The glow he’d felt in talking to Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley faded. He slipped down the back alley between Marsh Street and Gladstone Terrace, making for Tite Street and Beattie Roper’s shop, a journey he must have taken thousands of times as a child, a boy, a young man, but now he moved silently across the cobbles, feeling almost invisible. He was no more part of the life around him than one of those returning ghosts.
He came out at the top of Hope Street and started to walk down it. Hope Street ran parallel with the canal and was known, predictably, as No-Hope Street, because of the alacrity with which its inhabitants transferred themselves from one to the other. At least before the war they did. Suicides were rare now. The war had cheered everybody up.
Half way down, on the corner of Hope Street and Tite Street, was Beattie’s shop, its windows boarded up. He knocked loudly on the door.
‘You’ll not get an answer there, love,’ a woman said, passing by. He waited until she’d turned the corner, then knelt and peered through the letter-box. The counters were cleared, the floor swept clean. He called, ‘Hettie. It’s me, Billy.’ The door into the living-room stood open. He felt her listening. ‘Hettie, it’s me.’
She came at last, kneeling on her side of the door to check he was alone. There was a great rattling of bolts
and chains, and she stood there, a thin, dark, intense woman, older than he remembered. No longer pretty.
‘Billy.’
‘I’ve been to see your mother.’
‘Yes. She wrote.’
A long hesitation, which told him immediately what he wanted to know. He took off his cap and stepped forward. Almost simultaneously, she stood aside and said, ‘Come in.’
The living-room was empty. Both doors, one to the scullery, the other to the stairs, were closed. He looked round the room, taking his time. A fire blazed in the grate. The kettle stood on the hob beside it. The table, with its green cloth, still took up most of the space, six empty chairs ranged neatly round it. Hettie followed his gaze, and he could see how changes she’d become accustomed to — the empty chairs – became strange again, and unbearable as she saw them through his eyes. ‘Oh, Billy,’ she said, and then she was in his arms and crying.
He cuddled her, lifting her off her feet, rocking her from side to side. Only when the sobs subsided did he loosen his grip, and let her slide to the ground. Her spread fingers encountered belt, buckles, buttons, tabs, stars: the whole hated paraphernalia. He said quickly, ‘I see you’ve still got Tibbs.’
A fat tabby cat lay coiled on the rug, the pale underside of his chin exposed. Ghost smells of cat pee and creosote drifted in from the shop.
‘Yes,’ she said, laughing and sniffing. ‘Pees on everything now.’
Her laughter acknowledged the fund of shared memories. Thank God, Prior thought, pulling out a chair and sitting down.
She fetched the tea-pot and started making tea. ‘How’s me mam? She
says
she’s all right.’
‘Thin. But she’s eating. She’s come off the strike.’
‘Hmm. How long for? I tell her she shouldn’t do it, but she says, “How else can I convince them?”’
‘Have you been to see her?’
‘I’m going next week. I gather we’ve got you to thank for that?’
‘I put in a word.’
She poured the tea. ‘How come you’re in a position to put in a word?’
‘Got a job in the Ministry, that’s all. They’re not sending me back ‘cause of the asthma.’
‘But what do you do?’
He laughed. ‘Exactly what I did before the war. Push pieces of paper across a desk. But I managed to get me hands on your mam’s file – via a young lady in the filing department – and then I thought I’d go and see her.’
‘And you just
bluffed
your way in?’
‘Well, not exactly, I had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper. That gets you anywhere.’
‘Huh! I wish
we
had some.’
She believed him. Just as once her mother had believed Spragge. She was sitting at the head of the table, in her mother’s chair, no doubt because that made her mother’s absence seem less glaring, and he was sitting, almost certainly, where Spragge had sat. He looked across to the dresser, and there sure enough was the photograph of William.
Hettie saw him looking at it, and reached behind her. ‘I don’t think you’ve seen this one, have you?’ she said, and handed it across.
William was leaning against a stone wall, his arms loosely folded, and he was smiling, though the smile had become strained as the photographer fiddled with his camera. He was wearing bicycle clips. A pencilled date
on the back said ‘May 1913’. Prior thought he knew the place, they’d gone there together, the three of them. Behind the wall, not visible in the photograph, a steep bank shelved away, covered with brambles and bracken, full of rabbits whose shiny round droppings lay everywhere.
‘Why does it look so long ago?’ he said, holding the photograph out in front of him. Without conscious duplicity (though not without awareness), he was groping for the tone of their pre-war friendship.
She laughed, a harsh yelp that didn’t sound like Hettie.
‘No, but it does, doesn’t it?’ he persisted. ‘I mean, it
looks
longer than it is. You know, I was thinking about that on the way over. About…’ He took a deep breath. ‘You know if you were writing about something like… oh, I don’t know, enclosures, or the coming of the railways, you wouldn’t have people standing round saying…’ He put a theatrical hand to his brow. ‘“Oh, dear me, we
are
living through a period of terribly rapid social change, aren’t we?” Because nobody’d believe people would be so…
aware
. But here we are, living through just such a period, and everybody’s bloody well aware of it. I’ve heard nothing else since I came home. Not the words, of course, but the
awareness
. And I just wondered whether there aren’t periods when people
do
become aware of what’s happening, and they look back on their previous unconscious selves and it seems like decades ago. Another life.’
‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I went to London a couple of months ago, to see one of the few suffragette friends who still wants to know me. And we were sitting in her house, and there was a raid, and we actually heard shrapnel falling on the trees, and do you know it sounded exactly like rain. And she was
…
full of herself
. Short hair, breeches, driving an ambulance, all things she’d never’ve been allowed to do in a million years. And suddenly she grabbed hold of me and she said, “Hettie, for women, this is the first day in the history of the world.”’
‘And the last for a lot of men.’
Her face darkened. ‘Don’t beat
me
over the head with that, Billy.
I
’m the pacifist, remember.’
‘At least you’ve got the vote.’
‘No, I haven’t. I’m not thirty. Mam hasn’t, she’s in prison. Winnie hasn’t, same reason. William hasn’t, he’s had his vote taken away ‘cause he’s a conchie. So as far as votes go this family’s one
down
on before the war.’
‘Where is William?’ Prior said, looking at the photograph again.
‘Dartmoor. He took the Home Office scheme. He’s doing “useful work unconnected with the war”.’ She snorted. ‘Breaking stones.’
‘I’m surprised he took it.’
‘You wouldn’t be if you saw him. He’s that thin, you wouldn’t know him.’
‘I had Mike Riordan in my platoon. You remember Mike? I didn’t know
him
either. Only in his case it was the face that was missing.’
‘It isn’t a competition, Billy.’
‘No. You’re right.’
She touched his sleeve. ‘I wish we were on the same side.’
‘Well, as far as your mam’s concerned we are. You surely don’t think I’m on Spragge’s side?’
Her expression changed. ‘Oh, that man. Do you know, I met him once, just for a couple minutes, and I
knew
there was something wrong with him.’
‘You didn’t know about the poison?’
‘No, she kept all that from me. I wish she hadn’t,
I’d’ve told her she was daft to trust him. And that smirking bastard at the Old Bailey. It was awful, Billy. You’re stood in that dock and you
feel
guilty, even though you know you haven’t done it. For months afterwards I felt people could look straight through me.’ She stopped. ‘Here, drink your tea. It’ll get cold.’
‘How are you managing?’
‘I survive. Your dad brings me a bit of meat now and then. Don’t look so surprised, Billy.’ A pause. ‘I tell you who’s been good. Mrs Riley. Every time she bakes she brings something round. You know mebbe just half a dozen rock buns, but every bit helps. I’ve nothing to thank the others for, except a few bricks through the window. What gets me you know is the way they used to cut me mam dead in the street, they’d just look through her. But let them be in trouble, or their daughters be in trouble, and there they were, banging on the back door. I says, “You’re a fool, Mam. Why should you risk prison for them?” But it was, “Oh, well, she had to have instruments last time,” or “Poor bairn, she’s only seventeen.” And she’d do it for them. And it all came out at the trial. You know, killing a baby when its mother’s two months gone, that’s a terrible crime. But wait twenty years and blow the same kid’s head off, that’s all right.’
Prior winced, thinking how strange it was that such words should come so easily from her mouth, that she should have so little conception of what memories they conjured up for him.
‘What about Mac? Do you ever see him?’
Her face became guarded. ‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘You know bloody well, Billy, he wouldn’t dare come here.’
Prior sat back in his chair. ‘I know he couldn’t stay
away.’ He waited. ‘I thought I heard somebody just now.’
Her eyes went to the scullery door.
‘Walking up and down.’
‘It’s a restless house. You’ve got to remember me mam held seances here. In this room.’
‘You don’t believe in that.’
‘I know me mam wasn’t a fraud.
Something
happened. Whether it was just the force of people’s need or not, I don’t know, but there used to be nights when this table was shaking. It changes a place. I sit here on me own some nights and I hear footsteps going round and round the table.’
He had a dreadfully clear perception of what her life must be like, alone in this house, with the empty chairs and the boarded-up windows. It didn’t surprise him that she heard footsteps going round the table.
‘Talking of Mac,’ he said, and felt her stiffen. ‘I thought I’d go round and see his mam. I don’t suppose he still sees her, does he?’
‘That’s a good idea, Billy. I’d willingly go, but I doubt if she’d thank me for it. In fact, I doubt if she’d invite me in.’
‘No, she’s a great patriot, Lizzie.’ He was smiling to himself. ‘You know the last time I was home I bumped into her. Well.’ He laughed. ‘Fell over her. You know the alley behind the Rose and Crown? “Just resting,” she says. I got her on her feet and she took one look at the uniform and she says, “Thank God for an honest man.” And out it all came. Apparently on the day war broke out she did seven men for free because they’d just come back from the recruiting office.
They said
. “And do you know,” she says. “Five of them were still walking round in civvies a year after.” She says she had a go at Wally Smith about it. And he says, “Well they wouldn’t
let me in because of me teeth.” And Lizzie says, “What the fuck do they want you to do?
Bite the buggers?
” ‘
Hettie was looking very uncomfortable. Since she was far from prudish he could only suppose the story of Lizzie and her August 4th burst of generosity was likely to be painful to the person on the other side of the scullery door. He thought of saying, ‘Oh, come on, Mac, stop arsing about,’ but he didn’t dare risk it. Better make his plea first, then leave them alone to talk about it.
‘I’d like to see Mac, Hettie.’
‘So would I,’ she flashed. ‘Fat chance.’
‘No, I mean I really do need to see him. If I’m going to do anything for your mam, I’ve got to talk to him first. He —’
‘He didn’t know anything about it.’
‘No, but he knew Spragge. Spragge was with him the night before he came here. He gave Spragge the address.’
‘Do you think he doesn’t know that? Spragge took in an awful lot of people, Billy. He had
letters’
‘I know. I’m not… I’m not
blaming
Mac. I just want to talk to him. He might remember something that would help. You see, if we could prove Spragge acted as an
agent provocateur
with somebody else – or even tried to – that would help to discredit his evidence in your mam’s case.’
She glanced at the scullery door. ‘I know somebody who bumps into Mac now and then. I’ll see if I can get a message through.’
‘That’s all I ask.’ He stood up. ‘And now I’d better be off.’
She didn’t try to detain him. At the door he paused and said loudly, ‘I thought I’d go for a walk by the cattle pens. I thought I’d go there now.’
She looked up at him. ‘Goodnight, Billy.’
It was not quite dusk when Prior reached the cattle pens, empty at this time of the week and therefore unguarded. Mac, if he came at all, would wait till dark, so there was time to kill. He lit a cigarette and strolled up and down, remembering the taste of his first cigarette – given to him by Mac – and the valiant efforts he’d made not to be sick.
He stood for a while, his hands gripping the cold metal of one of the pens. He was recalling a time when he’d been ill – one of the many – and he’d gone out and wandered the streets, not well enough yet to go back to school but bored with being in the house. It had been a hot day, and he was muffled up, a prickly scarf round his neck, a poultice bound to his chest. The heat beat up into his face from the pavements as he dragged himself along, stick-thin, white, bed-bound legs moving in front of him, the smell of Wintergreen rising into his nostrils. The name made him think of pine trees, snow-covered hills and the way the sheets felt when you thrust your hot legs into a cool part, away from the sticky damp.