Love Fifteen (19 page)

To cool the hellish blush that came to his face, Theo did Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy, moving his scalp forward and making his Adam's Apple go up and down like old wossname used to at the Film Society. What
was
his name?

At which moment swollen little Kay pushed open a French window and called them to tea, thank Christ.

Was it Moss or Stone? Forgetting all that already.

The shared cigarette was symbolic, a rite of passage. So much of Theo's old life was being cast off now. His last end-of-term show had included a vicious send-up of the bollocking he'd got from old Hines after Olivier's visit.” To importune an eminent guest in such a cavalier fashion,” he said (or that's what Theo wrote him saying, which he thought more important), “was a gross impertinence, a social solecism of the most heinous nature. Solecism, by the way, means …”

He'd enjoyed taking the piss out of that but somehow the mock-Gothic place and all its mock-Gothic characters were already ancient history, along with crazy comedy. Imitating Olivier's way of talking was great but the thrill of those words in that voice was greater. It gave you a sense of something huge, going back centuries, that was still there in the present and would continue into the future.

He and Inky saw each other still but only at school. when his old friend was free from his insurance office. Then Inky blurted out breathless accounts of how he'd kissed the breasts of one of Margo Carpenter's plain attendants one evening up on Purdown. Once the first anguish was over, Theo found he was able to tolerate Hazel's absence, reminding himself that after all she was quite old. For his remaining weeks at home, he avoided Charlotte Street and was watchful on walks down Park Street to the Central Library beside the Cathedral. He spent hours poring over the few books on cinema he could find in the reference section. This was before the era when film buffery became a profitable market, when every small-part player rated a full-page obit in the posh papers. At home he learnt most of
Henry V
by heart and even swotted the actual battles of Harfleur and Agincourt. Much as he idolised its maker, by October he doubted whether this wizard battle-cry of a play could ever make a decent film. If it did, how many of the sweaty-nightcap brigade would pay to see it ?

His months on the production were a foretaste of National Service. In later years, when younger people wondered why British films went on fighting the second war for twenty years after it had ended, he told them how alike the military and movie worlds were. In both, a huge number of idle serfs supported an elite of actual fighting men; the long-awaited battles, when they finally came, were mostly a few hectic skirmishes followed by more periods of inertia while a hundred crew and cast awaited a burst of sun. The forces also embodied and codified a class system that appealed to the social climbers who ran the movie industry. Within twenty years, the dialect the actors spoke would be as archaic as sedan-chairs and top hats.

He never exchanged words with Olivier again but was often near him when editing decisions were made. He thrilled again to those great soaring harangues before the battles. Till now he'd felt little about the war, taking for granted that we had to fight it and would certainly win. Now he found the best words for that in the unlikely but wonderful scene when the king talks with the common folk on the eve of Agincourt.” His cause being just and his quarrel honourable.” Of course Hazel was right in saying Henry's hadn't been just in any way, only land-grabbing and empire-building, quite like Hitler in fact, but – whatever the origins – she conceded that this second global set-to was as permissible as war could ever be. Old Swiftie may have got their goats, bunking off prayers by being a Jew but you couldn't imprison an entire race in camps just because a few of them were jammy sods.

To cut down on travelling time, he left his Barking aunt, digged in the north-west suburbs and heard only by post that Rose and Kay had moved to stay for a spell with the Aunt in Barking. On one occasion they managed to meet, all three – mother, son and sister – in Lyons' Corner House in Oxford Street. Rose brought some smarter new shirts and trousers Fred had scrounged from the buyer of Men's Outfitting,. so he'd feel more at home in the big bad world. By now Theo had learnt a bit about ordering food in a restaurant and played the father's part far better than Fred could have.

In November, a letter from Fred at Rosemount told him Kay's baby had ‘come along': a premature boy, four pounds five ounces, mother and child both doing well. When the contractions became regular, Aunt Harriet and Tilda had come to Henleaze from Newfoundland Road on two buses as Fred was away in Dorset and couldn't give them a lift. When he returned on Friday, he made another bonfire in the garden to burn the placenta, wrapped in a newspaper. This part of reproduction hadn't come into old Sparrow's lessons on the axolotl. Cold-blooded salamanders didn't breed that way.

The male child, being small, came easily and no-one was any the wiser. As planned, Hazel was there as soon after the birth as possible, to take it away before Kay could change her mind. A fortnight later,. a sunny weekday, Theo went home for the first time since taking up the film job. At Temple Meads he managed to avoid having his bag carried by his uncle and took a taxi to Charlotte Street. Hazel had been warned by a postcard. She appeared at the attic dormer and tossed down the front door key in a small cotton bag with a drawstring. He'd brought only a weekend grip and climbed the fifty stairs as he'd done so many times in so many different moods, always wanting love and sure of finding it.

Hazel had already opened the flat door and stood not far inside. Fred, he thought, would have been pleased to see her wearing the trousers and he himself thrilled at the white angora sweater that he'd often removed over her head, pulling her eyes back, making them look Chinese. The outline of her breasts caused him a passing pang of desire. He didn't know how to behave but she helped by offering a sisterly kiss. She led him by the hand towards the bedroom half. They approached a free-standing cot and he looked in at his new-born nephew.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “he's a negro!”

“Eugene,” she said, smiling.” As soon as she saw him, Kay knew who the father was and insisted he be named after him, though he'll probably never see him.”

“No-one told me,” he said, “not Dad or Mum or even Kay. Too ashamed, I suppose. Poor Mum. Did Kay expect him to be coloured?”

“She reckoned it was fifty-fifty, judging by the dates.”

“What about the Youth Club bods?”

“That was a red herring. No, it had to be one of two G.I.'s. one white, one negro. She thought there was no point telling anyone before she saw which came. It was only the once. He was posted away soon after. He's training somewhere to take part in the Second Front.”

Taking the tiny hand between his fingers, Theo looked at the pale palms and nails. The infant gripped and kicked. and smiled.

“Oh, ma babbie,” he remembered Rose singing, “ma liddle darkie babbie …”

“Gorgeous, eh?” Hazel said, touching the dark hairs at his fontanelle.

She lifted him and held him at arm's length. “Just look at him. Isn't he fantastic!”

“Fantastic.”

“Yes, he is,” she went on, swinging him from side to side, “he is, he is, oh yes he is …”

“Quite like Fats Waller,” Theo said, “or a clean-shaven Count Basie.”

“Thank you,” Hazel said, and began putting words into the baby's mouth: “I'll take that as a compliment, he says, knowing your love of jazz, he says. Yes, he does!” She put her face in his belly and blew with a shuddering sound, making the baby laugh and Theo smile..” Take him and hold him.”

She passed Theo the swaddled boy and for the first time he held a infant and found how little it weighed. He looked a sight better than white kids of that age, all boiled cabbages or drunken Churchills, more a wrinkled walnut, hands and arms twitching, his face practising a range of expressions for later life – pleasure, outrage, welcome, fear, pain…

“That's all wind. Support his head more,” Hazel advised him. The skull already had a light shroud of tight black curls.

“Have you told Geoff?”

“Oh, yes. He's quite alright about it.”

“Why wouldn't he be?”

“Some men wouldn't.”

“Small-minded bastards,” he said, making Hazel look up sharply. On the film-unit he'd already learned how to use a wider vocabulary. “But not Geoff.”

He cradled Eugene in his left arm and walked to the dormer.

“In some ways,” Hazel said, behind him, “his being negroid works to our advantage. When Geoff comes home I mean. He couldn't possibly be yours and mine. In case anyone ever did drop a word, you know, about us.”

“Would that worry Geoff? Any more than it would his adopted son being brown?”

“I just meant it could make him wonder if I've told him the whole truth.”

He held the baby up to the window and showed him the panoramic view. There was little sign of the damage they'd seen done during that first raid. Most buildings in the city centre still stood. Gaps in terraces had been filled with wooden buttresses, shoring up the houses till they could be rebuilt when the men came home. Everyone's minds had now turned to invading Europe and beyond that to bluebirds and bananas.

“But if this was really
your
baby that you'd had by a coloured Yank, Geoff would really like that, wouldn't he? All part of the new world-state of brotherly love and without all those shitty ideas our parents had. How did Mum and Dad take it, by the way, him being negro?”

“Oh, shocked, but mostly because they'd been so easily deceived by Kay.”

“Mum too? Talk about people in glasshouses.”

“They didn't have long to form a view of any sort. As soon as he was born I went over to Rosemount and found Kay giving him the breast. White against brown. A pretty picture.”

“Will you feed him that way too?”

He turned to find her shaking her head at him and smiling.

“Why don't those schools teach you something that matters?”

She explained the biology of lactation as she'd earlier done that of ovary, sperm and the menstrual cycle. Eugene started niggling and she took him back.

While she gave him his bottle, performing the rituals of motherhood with amazing ease, she told him a corporal from Geoff's unit had come on compassionate leave and brought an uncensored letter from him. He was expecting early repatriation. He'd proved too troublesome in Egypt, organising a Soldier's Parliament which encouraged Other Rankers to ask the wrong sort of questions. The authorities had made life tough for him but hadn't broken his spirit. He'd committed no offence against King's Regulations, only encouraged the men to think. This hadn't fomented mutiny and there was no chargeable crime. So now they'd decided to get him off their backs by an early release.

The presence of baby Eugene made it easy for Theo and Hazel to exchange no more than the most formal gestures of parting. Though his cine-camera didn't take professional film-stock, Theo had scrounged several reels of the right stuff at Elstree and now exposed close-ups, long-shots and slow pans of Hazel and the baby. He only once referred to their former intimacy, when saying how these pictures would differ from those he'd taken at Villa Borghese and Rosemount. She smiled but didn't encourage more talk on those lines. It reminded her, though, of those undeveloped reels she still had hidden in a space beneath the roof. Now that Geoff was liable to arrive without warning, she wanted Theo to take them with him. Following her directions, he squeezed through the low door and brought them out. While wrapping them in an old copy of
The Daily Worker
, he promised to call again on his next time home, which would be after
‘Henry V
's completion or, as he called it, wrap. There'd be some months for him to wait for call-up, unless he volunteered and went in under age. Most likely by his next visit Geoff would be home and Theo would meet him and hear all about the Soldiers' Parliament and the brave new world that was about to begin. And perhaps he and Hazel would tell him how they'd practised all Geoff's ideas about free love.

‘“And perhaps not,”‘ Hazel said, took the bottle from the baby, let him lean forward and waited for his quiet belch and slight seepage of milk.

“Of course,” she said, “I'll always like to see you and I know you'd like to meet him, but don't you think Eugene changes everything? You and your family should really keep away. Kay's going up to Oxford and that will put her out of temptation's way. Only – if you went on visiting me… d'you see what I mean?”

He put the wrapped reels in a brown paper carrier.

“You saying you don't want me to come again?”

“Want? I very much want you to, never doubt that, dearest, but you can surely see how things are changing?”

Yes, he could. In his inner self he knew. He'd left school and was a man. He'd worked with England's greatest actor. The career that would take him to Hollywood had begun. He was lucky to have had what he'd heard an officer-voiced location manager describe as ‘a good war', but there would come a lovely day when they'd all feast their tear dimm'd eyes on tomorrow's clear blue skies. And when he thought about those cowards and rich sods on the Chicken Run, he found Shakespeare had got them on the nose too for ‘he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart… we would not die in that man's company that fears our fellowship, to die with us.' Though he'd been aching to be on that boat to Canada when war started, now he was hellish glad things had turned out the way they had. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He'd been a patriot without trying.

Hazel was careful to busy herself with Eugene, mopping the milk he'd spilt down his bib, so that she could only offer her cheek to be kissed as Theo left. She heard his footsteps skipping down the long stairwell. By the time he'd reached the front hall, she was at the dormer, looking down for him, the baby laid back in his cot. She watched the top of his head as he emerged on to the high pavement and waited expectantly for him to turn his face upward for a last look and a wave but he only walked off to Park Street, grip in one hand and in the other a carrier bag that held that pictorial unexploded bomb. She'd forgotten exactly what he'd filmed. Standing in the narrow window space, she remembered leaning out to watch the fires and how he'd raised the skirt of her gown and would have taken her from behind if those men in the street below hadn't shouted to ask if she was needed help. Help ? No, she knew how all right. It wasn't the actual sensation she remembered but all that happened around it, the fires and thunderous noise and lights and a feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.

A groaning bus took him up Whiteladies Road and Blackboy Hill, then relaxed into top gear to travel across the Downs past the White Tree to Henleaze, where the negro G.I. had been shot as he tried to jump on the bus.

Rosemount's front garden was bare at this time, but with a few new shoots showing, crocus and snowdrops opening. To help with the baby, Tilda had moved in to his old room, so Rose had won that battle too and Fred had had to accept the old woman's presence during his weeks at home and when he came back on those Fridays of the regular week away.

Kay let him in and kissed him, another first, at least since they'd been kids themselves.

He told her he'd called at Hazel's and seen Eugene and both were fine. Rose asked him to agree the boy was lovely. He did and added that he liked his name too. It had an American sound: Eugene O'Neill the playwright, Gene Krupa the drummer, Gene Tierney the film actress…

That first name was all she knew of the father.

“In fact it's more Irish but from the Greek for ‘noble' and ‘well-born',” Kay said. “Could have been some cruel sort of joke by the slaver who owned his great-great-grandparent.”

“Or just a hope he'd turn out well?”

“‘Reckon so ?”'

“‘Not really.”'

“She only went with him once,” Rose said, as she often did when defending what remained of her daughter's good name.

Kay said: “And he'll go to war not knowing he's got a half-English son.”

He said he'd heard it had been an easy birth.

“Oh, yes,” Rose said, “she'll be fine to have lots more when the proper time comes.”

He could see moist patches on Kay's blouse.

“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!” she said in her Scarlett O'Hara voice and made him laugh by showing him the weird breast-pump Aunt Hattie had lent her to draw off the milk.

“And Dad? How did he take it?”

He had an image of Fred, already making every effort to accept the idea of a bastard grandson, then finding the boy was a picanniny. This family always somehow reduced the man's ambitions to slapstick.

“We thought it best not to tell him,” said Rose.” He was away when baby came along and Hazel took him off almost at once. By the time Dad was home on Friday there was no trace.”

“He still doesn't know? In this day and age?” Theo rapped out.

“What's it matter?” Kay said.” He's happy I'll be able to go to Somerville without any shame attached. Why spoil it for him?”

“There were a few tricky moments,” Rose said, ‘“when Dad wanted to know Hazel's address so as to go and see his first grandson. We had to persuade him it was best to make a clean break.”

Was it only the baby Fred was eager to visit? Theo thought of his furtive admiration for the sight of Hazel in slacks, admitted man-to-man in the garden he now looked out on.