While England Sleeps (18 page)

“Now, Sarah,” Lil said, “what do you say?”

Sarah mumbled something inaudible.

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Very pleased you could come to supper,” Sarah enunciated through clenched teeth.

Suddenly her nervous knife slipped; she scraped her knuckle and began sucking on it furiously.

A pale pink bloodstain spread out over the potato she had been peeling.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.

“It’s nothing,” she murmured, looking me in the eye for the first time and, knuckle in mouth, smiling.

Lucy traipsed in. Her hair was longer than the last time I’d seen her. Once again she had on her face that look of aloof disinterest that appeared to be her trademark.

“Edward!” she said in mock surprise. “To what do we owe the honor of a visit from the likes of you?”

“Just missed Mum’s cooking,” Edward said quietly.

“Missed Mum’s cooking! That’s a laugh!”

“I’ll thank you not to bite the hand that feeds you,” Lil said.

“Oh, Mum, I’m just joking.” She turned to me. “Hello, Brian. Been out much lately?”

“A bit.”

“How’s that lovely girlfriend of yours.”

Edward shot me a glance.

“Girlfriend? I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Yes you do. What was her name—Lulu?”

“Oh, Louise,” I said with relief. “She’s gone back to Paris.”

“What a pity! I’ll be arriving in Paris next week.” She lit a cigarette.

“It’s true,” Lil said from the stove. “My little linnet is flying the nest. Soon it’ll just be Sarah and me left here to guard the old house, ain’t that right, Sarah?”

Sarah said nothing.

“And what will you be doing in Paris?” I asked.

“I shall be an artist’s model,” Lucy said. “Paulette is taking up sculpture.”

“Imagine!” Lil said. “I’m jealous, I am. It’s not every girl what gets to go to Paris and be an artist’s model. And this marquise—well, I thought, who does she think she is, stealing my little girl just because she never had one of her own? But then I met Paulette—imagine that, she wanted me to call her by her Christian name—and she couldn’t have been more polite. Not like those earls and dukes and what have you here in England, who won’t so much as give you the time of day if you’ve got the wrong accent. The marquise—Paulette—treated me like her oldest friend. It put my heart at ease, let me tell you.”

“How are the children?” I asked.

“Not here anymore, thank God,” Lucy said.

“Lucy!” Lil said. “The way you talk about your own niece and nephew! In fact, Brian, they’re back with their mother, and it’s very considerate of you to ask. And they seem fine over there in Walthamstow. Children want to be with their mother, even if she’s an unreliable one like that Nellie. Imagine, running off when you’ve got two little angels like those!”

“But I thought her grandmother was sick.”

“Don’t believe it! She had a fellow there, that was the truth of it. He must have caught on to her, too, because quick as a flash she was back, just the way she left.”

“And not a moment too soon,” Lucy said.

“Bite your tongue, missy! I’m tired of your attitude, I am. You should be grateful to have them, your brother’s only babies. They’re all he’s left us, after all.”

Suddenly Lil stopped cooking; tears welled in her eyes. “Now, Mum,” Edward said. He put his hands on her shoulders to comfort her.

“I’m sorry,” Lil said. “It’s been two years, but the wound’s as fresh as the day I heard the news. I doubt I shall ever get over it.”

For a moment, everyone was silent in honor of mothers who have lost their sons. Even Sarah stopped peeling.

“Have you got a picture of Frank?” I asked, once it seemed decent to do so.

Immediately Lil brightened. “Why, yes, lots. I’ll go and get them.” Taking off her apron, she bustled into the dining room.

“Now you’ve done it,” Lucy said. “We’ll be looking at pictures all night.”

Edward laughed—it seemed as if it were the first time in years—and then Lil came back with picture albums that she spread out on the table. We looked at Frank as a baby, held in the arms of his father. Frank throwing a ball. Frank and Nellie at a dance. Then all four of the children as children, gathered nervously around a small, ratlike terrier. The little girls on horseback. The entire family posed formally in their Sunday best, staring at the camera with that particular gravity—almost terror—that seems so typical to photographic portraits of the working class: as if, by the mere fact of sitting before this imposing shutter-eyed machine and recording their existence, they feared they were “putting on airs.”

A quiet descended, the hush of a roomful of beings suddenly lost in collective memory, familial memory. Things fleeting, and gone. Children grown, brothers dead. “That was the year the dog got hit by a milk truck—remember, Sarah? I’ll never forget the poor little thing waddling around, up to its neck in snow.” A chorus of “Yes, ah, yes.” Clear as morning. Close as you’re standing. As if it were yesterday.

Edward was smiling. He had his hand on his sister’s shoulder, and he was smiling. And I knew that for the first time in days, perhaps even in weeks, he was thinking not about me but of other, older things, here in his family’s house, this house he’d been raised in, this house with its cache of experience that dwarfed my brief tenure in his life. This house where everyone loved him and would gladly say what I, in Earl’s Court, would not.

We went in to dinner. I was seated between Sarah, who ate methodically and would not look up from her plate, and Lucy, who smoked cigarette after cigarette, complained about the meat, swirled her potatoes around with her fork. There was both wine and beer. It seemed that every time I emptied my glass it was refilled before I had a chance to ask. The extent to which I was enjoying myself surprised me—I hadn’t expected to. It was as if, after weeks of self-imposed misery, Edward and I were being given a holiday, a chance to forget our troubles, to talk of other, incidental things and feel at home. From reluctance and poutiness Edward’s hardy, happy, optimistic old self reemerged, the way a desiccated flower, given water, comes back to life; his first hesitant bites gave way to faithful appetite. Such bashful hopefulness in his green eyes that I couldn’t help but wonder if he and his family had conspired in planning this evening, to remind me of everything I stood to lose along with him.

And of course, by the time the dinner was over, it was too late—and we were both too drunk—to catch the last train back to Earl’s Court. I protested; I had to be in Oxfordshire in the morning. “Never mind,” Edward said. “We’ll get up early and I’ll take you to the station.” It seemed I had no choice.

Once again, we put away the dining room furniture; once again, Edward dragged out the narrow cot. The women bid us good night. When I kissed Sarah on the cheek she smiled and blushed bright crimson.

And then the door closed. We undressed tenuously, as if, in the absence of those cheer-inspiring women, in the wearing away of the liquor, the old misery might return at any moment, might fall like a sheet, muffling and silencing and separating. But it did not.

Cautiously we got into the narrow bed. There was not enough room not to touch. It had been a week since we’d last made love. Instinctively we reached for each other, we kissed, groped, burrowed inside each other’s pajamas, our hands laying claim to whatever flesh they could find.

Later, I held Edward while he slept—peacefully again, the way he used to—and stared at the odd bits of furniture silhouetted in the moonlight: the crib from which that silvery-eyed child had gazed at me; the sideboard with its smell of mutton; the little cabinet where Lil kept her photograph albums. I thought how nice it was to see Edward sleeping again. I thought that I could love this family more than my own, given half a chance. And yet it seemed beyond question that the next morning we would wake up very early, that I would catch that train to Oxford, that I would leave him.

It started to rain: just a few drops at first, then a downpour, sheets heavy enough to bend and break the fragile young stems in the window boxes. Spring in London often brought cruel surprises: a last late frost that would kill them all. But of course it wasn’t spring. The window boxes were empty.

Still, I took comfort in the rain and held Edward tightly as it beat its old drums around us.

The bells on the alarm clock went off at six, boring into our sleep. Edward’s body spasmed. Even though I knew he’d woken up, he pretended he hadn’t; he kept his arms clutched tightly around my chest so that I had to push and wriggle, until reluctantly he relinquished his embrace.

I staggered out of bed and peered through the curtains. It was still raining; the sky was the color of cold porridge. Anyone who would willingly drag himself out of a warm, sticky bed and a warm pair of arms on such a grim morning as this had to be mad, which I suppose I was.

I sat on a chair, pulled on my socks, stood, felt suddenly and acutely dizzy and had to sit back down.

“Are you all right?” Edward asked. (He had stopped pretending to be asleep.) I nodded and stood again, this time successfully.

I pulled on my drawers and trousers. Edward got out of bed and started to dress as well.

“You know you don’t have to go with me,” I said. “Really, I’ll be fine on my own. You can stay here and get a few more hours’ sleep.”

“Don’t be silly,” Edward said. “I told you I’d see you off at the station, and I’m going to.”

“But really, it’s not necessary.”

“What, don’t you want me to?”

“Yes, of course—”

Edward turned away. “I don’t think you do. I think you’d rather go alone, in case one of the other guests at your smart weekend party sees you at the station.”

“Edward, please. I just don’t want you to have to go to the bother—”

“It’s no bother.”

“All right, then. Fine.”

And I strode into the kitchen. There was Lil, in her dressing gown, making tea. “Hello, lovey,” she said sunnily. “Did you have a good sleep, then?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“A bit headachy, ain’t you? Never mind. A little tea will do the trick.”

She handed me the steaming cup. How fresh she smelled! Amazing, considering the indecent hour and the cold.

“Are you always such an early bird?” I asked.

“I’ve never needed much sleep. A blessing, I suppose. More time to live. Good morning, Edward.”

“Good morning.”

Lil handed him his tea, which he took without a word. She raised her eyebrows.

For a few moments the three of us just sat there, silently sipping. Even for Lil it was perhaps too early to say much. And Edward seemed peeved.

Finally I announced I had better go if I was going to get to Paddington in time to catch my train.

We bade Lil goodbye and walked to the underground. On the train, sad-looking East End girls sat all around us, barmaids on their way to Knightsbridge to look at things they could never afford to buy. Those who expected nothing, I was learning, could be content to breathe in the steam that rises off the accoutrements of other people’s wealth. They all got off at South Ken to switch to the Piccadilly.

Rain was still plunging when we got back to the flat, where I pulled a few clothes and books into a suitcase. We would have to hurry, I realized, if I was going to make the train I’d told Philippa I’d be arriving on. Of course I would rather have made the trip to the station alone, but after the morning’s scene I didn’t dare ask Edward
not
to accompany me. So once I had my things collected we got back on the tube and rode to Paddington.

And then, at the station, I had a vivid premonition that this would be the last time we would see each other in a very long time.

I looked at Edward. As I recall, I felt the need to take him in, fix him in memory. He had on a black-and-red-striped waistcoat, a wrinkled blue shirt misbuttoned by one button, my red-and-yellow school tie. His leather satchel kept slipping off his shoulder, so that he kept having to hike it up. He hadn’t combed his hair.

“And what will you do with yourself this weekend?” I asked him.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Read. Potter about.”

I looked at the ground; the lace on one of his black work shoes was undone. And very spontaneously I got on my knees and did it up. There I was, on my knees at Paddington station, staring up at Edward’s foreshortened figure, his befuddled face, while I laced his shoe.

A voice over the loudspeaker announced that the nine forty-five to Oxford would be leaving from platform number six.

I stood. “Well, that’s my train,” I said. “I’d better run.”

“Goodbye,” Edward said.

“Goodbye.”

I patted him on the shoulder, turned around and headed for platform number six. Some impulse, however—perhaps, again, that premonition of finality—turned me back. Edward got bigger and bigger, more and more surprised-looking, as I strode toward him; when I got there, I kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t say anything, nor did I hear any particular reaction from the crowd, though I noticed an old lady putting on her spectacles and peering at us as if we were fornicating monkeys at a zoo. “Goodbye,” I said again, and left.