Thank you, he said. And I’m sorry. Bad night.
Bad morning by the looks of it.
Bad everything, he said, and he managed a smile. Now that didn’t hurt, did it? he thought.
He sat down and ate quickly. Watched the waitress clear the table opposite and his headache was momentarily soothed by the tilt of her breasts, by the rise and fall of her hips. She disappeared behind the counter and his sullen mood returned. He watched passengers tick-tock past the window and let himself be drawn into the hypnotic state of motion. He ate the last of his roll and lit a cigarette. He started to feel clearer.
It was then that a blonde hurried by. It was brief but he caught her none the less, because she slowed as she passed, slowed to take in her reflection in the steamy glass. Not a moment of vanity, but a simple one of recognition, as if she was a ghost seeing herself with a body once again, seeing herself alive once again.
Missy? Drake stood up and knocked over his tea. No, it couldn’t have been, God his head was so fucked. He righted his chair and tried to mop up the tea with his handkerchief. He sat back down, tried to get a grip. He lit another cigarette but stubbed it out straight away, it tasted all wrong. He jumped up. Fuck. It was her, he was sure of it. In the doorway, an elderly couple blocked his way with an oversize suitcase, there was no need for him to have sworn at them like that. He noticed the waitress’s pitiful look as he ran past the window.
Two trains pulled in and the station was awash with passengers and noise and steam. Missy! he shouted. Missy wait! But his voice was swallowed by the constant din of chatter and the clatter of luggage and trolleys and the soot dust in the air. He stopped to catch his breath. She was nowhere to be seen. He took a punt and ran down the stairs towards the underground. He was quick at the ticket office, and staggered breathlessly towards the platforms. Eastbound or Westbound? He heard the familiar rumble of an underground train approaching. Come on! East or west, Drake? The noise of the train got louder. East or west! He began to run. East. She had to be going east.
The platform was packed. It was difficult to move through the crowd without drawing comments and looks. He couldn’t see her; she must have gone west. He leant against the wall and felt the first swoosh of air rush through the tunnel, before lights appeared and finally the train itself. He lost his hat in the tumult and was resigned to leaving it there amidst the jig of jostling legs but as he bent down to retrieve it, that’s when he saw her. Getting up from a bench without a care in the world, looking into a compact mirror, adding more red to already perfect red lips. He felt restored and he began to laugh. She looked so bloody good.
Bodies entered close. She took the left-hand door, he was swept towards the right. A man offered her a seat and a cigarette at one end of the carriage – she accepted both – and she placed her small valise on her knees. Drake stood at the other end of the carriage watching. It felt wrong and delightful. The brim of his hat pulled low. Peering out through the years, a latent buzz pressing against the front of his trousers.
He could remember it so clearly, the day he had first set eyes on her. He was eleven, and it was after his mum had died when he was living with the aunts. She had burst into his room without knocking, all sixteen years of cheek and beauty, and she had said, I’m Missy Hall and I’m your third cousin. Don’t worry, we can still marry, and she laughed a deep laugh, and took a pack of cigarettes out of her school blazer. She went over to the window and opened it wide. She lit up and exhaled a stream of smoke. Said, Stick with me, Francis. I’m an orphan too.
He hated that word. Wasn’t ready for that word.
She said, One more year of school then the world’s my fuckinoyster. By the way, Francis is a girl’s name, you know that, don’t you? I’m going to call you Freddy, if that’s OK? And it was OK and that was that. And when the aunts’ backs were suitably turned, she marched him down to the River Thames where she shed her clothes effortlessly under the grateful eye of Tower Bridge.
Come on in! Missy had cried, as she ran splashing into the water. Freddy would have given anything to have followed her in, anything to have been braver, to have been older, but he kept his clothes on instead, and anchored his toes ever deeper into the safe damp shingled shore. He watched pale scrawny bodies run and jump into waves as steam tugs passed. He thought it looked like fun.
Whassa matter, Freddy? Can’t ya swim? said Missy stumbling towards him.
No. Not really.
Want me to teach you?
Nah thank you, and he bent down and handed her a towel.
He watched the costume dry upon her and noticed her body brought to life by the occasional breeze that blew across her skin and made her gasp. He watched her reach for her packet of Players cigarettes. He beat her to the matches and, in his cupped hands, he gave her light. In the brightness of her smile, it could have been life.
An exodus at King’s Cross Station forced Drake to make a quick decision: stay and be seen or move to an adjoining carriage. He moved and watched her through a jammed window. Watched her cross her legs. Pat her hair. Pull at the hem of her perfect tweed skirt.
It had been a dare. About a year later, Missy had called him to her room, and when he got there she was lying on her bed in a shaft of yellow lamplight. Blouse undone and breasts exposed, a single coin was balanced on the left nipple.
Take it in your mouth, she had said. Take it in your mouth and it’s yours, Freddy.
He was nervous. It felt wrong and a bit mucky and he was scared at first, but he knelt by her bed and lowered his head and opened his mouth and kissed the warm line of her skin. The coin came away easily but she held his head down until his tongue flickered over the coin, until flesh and metal and warmth were one. They stopped as the aunts’ footsteps neared. Breathed out as the aunts’ voices passed. And only afterwards in the dark did the dare give way to a simple need.
This is the size of your heart, Missy had said, tracing the area of his palm with her index finger. Love just enough, Freddy.
What’s enough?
Enough to hold. When it hurts, you’re loving too much. Just enough to hold. Anything more than a handful and you’re in trouble. Got it? Are you listening or are you asleep?
I’m listening.
What did I say, then?
You told me to never let go.
He heard her laugh. That’ll do, she said.
He gave her the coin. Can we do it again? he said.
Say please, she said.
Please, he said.
He lingered at her breast, and when he raised his head, the sixpence gripped between his teeth, he dared as he had never done before and his mouth dropped the coin and his mouth found hers and tasted, for the first time, what he believed to be the life that existed outside of those solemn walls, outside of himself and he loved her and that was everything.
She kissed him back – passionately, to start with – he felt her tongue exploring his mouth and the sensation felt fine, the sensation pulsed between his legs until she suddenly shuddered and pushed him to the floor. She stared at him, shocked. It wasn’t the taste of promise that coated his mouth, but that of first milk. That’s how she knew for sure and that’s why she left. That cold morning in March when life all around was beginning, his was ending. A piece of paper hurriedly slipped under his door, the drawn outline of her hand in the middle. Not too much, Freddy, she wrote. But it was already too much. Never forget me. Never. Never. Never.
Liverpool Street. Drake stared at the station sign but nothing registered. Only when the doors were about to close did he notice that Missy had gone. He lunged with his suitcase at the narrowing doorway and forced the doors back once again. He caught sight of her not too far ahead. The platinum hair bobbing upon a lake of black and grey. He straightened his hat, took deep steadying breaths and walked a safe distance behind her.
Missy veered right acros
s the concourse, heading towards the Bishopsgate stairway. When she reached the top, just out of view, Drake ran up two steps at a time into the dusk and caught her as she was about to cross the road. She slowed at the police station and seemed to change her mind and she headed up Brushfield Street and the fruit market. But then she stopped. He turned away, bent down to tie his shoe. She took off again and he followed her to Commercial Street, saw her wave to a woman at the Ten Bells. She looked as if she was about to cross the road but hesitated and stopped again as if she had forgotten something. With each street the years peeled away. She turned left quickly, almost a run now. Doubled back down Folgate Street, back down . . . Jesus, thought Drake. She can’t be. But she was. When he got to the turning, the street was empty except for her.
She was standing in the middle of the road, looking at a house. It was at a tilt, it seemed, leaning on the ruin next door, wounded but still standing, it was, and that’s what she liked to call it when she was a bit drunk and a bit sad: Still Standing. It was a gas leak, and not a bomb that had almost taken out what Hitler couldn’t. Careless whispers cost lives, careless cigarettes just as many, thought Missy, lighting up. She picked up a stone and threw it at a boarded-up window. She didn’t know why she hated the house so much, it had been a home of sorts. But it had made her feel useless and dirty when all she had ever been was young.
The footsteps behind sounded loud and sinister against her thoughts. She didn’t turn. Just pulled her shoulders back, stood taller and said, What do you want? I know you’re following me. I could of gone to the police, but I’m not that type, never been that type. But I’ve got a knife in my pocket and –
Missy, said Drake quietly.
– I’ll bloody use it.
He called her name again. And he walked out of the shadow of childhood and into her light, and she said, Freddy?
And he could say nothing because his heart was in his mouth.
8
They sat at a table in the corner of a pub as night grew through the window behind them. The sounds around were generous and soothing. Men chattered, glasses clinked, jokes coasted and a fire crackled, and now and then someone let out an almighty laugh and it was catching and circled the room like a kid playing tag. And they were grateful for distractions like that because really they didn’t know what to say. They looked tired and they looked worn but neither of them would mention that because their joy was so loyal. And they held on tight to that beautiful silent moment before words transported them to the realm of the ordinary, to the realm of the inarticulate and mundane.
I just can’t believe it, she said. You’re here.
Freddy grinned. He lifted his glass and savoured the first taste of a pint of Truman’s. God, that’s good, he said, and wiped his upper lip.
You saw the world, Freddy!
I saw the world.
And not a scratch on you.
He smiled, kept his shaking hand under the table.
When d’you get back? she said.
Yesterday.
Yesterday? Blimey. What took you so long?
Dunno.
Most got back last year. Some before that.
Yeah, I know. Didn’t know what there was for me to come back to.
Not even me?
I thought you were dead, he said.
What? Why?
Because of the Café de Paris. When I heard it had taken a hit, I thought about you. Thought I’d lost you.
Missy went quiet.
That’s where you told me to find you, said Freddy.
Did I?
Don’t you remember?
Long time ago, Freddy.
I know.
Lifetime.
Yeah. Freddy drank his beer.
I bet you fell in love, really. I bet that’s why you never came back, said Missy.
Freddy smiled. Nah.
Don’t believe you.
Wouldn’t be here if I fell in love, would I?
Things end.
Not with me, he said, and looked into her eyes. I never met no one, Missy. No one who counted.
That’s a pity. Would of done you the world of good.
You reckon?
I know you.
And he smiled because she did know him and it felt good all of a sudden to be known by someone, cared for by someone, and he felt warm and expansive, and loosened his tie and rolled up his cuffs. He reached over and lightly touched Missy’s cheek.
You look good, he said.
Me? You’re bloody daft.
You never seem to change.
Is that a fact?
When I saw you at Paddington, I thought, Cor she looks all right.
Cor she looks all right? What are you? Twelve again?
Freddy laughed. You did, though. Where were you coming from?
Oxford.
How come?
I was visiting someone.
Someone who? said Freddy.
Not what you think.
What am I thinking? said Freddy, grinning.
Look, three days a week I work in an office on Fleet street. Nice. Rest of the time I do a bit of modelling.
Magazines?
She laughed. Said: Ten years too late for that! No. I sit for an old bloke who likes to paint me. Pays good money too. Don’t look at me like that, Freddy, I know that look. You’re making it mucky and it’s not. I’m a life model and that’s respectable. And he’s respectful. He’s never touched me, just looks at me. Only once did he ask me to pull down the straps from my slip or bra.
Did you?
Yeah.
And?
And nothing. I sit in me nightgown mainly, in front of an electric fire, next to an old tabby cat, and he drapes things round my shoulders.
Freddy smiled. Like what?
Scarves mainly. A fur stole, once. Anything. And when I look at the painting, the room I’m sitting in has gone. The fire’s gone, the bookcase. All gone. He’s painted a completely different world. The painting he’s doing at the moment is of a farm but it’s not a farm here, it’s somewhere far away. Big horizon and strange trees and a red earth all around, and a sun so bright it hurts to look at it. In the distance, the bluest sea. He calls it an ocean, though. And I can smell that sea. That’s the power of what he’s painted. And d’you know what? I really like who I am in the picture. What he’s captured. He’s put a scarf round my head and I’ve no make-up on and I’m looking out towards something, but he hasn’t painted that something. Can you imagine it, Freddy? It’s fascinating. And as he watches me, I watch him now. I watch the world he enters, the world he never really wants to come back from. Art: it’s about some kind of order, I reckon.
Order?
Yeah. Or reorder perhaps. He’s bringing rightness back to his life. The life he thinks he should’ve led. It’s just like dreaming, really, but with paint. He doesn’t think he’s Picasso, he’s just lonely. I reckon I would’ve made a good painter, Freddy.
Missy finished her half. Another? she said. My shout, she said, and she wiggled free from the table and surfed across a sea of eyes towards the bar.
Freddy was aware of men watching her because he always had. But that evening he noticed the blokes looking his way, too, checking him out, seeing who she was with. He turned round to smile at her, just so they could see him. He knew he was being an arse but he couldn’t stop himself, he felt a little too good and that was rare. He pulled the table out for her as she slipped back in to the bench. He lit a cigarette and grinned at her.
French cigarettes, said Missy, winking at him. Bit sophis for a place like this.
Want one? said Freddy.
Why not?
And he offered her his lighter. She held his hand to stop him shaking.
Builders hands, she said.
I was apprenticed after school. Carpentry mainly.
Well, you’ll never starve. People always need a table.
Is that a fact? And he laughed.
So tell me, said Missy, awkwardly. What happened to the sisters? Where’d you all go?
Northumbria. Moved there three years before the war. They took a cottage and some land.
Missy said, So that’s it? That’s the end of the story?
’Fraid so.
Nothing better than that?
No. It ends in a field.
No, we end in a field, Freddy, they were our story. We end in a bleedin’ field! And they drank their beers and laughed.
I’m glad you’re back, and he said, Me too. And there was a flash of the old Missy when she stood up and wrote on the foggy windowpane behind: ‘FReddY home 1/11/47’. Now it’s official, she said. She turned to face him and as she did, a face from the past appeared over his shoulder, standing in the doorway. Jeanie? It was instinctive, her desire to move towards her friend, but they weren’t friends no more, were they? Jeanie hurried on through to the lavatory out the back. Was that the new secret code? Shit or leave?
You all right? said Freddy.
Better than all right, said Missy brusquely.
Look like you’ve seen a ghost.
They’re all around, Freddy, and she gathered her things quickly, quietly cursing her choice of pub. When they left, beads of condensation rolled down the windowpane.
9
They got to Missy’s lodgings before the rain hammered down and the first of the thunder roared through the streets. Missy took his hand and quietly led him up the narrow staircase to the second floor, without Miss Cudgeon catching them and causing such a fuss like she had the week before.
What happened the week before? asked Freddy as casually as he could. But Missy didn’t answer him; she said, I’ll just tell her you’re my brother. The word irritated him.
She opened the door and motioned for him to be quiet and to take off his shoes. She placed them on an old Radio Times. She took his coat and hung it on the back of the door.