The Shifting Fog

  In a far grey corner of London, Robbie Hunter wakes. Shrugs off his nightmares and pulls a small parcel from his pocket. A parcel, nursed in his breast pocket since the final days of war, its safe delivery promised to a dying friend.

  PART 3

  The Times

  6 JUNE 1919

  The Estate Market

  LORD SUTHERLAND’S PROPERTY

  The principal transaction this week has been the private sale, by Messrs. Mabbett and Edge, as briefly announced in The Times yesterday, of Haberdeen House, the ancestral home of Lord Sutherland. The house, at number seventeen Grosvenor Square, was sold to the City banker Mr S Luxton, and is to be occupied by Mr T Luxton and his new wife, the Honourable Hannah Hartford, eldest daughter of Lord Ashbury.

  Mr T Luxton and the Hon. H Hartford were married from the bride’s family home, Riverton Manor, outside the village of Saffron Green, in May and are now honeymooning in France. They will take up residence at Haberdeen House, to be renamed Luxton House, when they return to England next month.

  Mr T Luxton is the Tory candidate for the seat of Marsden in East London. The seat will be contested in a bi-election in November.

  CATCHING BUTTERFLIES

  They have brought us to the spring fair by minibus. Eight in all: six residents, Sylvia and a nurse whose name I can’t remember—a young girl with a wispy plait snaking down her back to sweep her belt. I expect they think the day out does us good. Though what can be gained from exchanging comfortable surrounds for a muddy oval of tents selling cakes and toys and soaps I do not know. I should have been just as happy to stay at home, away from the bustle.

  A makeshift stage has been erected behind the town hall, as it is each year, and rows of white plastic chairs assembled before it. The other residents and the girl with the plait are sitting by the stage watching a man pluck numbered ping-pong balls from a metal bucket, but I prefer it here on the little iron seat by the memorial. I feel strange today. It is the heat, I’m sure. When I woke my pillow was damp, and I’ve been unable to shake this odd foggy sensation all morning. My thoughts are skimming. Coming quickly, fully formed, then slipping away before I can properly grasp them. Like catching a butterfly. It is unsettling, leaves me irritable.

  A cup of tea will see me right.

  Where has Sylvia gone? Did she tell me? She was here only a moment ago, about to smoke a cigarette. Talking again about her man-friend and their plans to cohabit. Once upon a time I’d have considered such extramarital relations improper, but time has a way of changing one’s views on most things.

  The exposed skin on the top of my feet is cooking. I consider slipping them into the shade but an irresistible sense of masochistic ennui bids me leave them where they are. Sylvia will see the red patches later, will realise how long she has left me.

  From where I sit I see the cemetery. The eastern side with its line of poplars, new leaves quivering at the suggestion of a breeze. Beyond the poplars, on the other side of the ridge, are the gravestones, amongst them my mother’s.

  It’s been an age since we buried her. A wintry day in 1922 when the earth was frozen solid and my skirts blew icy against my stockinged legs, and a figure, a man, stood on the hill, barely recognisable. She took her secrets with her, into the cold, hard earth, but I learned them in the end. I know a lot about secrets; I have made them my life. Perhaps I hoped in some way that the more I learned of secrets, the better I would be at hiding my own.

  I am hot. It is far too hot for April. No doubt global warming is to blame. Global warming, melting the polar ice caps, the ozone hole, genetically modified food. Some other disease of the 1990s. The world has become a hostile place. Even the rainwater is not safe these days.

  That’s what’s eating the war monument. One side of the soldier’s stone face has been ravaged, the cheek pockmarked, the nose devoured by time. Like a piece of fruit left too long in a ditch, gnawed by scavengers.

  He knows about duty. Despite his wounds he stands to attention atop the cenotaph, as he has for eighty years, surveying the plains beyond the town, hollow gaze cast over Bridge Street toward the car park of the new shopping centre; a land fit for heroes. He is almost as old as I am. Is he as tired?

  He and his pillar have become mossy; microscopic plants thrive in the etched names of the dead. David’s is on there, at the top with the other officers; and Rufus Smith the ragman’s son, suffocated in Belgium by a collapsed trench. Further down, Raymond Jones, the village peddler when I was a girl. Those little boys of his would be men now. Old men, though younger than I. It is possible they are dead.

  No wonder he is crumbling. It is a lot to ask of one man, to bear the strain of countless tragedies, bear witness to countless echoes of death.

  But he is not alone: there is one like him in every English town. They are the nation’s scars; a rash of gallant scabs spread across the land in 1919, a spate of determined healing. Such extravagant faith we had then: in the League of Nations, the possibility of a civilised world. Against such determined hope the poets of disillusionment were lost. For every TS Eliot, for every RS Hunter, there were fifty bright young men espousing Tennyson’s dreams of the parliament of man, the federation of the world.

  It didn’t last of course. It couldn’t. Disillusionment was inevitable; after the twenties came the depression thirties and then another war. And things were different after that one. No new memorials emerged triumphantly, defiantly, hopefully out of the mushroom cloud of World War Two. Hope perished in the gas chambers of Poland. A new generation of the battle-damaged were blown home and a second set of names chiselled onto the bases of existing statues; sons below fathers. And in everybody’s mind, the weary knowledge that some day young men would once again be falling.

  Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn’t flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternative version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.

  I have been trying to fix upon the turning points in Hannah and Teddy’s story; all thoughts, these days, lead to Hannah. Looking back it seems clear: there were certain events in the first year of their marriage that laid the foundation of what was to come. I couldn’t see them at the time. In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabelled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.

  I wonder how their marriage will be handled in the film. What will Ursula decide led them to unhappiness? Was it Deborah’s arrival from New York? Teddy’s election loss? The absence of an heir? Will she agree that the signs were there as early as the honeymoon—the future fissures visible even by the dusky light of Paris, like faint flaws in the diaphanous fabrics of the twenties: beautiful, trivial fabrics so flimsy they could not hope to last?

  In the summer of 1919 Paris basked in the warm optimism of the Versailles Peace Conference. In the evenings I helped Hannah undress, peeled off yet another new gossamer gown in pale green, or pink, or white (Teddy was a man who liked his brandy straight and his women pure), while she told me of the places they had visited, the things she had seen. They climbed the Eiffel Tower, strolled the Champs-Elysées, dined in famous restaurants. But it was something more, and less, that appealed to Hannah.

  ‘The sketches, Grace,’ she said one night as I unwrapped her. ‘Who’d have thought I so adored sketches?’

  Sketches, artefacts, people, smells. She was hungry for every new experience. She had years to make up for, years she considered had been wasted, marking time, waiting for her life to begin. There were so many people to speak to: wealthy folk they met in restaurants, politicians fresh from devising the treaty, buskers she encountered on the street.
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  Teddy was not blind to her reactions, her tendency to exaggerate, her inclination toward wild enthusiasm, but he put her high spirits down to youth. It was a condition, enchanting and bewildering in equal parts, which she would outgrow in good time. Not that he wished her to, not then; at that stage he was still enamoured. He promised her a trip to Italy the following year to see Pompeii, the Uffizi, the Colosseum; there was little then he wouldn’t promise. For she was a mirror in which he saw himself no longer the son of his father—solid, conventional, dull—but the husband of a charming, unpredictable woman.

  For her part, Hannah did not speak much of Teddy. He was an adjunct. An accessory whose attendance made possible the adventure she was on. Oh, she liked him well enough. She found him amusing at times (though often when he least intended), well meaning, and not unpleasant company. His interests were rather less varied than her own, his intellect less keen, but she learned to stroke his ego when required and seek intellectual stimulation elsewhere. And if she wasn’t in love, what did it matter? She didn’t notice the absence, not then. Who needed love when there was so much else in the offing?

  One morning, toward the end of the honeymoon, Teddy woke with a migraine. He would have others in the time I knew him; they did not come often but were severe when they did, the legacy of a childhood illness. He could do little but lie very still in a darkened, silent room and drink small amounts of water. Hannah was unsettled that first time; she had been shielded, for the most part, from the unpleasantness of illness.

  She made an uncertain offer to sit with him, but Teddy was a sensible man not given to extracting comfort from the discomfort of others. He told her there was nothing she could do, that it was a crime not to enjoy her last days in Paris.

  I was required as companion; Teddy considered it unseemly that a lady be seen alone in the street, no matter that she was married. Hannah had no wish to shop and had grown tired of being indoors. She wanted to explore, to unearth her very own Paris. We went outside and began to walk. She used no map, just turned in any direction that took her fancy.

  ‘Come on, Grace,’ she said, time and again. ‘Let’s see what’s down this one.’

  Eventually we reached an alleyway, darker and thinner than those that had come before. A narrow path between two rows of buildings that leaned together, the tops embracing to enclose those below. Music drifted along the pathway, threading out into the square. There was a smell, vaguely familiar, of something edible, or perhaps something dead. And there was movement. People. Voices. Hannah stood at the entrance, deciding, then started down the alley. I had little choice but to follow.

  It was an artist’s community. I know that now. Having lived through the sixties, having visited Haight-Ashbury and Carnaby Street, I can easily identify bohemian dishabille, the trappings of artistic poverty. But at that time it was all new. The only other place I had ever been was Saffron where there was nothing artful about poverty. We wove down the alley, past little stalls and open doors, sheets strung to create divisions and spaces, smoke drifting up from sticks releasing a dusty, musky smell. A child with huge eyes, limpid gold, peered, expressionless, from between shutters.

  A man sitting on gold and red cushions played a clarinet, though I didn’t know its name then, the long black stick with shiny rings and keys. In my mind I called it the snake. It made music as the man’s fingers pressed all over it: music I couldn’t place, that made me feel vaguely uncomfortable, seemed somehow to describe intimate things, dangerous things. It was jazz, as it turned out, and I was to hear much more of it before the decade was out.

  There were tables along the alley, and men sat reading, or talking, or arguing. They drank coffee and mysterious coloured drinks—liquor, I was sure—from strange bottles. They looked up as we passed, interested, uninterested, it was hard to tell. I tried not to meet their eyes; silently willed Hannah to change her mind, turn around and lead us back into light and safety. But while my nostrils were filling with unwelcome foreign smoke, my ears with foreign music, Hannah seemed to float. Her attention was elsewhere. Along the alley walls pictures were strung, but not like those at Riverton. These were charcoal. Human faces, limbs, eyes, staring out at us from between the bricks.

  Hannah stopped before a picture. It was large, and was the only one to include a whole person. It was a woman sitting on a chair. Not an armchair, or a chaise longue, or an artist’s couch. A plain, wooden chair with heavy legs. Her knees were apart and she sat facing directly ahead. She was naked and she was black, luminous in charcoal. Her face stared from the painting. Wide eyes, sharp cheeks, pleated lips. Her hair was wrapped into a knot behind her head. Like a warrior queen.

  I was shocked by the painting, expected Hannah to react similarly. But she felt something different. She reached out and touched it; stroked the curved line of the woman’s cheek. She inclined her head.

  A man was somehow beside her. ‘You like?’ he said, heavy accent, heavier lids. I didn’t like the way he looked at Hannah. He knew she had money. He could tell by her clothing.

  Hannah blinked, as if released from a spell. ‘Oh yes,’ she said softly.

  ‘You want to buy perhaps?’

  Hannah pressed her lips together and I knew what she was thinking. Despite his professed love of art, Teddy would not approve. And she was right. There was something about the woman, the painting, that was dangerous. Subversive.

  And yet Hannah wanted it. It reminded her, of course, of the past. Of The Game. Nefertiti. A role she had played with the unencumbered vigour of childhood. She nodded. Oh yes, she wanted it.

  Misgivings prickled beneath my skin. The man’s face remained expressionless. He called someone. When there was no answer he gestured for Hannah to follow. They seemed to have forgotten my presence, but I stayed close to her as she followed him to a small red door. He pushed it open. It was an artist’s studio, little more than a dark hole in the wall. The walls were faded green, wallpaper peeling in long strips. The floor—what I could see of it beneath the hundreds of loose paper sheets scarred with charcoal—was stone. There was a mattress in the corner, covered with faded cushions and a quilt; empty liquor bottles were strewn around its edges.

  Inside was the woman from the painting. To my horror she was naked. She looked at us with interest that was quickly extinguished, but didn’t say anything. She stood up, taller than us, taller than the man, and walked to the table. There was something in her movement, a freedom, a disregard for the fact that we were watching her, could see her breasts, one larger than the other, that unnerved me. These weren’t people like us. Like me. She lit a cigarette and smoked it as we waited. I looked away. Hannah didn’t.

  ‘Madame wants to buy your portrait,’ said the man in stilted English.

  The black woman stared at Hannah then said something in a language I didn’t speak. Not French. Something far more foreign.

  The man laughed and said to Hannah, ‘It’s not for sale.’ He reached out then and grabbed her chin. Alarm pulsed loudly in my ears. Even Hannah flinched as he held her firmly, turned her head from side to side then let her go. ‘Trade only.’

  ‘Trade?’ said Hannah.

  ‘Your own image,’ said the man in his heavy accent. He shrugged. ‘You take hers, you leave your own.’

  The very thought! A portrait of Hannah—in Lord knew what state of undress—left hanging here in this dismal French alley for all who cared to see! It was unthinkable.

  ‘We have to go, ma’am,’ I said with a firmness that surprised me. ‘Mr Luxton. He’ll be expecting us.’

  My tone must have surprised Hannah too, for to my relief she nodded. ‘Yes. You’re right, Grace.’

  She walked with me to the door, but as I waited for her to pass through she turned back to the charcoal man. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said faintly. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  We did not speak on the way back to the car. Hannah walked quickly, her face set. That night I lay awake, anxious and afraid, wondering how to stop her, certain that I
must. There was something in the sketch that unsettled me; something I saw in Hannah’s reflection when she looked at it. A flicker reignited.

  Lying in my bed that night, sounds of the street took on a malevolence they hadn’t had before. Foreign voices, foreign music, a woman’s laughter in a nearby apartment. I longed to return to England, to a place where the rules were clear and everybody knew their place. It didn’t exist, of course, this England, but the night times have a way of encouraging extremes.

  As it happens, things next morning took care of themselves. When I went to dress Hannah, Teddy was already awake and sitting in the armchair. His head was still aching, he said, but what kind of a husband would he be if he left his pretty wife alone on the final day of their honeymoon? He suggested they go shopping. ‘It’s our last day. I’d like to take you out to pick some souvenirs. Something to remind you of Paris.’

  When they returned, I noted, the sketch was not amongst the things Hannah had me pack for England. I am not sure whether Teddy refused and she acceded, or whether she knew better than to ask, but I was glad. Teddy had bought her a fur wrap instead: mink, with brittle little paws and dull black eyes.

  And so we returned to England.

  I am thirsty. There is someone sitting beside me again, but it is not Sylvia. It is a woman, heavily pregnant, with bags of knitted dolls and homemade jams at her feet. Her face is shiny and moist, and her makeup has slipped an inch since application. Black crescents rest on her upper cheeks. She is looking at me, has been watching me for some time, I suspect.

  I nod; it seems to be expected. I consider asking her to fetch me something to drink but I quickly decide against it. Of the two of us, I think she looks the worse.

  ‘Lovely day,’ she says finally. ‘Nice and warm.’ I can see the beads of sweat about her hairline. The darker strip of fabric that clings beneath her heavy breasts.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say. ‘Very warm.’