Wake: A Novel (29 page)

Evelyn stares up at her brother’s window, then pushes her way against the tide, heading up the hill instead. They have a long way to go, these people—a long slow walk until they are able to spill.

The eleventh of November.

Two years since the end of the war.

It was still a shock when it came, at the fag end of 1918.

She was in the office, filing invoices, when she saw a boy from upstairs come running onto the factory floor below. She saw him shouting, his arms moving up and down. From where she sat she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw its effect on the people below: saw them stand as one—the stunned pause as they looked at one another and then walked out and left their machines still running. She left what she was doing and went down the steps, and by then she could hear the shouts, echoing up the stairwell: “It’s over; we’ve won. It’s over; we’ve won!”

It was a damp, foggy day, and outside there was confusion, women milling around, their voices ringing—shrill and useless. No one seemed to know what to do. They were screaming, shouting, crying, hugging one another. Others simply stood, staring into the distance.

She saw a woman she knew from her days on the factory floor, beckoning her from inside a taxi. Six or seven women were already crammed into the cab and there was barely room, but she climbed inside, half-sitting on someone’s lap, her face jammed up against the window as rain splayed across the glass.

The women kept stopping the taxi to try to buy champagne, but all of the shops had sold out, and in the end they gave up and bought bottles of cheap, acrid white wine and drank it leaning out the windows, despite the rain, singing the raucous songs they had learned on the factory floor. They were heading for Trafalgar Square, but the taxi could only get as close as the Marylebone Road, and so it stopped there and the women piled into the street. It was already nearly impossible to pass through the crowd, and Evelyn lost the other women immediately; but it was easier to move alone and she managed to push her way along Oxford Street, where the traffic was at a standstill, and then further down toward Soho. The pubs of the West End were packed; everywhere people were spilling out onto the pavement and streets, heedless of the rain. Drunken faces lurched in front of her. She passed an older woman, her long hair lank and loose, hanging on to the coat of a young soldier. “It’s down to you,” the woman was slurring. “It’s all down to you.” She fell to her knees in front of him, holding out her bottle of stout. The young man, embarrassed, was trying to pull himself away from her grip.

Evelyn pushed through the swaying crowds to the Charing Cross Road, where paper fluttered down from office windows as though the buildings had been turned inside out—and then onto Trafalgar Square. The sound of the celebration was a roar here, the traffic at a standstill, and people were dancing, stamping on the pavement and on the roofs of cars, running round and round in circles like broken mechanical toys.

Everywhere she looked she saw youth. Young people kissing one another everywhere, in various states of abandon; a couple wrapped around each other, the girl sitting on a wall, skirt hitched up, cutting into her white, bulging thighs. It felt as though, while she was in that factory, staring at machines and files, the world had left her behind. For two years she had sat at a bench, or at a desk, and looked only at what was in front of her. Now she would have to look up.

She skirted the square. Flags. Everywhere. Vendor after vendor, standing by little gray tables that had sprouted like mushrooms in the rain. A large, sweaty man in the midst of buying a job lot handed one to her. “There you go, love.”

She stared at it, and then back up at him.

“You all right, love?”

When she didn’t reply, he lost interest and began throwing the flags out to the appreciative crowd. She looked at the tiny flag: It was made of paper and wood and not much bigger than her palm, the end a sharp point, like a toothpick. She pushed the pointed end deep into her thumb. She felt the pain of it, but not enough, not nearly enough. She pulled it out again, and blood welled from the hole she had made. She smeared the blood across her mouth.

“Do what ought to have been done in 1914!”

A man beside her was selling lavatory paper. It had the kaiser’s face imprinted on each perforated section. Evelyn blinked; for a moment she thought she was imagining it. “Do what ought to have been done in 1914!”

“Honey.” There was a touch on her arm.

A young man in uniform stood in front of her. He was tall, his accent American or Canadian. “You okay?”

His face was broad and young and smooth; sweat stood out on his forehead. Was he really so young? It didn’t seem possible for someone to be so young.

“Can I kiss you, honey?” he asked. “Can I give you a victory kiss?”

She said nothing, and so he pulled her toward him and kissed her. He opened his mouth and she could feel his tongue, taste beer, smell the thick wet khaki smell of his uniform and his sharp, salty sweat beneath. When he pulled back she saw that there was blood on his lip, and for a moment she thought that she must have hurt him—had bitten him—but then she remembered it was her own.

“Come on,” he said. He took her hand and she let him lead her across the road, through the standing traffic, past a woman covered all over in Union Jacks who was riding a bicycle down the pavement, screaming, blind drunk, with two soldiers running along on either side. She followed him toward the church on the square, toward Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, where the steps were clogged with people, sitting, standing, sheltering from the rain. The young soldier pulled her around the side and down some shallow stone steps to where it was cool and arched and echoing and there was no one else.

“Here.” He pushed her against a pillar. She felt the rough stone of it, pressing into her back. “Let’s do it here.” He began pulling at her blouse, not unbuttoning it, just tugging it out of her skirt and then passing his hands beneath it, under her camisole, until his hands were over her breasts. He leaned his face into her neck. She turned to the side, against the cold pillar, as he hitched up her skirt. He pulled down her knickers. She stepped out of one leg of them, letting them fall around her ankle to the floor. When he pushed himself up inside her she gasped.

She could hear the banging of the drums outside, the rattle and the screams and the singing, and the rasp of his uniform against her blouse. She lifted her face, up to the vaulted ceiling. It was over in five or six thrusts, and then he pulled away, turning from her to button himself. He looked like a child when he turned back. Part of her wanted to put a hand on his arm, to tell him it was all right. Part of her wanted to laugh.

They walked out together, and then, without speaking, as if they had already decided that this was what was to happen, they parted on the street without a word. She walked on, toward the river, away from the church, down Northumberland Avenue. The crowds kept coming toward her, ceaseless, swarming over the bridges from the south, packed tight now, a heaving, boozy mass. A song broke out near her, and the people started to sway, and the swaying spread until it was everywhere.

Finally she made it to the Embankment, where all along the length of the river the boats were moored, their sirens hooting. There was a crowd near to where she stood, gathered around a young boy who had shinnied to the top of a lamppost. At first she couldn’t make out what he was doing, and then she saw he was scraping away the blackout paint. The lamp was lit, and there was an exultant cheer. Then another lamp blazed into life, and another, until there were lights all the way along the Embankment, all the way along the river.

She pushed her way to the low wall, where she stayed, gathering her breath. She could feel the cold, slippery residue of the boy in her knickers. Her stomach rolled in disgust. She stared out over the river, at the water, orange in the lamplight, and thought that she could easily climb the wall, climb it and jump. That no one would notice. That they were all looking up, at the future, and their places in it. And for a brief moment, she thought that she was brave enough, that she might have the courage to do it, but the moment passed, and she was still standing, staring out at the river, at the lit orange rain captured there, as if time had stopped and the rain was only held there, suspended, and wasn’t falling after all.

Fred is dressed smartly, in his hat and suit. Walking beside him, Hettie feels strange. Hollow. Like she used to after she was ill, when she was a child. That first day of getting up, and going back to school, walking on cotton wool legs, when everything would look different: The house she lived in. The people she passed. The street.

Today the street is deserted, and the people are all gone. The houses have an anxious look, as if unsure their occupants will ever return.

They will.

Today, she doesn’t want the houses to be blown up, or the streets torn apart. She wants the bricks to be solid and sheltering. She wants things not to change. She wants her father not to be gone and the gardens to stay innocent and the heliotrope flowers to mean only summer and not swollen skin and quick, quick death. She wants there not to have been daughters lying down for man after man in their fathers’ houses in villages in France. Or women on their last legs, waiting for the queues of men to end. She wants the sad parade of men at the Palais to disappear, or to be whole, or patched together again. She wants Ed to be unbroken. And Fred. She wants her brother back.

But she knows, in this warm, sun-bright morning, that none, or not all, of these things are possible. That Ed is right. That you cannot go back.

But her brother is beside her. He has done as she asked and come with her today. And they are walking, the two of them, their steps in time, side by side, one foot in front of the other. One in front of the other, walking down the street.

As they near the bottom of the street Hettie can hear the murmur of the crowd from Hammersmith Broadway. People are lining the road, three deep on either side. All of the shops are closed, their awnings still rolled, their shutters drawn down. Motorcars and omnibuses have pulled over to one side and parked. The clock on the little island in the middle of the road reads a quarter to eleven.

She and Fred skirt the back of the crowd, looking for a place to stand. But as they move further forward, to where the crowd is getting thicker and more difficult to pass, she can sense Fred’s rising unease.

She reaches out and taps him on the arm.“Is here all right?” she says to him. “I don’t think I can go any further in.”

He looks down at her gratefully. “Yes.” He nods. “It’s fine.”

They take their places. The crowd is already silent: hundreds of faces facing hundreds of faces across the empty street.

They move through the crowd until they are wedged so deeply in among black backs that it seems as though they might never move again.

“Well, this won’t do, will it,” hisses Ivy. She is so close that Ada can smell her breath, slightly sour, the musty mothball smell of her dress, the roses she carries, and then, behind that, other bodies: thousands of them and thousands of other rapidly wilting bouquets. For a second, in the overwhelming, rank-sweet smell of the crowd, Ada feels she may faint. She steadies herself, twisting her neck to try to see around a tall man in front of her, but all she can make out is backs and heads and hats. They must be fifteen people away from the front at least. It is impossible to even see the barriers, the crowd is so deep. No one seems to want to speak it out loud, but plenty of people are grumbling about it under their breath.

She turns back to Ivy. “I suppose it will have to do,” she says, with a brightness she doesn’t feel. They should have stayed where they were. They could breathe there at least, and they had a view. It had been her idea to move.

Just then there’s a scuffle in the crowd up ahead. Something is happening, closer to the front. For a long time it’s not clear what, until voices start shouting, “Clear a space! Clear a space!” A narrow gangway is carved from the crowd, and two men carry out a young woman, feet first. The woman’s hat falls off her lolling head, and Ada stoops to pick it up. She doesn’t know what to do with it then, so she places it down on the woman’s chest. The hat is a modern one, pretty, one of those that look like a bell, with a small spray of white fabric flowers on the rim.

She touches the young man on his arm. “Will she be all right?”

“She’s fine. Just had a funny turn. Didn’t you, Mary?”

The young woman is stirring now. “It’s all right,” says the man, leaning down. “We’ve got you, Mary love.”

In the wake of the commotion the crowd churns and shifts back into place, then heaves suddenly from behind, as though people at the back had decided to push, all together. For a moment it seems that they will topple, like dominoes, until, as though on a wave, the part of the crowd where they are standing surges forward. Ada and Ivy hold on to each other, and to their flowers, as they find themselves traveling toward the front.

When the crowd has stopped moving, they are standing close to the barriers and have a clear view of the street: of the backs of the policemen, holding back the crowd, legs spread, arms behind their backs, the tips of their helmets shining in the sun; of the large expanse of empty road beyond; and then, on the other side of that, of all the many faces, ranged, expectant, staring back.

Beside her, Ivy is shaking. Ada touches her arm. “You all right, love?”

When Ivy brings her head up it’s clear that she has been laughing. She nods, wiping her eyes. “Couldn’t help it,” she whispers back. “How about that, then? Someone wants us to see.”

“That was funny, all right.” Ada steadies herself. To their right stand a young couple, their young son between them, holding their hands. The man is speaking to his wife and boy in a low voice. “Look at the windows,” he is saying. “Look up at the roofs.”

Ada follows his finger, and what she sees astonishes her. Every window up above is packed with faces, and there are indeed people on the roofs: young men, mostly, though there are women, too, sitting in dangerous-looking positions on windowsills and out on the edges of small balconies. She taps Ivy on the arm and gestures up.