The Edge of the Fall (44 page)

A man with a case bumped at her back and finally she roused herself. ‘Yes, I've been staying with Arthur. We talked a lot. He's changed from how he used to be. Or maybe I just couldn't see what a good person he was when I was younger.'

‘I expect it's easier to be good if you didn't go to war. He stayed in Paris and had a nice time.'

She started. Her voice was high in her throat. She forced herself to lower it. ‘Well, at least he was out of the killing. Perhaps that's better.'

He flushed, a bright, painful red. They couldn't talk about it, she saw. They couldn't mention it. Otherwise the world would fall down around them. It was the bargain you made to live every day – you couldn't show what was really going on in your mind because if you did, everyone in this station would be screaming and shouting against the blackness, not rushing for trains, staring at announcement boards, picking up children, nibbling biscuits pulled out from their suitcases. But the deal she had with Tom was even greater. If she mentioned any word about Michael, the fighting, the betrayal, then everything would fall in on them, and perhaps she might kill him. She might kill the father of her child.

‘Arthur was very upset about Louisa. He was looking after her, you see.'

‘I understood that,' he said, strangled, face still burning. ‘I understood from the newspapers.'

‘He thinks people suspect him. So he has to stay away.'

He nodded, leant on his cane. ‘I went to your house. Stoneythorpe is in a bad way. I've almost forgotten how it used to be.'

She shook her head and changed the subject. ‘How are your family?'

‘My sister's a nurse now.'

‘That's good.'

‘She likes to keep busy.' He smiled, looking past her. ‘Do you remember when you put on that play of
Cinderella
? You were Cinderella. You were only twelve or so. You invited me and my sisters to watch, Mother too. Do you remember?'

She nodded. The question flamed in her heart.
Who played Buttons?
she wanted to say.
Can you remember? It was Michael, Michael in the golden-edged jacket, laughing at all the jokes, waving at you and your sisters. Michael who you shot, you lifted up your gun and fired at him
. She tried to push away the thoughts, smiled.

And then he did it. He saw her smile, put his hand out, said, ‘Shall we go to get something to drink?'

She looked up at him. They could, she thought, although it wasn't long until her train. But then what if he was passing her the milk for tea or offering her a sandwich and the words came out from her? What if she said them, hissed them, whispered them.
I had a baby
.

‘What did you say?'

She had said it out loud. She had. She stared at him, mouth open.

‘What did you just say, Celia?' He was bending towards her, looking at her. The station stopped still. The people around them were frozen. She looked at his eyes, the eyelashes around them, the face that had been so close to hers.
Michael's face
. ‘Did you say you had a baby?'

She couldn't answer.

‘You had a child? What?' And then his face opened, a burst of shock. ‘When? Where is it? Whose is it?' The last question was a whisper.

And that, the whisper, the dropped voice, threw her back into herself. There was shock, pity in his eyes. She wanted to send it away, along with every feeling for him in her treacherous heart. ‘It was a soldier I met. The December after I came back from Germany, I met a soldier in a hotel. And it happened there.'

He was shaking his head, slightly, very slightly. He was silent
a long while. She stared at him under the clock. His face both flushed and pale. ‘This is . . . well – I can't believe this. Is this true, Celia?'

‘Very true. The baby's dead now. It died just after it was born.'

‘I'm sorry.' He held out his hand to her. ‘Poor you. It must have been very hard.'

She nodded, her head on fire with Michael playing Buttons, the baby in her arms, her words that had jumped out in spite of her.

‘Well . . .' he said, and paused. He opened his mouth to say something further – but she drew back. She knew what the words were.

‘Were you going to say it? That it
perhaps was just as well
? I can't tell you how many times I see people thinking it. The girls at the—' She stopped, not wanting to mention seances.‘The girls. And my family. How dare you? How can you say it?'

‘I think,' he said, dazed, ‘people are only trying to be kind. It's hard being on your own—'

She stepped away again. ‘I hate you. I really hate you. You dare speak to me about death
when you murdered my brother
.' He was saying something, reaching out to her, but her mind was whirling and her body was flaming. ‘Leave me alone!' she shouted, too loud, so loud everyone in the station might hear. ‘Leave me alone for good!' And she turned and ran, her bag bumping against her legs, headlong through the station, not knowing where she was running to, just that she was moving forward, barrelling through people, even though she could hear them protesting. People were shouting
miss
, and Tom was calling
Celia
, but she kept running, wanting to do it until the words weren't in her head any more, until the image of Michael playing Buttons was gone, along with the baby and Tom thinking perhaps it was just as well.

Three days later, there was a letter at the Post Office address she'd given to Verena. It was from Tom, forwarded from Stoneythorpe – saying he was sorry, asking to meet. She tore it up, threw it into the fire.

THIRTY-TWO

London, February 1925

Celia

VAD dances were the rage. Even more so if you actually had
been
a VAD. Almost ten years on and it was all about nostalgia, girls who were eighteen, nineteen, only children during the war, dressed up as nurses.

Ellen, one of the girls in the office, had spotted an advertisement for a party near Oxford Street – and when Celia told them she'd been an ambulance driver, well, then they were quite delighted. ‘You must come!' they said. ‘You can tell us exactly what to do as well!'

‘Check our outfits!' said Mary.

Celia had only been out with them once before. When she'd got the job a few weeks after returning to London, Mr Ellerton had told her that she should hold herself apart from them, since she was the one who was supposed to be in charge. ‘You need to maintain a little distance,' he said. ‘Tempting as it may be to accept their offer of friendship.'

Celia had agreed, immediately. While she'd been away, Mr Penderstall had taken on another girl to do her work – and liked her so much he kept her. Celia had to admit it was probably fair – she'd never really been excellent at the job. So she wished goodbye to Miss Jeffs and set off to the employment bureau. They sent her to Mr Ellerton – who said he was in urgent need and asked if she could start that day.

She would be in charge of an office of three girls, and their job would be typing up scripts sent in by writers for possible radio
plays. Celia would be there to check over them before they went forth to production. It seemed rather marvellous, really, being paid to read plays.

‘If you could mark out the plays about war,' said Mr Ellerton. ‘We don't want those, thank you. We want new material.'

Every morning she took the tube to Oxford Street, walked with the crowds to Regent Street and on to the tiny typist office on the lower-ground floor and set about reading the scripts. At lunchtime, she went to the canteen, sometimes with the other girls, sometimes sitting alone to read. It wasn't too hard, really, to stay away from them as Mr Ellerton had suggested. They seemed so young, only nineteen or so – Mary was the oldest at twenty. Celia felt a million years older than them, not five. They spent their money on cakes from Lyons's, lipsticks from the Smith's pharmacy nearby, saved up to buy short gowns, went to the hairdresser every week for a permanent wave, every three weeks for a trim. They met up in the evenings, went dancing, free, unencumbered.

‘You're always so serious, Miss Witt,' said Ellen once, when they were having their tea break together. Celia nodded. Of course. They had everything in front of them, men, husbands, babies, a house. She'd done it, but all wrong, so she had nothing, no wedding, no child, no home.

She still knew nothing about Michael, not even if he was alive. He could be anywhere, she told herself. If Verena had taken him, it would have made most sense for him to be sent off to be adopted into a family – but how would she find him then? Just another war baby, born to an unmarried mother who'd given him up.
What if he really is dead after all?

She shook the words off. On the way back from France, she'd been thinking, and after meeting Tom, she'd decided: she wouldn't speak to her family. It was the only way. The thoughts circled in her head, gathered together then swooped apart, a flock of birds flying to settle at night. She'd wait her family out, until they cracked and told her the truth.

That first night back in London, in the cheap hotel where the walls seemed to magnify every noise, she wrote to Emmeline.
I
have found a place to live
, she wrote.
I am going to stay here and get a job. I won't come to you. I won't, not until one of you tells me where Michael is
. Her pen shook around the words.

She folded up the letter, trying not to think of Lily and Albert. If she didn't see Emmeline for six months, no matter, her sister would hardly change. But Lily and Albert might be entirely different – talking even more, making up little stories. Well perhaps Emmeline would give in fast and tell her all. She picked up her pen and began writing the same letter to her mother, folded it and sealed it, put both letters on the bedside table for posting the next day. She lay back on her bed, hands behind her head. The sounds of dozens of people welled up around her room, talking, washing, putting things away, arguing, closing their doors.

Celia took a room with two other girls off Marylebone Street and gave her mother a Post Office address for mail. A few days later, Emmeline had written saying she should reconsider, Verena had sent a letter saying she was heartbroken. Celia wept over both, forced herself not to write back. If they knew where Michael was, they could tell her.

She had to force herself not to care about them, not to look at children in the street and wonder how much bigger Albert and Lily were, not to read about the discussion of a strike and wonder what part Mr Janus was taking, to ignore newspaper articles about how servants preferred to be in factories or shops nowadays, rather than be locked up in the middle of nowhere, and so the middling country houses were falling into ruin. Every time one of her family came into her head, she tried to conjure up something else. It didn't always work.

She had become like all the other girls. She wore her hair short now – how strange it had been to sit there while it was cut away – small heels, shorter gowns. Anyone would look at her on the bus and say, ‘Just another one of those modern girls!' The newspapers had plenty of articles about them, how they had too much money, spent it on whatever they liked, went out every night, had no idea how to run a household. The others in the office brought in women's magazines. Every one you picked up exhorted them,
‘Not to give up! There might be a man just around the corner!' Women should try harder, they said, be always ready, never go out without make-up, be eager to smile softly even when it was raining and you had missed the bus. For you never knew where he might be! And you might have only once chance – if you weren't pretty or smiling or had a run in your stockings, he could find plenty of other girls who were ready for the moment.

Mary, Ellen and Sarah paid attention to the advice, tried to put it into action, carried lipstick, touched it up on the journey home and even when popping out of the basement to the WC (not that any men ever came near them except the ones from the post room or Mr Ellerton, all of whom were married). Celia didn't join in. Who would marry her? She had only one thought: Michael. He was always there when she talked about work to the other girls, answered Mr Ellerton, deciphered the illegible writing in a script, exchanged pleasantries with the bus driver or in a shop, talking briefly while she boiled an egg or heated soup with Milly or Grace, the two girls in her shared flat. If she spoke to a man or even went for tea with one, she knew she'd sit in the tea room or even the supper club, thinking about Michael. She looked every day for the letter from her parents which would tell her the truth. Nothing came – from anyone, not even Arthur. She'd told herself that if Tom sent a letter to Stoneythorpe and it was forwarded to her, she'd throw it away.

This is your life now. This is what you have. You read the scripts, talk to the others
,
make yourself sleep well at night
. She would go to a party dressed as a VAD and pretend the whole thing was marvellous fun.