1918
“Are you coming too?”
Thea is going to hand out suffragette pamphlets by the entrance of Holloway Gaol, because that’s where they’re force-feeding the women. She explains how they do it, with a tube in their throats and a funnel; it must be dreadful—two women have already died because it brought on pneumonia. I put my violin away, put on my coat. She pins a rosette to it.
When we’re outside she links arms. “Peter’s asked me to marry him. What do you think?” Sometimes she’s just like a cat, round and purring.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes, quite a bit. I mean, not as much as Don. But enough maybe. And Don doesn’t want to be tied down.”
A rag-and-bone man drives past, straight through a puddle. The wheels of his cart spatter water against our legs. He’s cursing and swearing at us—he must have seen the rosettes on our lapels.
“Don and you are exactly like each other.”
“Yes, but that’s precisely why it won’t work. Music is enough for you, but I need someone who puts me first. To make me happy.”
We change shifts with our fellow protesters at the square in front of the prison. “How did it go?” Thea asks.
“Boring. Just three men, and all of them prison officers. Can one of you p’raps give us a cig?”
Thea takes a case from her coat pocket and the girl helps herself to a cigarette. She shares it with her pal while they walk away, taking it in turns for a drag.
Thea asks if I’ll come and have a meal with her later this week, when Peter will be there, so I can get to know him better and perhaps give her some advice. “I’m so impulsive. I mean, I do think I love him, but it’s the same with all of them.” An aeroplane drowns out her tale. We both look up.
Two soldiers are walking towards us. I recognise the one on the left. I think his name is Leo—he’s one of the chaps Kingsley used to play tennis with, in Aberdovey. Perhaps he’ll know something. I run towards him.
“Yes?” his friend says, frostily. We’re allowed to protest here, but our presence isn’t appreciated.
“Leo?”
His face brightens as he recognises me. “It’s Gwen, isn’t it?”
“Have you heard anything about Kingsley? We’ve heard nothing at all for a few months and most of the soldiers are back from France now, surely?”
A cloud passes overhead. “They haven’t informed you?”
“What about?” Beneath my feet the ground gapes open in slow motion.
“The bombardment. The night before we were going to return. The whole camp was wiped out. We’re not exactly sure who was there. Perhaps Kingsley was with the first detachment and he’d already left, but all the records were lost. Perhaps he’s still in France, or on his way home. I was there too, but before Kingsley—so I don’t know if he was there then or not.”
Thea stands beside me and folds me into her arms.
“Kingsley is a strong, resourceful chap. It’s quite possible that…” He looks directly at me. “It’s chaos there. Perhaps he’s in a hospital somewhere. Or he’s making his own way home. No one knows exactly where they are and it’s not very easy to get away. Men are still coming home.”
Coming home, hope, hold on, get a grip, Kingsley. My father and Olive waved us off from the station in Wales; we shared a bar of chocolate in the train. His face, so familiar, a stranger, a soldier, I read, he gazes out of the window. France, a farm, hold on to hope. Thea talks to me, gives me a cigarette, I’m all light-headed.
“It can take weeks sometimes. One of my other mates got back just the day before yesterday. And it depends on how badly they’re wounded.” He turns to Thea. “No one’s reported that things have gone badly for him.”
“You should sit down a moment,” Thea says. She towers above me, as my mother did before I fell asleep when I was little, as in those moments when my soul has almost let go of the day, grasps on to a few threads a little longer, and then yields.
The third time someone knocks at the door, I open it.
“Miss Howard. It’s eleven o’clock already. I can’t control what you do in your own time, but we can’t keep breakfast waiting for you for ever.” Mrs Sewell’s face seems more deeply furrowed each week.
I nod. This afternoon we’re starting to rehearse a new piece. I haven’t practised it enough yet.
“Breakfast tomorrow will be at half past seven, as usual. If you wish for something else to eat today, then ask in the kitchen.”
She turns around, thin and creased as crêpe paper. Her feet barely leave prints in the carpet.
I go and sit on the windowsill. The late autumn sun makes the chestnut treetops luminescent—yellow, ochre, red, redder. A stabbing in my belly, in my diaphragm—perhaps he’ll never see this again. Thea kept insisting yesterday evening that we can’t tell what’s happened, that I mustn’t lose heart. She said it again this morning. Don’t lose heart, hope. He had no worries about the war, he wasn’t the type to worry about anything. A good soldier, not made of granite but certainly of solid wood. But no one could really imagine how bad it was, not even when the first stories reached us from the trenches, when the first soldiers returned, when the newspapers wrote reports—now we have photographs too.
A military truck drives past in the street below, tooting its horn, and there’s a group of children at the roadside, cheering. A soldier walks past them, arm in arm with a nurse. Her laughter cuts off my breath.
My dress is draped over the foot of my bed. The fabric feels cold for a moment, and then takes on the temperature of my skin.
The banister rail gives some support. It’s colder outside than it seemed, so I go back for a warmer coat and my soft velvet bonnet, and try again. When the door slams shut behind me, it makes me jump. But it’s only on reaching the rehearsal room that I realise I’ve forgotten my violin. Stockdale lets Joan take me home. “We really don’t need you this week. Just make sure that you practise every day. It’ll do you good. Chin up.” He pats a little colour into my cheek.
“Gwen, we must go now. We’re already late.” Thea is at the open door. “Come on, darling. I know you’re not in the mood. But you can’t let the children down. Truly.”
She takes my hand and tugs me up. I grasp my violin case and follow her downstairs, out of the front door, out of the street, to Don’s house. He’s started a little school for the children in his neighbourhood. They have classes twice a week, violin and piano. Thea helps Don with the piano classes, I help with the violin. They’re too small still for the cello. He has a rich uncle who has bought some second-hand violins for him, and some of the orchestra have donated old instruments.
One of the youngest children, Paulie, is standing at the door waiting for us. “Thea!” He throws his arms around her waist and presses his filthy little body against hers.
“Clever boy—you’re here already!” She asks if his sister is here too. He doesn’t know, scratches a scab off his cheek; the black dirt from his nails remains in the wound. His pals run into the street, yelling; the smallest boy falls over, seems to want to cry for a moment, then swiftly races towards us with the others.
There are twelve children in all. We put them in a circle and start warming up. We always begin with a little song. “Happy or sad?” “Happy,” half of them shout. “Sad,” the other half cry. For a few minutes it casts its spell on them. After that they’re allowed to play. We’re halfway through ‘Frère Jacques’ now. Michael is concentrating so hard that his tongue sticks out. Paulie is distracted and is running around. Thea sits him down again, with his violin. The girls are really doing their best. Bert and Timmy are always laughing. Once a week isn’t enough. They have no other stimulus. These children aren’t from the worst families: they have shoes; their teeth are mostly white, not black; they’re not as thin as the street urchins who live behind Mrs Sewell’s house. But they all have too many brothers and sisters and only Paulie and Timmy regularly go to school.