Wake: A Novel (31 page)

“From work. He’s a man from work.”

“Well, isn’t that a turnup for the books.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” says Evelyn, quickly, crossly.

“Course not.” Doreen is still smiling.

“What?” says Evelyn. “
What?
Stop looking at me like that.”

But Doreen doesn’t stop. So Evelyn stands up, lifting the dress and holding it up to her chin. “What do you think?”

Ada gets off the bus a couple of stops before home and walks down empty streets toward the canal. The mild sun is still hanging in the sky, and as she walks down the lichen-covered steps to the towpath, she feels a lift. She has always loved it down here, ever since she was a girl, when she used to come with her father to feed the ducks—loved the weed-and-water smell of it, the rampant scramble of green by the side of the path. She turns left, feeling the sun on her back, then tucks herself into the side to wait while a barge comes under the bridge. The bargeman lifts his cap to her. “Afternoon.”

His boat is a shock of color, painted brightly in yellow, red, and blue. His bridled, blinkered pony’s breath is sweet in the afternoon air.

She passes under the bridge and sees the gas towers ahead, half-full, their latticework etched gray against the sky. Nearing the allotments, she can smell woodsmoke. As she turns up the path that leads along the backs of the gardens, two fat wood pigeons take to the air. She passes windfall apples, crisp, browned brambles, and empty, neatly tended plots.

Soon enough, she sees him. He has his back to her, kneeling by a bed, trowel in hand. She stays just outside the gate, watching as he bends forward, worrying something out from the soil. His jacket is off; he is in his shirtsleeves, and patches of damp bloom beneath his arms. There’s a small pile of vegetables beside him on the ground. To his right, a low bonfire burns. She bends and opens the latch gate, taking a couple of steps toward him. He doesn’t turn at the sound, although she knows, from the way he stills, that he has heard her. He stands slowly, wiping down his hands, and walks over to a table, where he lays the trowel out. Only then does he turn.

“Hello.” She is the first to speak.

“Hello.” He reaches up, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Been standing there long, then?”

“I just arrived.”

He nods. “It’s not like you to come down here.”

“Well.” She holds her arms across her chest, self-conscious, dressed as she is in her mourning. She reaches up and takes the hat off, smoothing her hair. She holds the hat in front of her, looking around at the other plots. “There’s not many people about.”

He shakes his head. “No one all day. I thought I’d take advantage of it. I got a lot done. Set up for the winter now.”

She can see that the beds have been freshly raked and covered over with netting that is pegged into the ground. A large pile of cleared brambles and leaves waits to go on the fire. There’s an air of quiet calm and order to it all.

“There’s another squash just come through.” Jack points to the vegetables on the ground. “Thought we’d seen the last of them.”

The squash sits surrounded by a small, muddy pile of vegetables. A bright orange, streaked with yellow and green, it is an even deeper color than the one he brought her on Sunday. He goes to the fire and kneels down beside it, leaning in and raking the embers until they glow with heat.

She comes to stand opposite him. “Were you here, then?” she says slowly, her throat dry. “Is this where you were last night?”

He looks up at her and nods once, slowly.

Relief floods her. “Where did you sleep?”

“Shed.”

“Were you warm enough?”

“I was pissed enough.”

She laughs at that. The air between them eases a little. She steps closer to the flames, holding her hands up to warm them. “Can I put some leaves on?”

He looks up at her, surprised, and gestures yes.

She goes over to the pile of leaves, gathers an armful of their red and yellow and brown, and throws them onto the flames, which lick them, until they catch and flare briefly, beautifully, before curling and spitting in the heat. Gray smoke curls into the still air. She breathes it in.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She looks across at him. His gaze is steady, watching the leaves burn, his face warping a little in the flames. His cheeks are reddened and his eyes look swollen, as though he has been staring into the fire for a long time.

“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s me who should say that.”

“I’m not so sure.” He looks up at her now.

“I didn’t see you,” she says. “All this time. I was looking somewhere else, for something else, and I didn’t see you anymore.”

He takes this in. Takes her in. Nods, as if acknowledging the truth of it.

“You go up to town, then?” he says.

“Yes.”

“On your own?”

“With Ivy.”

He grunts. Sits back on his heels, a challenge in him. “And was it worth it?”

Was it worth it?

She doesn’t answer immediately. She thinks of the crowd. The press of so many bodies, so close together, the smell of them, of the silence, stretching: the noisy silence of grief. Of the boy, his wife, and his daughter and his blue flowers. Of turning away from him, and the feeling as she did so, as though she’d had her hand balled in a fist, held tight for years, and opened it, only to find that there was nothing inside. “Yes,” she says. “It was.”

He nods. “Well.” He pushes himself to his feet and walks over to the remaining brambles and leaves, turning with a great armful, which he throws into the fire, where they pop and crackle, their thin stalks twisting and coiling in the flames, flaring briefly high, and then fall, and the blaze is quiet once more. He picks up his jacket and pulls it on. The sun is setting over the gas tower behind him, the sky purpling with evening light.

“Jack—”

“What’s that?”

She goes to him then, and he lifts his arms to embrace her. She puts her head against him, her ear against his chest. She can hear his steady heart. She breathes him in. He smells of woodsmoke, his day’s work, and of himself.

At the station exit, Evelyn stops a young couple. “Excuse me. Do you have any idea where the Hammersmith Palais might be?”

The girl, dressed smartly in a cloche and woolen coat, stares at her as though she is touched in the head. “It’s right here,” she says. “We’re going there, too.”

They emerge to a queue that stretches fifty deep away from a building that looks like a tram shed.

“Thank you,” says Evelyn, mortified.
Bloody hell.

She doesn’t want to stand near them, not on her own, not at the back of the queue, only to have them take pity on her and try to make conversation. “I just, must—go and buy some cigarettes.”

She ducks into the little kiosk at the side of the station and buys a packet of Gold Flakes, then takes them around the side and lights one up.

What in hell’s name is she doing here? She peers back around the corner. The young couple have already disappeared from view. People are streaming from the station to join the queue, which has lengthened until it is stretching down the block toward her, but it appears to be moving quickly at least, and it seems no one at the top is being turned away. She finishes her cigarette and grinds it out under her heel, and then, almost as if she isn’t really doing it at all, Evelyn walks a couple of paces to join the line in the back.

They are young, most of them, horribly young.

She fingers her collar, aware of the red dress under her coat.

She has lost too much weight—it no longer fits. She wishes she weren’t wearing it, wishes she had never put it on. The color is all wrong: too
red.
Whoever thought of wearing red? And it will gape. She knows this with a sinking certainty. She has no bust anymore and the dress will gape.

She wants to go home.

Is she early or late? She cannot tell. Will Robin be inside waiting for her? She cannot see him out here. Will he see her first? Or will she have to stand there, looking for him, trying to find him among this crowd? How in the hell are these things done? They should have arranged a place to meet, at least. Suddenly she’s not even sure she can remember what he looks like, and everyone in this chattering, excitable queue seems so young, and this is why, this is
exactly
why, she doesn’t come out: because places like these are for the young, for those who have yet to understand that pleasure is not their right.

Hettie can hear the chatter of the crowd massed outside as she files into the Pen and takes her place as Grayson stalks the line.

There’s a strange feeling about tonight—something bubbling under the surface. It’s in everyone: in the boys, sitting opposite them, in Grayson, as his eyes sweep up and down, in the barely contained excitement of the girls.

The Palais is looking its best. The cleaners have polished the floor to a deep shine, the glass panels are gleaming, and the dust has been dusted from the Chinese lamps. The doors at the back of the stage open, and the band files out. A ripple runs through the Pen as the musicians lift their instruments and start warming up. Hettie and Di and everyone else sit a little higher in their seats.

The trumpeter does a little solo, a little scale, ending in a trill. There’s a confidence in the band, a swagger tonight. Still, Hettie’s not sure she wants to hear jazz. She’d like some music to match her mood, this sweet-jagged melancholy mood that she’s had all day. This mood that, walking here, felt like carrying some precious liquid: something newly distilled that she didn’t want to spill, that was reflected back to her in the faces of the people she passed, in the last of the day’s unexpected sun.

The doors open and the punters flood the floor. Part of her recoils. She doesn’t want this delicate feeling trampled on, not just yet.

But the floor is already packed. Though the band has not yet started, some people are dancing, and small eddies of movement show where people are doing their own little rags. Hettie’s eyes light on a tall, fair man, wearing evening dress, standing alone. His eyes scan the crowd, looking for someone. Then, as if he has felt her staring, the man turns his head her way. When she looks again he is crossing the floor toward the Pen. An elbow digs her in her ribs. “There you go, Het,” says Di beside her. “Now you’re away.”

The man is heading straight for her. A slight hesitancy interrupts his stride, a small roll, as though he has one leg longer than the other.

False leg.

The man comes to a halt just in front of where she sits.

“Hello,” he says. He has an open face. A friendly smile. He reaches out and touches the metal gate with a finger, seeming to test it for strength. “Bit barbaric, this, isn’t it?” He gives it a little rattle. “Why do they need to keep you locked up, then? Are you dangerous?”

She raises the ghost of a smile. She has heard the jokes already—heard them all.

“Do they ever let you out?”

“Sixpence,” she says, pointing to the booth. “Over there.”

“So I can release you for sixpence? That’s cheap at the price.”

The man turns, but then, as though something has just occurred to him, he turns back, hands in his pockets, a quizzical look on his face. “That is,” he says, “if I may?”

Is he laughing at her? She cannot tell. “Of course,” she says. “That’s my job.”

As he goes away from her, she sees again the slight pause, the tiny hesitancy in his stride that gives him away. He hides it well, she thinks, that leg; if you didn’t know how to look you might not be able to tell.

“He’s nice,” says Di, leaning in. “How’d you manage to score that?”

Hettie shrugs. She can tell Di’s trying to be nice. She’s been nice to her ever since Hettie arrived earlier and just shook her head when Di asked her how it had gone Tuesday night. She hadn’t pressed it, either, when Hettie had to explain that she hadn’t brought the dress with her—that she’d gone down to the Broadway for the silence instead.

Di frowns now, putting her hand on Hettie’s arm. “Are you sure you’re all right, Het? You’re ever so quiet tonight.”

“I’m fine.”

The fair-haired man is back in a minute with his docket. “There we go.” He holds it out to her. “They say I’ve to give this to you.”

Hettie takes it from him, puts it into her pouch, and lets herself out of the little gate. They stand, facing each other, he with his hands in his pockets, she with her arms behind her back. He makes no move toward her. They stand this way for a long moment, until she grows hot and cross. “Don’t you
want
to dance?” she says eventually.

“Dance?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Is
that
what you do? You just looked so forlorn, sitting there, that I thought I ought to set you free.”

She glares at him.

“Sorry,” he says, smiling. “Only joking.” He takes his hands out of his pockets. “What’s the next dance, then?”

“It’s always a waltz. First and last.”

Behind the man, she can see that the band has finished tuning up. The performers are straightening their ties, adjusting their music, and sitting forward in their seats. The conductor comes out from the wings to cheers and scattered applause.

“First and last,” says the man, nodding, as if this is important, somehow, to note. “And how long are you free for?”

“Just one dance.”

“And then what happens? Do you turn into a pumpkin? Or do I?”

“Then I go back in there.” Hettie points to the Pen, where Di has been hired now, too, and where just three girls are left.

“Ah.” He makes a small grimace. “I see.”

All around them, couples are taking their places on the floor, and the raucous hubbub is dying, giving way to something else—an excited, expectant hush.

“Well, then,” says the man, opening his arms. “I suppose I’d better make this count.”

She lifts her arms and their palms touch, very lightly. His right arm circles her waist. “I hear the band is very good,” he says.

She wonders how he will manage, dancing, with that leg.

The conductor lifts his baton, and the music begins. The band plays a low, pulsing beat. It is not an ordinary waltz. It is slower than usual and sounds mournful, a little strange. All around them there’s the swish of cloth and the sound of feet on wood as couples start to move.