‘No, it’s fine. More bread, anyone?’ I forced it away.
There was a pause, which Charles broke, nervously. ‘I’ll have some, thank you,’ he said, reaching for the plate. ‘It’s very good. Fresh.’
‘Deliciously so,’ added Bella.
She began talking about a new bakery near her and people joined in, the topic of food always one to raise interest. And after a while, the atmosphere lightened again. Even Charles made people laugh with a story about being caught scrumping a crateful of pears when he was at school and being made to eat them all as punishment. He was apparently ill for days.
When I began to clear the table, he offered to help. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘It was very nice, Mrs Cawson,’ he said, as we entered the kitchen. ‘It can’t be easy making something like that from whatever’s available today.’
‘Oh, you find ways to get the ingredients.’ I passed him a stack of plates and his hands wobbled a little. ‘Can you take these through?’ He was a lot more pleasant when he was squiffy, I decided. I would have to try to keep him like that. Dilute his morning tea with scotch? Make his coffees Irish to match his name? Some way to keep him mildly inebriated.
‘My pleasure.’ He went back into the dining room and I followed him carrying a china mug of water. Through the bannister I caught sight of Hazel watching us with a look of curiosity on her face.
We talked about the prospects for change at the top of the Party, should Blunt ever decide to retire – there were few other Secretaries with his stature and bearing, which meant it was hard to predict what would happen. ‘But who could replace Comrade Blunt?’ Nick said. ‘I can’t see…’
I lifted my drink but as I did so something struck me like a shard of light. Lorelei’s last words, Who’s there? I can’t see. They echoed in my mind.
And then the mug fell from my hand, splitting in two and spilling the water everywhere. Nick pushed back from the table as it spread towards him, and Charles jumped up to grab what was left of the mug, setting the base upright again and mopping it up with his napkin. For his part, Morton just watched me as if he were studying a lab rat in a cage. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I said. But I said it with only half my mind on my own words. The rest was a jumble of thoughts and guesses. I kept turning the words over and over.
‘It’s all right, darling, it’s quite all right,’ Nick said in a soothing tone.
‘I know it is,’ I said angrily. ‘I dropped a cup, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t mean–’
‘I know what you meant.’ He meant that I was acting irrationally: arguing with Morton; feeling upset when I discovered where the dinner with Fellowman was to be held. Apparently smashing the damn crockery for no reason. At least he didn’t suspect the real reason that my mind was churning. I had to keep it to myself for a bit longer. I left the room.
‘Is there something I can do?’ I heard Charles ask.
‘No, just leave it,’ Nick answered him.
In the kitchen I noticed my palm was bleeding – I had cut it on the sharp china when it broke. Running it under the cold tap numbed away the pain.
With a clean handkerchief pressed on to the wound, I went back into the dining room to find them all sitting silently smoking. It was the kind of silence that said they had been speaking in hushed tones the moment before but had stopped when I entered.
‘Anyway, shall we go to the Duck?’ said Nick in an unworried tone of voice, addressing the men.
‘Why not?’ Morton replied, putting a lighted match into the bowl of his pipe. ‘I think we’ve finished here, haven’t we?’
‘I’ll take a cab home,’ Bella said sweetly to her husband. ‘There should be some on the street.’
‘Unless you would like a hand with the dishes, darling?’ Nick asked me.
‘I can do them – you go,’ I said, taking the upper half of the broken mug and placing it inside the base.
Nick stayed back while the others went to the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s where they have all these functions. I don’t know if it’s security, or if they just like it or… oh, look, I’m babbling. I will understand if you don’t want to come.’ We were both straining to sound unstrained.
I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘I can’t get away from it.’
‘No,’ he said. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. ‘But it’s so soon. I don’t want you to… I think we have to recognize that it could make you feel unwell again. You’ve been a bit…’ He took my hand in his.
‘I’ll survive. Who else will be there?’
‘Oh, lots of people with important titles and empty heads. Jane, I really do think you should speak to someone about what happened to you. What you’ve been through.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘If you say so. Well, I’ll be back soon.’
‘All right.’
He joined the others outside. I watched them walk towards the pub. When they could no longer be seen, I ran out to the telephone box across the road and called Tibbot’s number, eager to tell him what I had realized from the words Lorelei had spoken when I had found her.
There was a second of metallic clicking, and then the ringing tone. It went on and on and I willed him to pick it up. At the same time, I was watching through the glass panels, should Nick and the other men happen to return – they might decide the walk wasn’t worth the candle, or the Duck might be closed, or there might be some other reason that would bring them back to find me making a strange telephone call from outside the home. I tried to think of an excuse in case I needed it, but none seemed plausible. ‘Come on,’ I muttered into the receiver. Eventually, I hung up and hurried back to the house. I would call him as soon as I could get away again.
Hazel was standing in the hallway, looking at me quizzically. ‘Who were you phoning?’ she asked.
‘It’s nothing. Just a friend of mine I’m seeing this week.’ She looked at the telephone in the hallway. ‘It’s not working very well,’ I said. ‘So, now that the men have all gone out, what shall we girls do? Would you like to listen to the radio? Or play a game?’
Her eyes seemed to blur behind water, which she rubbed away. ‘The Odeon’s showing Victory 1945. Can we go?’
I pursed my lips. It was nine o’clock but seeing her mother’s film might do her good. ‘Well, it’s a bit late, but all right.’
She perked up at my answer. ‘Thank you.’
Soon we were on a tram as it bullied a car out of its path – Socialist transport took precedence over private vehicles. Hazel looked up at me. ‘Will you come to my mum’s funeral?’ she asked.
‘If you want me to.’
‘Yeah. Please.’ She bit her lip to stop herself grinning at a private thought. ‘I think Charles is sweet on you.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong.’ But it warmed me to see her almost smile.
A bored seventeen-year-old in the ticket booth took our money and hunted around for a pen. ‘Machine’s not working. Got to write out your tickets,’ she mumbled. Inside the crowded auditorium we found it was so hot with all the bodies that the condensation was running down the walls. A couple of Soviet guest soldiers entered behind us with their British girlfriends. They went to the best seats in the house, and the four occupants of those seats got up and moved. I didn’t blame those girls, really. The Russians could get them extra coupons and into the Lyons Corner Houses. Our empire was over; theirs was just beginning.
The seats were covered with what had clearly once been velvet but had since been rubbed almost bare – not unlike the movie, which was also showing the ravages of time, its images old and scratched. And yet Lorelei still shone in it like the sun. Oh, they could rip her from the posters, but they could hardly cut her from the film. She mourned her executed boyfriend like Shakespeare’s Juliet, and then raised a pistol to a Nazi officer. He fell and she showed no emotion. Our heroine. Our past and our future.