Love Fifteen Read online

  “What is it?” he asked, taking the glass of greenish liquid.

  “Dutch courage.”

  He didn’t know it but Kay would at least recognise the name from her book of cocktails.

  “Don’t think I’ve ever tasted it.”

  She explained the phrase meant alcohol that made you feel braver than you were. This was a tiny tot of gin filled up with Rose’s lime juice. He’d tasted his father’s whisky one Christmas and said it was like cough medicine.

  “Try again. When you’re used to it, you’ll like the feeling.”

  “Being drunk?”

  “Certainly not. But a little drop makes you more cheerful. Come on, keep me company. It’s mostly juice. It’ll hardly set you on the primrose path of dalliance.”

  He sipped, making a sour face.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s okay. Lime juice is wizard. This your husband?”

  She nodded.

  “He looks dead brown. I suppose he would be in – where is it?”

  “Cairo, yes.”

  A violent barrage shook the house, then a few more distant explosions pushed against the windows. He remembered the big bad wolf.

  “We’ll be safer with the dormers open,” she said.” Turn the light out.”

  She drew the black-out and opened the panes like doors. In Villa Borghese all the windows slid up and down. Her head was black against the orange of the night sky. He hadn’t realised quite how thirsty the smoke had left him. He drained the glass and went to stand beside her at the window. There was only just room for them both in the narrow sentry-box. Together they stared across the city, smelling the woodsmoke, hearing the crackle of fires, the hiss of hoses and someone in the street shouting “‘Bloody bastards!”

  “I’m going to open the other too. Safer, they say, than having them all blown in. We’re alright in the dark, aren’t we?”

  “Dark?” he said, staring over the roofs of houses down the hill.

  She took the glasses to the other room, poured more, turned out the light and opened the window.

  “Looks to me as if they’ve got Castle Street,” he said, “I hope the Regent’s alright.”

  “Where we met,” she said.

  “They’re going to do Sunday showings from next week. It would have been packed if they’d started tonight.”

  They both thought of the raid warning that afternoon they’d been there and how no-one had moved.

  “So tonight it’s empty? Lucky.”

  They felt a breeze on their cheeks and hair and a moment later heard the bomb fall nearby. They grabbed each other, flinching from the blast.

  “That was close.”

  Windows shudderd, tiles slid and shattered far below.” We ought to go downstairs,” she said, moving a step away, “all the tenants are meant to be in the cellar. A fire could come up the stairs and we’d be trapped.”

  “D’you want to?” he asked, looking down on the fires.

  “Aren’t you scared?” she said.

  “Yeah, sort of. But sort-of excited too.”

  He drew her back into an embrace and kissed her hair. As if to borrow his strength, she held his head and put her mouth to his. The tip of her tongue pressed against his closed lips, forcing them open.

  Any moment could be their last. Who cared?

  He relaxed his lips and she pushed her tongue right into his mouth. His horn rose against her belly. He’d tried French kissing once or twice with girls at parties when they played Sardines and felt nothing much. But now he realised why bods talked about it so much.

  When the next barrage came, they dropped out of danger behind the window.

  Reaching the bed again, they took off each other’s clothes. She made it easy for him, unbuttoning her blouse and undoing her bra at the back when he fumbled, freeing her breasts so that they held the open blouse apart. By the faint light from outside, he saw how beautiful her body was without the frumpish clothes. As he ran his hands up her leg, feeling the change of texture to something softer and moist, his jack was huge and bursting. He moved apart and started towards his abandoned trousers.

  “Where are you going?”

  How could he say it?

  “Something I’ve got to get.”

  “What?”

  “You know –…”

  “Oh, my dear. No need… come back …”

  Afterwards he’d remember only how easy she made his first time. What was all the fuss about? And it was very soon over. He’d expected pain but, of course, that was what the woman felt, – and only if they hadn’t done it before, which Mrs. Hampton must have, loads of times with that man in the photo beside the bed.

  She hardly had time to feel him inside her when he jerked and made an amazed sound, rolled over and lay facing away. She lifted herself by one elbow and watched him as he slept. Like a baby? A boy? No, that’s cultural, a conditioned European attitude. He was more than capable, a young male. Indians his age already had child-brides and children of their own.

  More débris was falling outside and more planes came, bringing more damage.

  “Anyone there?” a man shouted from a landing somewhere below their floor. Theo woke and she stopped his mouth with her hand. They lay in silence and heard retreating footsteps.

  Theo turned back to her, touching her breast with his lips, licking the nipple. He pushed her back and rolled on to her. “No hurry,” she said, “we’ve got until the all-clear.”

  This time she helped him take longer. He was able to wait till she was ready, startled at her gasping and whimpering, inclined to stop till he heard her quiet appeal to “‘go on, for Chrissake… oh, that’s it!”

  She agreed how easy it was if you wanted each other as much as they had. After some moments she said: “It’s what comes later that’s not so easy.”

  “Babies, you mean? D’you think you might? That’s why I was going to get the… you know… from my wallet.”

  “Real little boy scout.”

  “No, I was a cub but never took to it… What d’you mean?”

  “Being prepared.”

  He must not tell her he’d actually been prepared for Margo Carpenter. In the half-dark, he blushed at the memory, then smiled. He was pretty sure she was still a virgin. Next time he’d ask for a half fare in a loud clear voice and give her a knowing grin. Silly kid.

  There seemed to be no after-effects of this momentous event, only a slight odour like mushrooms and a stickiness down there.

  “Have you got a baby?”

  “Can you see one?”

  “I thought it might be somewhere else. Such as with your parents?”

  She shook her head.

  “How long does it take to have one?”

  “Don’t teach you much at that expensive school, do they? Not about the Slave Trade, no, and not about babies.”

  He knew the answer was roughly a year but had thought this a polite way of asking how long Geoff had been away. About eight months, she said, since his embarkation leave. In other words, she’d have known some months ago if she was expecting.

  He crawled on all-fours to his sports coat and returned with the crumpled Gold Flake packet. They shared the last, sitting with backs against the wall while a new fall of fire-bombs was signalled by the ack-ack that was trying to see the bombers off.

  He tried Kay’s trick with the smoke she’d done in the Regent café but it went the wrong way and brought on a bout of coughing. Gin, sex and tobacco. Not to mention all that going on outside. He wished he’d kept up the diary he’d dropped in February, like he did every year from having nothing to write down.

  A five-star day by any standards.

  *

  Part of the time they talked. Or she did and he listened. Starting with Free Love, she explained that only when life’s resources were shared could a decent world be achieved. And people were the most valuable resource of all. Love must be freed from the false values that had in the past turned so much marriage into legalised prostitution. She took Geoff’s
photo and kissed it, telling Theo how much he’d taught her. His clear vision of the future was of a world without class, a society where the wealthy had to be saved from their own cruelty, by force if necessary. Apart from being unfair, inequality was stupid and wasteful. But the people who had the least to lose and most to gain were still scared to change things. Working people got the smallest share of what their labour created. Theo said it sounded a helluva lot like Capra except that the people in his films mostly didn’t work and were all pretty crazy. But no, she told him, that was only democratic anarchism based on economic privilege. Heaven on earth could only be achieved through Communism, ultimate liberty only through initial discipline, such as this war was now imposing even on the better-off. Or at any rate those who hadn’t bolted to America. Hollywood, she said, offered an illusion of liberty. It was Bakunin to the real promise of Marx. Theo inevitably gabbled some dialogue from Groucho and she patiently waited and smiled and explained about Karl, who was the greatest mind of modern times, along with Freud who had freed us from the sexual fetters of the past. And they were both Jews and so was Groucho and that was reason enough for this war, even though Churchill didn’t care about that and was probably an anti-Semite himself. So what exactly, Theo wanted to know, was an anti-Semite?

  EIGHT

  Fred drove him to school next morning so Theo missed his chance to gloat over Margot Carpenter’s virginity. Kay stayed home to comfort Rose. Today no forged excuse-note was needed. When Fred gave a lift to two middle-aged crones queueing for the 21, he saw there was a new excitement about these familiar figures. After years of living death, they were almost skittish, animated by the raid, telling stories of their blitz. Fred told his too, how last night he’d helped prevent the spread of fires from a local car showroom and Salvation Army drill hall that had been hit by sticks of incendiaries. And when he’d at last reached home after the midnight all-clear, Rose had made him get out the Morris from the garage and drive down to the poor streets to see if Grandma Tilda’s house was one of the fires that had lit the sky. Several streets around hers had burned and she was frightened but unhurt, seeing out the raid with her sister’s family of two lugubrious daughters, a brother-in-law and simple-minded son Stan. Theo whiled away family visits to their house by noting the way they spoke their predictable opinions in unison like a chorus from that Greek play the swots of 6A had done once in the Victoria Rooms. The Great War, his aunts had chanted, at least stayed abroad where it belonged. If Tilda’s two boys had survived the Somme, they’d be wondering whatever they’d given their lives for. Fred listened, nodded and refrained from pointing out the illogicality of this, consoled them, looked at his watch and left to drive farther into town, partly to see the destruction, also on the chance of meeting his son who’d had to shelter in some teacher’s place.

  The phones were cut off, power lines broken, so Theo was walking home, a bit surprised to find so many streets untouched, and came upon Fred and the Morris where Jamaica Street joins Stokes Croft. Wartime policemen turned them back from the part that had caught the worst, by which time they’d both seen enough anyway. When they reached home, a neighbour, excited beyond control, shouted that there wasn’t one stone left standing on another in the city centre.

  “Really?” Fred said.” That’s strange because my son got caught after attending a meeting at the Central Library and had to spend much of the night there and what d’you say it’s like, son?”

  “Quite bad but mostly fires, at least that I could see.”

  “So you’d say from your personal observations that stones do still stand one upon another, given that there have been few high-explosive bombs and that fires alone consume only wood and furniture and do not send stone walls flying?”

  “Alright,” the neighbour broke in, “I was only reporting what I heard.”

  “Careless talk costs lives,” Fred said.” It’s just that sort of wild surmise that undermines morale. We get enough of that with German radio.”

  In the usual way Theo would have inwardly groaned at the self-righteousness but today he was glad to see the neighbour so put down. Overnight Theo had grown a good deal closer to his Dad and felt he was about to join the men. Or had already.

  By daylight the damage was disappointing. Only a few gutted smouldering houses between Villa Borghese and the corner of Elmdale where Fred dropped him later on, before driving off to his week of merchandising in South Wales. At the last moment, as Theo pushed the chromium handle to open the passenger door, Fred put a hand on his flannelled knee.

  “While I’m away, son, look after your mother and sister,” he asked him, “soothe their nerves if there’s any more bombing. It’s not very nice my having to go away and leave them but this is my way of doing my bit while others are giving so much more.”

  Theo had become the man of the family, a moment of self-regard that faded when he imagined trying to impose his will on Rose or Kay. Both had been singing over breakfast about the last time they saw Paris. The shameful lack of air raids was a thing of the past. Perhaps now, Mum told Kay, those blessed Cockneys would stop boasting about their blessed blitz and saying the Lights were lucky to live in a safe area.

  As Fred drove off, dropping Theo near school, his son ran the few yards down to the main road to check Broadcasting House. No damage there either, he was glad to find, so his favourite shows would still go out. Back at the corner, he met Inky, climbed on to his bike and sat balancing on his crossbar. Inky purposely teetered, twisting the front wheel, doing the sound-track screech of cornering tyres.

  “Hey, man, the Quasis aren’t half funny today,” Theo said, then in the neighbour’s voice: “They reckon the whawl city’s like it was after the San Franciscawl earthquake, theest know.”

  “From what I yeared,” Inky said in this mode, “it bissn’t there at all no more.”

  “What, hawl burnt down?”

  “No. Disappeared in a huge crater. An enormous hawll.”

  They normally spoke, like everyone in the city, in a local accent noticeable to strangers but they were also objective, somewhat apart, aware like people from elsewhere – of the difference between Hall, Whole and Hole.

  “What, the hall place?”

  “Gone!”

  “In a hall?”

  “H’all that’s left is a youge hall.”

  Though enjoying this routine as much as always, Theo longed to boast about last night but Hazel had left him in no doubt how serious it would be for them both if anyone knew. Especially for her. Not only would she never be able to teach again but would probably go to jail for corrupting a minor and get reported in News of the World. That’s what Society was like, a long way yet from the perfect selfless harmony of share-and-share-alike. She made him swear not to tell a soul. So Inky was only told, as the family was, that he’d been caught in town and taken refuge with an old teacher who wore glasses.

  The air smelt charred and black fragments floated high on warm currents. Thin smoke drifted against the grey November sky. Word was passed back through the tide of boys making one way along Elmdale that these promising signs came from the school itself. Those in front hurried for their first glimpse of the burnt-out wreckage. Inky straightened the handlebar and pedalled hard.

  “It’s a pile of ashes… ruined…” said Rumour in the form of other boys, even a few titches.

  “What, even the Great Hall?”

  Despite themselves, Theo and Inky felt this must be true. What other building thereabouts was big enough to cause such smoke and floating ash? Long before they reached the crossroads they saw hoses rising from holes in the road, entwined like boa constrictors among black standing pools and burnt timbers. Some scorched desks and benches had been dragged clear. Firefighters with sooty faces were drinking tea.

  Word came back from the first arrivals, before they saw the awful truth for themselves, “the prep!… only the prep’s gone…” and soon they saw the gutted junior school, roof caved in, walls charred but standing, empty holes that
had been pointy windows. And beyond it, higher up the slope, huge and unscathed, the main building. A chorus of lamentation swelled as the arriving seniors took this in and trudged towards the gates. Theo groaned as loud as any and, though it was disappointing up to a point, he hid a feeling of relief. A new school in another place would have been too great a change, along with all the others he had to somehow cope with. He’d agreed with Hazel that life now was about alteration. Still, he’d had more than enough for the time being.

  Wardens and firemen shouted at the boys not to stand or jump on the hoses or otherwise interfere. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Couldn’t they see all that No Trespassers stuff was done with now? Things To Come were already here.

  Across the tarmacked playground Sergeant’s voice yelled: “Light! Hands in pockets again? You’ll be going blind. Pity you can’t find some other sport but pocket billiards to amuse yourself with, you horrible object, what are you?”

  “Horrible object, Sarge.”

  So they’d all be pretending nothing had happened. Business as usual. We can take it. Turnip Townshend. The War of Jenkins’ Ear. The Treaty of Tilsit.

  Some teachers who’d been his masters (and mistresses) in the distant past were marshalling titchy prep kids like confused sheep into files near the bike-sheds.

  “God, what hell, man!” Inky said, as he wheeled his Raleigh forward, “look, my kid brother! Jammy wretch. Might get off school for the rest of the war.”

  “Bet you he won’t. Old Hines and his lot will have to find somewhere to put them. Up here probably.”

  “Oh, no, man!”

  “Bet you they will.”

  “Anything but that!” Inky moaned, abjectly slumping over his handlebars, “I can’t stand it, I tell you!”

  “For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together,” Theo told him between clenched teeth, “don’t you think we all feel like that sometimes? Don’t you think we all long for it to end? But you’ve taken the King’s shilling and now you’re blubbing like a damn girl. Pretty rotten sort of bargain, wouldn’t you say ?”