Wake: A Novel (3 page)

He reaches into his pocket, takes out a flask, and lifts it to her mouth. “Here, have a bit of this while you wait.”

“No, thank you.”

She half-turns from him, cringing as she hears her voice in her head:
No, thank you.
She sounds so Hammersmith. So up-past-her-bedtime. So prim.

“Go on. It’s good stuff. Single malt.”

His eyes are laughing now. Is he laughing at her? He is the sort of man who could talk to anyone. So what is he doing hanging around here? It feels like a trick.

She should go and find Gus; he must have been served by now.

She should. But she doesn’t.

Instead, she reaches for the man’s flask, takes it, lifts it to her mouth.

Because she’s only here for tonight, and her companion is useless and elsewhere, and her friend is otherwise engaged.

And so what has she got to lose?

She is unprepared for the sharp hit of the drink, though, and she chokes and coughs.

“Not much of a whiskey girl, then?”

She takes another, deeper pull in reply. This time she swallows it down. “Thanks,” she says, pleased with herself, handing it back.

He looks out over the dance floor. “Are you here to dance, then?” he says. “Or have you just come to lurk?”

“I’ve come here to dance,” she says, as the whiskey flares in her blood.

“Glad to hear it.” He crushes his cigarette in an ashtray nearby then turns to her. “How would you feel about dancing with me?”

“If you like.”

Fewer people are dancing now, and they can walk straight out to the middle of the floor. Once there, the man holds up his hands. It is an odd gesture, not quite the gesture of a man beginning a dance, more that of a man who is unarmed. Hettie puts one hand in his, the other on his evening coat, which is fitted tight against his back. The crease of his collar touches her ear. His hand is cool. He smells of lemons and cigarettes. She feels a bit dizzy. Perhaps it’s the drink.

The soulful, gorgeous trumpet has faded now, and the band is picking up again, the music moving into a rag, a one-step.

One-two, one-two.

The floor is filling, people pressing all around them, cheering, clapping, stamping the music back into life.

One-two, one-two.

He steps toward her.

Hettie steps back.

And it’s there; it’s in that first tiny movement—the flash of recognition.
Yes!
The rare feeling she gets when someone knows how to move. Then the music crashes in, and they are dancing together across the floor.

“Good band tonight,” he says, over the music. “American. I like the Americans.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow. “Who’ve you seen, then?”

“The Original Dixies.”

“The
Dixies
? Damn.” He looks impressed. “They were the best.” He puts his leg between hers as he goes for the spin. “Where’d you see them?”

“The Palais
.
Hammersmith.” She comes back to face him.

“Really? I went there once—saw them there, too!” He looks eager suddenly, like a boy.

Hettie considers this, wonders if they danced near each other. They definitely didn’t dance together. She’d have remembered.

“What was your favorite number, then?” he says.

She laughs; that’s easy. “‘Tiger Rag.’”

“‘Tiger Rag’!” He grins. “Crikey. That one’s dangerous. So damn fast.”

The fastest of all. Even she used to get out of breath.

“What was he called?” His face creases. “That trumpeter—Nick something or other.”

“LaRocca.”

Nick LaRocca—
the world-famous trumpeter from New York. He used to make the girls go barmy. He’d smiled at her once, in the drafty backstage corridor:
Hey, kid!
he said, and winked as he was doing up his bow tie. She’s had his picture above her bed ever since.

“La
Rocca
! That’s it.” He looks delighted. “Crazy man. Played like a lunatic.”

They are on the edge of the dance floor now, where the noise isn’t quite so loud. “So, then,” he says, “tell me. An anarchist with a love for American jazz.”

“But I’m not—” Their eyes catch, and something passes between them, a silent understanding.
This is all a game.

“What’s your cover?” he says, leaning close—close enough for her to smell the whiskey on his breath.

“Cover?”

“Day job.”

“Oh, it’s dancing. At the Palais. I’m a dance instructress there.”

“Good cover.” He smiles, then his forehead creases again, as though he’s remembering something. “Not in that awful metal box thing, are you?”

She nods, feels the familiar wince of shame. “Afraid so, yes.”

“Poor you.”

The Pen.
That
awful metal box.
Where she and Di sit, trapped, along with ten other girls, till they are hired, while the men without partners shark up and down, deciding if they want you, if you are worth their sixpence for a turn around the floor.

He leans back, as though to see her better. “You don’t look like the sort of girl who’s for hire.”

Is he making fun of her again? It could be a compliment, but she can’t be sure.

“I’m Ed, by the way,” he says. “Terribly rude of me. Should have introduced myself before.”

She hesitates.

“Right, then,” he says with a grin. “You can tell me your name when I get the thumbscrews out later.”

She laughs. The dance is almost finished. Over his shoulder she can see Gus standing on the edge of the floor, staring out at them forlornly, two drinks in his hands, and as the music comes to its close she is clumsy suddenly, aware of her body, of the parts where it is close to Ed’s. She takes her hands down, steps back.

“Wait.” He catches her wrist. “Don’t go,” he says. “At least, not before you’ve told me your name.” His face has changed again. The smile has gone.

“It’s Hettie,” she says. Because whatever game they were playing is clearly over and, all told, she’s not the sort of girl to lie.

“Hettie,” he repeats, tightening his grip. Then he leans in close. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I won’t give you away. I know how much these things matter. I want to blow things up, too.”

Then he lets her go, and turns and walks, without stopping, without looking back, through the crush of people, across the floor, up the stairs, and out of the club.

The room wheels, a queasy kaleidoscope around her.

And here is Gus, crossing the floor toward her, sagging now, all jubilation spent. “Who was that, then? Someone you know?”

She shakes her head. But she can feel him still, this Ed, this man she doesn’t know, a Chinese burn scalding her wrist.

“You looked as though you knew him,” says Gus. He sounds aggrieved.

Hettie is furious suddenly. With poor, bald Gus. His awkward dancing and that half-cringing look on his face. And then, seeing that he sees this, she is sorry for him. “Perhaps I knew him,” she says quietly. “Perhaps I met him before.”

He seems a little appeased. When she doesn’t say any more, he nods. “Lemonade?” he says, holding out her drink.

“Evelyn.”

Someone is calling her name.

“
Evelyn,
turn that bloody alarm off, would you? It’s been racketing for an age.”

Evelyn opens her eyes to darkness.

She reaches from under the blanket and gropes for the clock on her bedside chest. There’s a sudden shocking silence, until Doreen grunts on the other side of the door
.
“
Thank
you.”

Evelyn curls onto her side, her knuckles in her mouth, biting down, as Doreen’s slippered footsteps retreat.

She was having the dream again.

She lies there for a moment more, then takes her fist away, sits up, and pulls the curtains aside. Thin light touches the face of her clock. The immovable realities of morning make themselves known. It is eight o’clock. It is Sunday, her mother’s birthday, and she has to be in Oxfordshire by lunch.

Bloody hell.

In the bathroom, the pipes clank and creak. She hauls herself out of bed, the soles of her bare feet cold against the floor, and while Doreen hums and splashes next door she dresses in the half-light, choosing her least tatty blouse and her longest serge skirt, slipping into her stockings and shoes and pulling her cardigan tight.

The light is stronger by the time she has finished dressing; still, she avoids her reflection in the mirror on the wall.

Outside, in the scrubby patch of grass that passes for a garden, she pushes open the door of the damp lavatory and squats, shivering as she pees, before pulling the chain and stepping out. There’s a battered packet of Gold Flakes in the pocket of her cardy and she coughs as she lights one up. She looks up at the trees, at their wet black bare branches latticing the lightening sky. As she stands there, a single, tired leaf detaches itself, twirling down onto the path. After a couple of drags she throws the cigarette onto the path beside the leaf and puts her foot over them both, grinding them into the ground at her feet.

In the kitchen, she boils water for her coffee, then pours the coarse grounds straight into her mug, taking it to the table, where she sits and lights another cigarette.

“Good morning.” Doreen’s smiling head appears around the door.

“Morning.” She dumps two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into her cup and stirs.

“How’s you?”

“A-one, darling.” Evelyn salutes. “A-one.”

“Breakfast?” Doreen disappears into the pantry to root around.

“God, no.”

“Off to the country?”

“Paddington. Ten o’clock,” says Evelyn.

Doreen emerges with bread and butter. “Better get a move on, then.”

As much as Evelyn loves Doreen, as much as sharing this flat with her is the calmest, least troubling living arrangement that she can imagine, just now, just this morning, she really doesn’t want to talk. She would rather sit here alone, with the remains of her dream wrapped around her like a stole against the gray morning air.

Doreen pulls out a chair and begins slicing bread. She is humming. Dressed to go out: wearing a pretty frock, her cheeks scrubbed and powdered, her hair up. Though it’s hard to tell in this light, she may even be wearing rouge.

“What are you up to, anyway?” says Evelyn. “It’s Sunday. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Doreen looks up from her slicing. “I’m off today, too. The man, remember. I told you last week. He’s promised to take me out of London. Said I was languishing in the smoke.”

“Ah.”

“I know he’ll drag me up a godforsaken hill somewhere and make me look at a view. Still…” Doreen smiles, apologetic, flushed.

Evelyn crushes her stub in the ashtray. “You’re right. I do have to get a move on.” She pulls on her coat. “You look lovely. You are lovely. Have a lovely time. Say hello from me.” She goes to the door, then turns back. “And wish me luck.”

“Luck,” says Doreen, grinning, holding out her buttery knife. “And remember, don’t let the old girl get you down.”

Evelyn stands beneath the clock, tapping her foot against the ground, scanning the Paddington crowd for her brother. No sign. She checks the departures board a last time and then heads off across the station, moving through wide slices of morning light. Irritating. It’s irritating he should be late.

The engine is spitting ash when she arrives at the platform, and she just has time to jump on the last carriage before it pulls away. She walks the length of the swaying train, checking each compartment for her brother’s tall, rangy shape, the welcome of his smile. He is nowhere, though, and the train is full, but in the last carriage of second class she finds a compartment to herself.

Where the hell is he, then? They’ve had this arrangement for weeks.

She feels a brief, worried contraction on his behalf—but then pushes it away. She doesn’t want to think about her brother. Her brother can more than look after himself. She wants to think about her dream. About how it begins.

It begins like this: She’s in the sitting room of the house she grew up in, and she is reading a book. The doorbell rings; she marks her place and stands, moving across the carpet to the door. Now all she has to do is turn the handle and step into the hall, and Fraser will be there, waiting for her on the other side. Her hand is over the doorknob, and she is touching it, can feel the cool brass of it sliding into her palm; she presses down, the door swings open, and—

She never gets any further than this.

These are things she remembers: Light, a morning in summer, Fraser beside her on the bed. The shifting patterns across his face.

The train rattles through a tunnel. When it emerges again into the unpromising morning, Evelyn catches sight of her reflection in the mirror above the seat. Because of the way it’s angled, slightly downward, she can see her hair parting clearly. She hasn’t seen her hair in daylight for a while, and in among her dark hairs are coarse white ones—too many now to count.

And here is the truth of things, she thinks. Even if the dream were real, if he could assemble himself from his thousand scattered parts; if she could open the door and find him standing before her, whole; he would be horrified: She will be thirty next month. She has betrayed him. She has become old.

Outside, London’s suburbs slide on. She thinks of all the people, in all of the houses, waking to their gray mornings, their gray hairs, their gray lives.

We are comrades, she thinks, in grayness.

This is what remains.

When Evelyn wakes, there’s a small boy on the knee of a large woman sitting on the seat in front of her. Both of them are staring. The child has a headful of orange curls and a round, pasty face. The woman turns immediately away, as if caught in the act of something shameful, but the child carries on looking, mouth open, with a thin silver slug trail from his nose to his chin. Three more people sit in the carriage, too: a man and two elderly women over by the door. Evelyn looks out the window. They are pulling away from a station.
READING,
halfway there.

“That lady’s got no finger.”

“Shh,” says the woman with the child. “
Shh,
Charles.”

Evelyn raises an eyebrow.