Wake: A Novel (8 page)

“Well,” says Evelyn, “you should know, Mr.… Yates, that for what the department calls second-grade injuries—and these are any injuries that do not include the loss of a limb—the payment drops after three years. Can I ask when the injury was sustained?”

“Nineteen seventeen.”

She opens her hands. “There we are, then. I’m sorry, Mr. Yates. You’re welcome to file an appeal.”

The man spits a stray piece of tobacco out onto the floor. “Is that it?”

“That’s it, I’m afraid.”

“You’re not going to tell me if I’m going to get more?”

Evelyn sighs. It astonishes her still that she is here, the mouthpiece for a committee that regards every claim as suspect, every man a malingerer, guilty until proven innocent, forced to plead for scraps from a government that has long since ceased to care.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Yates, but we’re only a first port of call. If you wish to file an official complaint, then we are able to register that complaint and forward it on. You should have a date for reassessment, which will include a medical examination, within the month.”

“Within the
maaanth
?” He leans forward, mimicking her accent. At this he is, she notes, not bad at all. “What about the benefits, then? How come if I’d stayed a private I’d be drawing more?
Land fit for heroes, is it
?”

He’s right. In a way, the ex-privates are the lucky ones; they have been given a small unemployment benefit. No such benefit has been given to the commissioned classes; they are supposed to have friends, or means. Temporary gentlemen have come down to earth with a bump. He leans back in his chair, pointing his cigarette at her as though deciding whether to fire. “Fucking woman.”

“Yes, well,” she says. “I’m afraid unemployed women haven’t been given any benefit, either.”

He looks as though he could spit.

She shoots a quick look over to Robin, but he is deep in conversation with a redheaded man in front of him. Something the other man has said has made him laugh.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Yates,” she says, turning back. “Now, if you’ll—”

“How many kids you got at home, then?”

“That’s none of your—”

“Five,” he says. “I’ve got five.” He coughs, then leans forward, lowering his voice. “You haven’t got any, have you?”

She says nothing.

“Spinster, aren’t you? I’ll bet you’re dry as a bone down there.”

Whatever sympathy she may have had is long gone. She imagines hitting him, or stabbing him in his hand with her pen.

“I bet you love this, don’t you? Up there on your high horse.”

“Of course I do,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Do you want to know why?”

“Why?”

She leans forward again. “Because I’m a sadist.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Bitch,” he swears, under his breath, standing up, his chair legs scraping against the floor.

“That’s right, Mr. Yates. I’m a sadistic bitch.”

Then she reaches out a hand and, without looking up, puts the pink slip on the pile to be filed.

“Next!”

Thick bars of morning light stripe Hettie’s bed, touching the faces on the pictures above her, tacked in a careful arrangement on the wall: Vernon and Irene Castle in the middle of a fox-trot, Theda Bara, and, in a still from
Broken Blossoms,
Lillian Gish. Beside them are the Dixies, in a photo cut from the paper just before they left London: Billy Jones, Larry Shields, Emile Christian, Tony Spargo, and Nick LaRocca, brandishing his trumpet like a lethal weapon.

They all look happy this morning, grinning in the unexpected sun.

In the room behind her she can hear Fred getting ready to go out. Her mother has already gone to work, long before the light. Once Fred has gone the house will be hers for a few blessed hours till she has to leave for the Palais at twelve. She’ll boil some water and have her bath. First, though, she wants to lie here, in this lovely bit of sun, and think about the man from Dalton’s:
Ed.

She closes her eyes and tries to conjure him. The smell of him. The way he danced. The way he talked, as though everything were a game:
Two minutes constitutes a lurk.

No one has ever talked to her like that.

Behind her head Fred’s wardrobe opens with a judder she can feel through the wall. Hettie snaps her eyes back open, defeated. She can’t concentrate on anything good with her brother rooting around in there.

Fred woke her up again last night. It was just a few short shouts this time, and then he must have woken himself, because everything went quiet after that.

Clothes hangers clatter as he takes his jacket out. He gets dressed every morning and goes out, even though he hasn’t anywhere to go. Hasn’t got a job. Not since coming home from France, two years ago in December, just after their father died. For weeks after his demob, he didn’t leave the house; he just sat there, in their father’s armchair in the parlor. She would come back from work at Woolworth’s and he would still be in the same position as when she had left. Often, the dim light and something about the way he sat made her think it
was
her dad, come back from the dead. It gave her the creeps. But Fred just stayed there, hour after hour, as if that old armchair might tell him where to get a job.

That was when she had to start handing over half her wages. And there was Fred, just sitting there, doing nothing about it at all.

He wasn’t like that before. You couldn’t shut him up. He was annoying. He took up room. He would spread his bicycle bits all over the kitchen table and tease her about her dance classes and her film cards. He worked at the lamp factory down at Brook Green with their dad. They both used to set off together in the morning on their bicycles.
Peas in a pod
. Sometimes after work he would go to the pub and come back singing, and their mum would pretend to be angry, but you could tell she wasn’t really, because Fred was always her favorite. He had a girlfriend called Katy—who had hair so fair it was almost white and who smelled of pencil shavings since she worked at the stationer’s down by the tube.

He could be kind, too. Once, when he came back on leave from France, it was over Hettie’s birthday, and he wrote and asked her what she wanted. She’d asked to go to the theater, and he bought tickets for Her Majesty’s to see
Chu Chin Chow.
It was the first time she’d been to the West End, and the show was full of musical numbers and dancing and real animals on the stage. In the middle there was a zepp raid, and instead of going into the cellar with everyone else, they both went out on the street and shared a cigarette and watched the airships as they floated past in the late evening light, their bellies swollen like giant whales.

“Don’t tell Mum.” Fred had winked, as though they were in on it together, and she’d felt excited, and grown-up, and grateful for it all.

But the next time he came back from France he had changed. It was as though all of the noise and mess and life had been blasted out of him and only the empty, silent shell remained.

Hettie hears his footsteps pass her doorway now, his soft tread on the stair.

“Fred?” she calls out. He doesn’t reply, and she slides out of bed, goes over to the door, and opens it.

He is standing halfway down the stairs.

She leans on the banister above him. “Going out, then?”

He nods, cringing, as if caught in the act of something shameful.

“Where you off?”

“I’m just—” He shrugs, clears his throat, turning his hat in his hands. “Going down to the labor exchange. To have a see what’s what.”

“Going to try to get a job?”

There’s a horrible, stretched silence in which Fred’s cheeks flare a painful-looking red. He seems about to say something—but busies himself instead with straightening the brim of his hat. “’Spect so,” he says eventually. “Yes.”

Then he puts his hat on and almost runs down the stairs.

Hettie goes back into her bedroom, closing the door behind her and leaning against it.

He doesn’t go down to the labor exchange.

She saw him once, when he was out for one of his walks. Just shambling along, like an old man. He has become like those men from the Palais, the quiet ones: the ones who hire you and then shuffle around the floor, their silences like the thin skin on blisters, covering the things they cannot say.

Her eyes light on her dance dress, discarded by her bed.

If Fred got a job, at least she’d have a bit of money for clothes.

Why can’t he just move on?

Not just him. All of them. All of the ex-soldiers, standing, begging in the street, boards tied around their necks. All of them reminding you of something that you want to forget. It went on long enough. She grew up under it, like a great squatting thing, leaching all the color and joy from life.

She kicks her dance dress into the corner of the room.

The war’s
over.
Why can’t all of them just bloody well
move on
?

“Morning, Mrs. H. What can I get for you today?”

The butcher boy’s apron is red with wiped fingerprints. The smell in here is strong today, hitting Ada like a wall as she steps inside.

“What have you got that’s good, then?”

“This liver’s grand.” The lad presses the purple meat with his finger, and a small puddle of blood oozes onto the silver tray beneath.

“I’ll have some, and about half a pound of that beef.”

“Right-o.” The boy, whistling, turns around for his knife.

Ada takes her purse from her bag. There’s a cage of ribs laid out on the counter in front of her, the whitened bone sticking out of one end of the marbled flesh. The heavy smell seems to increase. She looks away, out onto the street, to where the sun is striking the ground. Two women stand beneath the awning of the fishmonger’s and a young man is walking past them, his head turned away from her.

The boy is slim and brown-haired. He looks like Michael. He looks like her son.

“Mrs. Hart?”

The butcher’s boy is handing the parcels of wrapped meat over the counter. Ada doesn’t take them. Instead, she rushes out onto the street. At first she can’t see him but then catches sight of the back of his head, fifty yards in front of her on the other side of the road. He is walking briskly, his arms swinging at his sides. She shouts after him, but he is too far away and doesn’t hear. A van makes its way up the road between them, cutting off her view with an advertisement:
SUNLIGHT SOAP FOR MOTHER;
a shy-looking girl in a blue pinafore and hat holds out a box of flakes. Ada weaves behind it. Her son is still there, walking steadily up the street in the sun, heading toward the park.

“Michael!” she calls, quickening her pace, but he seems to be moving faster than before. She tries to close the gap between them, keeping him in her sights. He looks well. She can see this, even from behind. He has both of his arms and both of his legs. He walks strongly and easily and his head is not bowed, and his hair is clipped just as it was the last day she saw him; and the sun is touching the tips of his ears, and whatever has happened to him, wherever he has been, he has come through it and is alive and well. She shouts his name again.

A small queue is gathered outside the grocer’s, but she pushes her way through it, feeling heads whipping around to stare. Her heart is racing now, sweat breaking at her hairline, on her back, and it is difficult to catch her breath, but the gap between them stays the same. He must feel her behind him, because he seems to be varying his pace to hers, as though they are playing some kind of torturous game.

When he reaches the top of the street, she sees him hesitate, finally, standing beside the ironmonger’s, as if deciding where to go, as if he is unsure, suddenly, of the way.

Turn left.

Go home.

He turns left, and she shouts after him as he disappears from view.

She lets herself slow a little, now that she knows he is heading home, but when she reaches the ironmonger’s, she sees the road to her left is empty. Her son has disappeared. An old man comes down the street toward her, moving slowly, a boxer dog snuffling the pavement at his side.

“Excuse me?” She goes to him and grips his arm. “Did you see someone come up here?”

“What’s that?”

“
Did you see someone
come this way? A boy? A young man?”

The old man, looking frightened, shakes his head. “No one, love. No.”

She releases him and leans back against the wall, gathering her breath.

“You all right?”

“Yes.” She nods. “Fine. I’m fine.”

She pushes off, hurrying, heading up the street that skirts the park, her thoughts jagged. Then it comes to her, and she could almost cry with relief, because she realizes he must have been
running,
when he saw where he was, when he knew how close he was, he must have run the last distance home. And she wants to run, too, but makes herself walk; she doesn’t want to be a hospital case when she reaches him, out of breath, unable to speak. Still, when she reaches the kitchen door she is shaking so much she needs both hands to turn the key.

Inside the house, everything is as she left it. The mangle in the corner, the air still heavy with heat and soap, the washing draped on the fireguard and hung on the dryer above her head. “Michael,” she calls, her voice deadened by the damp air. Then louder, “Michael? Are you there?”

She lifts the damp sheets. Looks behind chairs in the parlor. Stands at the top of the cellar steps and calls down into the musty dark.

Upstairs, the bedroom she shares with Jack is empty. She steps onto the landing and waits, outside the door of Michael’s old room, her heart hammering. Nothing but silence. Heavy silence. Thick. She pushes open the door with her hip.

The room is empty. She hesitates on the threshold, and then steps inside.

Months have passed since she has been in here. It is hard to breathe. She lifts the blanket and sees only unused sheets. She gets down on her hands and knees and stares at the empty air beneath his bed. Now there is only the wardrobe in the corner left. When she opens it, it smells woody, unused. There is nothing inside. Nothing but two empty hangers and a small cardboard box, tied tightly with string: a box tied so that no one would open it in a hurry; a box that hasn’t been opened in years.