Love Fifteen (5 page)

As she started down to Baldwin Street, a sudden gust along Welsh Back cut up the steps like a knife, and under the knee-length skirt, chilling her thighs. At home she'd change into slacks but, on her solitary days out, she dressed in ways Geoff would have fancied if he'd been here. She missed and needed his confidense that the war would change everything and open everyone's eyes. Men and women in uniform were discovering what ordinary people had never known. As a sergeant in The Education Corps, he saw enlightenment dawning in men who were learning to use their minds for the first time, to understand how the world worked. He couldn't be more specific in the censored air-mail letters he was allowed but she could read his encoded sub-text, between the lines. When she wrote that she wanted to join up too, he asked her to stay put and do the same job for the Other Ranks of Bedminster, the intended cannon fodder, as he was for those in Egypt. Though Geoff was in uniform, he wasn't combatant but helping those who
were
to discover what the fight was for. They also serve who only stand and teach.

*

A new sort of teaching, Theo remembered her saying, not all boring treaties and battles and kings, handed down from on high by bods like Earl Hines with BBC voices but a debate where the class asked questions and argued with what the teachers said and they all learnt from each other. Theo thought that sounded about as shambolic as old Birdie Sparrow's classes where all they ever learned was about the love life of axolotls.

He was walking east into Old Market Street, a part of town seldom visited by middle-class people, as Rose always called their family. Different again from narrow closed-in Castle Street in the old-as-God quarter, this wide open thoroughfare had tramlines down the centre and always a few waiting to start their journeys to parts he'd always avoid. And farther along there was a coaching-inn, a drill hall, and The Empire, a variety theatre where Theo had once appeared as The Voice of Them All in a local talent show. The rest of the bill were professional turns and one was a dancer who wrestled with a python and every night lost the struggle to retain her upper clothes, but when her blouse came off she had to stand stock-still till the lights blacked-out. If she didn't time it exactly, the local Watch Committee would close the show. Or so he was told by Dad, who made a rare effort to come and see Theo perform in this show and happened by chance to catch the dancer too and thought her very artistic. And to his son's surprise came a second time to give him a good loud clap and some hints on how to enunciate and asked if he'd encountered the snake lady at all behind the scenes.

Old Market reeked of beer and those who drank it walked sawdust from public bars out on to pavements. Barrels were rolled down chutes into cellars where men with red spotted kerchiefs shouted in dialects that had no consonants except ‘l' and ‘r'. Until dusk, lights from windows and poultry shops full of dead birds warmed the darkening street. It always felt countrified here, halfway between village and city. Great horses pulled carts called brewer's drays and ate from nosebags and delivered steaming heaps of spherical turds on to the cobbles. He was glad to reach Carey's Lane without being shouted at or barged by rough kids with snotty noses and wearing boots with metal Blakeys that struck sparks off the pavement. Here he climbed into the waiting 81 double-decker, found a window-seat upstairs, wiped a clearing in the misted glass and sat staring by turns outwards and inwards to a screen where he ran a sequence in which Miss Poland was straining against the flogging being given her by a brutal Nazi played by Conrad Veidt. Her pleas for mercy only maddened the schweinhund more as the driver started the noisy engine and turned left along the main road. Veidt had raised the whip again when his wrist was seized by Flying-Officer Light, just dropped by parachute behind enemy lines. Recovering, the Nazi drew his Luger, levelled the barrel and squinted along the sights when, with a well-aimed kick, Theo sent the pistol flying, before felling him with a blow to the jaw. Miss Poland's breasts heaved and grateful tears brimmed in her dark eyes, as he freed her and took her in his arms. Fade-out.

Rather than start another sequence, he thought about Mrs. Hampton. She must be some sort of Communist. One or two of the teaching staff at his school had been brought back to replace younger ones who'd joined up and a few of these had been wounded in the war against Franco, cartoonish bod in breeches and funny hat who was now on Hitler's side. That was when being against Hitler made you a Commie but now that everyone was against him (except Italy and Russia and some sissy neutrals like Portugal and Switzerland) nothing was nearly as clear. Russians were Communists but they'd signed a treaty with Germany. He liked politics in Frank Capra films but in real life they got so mixed-up it made his head ache. He wished he'd told Mrs. Hampton that, if the Africans hadn't been taken as slaves to America, there'd never have been a negro New Orleans or Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet or The Nicholas Brothers that were always the best thing in those films about Argentina. So out of all that misery came all that jazz and brilliance. But probably Mrs. Hampton liked commercial music, strict tempo and ballads, like his sister did. Though he hoped not.

*

Hazel crossed The Centre where, among a few trees, Edmund Burke's statue gestured to the half-dozen cars and buses that criss-crossed the open space, where Rose could remember only a few years ago ships moored beside the CWS on Broad Quay, Dad's Hh.qQ. Large posters told them all to Save for Victory. Please help equip YWCA canteens for our women in uniform. Drink Georges' beer. The Bovril sign no longer flashed its multi coloured sunrise. The walking Johnnie Walker had to go on walking in the dark. The Guinness Clock showed half-four and would do till the war ended, as it wouldn't do to let invading Jerries know the time. So much drinking and getting drunk… was it impossible for them to face reality?

She crossed and climbed to College Green. On the far side of the unfinished Council House stood the library where the Film Club met. That boy could do with a wider view. Even his film knowledge was confined to Hollywood and ‘
Things To Come
'. He was the sort of promising virgin Geoff loved to educate, to mould. Ed
u
cere, he'd said, when he'd begun teaching her, from the Latin ‘to lead out', not to implant. To ‘educe' what was already there. To cultivate, as with plants. To help them achieve their true nature and blossom into what they really are.

She crossed at the Mauretania and went on up Park Street.

*

Theo's bus emerged from all the poor streets, where Mum was born and Gran still lived, and passed the Metropole picture-house. Before it was made De Luxe, when the lights on the aisles were gas, it had been Cary Grant's local fleapit. He was the pioneer trailblazer. If he'd made it to Hollywood from Horfield, so could anyone who wanted it hard enough.

As they approached the long haul of Ashley Hill that took them – and had taken Rose – literally up in the world, the engine began an anguished groan while the bus laboured onwards, passing Archie's old school on the left beside the railway bridge, changing to a sigh of relief only when they achieved the summit and cruised down between the enormous grey orphanages. A rare parked car on the main road made the bus-driver slow down and Theo was already on the rear platform watching the kerb speed by. All set, Johnnie? Then off you go and the best of British luck. Give Jerry our best regards and tell him we'll be coming his way soon.

He gripped the straps of his ‘chute and hurled himself through the open hatchway.

The conductress pushed her way from front to back of the lower deck. Not Gale Sondergaard ; the one who always had her permed hair in a net.” ‘Just you mind out,”' she called, “‘bloody little madgaming loobie !'”

The momentum carried him along the pavement as he changed the rhythm of his run to a syncopated trot, reining in the Palomino, turning to look back up the trail. A shot had rung out, echoing along the canyon, and he caught the glint of gun-metal on a distant cliff. So white man had again spoken with forked tongue!

He spurred his steed and nearly rode under a motor-bike and sidecar he hadn't heard approaching. The goggled driver cursed him as he passed. Theo reared, called ‘“sorry” and crossed to Villa Borghese. Funny that he'd always sympathised with the Indians even before Mrs. Hampton's history lesson. Cowboys in some ways were like those rugby-team oiks in school that were always teachers' favourites, calling their elders ‘“sir'” and “‘ma'am”‘ and playing corny jokes on each other. You somehow knew they'd be good at shooting and killing animals and brown people.

Vince's battered Austin Seven was parked outside so Rose wouldn't be in a position to complain about him being late from sports or threaten to tell Dad when he came home on Friday.

He reckoned he might even go to Mrs., Hampton's film club, if only to hear how her friends could find fault with a work of genius.

*

Once alone in her top floor flat, Hazel unhitched the skirt, unbuttoned the blouse and stood naked but for her underclothes and the precious shoes. She posed for the cheval-glass, inherited from Geoff's tutor at university, that almost reached the slanting ceiling of her attic living-room. She pushed out her chin and glanced sidelong at herself, pulled up her hair again with both hands, pouting, turning away to look back over one shoulder. It was a famous pose by Bettey Grable who'd had her legs insured for something like a million dollars. The painted seam gave out some inches below the lower edge of her knickers, about where real stockings would have too. Pathetic. Enough. She took off the precious shoes and with spittle repaired a small scuff in the leather. They were already looking the worse for wear. She replaced them in tissue-paper in the box she'd bought them in three years ago. The gas-fire slowly warmed the three low rooms. She felt able to take off the rest and dress instead in cotton pyjamas Geoff had left when he went. There wasn't much to be rolled up at wrists and ankles. She was almost his height, though a different shape.

On the table a pile of exercise-books waited to be marked. Later.

From beside the double bed she took the framed photo of him squinting into the Egyptian sunlight with the Pyramids behind. She set it on the table and sat to write an air-mail letter, knowing that whatever either of them wrote could be slobbered over by some clerk in the censoring unit. First she gave a sunny picture of the mood at home, the good news about how many Fascist planes had been shot down, not bothering with ‘according to the radio', knowing he'd be saying precisely that to himself as he decoded her remarks. She described the afternoon's film and how good James Stewart was and that she'd taken in a boy who thought it was profound and how she'd tried to tell him it was only superior propaganda that just so happened to coincide with the truth for once. She wrote that she missed him terribly and, not for the first time, how large the bed seemed without him. There was no use saying how grim things looked. He could see that for himself. Everyone could. Otherwise life was so empty there wasn't much to tell. She wrote again that she was thinking of joining one of the women's services. Uniforms were the only fashionable clothes these days, though there was no rush on white feathers as there'd been in the
Great
War. As this was as much a civilian fight as a military one, no-one could know who was dodging the column. Women teachers were exempt from call-up but she could volunteer and see if they'd release her from her reserved occupation. Geoff had said he'd prefer her to keep a light burning in the window. Not very practical, she'd thought, in the black-out but he'd probably forgotten that detail since he got to Cairo. She folded the form, licked the strip of gum and smoothed it flat, for posting on the way to school next morning. The room was growing dark. She poured herself half an inch of gin and, rather than draw the curtains, turned out the low table light. Through the dormer window that faced the bed, she looked from this considerable height over the twilit city, the sun's last rays caught by a gleaming barrage balloon beside St. Nicholas' spire. Hardly an artifical light to be seen, almost the whole continent of Europe hiding in the dark, tribes afraid of other tribes, all of them created by competitive demands of Trade.

She lay on the divan, pulled the bedding over her and embraced Geoff's pillow. She caressed her own breasts and ran her hand down to loosen the braid on his pyjamas. She began to massage the moist bit between her legs, trying to remember how it had felt with Geoff.

Theo's father represented Hardware throughout the south-west region, from Glamorgan in the north, down through Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon and the Cornish peninsular or round to Dorset in the east. Of these, only Wiltshire had no coast or access to one. Branch managers in seaside towns reported falling business as so many residents moved inland away from the invasion that was expected any minute. The question wasn't When but Where. The south-east was a more likely target but Fred reminded other travellers in the railway hotel bar at night that the last successful invasion of England (by the Duke of Monmouth) had been through Lyme Regis. Now that Churchill had told us we'd be fighting on the beaches, barbed-wire was rolled along promenades, bandstands were boarded up and concrete pill-boxes rose overnight to resist the imminent blitzkrieg. So no-one could get to them, said Swifty.

Fred covered this area once every five weeks, close-to-home journeys by train, farther ones by the Wolseley, spending one out of four at Villa Borghese. Most of the boarding-houses and ‘private residential hotels' were closed for the duration, but the railway ones were still patronised by travellers. For the time being, his petrol allowance was about the same, leaving enough over from his circuit to take the family for a run on Sunday. The signposts had been taken down, a crackpot scheme in his view, pure propaganda, as it assumed German parachutists wouldn't bring their own maps – or couldn't read them. But it certainly confused the
natives
who still had to keep the country going and find their way from place to place. No bother to him. He knew the roads by heart and could always drive the family to a village of thatched cottages with a pretty green beside ancient oaks where he and the kids could knock a ball about. The boy wasn't keen on cricket but his sister Kay was a promising bat, often bowling or catching Fred out. Rose preferred sitting in the car with the
Sunday Mirror
, all the windows closed, smoking a Du Maurier. On long summer afternoons, they'd round off the outing in a country pub but, now winter had come, they had to be home by dark as driving in the black out wasn't fun. In any case, there was ‘
Hi, Gang
' on the Forces Programme at 6.30 with that American comedian who'd married Churchill's daughter, which a lot of people thought infra dig but Fred reckoned a pretty smart move on his part,typical of so many Jew-boys.

Kay and Theo shared the back seat. Either could be sick at any moment, due to the smell of petrol and leather upholstery. Passing along the empty roads, Kay and Rose often sang songs of the moment:

That certain night, the night we met

There was magic abroad in the air… or I like New York in June

How about you?

And Theo would sneer that that sort of music was all commercial, at which Fred snorted with laughter and asked him where he thought he'd be without commerce. Kay was brighter than the boy, of course, and it was assumed at school and at home that she was headed for one of the better universities, by which they meant Oxbridge which Fred had thought was a place apart till the manager of Weymouth branch told him it was a portmanteau of Oxford and Cambridge. Theo acted the goat when he should have been studying and, judging by his fortnightly report cards, would be lucky to scrape a School Certificate, leave alone Matriculation. Fred wasn't sure what the word meant, but had been advised by the chief buyer of drysaltery that it would ensure him a job for life in the civil service, which was Fred's long-term plan for the boy. The last time he'd nagged Theo, the noodle had replied that exams were only for swots who wanted to spend their lives in white coats looking at unborn babies, which sounded a bit near the bone to Fred so he dropped the subject rather than be drawn into bodily functions. Theo was a nice enough boy, except on that occasion when Fred had decided without warning to pick him up from school Saturday midday, having spent the morning, as usual, in the firm's city depôt handing in his weekly sales figures and trading discount goods with the other reps to top up the meagre family rations. After a quick pint in The Drawbridge, he'd driven up Park Street, parked the Morris at the school gate and crossed the playground to talk to the Sergeant porter whose vantage point was in a glass booth under the entrance porch. Fred felt the fees were steep enough to allow him this privilege. As the two men stood passing the time of day, Fred was impressed, even alarmed, by the outrage this old soldier assumed when he spotted any boy slouching, sidling, swaggering or in any way offending the military manner he tried to impose on the school. If a culprit got close enough, Sergeant aimed a flick with his cane, usually missing as the boy dodged, then winking at Fred with the sort of adult complicity that made Fred feel almost at his ease in the otherwise humbling atmosphere. The nippers, he thought, were evidently in awe of the man and jumped to his growled commands.

He watched his son come swaggering along the dark corridor, garlanded with gas-mask, bursting satchel and blue raincoat, honking with other broken-voiced boys, till he caught sight of Fred standing beside Sergeant.

*

Theo had felt blood rush to his cheeks and his heart leap like a fish. There followed the three most embarrassing minutes of his life so far, apart from Gale Sondergaard telling him (in front of Margo) that he was still young enough for a half-fare. Now, spotting Theo's hand nonchalently stuck in a raincoat pocket, Sarge went into his brilliant parody of a drill pig on a barrack square. He was almost as well-loved a figure as Jimmie Lunceford. His frenzies of umbrage reminded him and Inky Black of old Donald MacBride in the Marx films or Eric Blore in the Astaires. Theo could be sure of a laugh at his end of-term show by making that face and doing pretend-whiplashes with the cane. In the presence of parents, though, Sarge played a double-bluff, pretending to wink at the oldsters while the bods all knew he was having them on. Once they'd reached the car, Theo made Fred swear by whatever gods he held dear never again to venture beyond the gates. Turning the ignition key and pulling the throttle knob, Fred smiled and shrugged, probably thinking Theo was really afraid of Sergeant's put-on anger. Gawd strewth, strike me pink and luvaduck guvnor! Theo despaired of older people sometimes, even fairly decent ones like old Fred.

*

Kay, on the other hand, welcomed her father at her school and showed him off to her nubile classmates. She reminded Fred of that cat that walked alone in the
Just-So Story
he'd read them when they were nippers. She kept herself to herself, as in Kipling's drawing of it on that long road through the forest. To assuage twinges of guilt about using the business car for pleasure, he sometimes gave her schoolfriends lifts home, even if they lived as far afield as Henleaze and other places Rose dreamt of moving to after the threat of Nazi Germany had been seen off. Her escape-by-marriage from the poor streets down near the Metropole (before it was de Luxe) wasn't enough for her. She wanted to climb even higher, to Sneyd Park beyond The Downs. Fred had no such craving. Villa Borghese was more than elevated enough for him.

Sometimes Kay and her friends were picked up before Theo got on. Then he'd have to climb in and sit beside them on the back seat, even have one of them on his lap, all the others giggling. In the rear-view mirror Fred saw his face, a study in scorn and loathing. Strange how boys of Theo's age still scoffed at girls. Fear, probably.

Theo couldn't help getting the horn when one of these women was on him and he prayed she wouldn't feel the knob pressing against her thighs through the skirt. He reckoned Kay knew this and encouraged her coven of professional virgins to make eyes at Fred while actually mocking Theo's manhood by giving him the jack. They all did Vivien Leigh's tinkling laugh, though Kay's was best, and whoever was on his lap would roll about when the car cornered to make his horn bigger, probably on purpose. If he could keep it hard till they reached Villa Borghese, he'd toss off in view of all those starlets and Miss Poland on the walls.

*

Now, on the Sunday run, Fred looked across at beautiful Rose, glammed up in the passenger seat and his left hand moved over to caress her knee. She gave a warning look, rolling her eyes towards the back seat where the young ones sat. This afternoon they'd been to Blaize Castle (where Theo and Inky often played Robin Hood, swapping the Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone roles, both liking villainous Guy of Gisbourne best) and back through Westbury where Rose could admire the beautiful houses, each in its own garden, with kids on swings or playing French cricket. Fred and Rose had looked over one that was for sale and she later told her mother with awe about the labour-saving hatch from kitchen to dining-room. Villa Borghese had once seemed to both women a hilltop palace. Now they complained of its dark corners and blessed up-and-down steps. Fred had come to the west country from Kent and with that move thrown off his own modest Medway upbringing. Mother-in-law Tilda embodied the poverty that Rose had risen above, the memory of it always threatening to climb the hill like floodwater and drown her again. The old lady's lapses frightened them both. Fred had learnt the importance of props and gestures: fawn felt spats and Homburg hats that he wore for Business; bridge-parties and whist-drives; annual travellers' balls where Rose could oblige with a ballad; and above all his imminent admission to the Masonic Lodge. It was a relief that Tilda spent weekends at her rented flat down the hill, as Fred made clear he liked to enjoy these with his family, not always to be reminded of Tilda's infra-dig origins.

Many houses in Falcondale Road had For Sale Apply Within signs in the windows, as their owners were eager to bolt somewhere further off for fear they blitzed this city too. The asking prices were rock-bottom. No wonder, said Fred, with the impending likelihood of property being bombed to smithereens and/or occupied by Nazis. The jealousy that London had got it all so far was mixed with relief that they hadn't. Rose and Tilda reckoned people here could be just as brave as the blessed Cockneys, given the chance. It wasn't their fault this was a safe area. So far there'd only been the odd incendiary dropped for fun just so that the filthy swine could watch the damage from up above. Fred said the Jerries up there were terrified and jettisoned the fire-bombs on the way back from raiding the South Wales docks just across the Bristol Channel.

He took the scenic route across the Downs, past the zoo and through Clifton. Theo thought of what old Mrs. Hampton had said about that part being built on the spoils of empire. In prayers, Earl Hines and visiting vicars were always on about the Merchant Venturer founders but Mrs. H reckoned they were a load of crooks and slavers who'd started the zoo to house the animals they'd caught in India or Africa, and Clifton College was a public school where the next load of rugby-prefects were trained to go out and boss natives about. This confused him so he thought instead about what would happen if the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped, running wild all over the Downs, and Alfred the gorilla came charging out of shrubberies just where some bloke had taken off one of those WAAFs' bras. It would be quite like that flickergraph he'd done in
Songs of Praise
.

*

“What is a Film Society exactly?” Fred asked, as the boy climbed out of the Morris on College Green.

“It's to see the sort of films you can't see in the ordinary cinemas.”

“Hello hello! What sort's that?”

“French.”

“I'm surprised at them allowing that in the library,” Rose said.

“Is that the sort you mean, son?” Fred asked with a quickening of interest.

“I don't know, do I? German and Russian too.”

“I foresee disappointment,” Kay said, “and fully expect he'll spend a tedious hour watching tractors and peasants trying out their new milking-machines.”

Theo slammed the car-door on her and pressed his face to the window, sliding it downwards and rolling his eyes like old Charles Laughton as Quasi.

He watched Fred drive off past the Cathedral and made his way to the Central Library's main doors.