cedarwood.

He’d winced as he stood. His secretary had hovered. Would they be taking tea? Leah had shaken her head, embarrassed, and removed her gloves. He’d walked around to the front of his desk, held her chair, and longed for the weight of her in his lap.

‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How are you both?’

‘Yes. Well.’

She looked pale. Her coat was too sober a blue – it aged her – but her beauty spot was in place, and her lips were slick with colour. She sat, her face lowered. The silence was painful.

‘Is it money?’ he said finally. ‘May I help?’

‘
Yes
. Money. Exactly.’ She laid a manila envelope on the desk and slid it towards him. ‘You left this at mine when you … when you went.’

He met her eyes. ‘When I fled.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘when you fled.’

‘It was a … gift.’

She looked past him, her eyes cold.

‘An apology, rather.’

She reached for her gloves and stood.

‘Keep it, Leah. Do please keep it.’

‘It is not mine.’

‘Keep it for Misha, then.’

‘Keep it for you, you mean.’

‘For me. Yes. Please, keep it as a favour to me.’

‘I don’t need to make you feel good, Mr Beaumont.’

She knew his name.

‘Is not my job any more.’

He felt the heat in his face. ‘No.’

‘I have new job.’ Her back was rigid. It was hard to imagine she’d ever lain soft in his arms. ‘I play organ at cinema. Is not Chopin, but Misha gets to push the pedals and he loves it.’

He blinked hard. ‘You deserve more.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I do.’

‘I am … very grateful to you. Not just for … but because I believe you changed me somehow …’ His throat was tightening. He had to turn to the window. ‘Leah, I can’t tell you how much I –’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You cannot tell me, can you?’ She rose from the chair.

Did he dare? ‘There is a concert, an outdoor concert, weather permitting. On the evening of the 16th.’ He plucked at his cuffs. ‘At the top of Race Hill. The old racecourse.’ It was the last risk he’d take. For her; he’d take it for her. ‘I’m afraid I cannot arrange a box, but I would see to it myself that one of my staff collects you and returns you safely home.’

At the door, she hesitated and the line of her shoulders relaxed.

‘I am told that the pianist once played for the Tsar.’

Her hand hovered over the knob.

WINTER & SPRING

37

Snow fell through December, dimming the town. Pipes froze. The clock in the Clock Tower stopped. The power failed. Hearts failed. Dogs drowned, surprised by the icy sea. Still Brighton braced itself for disaster, for enemy ships on the horizon. The wait was a cold fever. Dread flattened hope like a late frost, and its residents stifled in the cold as they had stifled in the heat.

Outside Mrs Dalrymple’s bedroom door, in the hush of a shadowy corridor, Evelyn knocked twice, and, hearing nothing, entered with Philip. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust; for her mind to navigate a path through the intimate gloom. The room smelled of candle wax. Its windows were covered with a heavy maroon brocade.

The details separated themselves only reluctantly from the shadows. Mrs Dalrymple’s foxtail stole hung limply over a gilt screen. Her rings lay scattered across a rosewood
poudreuse
, their sparkle all but lost to a chaos of puffs, powder, pots, gap-toothed combs and yellowing brushes. A tall taper was lit at either end, while, across the room, on a chest of drawers, a Christmas hamper stuffed with biscuits, flowers, cheeses and imported fruits rotted fragrantly. The room was part boudoir and part mausoleum.

A fortnight before, Mrs Dalrymple had formally taken to her bed for no apparent reason, although she still received occasional visitors
beneath its silk canopy. Three days before, she had announced to Philip from her window that she was dying. He had run in from the terrace to inform his mother, and now Mrs Dalrymple lay in state, propped, haggard and wan against fat bolsters, and covered in an eiderdown of pale gold satin.

Evelyn envied her neighbour the privileges of age. There were dark mornings these days when all she could hope for was more sleep and a delay to the tyranny of the new day. Sometimes she wandered out to the terrace for air and found herself staring, mesmerized by the spot where the tin and its two terrible pills lay buried.

After everything that had been said, Geoffrey had not given the woman up – Otto’s inadvertent comment had made that clear – and yet here she was, playing her part of the dutiful wife and neighbour. Why, she wondered, do we seem unable to speak of the things that matter most?

I am alone
, she wanted to say.
I am so alone.

The old lady opened one eye and looked past her. ‘Is that you, Philip Beaumont?’

‘Yes, Mrs Dalrymple,’ he whispered from the gilt shelter of the screen. He turned his head away, but it was no good. In the reflection of a speckled looking glass, her bloodhound eyes were drooping lower than ever.

‘I hope you’re not growing up, Philip Beaumont.’

‘I’m not trying to, Mrs Dalrymple.’

‘What is it I’ve told you?’ she creaked.

‘Men,’ he repeated balefully, ‘are execrable buggers.’

‘I should like it very much if you would wind up my music box. It is here on my nightstand and plays “Für Elise” rather charmingly. My late and wayward husband bought it for me in Switzerland as a token of his undying guilt.’

‘Is there anything else we might get you, Mrs Dalrymple?’ said Evelyn, seating herself gently at the edge of the bed. ‘A glass of water or tea or a hot-water bottle? A book perhaps?’

The old woman arched a frayed eyebrow and expelled a sigh. ‘Clarence used to nestle here, right here beside my hand.’ Her gnarled fingers groped the air uselessly.

Philip approached the bedside table, took the miniature music box in his hands, wound the tiny handle, and laid ‘Für Elise’ close to his ear. But it was no good. He could still hear every mournful word.

‘I cannot imagine what variety of
animal
would make off with Clarence.’

He wound the handle again.

‘Philip, please. It’s very delicate.’ His mother patted the edge of the bed.
Pat, pat, pat
. He’d never known so dreadful a sound. ‘You miss Clarence too, don’t you, darling? Come and tell Mrs Dalrymple about your birthday.’

He nodded, pale as the white Christmas rose withering in its vase on the nightstand, but he didn’t move.

‘Philip turned nine last week, didn’t you? He had sponge cake with jam and a trip to the cinema.’

Mrs Dalrymple knew. He knew she knew. His innards were jelly.

‘And did you
enjoy
yourself, Philip Beaumont?’

He nodded quickly and whispered in his mother’s ear: ‘May we leave now? I don’t feel well.’

‘It’s rude to whisper,’ she chided. ‘Wait for me in the hallway, please.’

Outside Mrs Dalrymple’s door, the shadows swallowed him whole, yet even in this other dimension, every word rang out.

His mother: ‘Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like Geoffrey to send for our family doctor?’

Mrs Dalrymple: ‘I am better left to die, Mrs Beaumont, without being
bullied
on my way by any doctor.’

‘Yet if you’re not feeling well –’

‘If one is dying, one is generally not feeling well, and that is also why the last thing I need, incidentally, is
noise
.’

‘Noise?’

‘Nois
es.
Plural.’

‘From the Park?’

‘Through the walls.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘I hear noises through the common wall.’

Evelyn shook herself. ‘Ah! So sorry. I have asked Philip not to tramp down our stairs but I will –’

‘From Number 5. Odd little sounds. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’

‘Naturally.’

‘You must ask your husband to investigate.’

Evelyn smiled as convincingly as she was able. An eyelash fell into her eye and she tried to blink it away. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Mice, I should think, or a bird in the chimney.’

‘I’m not sure you understand me. Kindly remember, Mrs Beaumont, that we must
all
keep our eyes and ears open these days.’

Was it a warning?

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly and in the correct tone. ‘We must all be vigilant.’

Remain alert.

Train yourself to notice the exact time and place where you see anything or anyone suspicious.

Make certain that no stranger enters your premises.

38

Father Christmas was not put off by the Luftwaffe. He left a boy-size RAF helmet and goggles, a card game called ’Vacuation, a box of pencils, a new sketchbook for Philip’s aeroplane drawings,
The Wonder Book of Science
, an orange from Spain and a diablo.

From his parents, Philip had a knitted hat, a pair of red mitts and a shiny half-crown coin fresh from the Royal Mint. He gave his mother a bookmark and a box of lilac-coloured notepaper that his grandmother had helped him to buy. He’d chosen lilac because lilac was his mother’s favourite flower. He gave his father a shoehorn and a shoe-polish kit. His father gave his mother a box of soaps and a new nightdress that was, he told her, the latest in parachute-silk couture. His mother gave his father a blue silk tie and a matching blue handkerchief for his breast pocket. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘a colour I can correctly name! Excellent.’ He folded it Fred Astaire-style and popped it in his pyjama shirt pocket.

His mother smiled but not with her eyes. Later, she came in from the Park with red, raw hands and brussel sprouts that were solid with ice.