Love Fifteen (13 page)

But this evening they were playing a military hospital in a large pre-war barracks. Convalescent soldiers in Reckitts blue uniforms sat in ranks of chairs along the aisle between beds in which more serious cases lay in pyjamas.

Rose was fifth on the variety bill.

“Oh ma babbie,” she sang, “ma curly-headed babbie,

Yo' daddy's in de cotton-field a-wo'king for de co-oo—oo-oo-oo-oon.”

Theo watched from beyond double-doors in the end wall, beside the Sister's room. His mum stood under a couple of overhead lights; the rest had been turned off to create a feeble penumbra but enough was reflected to show the bed-patients' shaven heads. Some blankets were held up by frames to relieve the weight on hidden wounds.

In the front rows of walking patients sat one or two medical officers and female nurses, listening politely, like the rest. A snort of laughter from a bed was suppressed as an NCO's head shot round. Poor sods, he realised, they thought this was as funny as he did. Though he'd have been upset to hear Rose openly mocked, surely these poor wretches had already paid their dues and had enough to suffer without this woman twice their age singing in darkie language to the din of an untuned upright. He was on next and felt this could be the right time to try a new routine he'd been rehearsing in private, based on material worked out with Inky.

She finished quietly, tenderly, her plump bare arms embracing the imaginary baby, head on one side, while the pianist struck his closing chords.

“Thank you so very much, goodnight and God bless you.”

She bowed at the round of applause, carefully judged by the audience to be the courteous minimum, without seeming to invite another encore, or – as Rose usually put it – ‘request'. As soon as she reached the doors of the ward behind which the other performers waited, the clapping died. As they closed behind her, the compère began a joke about servicewomen.

“Went well, Mum,” Theo told her.

“Oh, they're very good, bless their hearts. It's nights like this you feel you're really doing your bit. You on next? Good luck then.”

“So it's up with the lark,” said the comic, “and to bed with a Wren.”

When the laugh died away, he went on:

“And now will you welcome our boy impressionist, the voice of them all, young Teddy Martin!”

Theo had adopted Rose's maiden name for his entertaining. As the pianist struck up Deutschland Uber Alles, he kicked open the doors with the first goose-step, holding up one arm in the Nazi salute. He strode on to laughter, cheers and boos.

“Ach himmel, donner und blitzen, sprechen sie deutsch und wiener schnitzel,” he bawled, strutting about, “Hindenburger, Brandenburger, Edinburger, Hamburger…”

While they laughed at that, he turned his back on them, tore off the moustache and put a monocle into one eye before turning back.

“Charmany calling, Charmany calling…”

More laughter and applause.

“What,” he drawled as Lord Haw-Haw, “are your rulers doing? Winston Churchill? The King? Ask them. What have they got to say for themselves? From a European point of view one can't help wondering.”

He turned, took off the monocle, put on a gilded paper crown and turned to face them again. He had the cigar in his pocket all ready for his Winnie speech, which always brought the house down. They only wanted a cue to cheer and stamp their boots. Tonight the response was subdued as even the walking wounded only wore soft slippers. But first he was interpolating his new routine. Saluting like an English officer, he began : “Today, in these ppperilous ah-days, when so many of my subjects are ah-fffar away, I say to you now, though it may take ah-sssome ah-time…”

No laughter yet. Hadn't they recognised him?

“F-f-f –”

He stamped one foot to unlock the stammer.

“ – fffar fffflung you may be, ah-bbbrowned awff perhaps, but the Queen and I are with you in sah-spirit. She set an example by only taking fah-five inches…”

He paused and waited.

“… in the ah-b-bath… though, of course, we of the ah-rah-royal fffamily do it every day whereas I'm ahm-informed many of my sah-subjects only do it once a week.”

“Shame!” said an officer's voice from one of the front rows of chairs. He began a slow handclap that was taken up by others.

There were shouts of ‘Get off!', booing and hissing and a sound of slippered feet being drummed on floorboards. The compère cued the pianist, who went into his play-off from ‘Rule, Britannia'. Theo was glad to be able to blunder through the doors as the booing died. The compère ran on.

“Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. He's only a lad…”

“Should be ashamed of himself!” said the same voice.

“Yessir. Little brainstorm. Won't happen again. No offence intended to His Majesty. And now, to raise your temperature and improve your circulation – will you please welcome back the lovely Trixie!”

The peroxide-blonde tap-dancer from Knowle West, bare midriff, satin bolero and shorts, clattered forward on tap-shoes, greeted by an appreciative roar.

Some minutes later, Vince found Theo in the ward's lavatories. By now he'd controlled his outburst of violent sobbing and wiped away the tears.

“Take no notice, son. Care for a Capstan?”

They lit up.

“A lot of them were on your side but too scared to laugh. I was out there among them so I saw. I thought it was funny. You got his stutter dead right. Why shouldn't we have a laugh at him too if we can take off Churchill?”

“I thought they were ready for something different.”

“As I say, some were. Only when that officer started the clap they had to follow. About all they
could
give you, this lot.”

“What?”

“The clap.”

“What d'you mean?”

“Did you think they were wounded on active service? War heroes? So did I. Then one of them told me this is a V.D. ward. Yeah, they've all picked up a dose of syph. Or clap, if they're lucky.”

“What's clap?”

“Gonorrhoea. Now that
is
a funny thing, don't you think?”

He did, and was caught for some time between an urge to go on crying and irresistible laughter.

He was back to see the end of Trixie's act as she went down in the splits while the pianist gave a roll in the bass. From beds and chairs came groans of vainglorious lechery, as though all set on to showing that their warning doses hadn't scared them off. Watching them reminded him to count his blessings for having fallen on his feet, chief of which was a beautiful, experienced, intelligent, and barren lover. What did
they
have?

The compere-comic was top of the bill and Theo usually went on for the finale to bow with the other members of the troupe.

“No, son, best not go on for your call tonight. Don't want them booing again, do we?”

So, when they all lined up behind Rose, linking hands to sing

So goodbye to times of sorrow

And when every little thing seems gray

Just forget your troubles and learn to say

Tomorrow is a lovely day,

he was in hiding behind the ward's double-doors, longing to be out there sharing the warm bath of sentiment. They may not even have joined the war yet but Americans obviously ruled the world because they knew how to write songs for us all, to find the right words not just for a few toffs in London but the whole English-speaking world.

They sang it all through once and Rose reprised the chorus, first saying ‘All together now' then rapidly prompting them in the gaps

‘“Come-and-feast-your-tear-dimm'd-eyes”‘

and the whole audience sang the line and again Rose rattled off:

‘“On-tomorrow's-clear-blue-skies”‘,

and Theo didn't need to see the stage to know when the others stepped forward to join her and all the voices, the casualties too, were raised in jubilant hope. The troupe would be holding their hands high in a final wave and the women blowing kisses as the piano rolled and modulated into the national anthem. The compère brought his heels together, those who could stand did so, the others lay to attention in their beds and everyone sang the gloomy dirge that caused a rush for last buses in every cinema in the land.

*

At the same moment in a masonic lodge, Fred stood blindfold while a guard held a dagger to his breast and asked questions of the Tyler. When Fred faltered, his sponsor prompted. The ritual was tommy rot but somehow intimidating. Impressive. Solemn. He had visions of his tongue being torn out and buried some way across the sand at Weston-super-Mare.

*

On Horfield Common, just above the little street where Cary Grant was born, Kay was allowing a handsome boy to kiss her breasts while an all-clear sounded and the guns ceased firing at the end of a medium-size raid. She looked at her watch and told the youth-club ping-pong champion that her parents said she must be home before they were. The bench was hard and the night cold and she wasn't sorry when he asked her if she'd be alright walking home alone as his Mum would be expecting him at their place just across the green on Golden Hill. She said “‘I haven't got much choice, have I ?'”, deciding ping-pong didn't help this boy to be much of a lover.

*

Rose waited till they were in Vince's car and driving home before she passed on the compère's message that Theo wouldn't be needed for future shows. She'd had to ask why, as she'd been enjoying a Craven A while her son parodied the king and didn't know the audience response till she was told. In the back seat, unseen, Theo's eyes were moist with anger and shame at being dismissed by the sort of Bloody Sergeants who used to stand outside The Regent. When they reached Bedminster Down, Vince paused for them to look down on the fires and flares and a couple of blazing balloons near The Centre.

“I hope Kay's looking after Mother,” Rose said and Vince gave her knee a sympathetic squeeze.

When they got home and paused outside Villa Borghese,the engine running, they exchanged a quick kiss while Theo climbed from the car. Before Fred had closed the inner door and opened the outer, Vince's motor was halfway down the avenue.

“How's Mother?” Rose asked, passing through the lobby.

“Well,” said Kay, “not too fond of them blessed Zeppelins so just gone up to bed with her glass of stout.”

Fred was in the front room with the curtains drawn back watching the last of the raid with Ride of the Valkyries blasting from the extension speaker. He'd been worried stiff, he told them, thinking of them out in some godforsaken dump.

“Where've you been till this time?”

After making a malted milk, Fred said he'd had enough of her going out so many evenings and insisted they drop this stunt.

“Stunt? That's nice. You don't know unless you see the poor dears, does he, Theo? I could hardly sing the finale tonight at the sight of them in their beds, all bandaged up but so brave. Then I knew how true Winnie's words were that never in the field of… what is it, Fred? –”

“Human conflict.”

“Yes.”

She now reported Theo's dismissal, the way they'd agreed together on the drive home that, to please his father, he'd resigned voluntarily, so as to give more time to his school work. This went some way to calming the old boy but he now saw even less reason for Rose to go on risking life and limb.

“I want to do my bit. I'm surprised you don't. Some of these boys have come halfway across the world to be at the front.”

“This isn't the Great War, Rose. You're as bad as Tilda. Apart from North Africa,
this
is the only front. The
home
front.”

She deflected him by asking how things had gone at the temple. Fred told them he was now an entered apprentice of the first degree and showed them all how to do the secret handshake.

*

On Hazel's next free afternoon and his sports day they went to a matinée at the Embassy and he told her about the evening at the military hospital.

“So,” she said, “what price freedom now? The priceless privilege of free speech? Say what you like as long as it's not against the king or Churchill or God.”

“D'you reckon the Russians can say what they like about Stalin? You know, make fun of him?”

She gave him a mystified stare.” Why would they want to?”

“Yeah… course.”

This talk of free speech and openness led him to ask her again if she'd written to Geoff about their affair. She told him she was waiting for the right moment, when her husband was able to give it his full attention. Just now he was busy teaching soldiers what they should demand from their rulers as the price of victory. Theo asked if it wasn't safe now for him to start calling at Charlotte Street again.

“Still too risky,” she said.” People in general are in a moralistic mood. It's patriotism, togetherness. Think, if that much fuss could be caused by a joke about the king's stammer, what could happen if some nosy neighbour dropped a word to the education authority or your headmaster.”

In the dark cinema, his hand on her thigh, he said: “Then we must find some other way to meet.”

Weeks later, on a bright Sunday evening when they assumed they'd negotiated the weekend without Fred seeing his latest report card, Mother, Daughter, Son and even Grandma were playing Monopoly on the dining-table in the bay-window when Father flung open the door and stamped in to find Rose and Kay singing along with Hutch and ‘This is a lovely way to spend an evening'.

‘I'd like to save all my nights and spend them with you' they crooned before Fred turned it off.

“We're listening to that,” Rose said, “if you don't mind.”

“You've evidently all seen this card? Titchcock's report? All but Muggins here. Twenty-eighth out of thirty! And here's Kay with a scholarship to Redland, costs not a bean and always top.”

“We can't all be as clever as Kay,” Rose argued, as Theo moved his top hat round the board.

“Rent!” Kay said, “Park Lane with one house. A hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

“Not fair!”

“Dad – where
is
Park Lane?” Kay asked.” You come from London. You must know.”

“Many moons ago perhaps, before I lived in Kent. So don't ask me. I knew Whitechapel Road, Mile End and all round there.”

“The houses there only cost sixty pounds,” she went on, “it's the East End, isn't it? The poor part? The rent's only two pounds! It's the property Theo always ends up with.”

“Your mother and I make no bones about our humble origins or that we've come up in the world. No desire to slip back either, which is what happens to people who come bottom. Back to elementary school with the runny-nosed boys. Well, Theodore, any ideas? Or is it Einstein?”

He waited while Theo pretended to see which properties he could mortgage to pay Kay's rent.

“Theo was wondering –” Rose began but Fred raised his hand.

“Let the boy speak for himself, please, Rose.”

“I've been wondering,” Theo said, “if I could try private tuition again.”

“Ah, yes. More of my dough down the jolly old drain.”

Rose said “That's not very nice, when he's ready to try.”

“But
is
he?”

“Yeah, Dad, I am, honest. I've asked some of the other bods how to go about getting coaching.”

“I seem to remember this avenue has been explored. Didn't I fork out for extra maths and history?”

“Only from the same old teachers after school. But they're deadbeats brought back after all the decent ones joined up. I meant someone from outside.”

He pushed the Monopoly money across to Kay and refused to meet the provocative gaze she gave him.

“Your throw, Mum,” she said, passing the dice.

“Oh, is it my turn? Oh my lord …”

“But if I fork out again, you must promise to make an effort.”

“I will try, honest.”

“He can't do more,” Rose said, threw a double and got a Chance card which she dreaded as much as an ace of spades at rummy, a telegram or certain patterns in the tea-leaves. After her it was Gran's turn and Kay had to throw and move for her and tell her what she'd done.

A few days after this, Inky gave him a lift home on the crossbar, saving a bus-fare to put towards a shared packet of five Woods. As they free-wheeled the last hundred yards past the orphanage gates, they were in a British war-film.

“Oi'd best be cutting along ‘ome nah, sir,” Inky said as in Richard-Attenborough's cowardly cockney, “mustn't keep the Missus whiting.”

“But what the deuce is she waiting for, Nobby?” asked Theo with Michael Wilding's quizzical smile.

“She'll ‘ave my cup o' Rosie Lee on the toible, sir, or Oi'll know the reason whoy.”

“Good show, Nobby, and nil carborundum.”

“Strewth, sir, what's that mean when it's at ‘ome?”

Rose opened the front door and called: “Hurry up, son, that tutor's here waiting. I was afraid you'd forget and go to one of your blessed films.”

As Inky zoomed on down the avenue, Theo tried to pass Rose into the lobby. She grabbed his tie and pulled it straight.

“What a sight you are to meet a teacher.”

“Doesn't matter what I look like.”

“Do try hard to please your father. He's a good man, spite of everything. Cares a great deal for all of us.”

Taking off his raincoat in the hall, dropping satchel and gas mask, he gave her a reproving look. She pushed ahead of him into the front room.

“So here he is at last, the Wandering Jew, my son Theodore. And I know you told me but I'm no use with names. Missus – ?”

“Hampton.”

Hazel had dressed the part: the schoolma'arm hair-do, drab dress, flat shoes and glasses.

“Shake hands with the lady.”

Theo moved towards her, held out his hand and made Quasimodo's ‘Ah'm so ugly' face so that she had to look away for fear of laughing.

Rose only said “I've put up the Vono,” showing the card-table with Hazel's books and writing materials already set out on the baize.

“Thank you, Mrs. Light. This will be fine.”

At the door, Rose told them they'd have the house to themselves, as Dad was in Penzance, Kay at her debating club, Gran with her Sister Harriet for the evening and she herself had a rendezvous with her cousin from Montreal. She went to dress and they did half-an-hour on British India till they heard the front door close behind her. Soon after, Theo watched the 21 pass, his mother's silhouette quite clear on the lower-deck. Only then he led his tutor by one hand up the stairs to the front room.

While Hazel used a few drops of Rose's perfume on her shoulders, arms and breasts and Theo stripped off, he asked her again if they weren't pushing their luck by taking no precautions, there was a supply near at hand, in the third drawer down of his father's chest. She shook her head and opened her arms to welcome him to the bed where (he thought) he'd probably been conceived. He was jumpy in case Kay came, as well as excited by the extra danger.

“We must be careful not to leave traces,” she said.

“It won't always be this easy. Someone's usually going to be here.”

“Then we'll get more work done, shan't we? I'm not taking your poor Dad's money for nothing.”

“Nothing?”

And afterwards there was time to wash and dress long before Kay arrived.

Another time when they were alone, on the floor of his own room this time with a pillow on the carpet, he said: “D'you know, I reckon most of the bods at school are still tossing off. Old Charlton even likes dressing up in women's clothes. He told us he wears his mum's dresses and goes walking in the park.”

“Poor boy.”

Theo hoped at least to be the Porter in the 5th year's production of
Macbeth
but wasn't even an attendant non-speaking thane. They were all expected to see the performance so Hazel went with him to the university's Victoria Rooms, the only local stage now that the Prep hall was gone and the Prince's burnt-out. Charlton was so pretty in his lipstick and crown that Theo almost fancied him.

“Stop up the access and passage to remorse,” this teacher's pet recited, “That no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose…”

Hines, Shaw and Lunceford were attentive in the front rows, Dolly Grey smiled with adoration while Sparrow nodded off.

“Come to my woman's breasts,” invited Charlton, putting his hands to his flat chest as directed, “and take my milk for gall …”

In the interval, Theo was angry and tearful.

Hazel said: “Come on, you know why you weren't chosen and he was.”

“Cos he lets old Dolly touch his tool?”

“Cos you imitated the king at a concert. Didn't you say the head got told by that officer and then gave you a ticking off? You must learn that being brightest or seeing clearest doesn't mean they'll let you show it. Unless you're a favourite. Or belong to one of their cliques or clubs. Oxford or Cambridge, –”

“Or the Masons, like my old man.”

“As for that, what choice has the poor man got? All part of a caste system to keep power in the hands of those who've done nothing to earn it but stood up for some degenerate old king. They'll let you join as long as you toe the line. The whole country's run like that.”

“The whole world probably. Except America.”

“The New World's still being sorted out. It's closer to the savage state. To belong to
their
gangs you'd have to kill or be killed.”

“Not fair, is it? And don't say nothing's fair in this world.”

“We'll
make
it fair. That's what this war's about, though they don't know it yet. They're in for a shock when it's over.”

*

For two of the seven weeks' school holiday, the family went to stay in South Wales, where Fred had made friends with the local branch manager of his firm. Their pre-war summer stays in Paignton or Weymouth were only memories now that the entire coast was a front-line ready for invasion, the beaches barbed wired, cliff-walks bristling with concrete pill-boxes. He and Kay remembered those childish treats by the smells and tastes of vanilla ice cream, salt water, candy-floss, onions and vinegar, by the cry of gulls and the lapping of summer seas, by a residue of sand when they ran out bathwater in their ‘private' hotel.

The remaining holiday was a chance for more tuition. Hazel's elementary school had a month, as working-class children, it was assumed by the powers-that-be, wouldn't know what to do with more leisure than that and would only get themselves into trouble. Whenever Fred asked Theo if he thought Mrs. Hampton was giving him his money's-worth, Kay tried to make Theo look at her, both aware of his chronic tendency to blush. She'd nearly caught them one afternoon testing the strength of the indoor Morrison shelter, the steel box that doubled as a kitchen table. They managed to be back in their chairs when she came in but she can't have failed to notice their flushed faces, short breath and disordered clothes. After that, Kay was far less scornful of him, even now and then showing some respect.

His first fortnightly report of the autumn term answered his Dad's question.

“Top in English,” Theo read out.

“Yes, but that's no real surprise,” said Fred, at the wheel of the Morris, after picking his son up at the school gates to drive him home.

“Twelfth in French –”

“Your second-best subject –”

“ – fifteenth in History, eighteenth in Maths –”

“Oh, well done, boy! And Science twenty-first. That's ten places up in both subjects.”

“‘Yep, and about the best I can do. More than enough for a pass in School Cert. Credits in languages and history will get me a Matric.”

“I suppose we have to thank Mrs. Hampton for this? How many times a week is she coming?”

Fred rolled down the window to hand-signal a right turn at The Arches, then paused for an oncoming military convoy, and Theo was glad to look along Cheltenham Road without answering for a few seconds.

“It's not only her. I'm hard at it too.”

“True. You've obviously made an effort. We must think of a reward.”

Some time later, turning the bend to approach Villa Borghese, they saw two cars drawn up outside. A uniformed policeman stood at the gate and several neighbours had gathered to watch. Had Gran been taken ill? But there was no ambulance.

Fred pulled up behind the other car, climbed out and asked an older man: “Hullo, Stanley, what's all this?”

They shook hands.

“Your house, Fred?”

“It is.”

“I didn't know. Our friends in H.M.Customs have had their eyes on this chap. They were put on to him by your neighbours.”

“Which chap?”

Two men in raincoats came from the house frog-marching Vince. The net curtains in the opposite bay fell back as Theo looked towards the Salvationists' house.

“What was he doing in my place?”

The officer had opened the familiar cardboard suitcase resting on the waist-high wall of Villa Borghese, now stripped of its metal railings. He was studying Vince's stock. He didn't meet Fred's eyes.

“We have to assume it's a halfway house shall-we-call-it… where he colludes with his confederates perhaps? Very likely transpire that your good lady and her mother were just being used. Innocent victims.”

“D'you mean black market?”

“Pull the other, the whole bloody family knows me,” Vince began to say but the constable shoved him forward.

“Alright, that's enough language, thank you. Let's not play silly buggers, shall we?, Landing you in it even deeper.”

Fred stared closely at his family's retail supplier.

“Never seen you before in my life.”

But, come to think of it, he thought, the face wasn't quite unfamiliar.

As they opened the rear passenger door, Vince saw Theo still sitting in the front of Fred's Morris. A slight smile crumpled his face even more and he gave a wink no-one else would have seen, before stooping to climb in, a constable's hand on his head. Vince's face looking from the car jogged Fred's memory.

Tilda had pulled aside the net and thrown up the sash window.

“What do thee buggers want?” she shouted at the small crowd, “a saucer for thees eyes?”

“That's enough now, mother,” Fred told her and went inside. By the time Theo joined them in the living-room, Rose was sobbing, Fred taking off his coat and Kay looking on as avidly as the neighbours. Through the net-curtained window, they saw Vince being driven off. One of the officers dispersed the onlookers by telling them the show was over.

“They bleedin' gawpers with their h'eyes on stalks, they'm only jealous.”

“I've told you before, mother,” Fred said, “that sort of language may do for Mina Road but up here …”

“Mum,” Kay said, “the last I saw they were going to take
you
to the station too? So what happened?”