Wake: A Novel (4 page)

“Look out of the window, Charlie,” says the woman in a high, strangled voice. “Can’t you see the sheep?”

“No,”
says Charlie, wriggling and squirming on the woman’s lap.
“Look.”
He appeals to the man next to him. “Lady’s got no
finger.
” He is leaning forward now, the line of drool almost touching his mother’s skirts.

Evelyn looks down at her hand. She has indeed got no finger. Or half a finger. Her left index finger ends in a smooth rounded stump just after the knuckle.

“Good gracious, Charlie,” she says, looking across at him. “Do you know what? You’re quite right.” She waggles her stump in his direction. “Did you eat it while I was asleep?”

Charlie jumps back. The rest of the carriage takes a sharp breath, and then, as if in a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, everyone freezes their gaze straight ahead.

“You can touch it if you like,” says Evelyn, leaning toward the little boy.

“Can I?” the boy whispers, reaching out.

“No!” manages his purple-faced mother, yanking Charlie back.
“Absolutely not.”

“Well,” says Evelyn with a shrug. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Charlie slumps back onto his mother’s lap. His eyes flicker from the stump to Evelyn’s face and back again.

“And where are you going to, Charlie?” says Evelyn.

“Oxford,” says Charlie, punch-drunk.

“Perfect. Me, too. You can wake me up when we arrive.”

At Oxford, Evelyn waves good-bye to Charlie, changes trains, and takes the branch line that leads out to the village. She still half-expects to see her brother, emerging sleepily from farther up the train, but she is the only person to alight on the tiny platform. The small ticket window is shuttered up; a few straggling remnants of geraniums survive in the hanging baskets, the brittle skeletons of foxgloves in the beds. She walks out over the crossroads, where the butcher’s and the post office face each other with blank-eyed Sunday expressions, and passes the low, five-housed terrace that leads to the green.

There was a boy who lived here, Thomas Lightfoot, the son of one of the men who worked for her parents; her brother played with him sometimes when they were children. She always liked his name. He was the first person she knew to die. She remembers her brother telling her, one sunny afternoon in London, in the spring of 1915. He had a wife and a child and he lived and died and all before he was twenty-three. She looks into Thomas’s house as she passes now, sees a young woman through the window, back turned, scrubbing at something in the sink.

Evelyn walks on, her feet the only sound on the road, leaving the village behind, until she is passing open fields, where scattered crows pick at the stumps of the crop. The sun is out. She shuts her eyes against it, letting the light dance orange on her lids, and takes a lungful of pure air: glad, despite herself, to be out of London. Ahead of her, the low stone wall that marks the boundary of her parents’ land comes into view; behind it are clusters of high firs, their branches dark against the bright sky.

She takes the road that leads behind the house, so she can approach without being seen. Opening the gate in the wall, she enters and stands on the lawn. In front of her is the house, seen from the side, its Cotswold stone deep golden in the sun. As she stands there, a black-clad maid comes running out of a side entrance and scoots around a tree trunk to where she is lost from view. Soon a small cloud of smoke rises into the air. Evelyn smiles:
Good for her.

She sets off across the lawn, heading for the back of the house. The grass is surprisingly tall for November, and by the time she reaches the steps her shoes are soaked. She pushes the door open with her hip and swears under her breath as she reaches to unbuckle her shoes. They are suede, thinly strapped—the only vaguely ladylike pair she owns and a rare concession to her mother’s tastes—but they are too wet, now, to wear. She kicks them off and takes them to the cupboard by the back door, where a familiar smell greets her: damp and cobwebs and the close winter-rubber smell of stored galoshes. She chucks her shoes in between the umbrella stand and an old tennis racket, considers for a moment the merits of wearing galoshes to lunch, thinks better of it, then pads in damp stockings on cold flags down the corridor past the kitchen. A quick glance through the interior window tells her that they are buzzing: a platoon of servants scurrying to and fro.

When she reaches the end of the corridor she stops, puts her hand to the wall.

Once she turns the corner, she will be in the main hall, at the end of which is the front door, and behind the front door is where Fraser stands in her dream. And she knows it is stupid, but still…

She closes her eyes, letting the feeling of his nearness fill her, fill her chest, her arms, the air before her face, until—

“Evelyn.”

She snaps open her eyes.

“
What
are you doing?” Her mother, trussed in cream and gold, rears before her. “
Where
are your shoes?”

“I”—Evelyn looks down at her stockings, clinging wetly to her toes—“I came in around the back. They’re in the cupboard,” she adds. “Under the stairs.”

Her mother makes that noise: that special, back-of-the-throat click.

“Well, it won’t do. And neither will that blouse. You look like a shopgirl. Is this your latest pose?”

“I—”

“Your
cousin
is here.” Her mother leans forward, hissing. “And your old dresses are upstairs. Now
go at once and change.
” She steps back, narrowing her eyes. “Where is your brother?”

“I—don’t know. We were supposed to come together but then—”

“But what?”

“But then he wasn’t there.”

“He wasn’t there? Well,
where
is he, then
?”

Evelyn shrugs, defeated. “I’m sorry, Mother. I really don’t know.”

Her mother pulls herself up to her full height—she is magnificent, really, even Evelyn has to admit—and steers her great Edwardian bosom into the wind.

Evelyn grits her teeth. Occasionally, just occasionally, she can muster the strength to pick her battles. “Mother?”

Her mother turns back toward her.

“Happy birthday.”

Her mother nods once, swiftly, as though acknowledging something painful but necessary, like the removal of a tooth, then pushes open the door to the kitchen. As the door swings shut, the hubbub within dies. Her voice barks out an order—something about fish.

Evelyn turns back again and closes her eyes. But it is useless. The feeling has gone. She walks around the corner. The front door is there, ten feet of impassive wood, but behind its panels: nothing. No one is waiting for her on the other side. There is nothing but the brightness of the day and the dancing patterns made by the sun as it hits the bubbled glass.

Jack pushes his breakfast plate away and stands, then, “I forgot this yesterday,” he says, taking a squash from the bottom of his haversack. “It’s a good-looking one, I think.” He puts it in the middle of the table and shoulders his empty bag. “Right, then. See you tonight.” He stays there a moment, as though there is something more he wanted to say.

Twenty-five years.

Ada stays seated. His wide-shouldered bulk fills her view. He is wearing his old Sunday clothes, allotment clothes, softened and worn with use. She can still see the young man in his silhouette. Just.

“Yes,” she says. “See you tonight.”

He nods, goes, the back door shuts behind him and his footsteps disappear down the path.

Twenty-five years tomorrow. Twenty-five years since they went into the round chapel and said their vows. The day was as warm as springtime as she walked the uneven stone path to the door. Then, in the cool darkness within, she gasped, as though she had been plunged into water. She could hardly breathe, she was laced in so tight. For a moment she had the sense she was alone, until she saw the shape of him, standing next to the minister at the top of the aisle. Slowly, she could make out their guests, too, scattered in the rows on either side. She set her course for Jack and tried to walk straight.

“All right, there.” He took her hand in his and winked. “Here goes nothing, then.”

The morning kitchen is dim, but the squash he left her is a bright orange-yellow color, its skin seeming to pulse with the memory of sun. It will be one of the last pickings before winter attacks the allotment with frost. It fairly hums with life.

She picks up the breakfast plates, puts them in the sink, and goes outside, filling the kettle from the pump in the yard, then coming in and putting it on the range to boil.

From the back window she can see the fences and gardens of seven houses. She knows the names of all the mothers in this street and the next, all the children, all the men, alive and dead. She has lived in this house for twenty-five years. Jack even carried her over the threshold, the neighbors gathered, laughing, delighted at the unexpected show.

When the kettle is whistling she pours half the water into the washing-up bowl and the rest into the teapot, then scrubs the congealed remains of breakfast from the plates. She’ll use the squash tomorrow. A dinner to celebrate. Stew and dumplings. Buy some good meat to go in it. It pleases her, this plan.

When the plates are dried and stacked, she goes to move the squash from the middle of the table and put it in the pantry, and a sound comes from the front: a scuffling almost, as though an animal has come to the door. At first she thinks it must be Jack, come back for something he’s forgotten. But he’d never come to the front. A neighbor, then? Ivy? But she wouldn’t come to the front, either, not on a Sunday. Not on any day.

There’s a knock, and Ada jumps, moving quickly, taking off her apron, smoothing her skirts, and then going to open the door.

“Yes?”

A young man stands on the step. Thin sandy hair, pale eyes, an attempt at a mustache struggling over his top lip. Where his fresh-shaved skin has met the morning air his face is raw. He looks surprised, as if it were she disturbing his peace, rather than the other way around. He takes off his hat, holding it close to his chest. “Morning, missus.”

“Good morning.”

His eyes flicker over her face and shoulder to the hall beyond. He clears his throat. “Do you live here, missus?”

“Yes.”

“Then—w-would it be possible to trouble you for a minute?” He seems relieved when the words are out. What can he want? Then she sees the heavy bag at his feet. They are everywhere now, boys with bags like these: on every street corner, peddling everything from matches to bootlaces. Or begging. Knocking and asking for cast-off jackets or shoes.

“We don’t need anything.”

The boy stares. “Pardon, missus?”

“We don’t need anything,” she says, moving to close the door.

He steps forward, and there’s panic in him. “Can I come in? Just for a minute? Please?” His voice is wheedling. He moves slightly, revealing his left arm beneath his jacket. She catches sight of the yellowed edge of a sling. She stays where she is; the door open a crack, the boy shifting his weight from foot to foot. Then something in her softens, and she steps back, opening the door a touch wider, letting the young man slide round.

The two of them are standing close. She can smell him, sour beneath the clean hard smell of the outside air. There are white flakes scattered over the shoulders of his jacket. They stand there for a couple of awkward seconds. She doesn’t want to take him into the parlor, but one of them needs to move.

“In here, then.”

He follows her into the kitchen. At the sink she turns to face him, arms across her chest. The boy hesitates at the door, seeming to wait for permission, and when she inclines her head slightly, he comes into the room in a series of odd, lurching movements. When he reaches the table he holds on to the back of the chair.

“Nice place you got here.” He is out of breath, as though the small effort has exhausted him. “Nice and quiet.” He stares at her as though he is expecting her to make whatever move has to be made.

“You’d better show me what you have,” she says eventually.

“Sorry?”

“In your bag?”

“Oh, right.” And he bends, lifting brown paper packages onto the table, each movement with a similar careful intensity, as if he cannot rely on his body to carry out the small commands he gives it. He reminds her of her son, when he was small: the jerky unpredictability of his limbs.

Shell shock.

One of those.

She looks at the well-thumbed packages in his grubby hands and knows that there will be nothing but cheap rubbish inside. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t need anything after all.”

He looks up at her, pale face tight, and nods briefly, as though acknowledging the futility of their exchange.

She waits for him to gather his things, but he makes no move to do so. Instead, he carries on, his voice rising a couple of desperate notches. “Dishcloths?” He opens one of the paper parcels to reveal a pile of loose-woven sandy cloths. “Everyone needs those.”

“I’m fine for dishcloths, thanks.”

“What about a tea towel?” He leans toward his bag.

The bag is large. They could be here all morning. “How much are the dishcloths, then?”

He jerks back up. “Dishcloths?” He looks surprised. “They’re—tuppence. Tuppence for five.”

“I’ll take them. Five. That’ll do. I’ll just get my purse.” She goes toward it but then realizes she is trapped—cannot get to her money without showing him where her purse is kept.

“Would it be all right if I had a smoke?” he says; that wheedling voice again. “Just a quick one? I’m fairly done up with the cold.” He moves quickly, before she can say no, taking out a packet with his good arm, shaking a cigarette into his mouth, and reaching into his pocket for a light. “Like one?” He holds them out toward her.

“No, thank you.”

He nods and puts the pack on the table. “Can I sit down?”

Something strange is hovering in the air between them, something beyond the brazenness of this boy. Ada feels a thin sense of dread. But she nods, slowly, and he pulls out a chair.