on his broad shoulders while he climbed a ladder, who could swing both him and his sister up in the air at the same time, and dig the whole vegetable patch over in the hour or two of light that was left after supper. He was going to say that he remembered his father as a busy man; as someone who always seemed to be in a hurry to be somewhere else: home from work, out to the garden, away from the supper table and out to join his friends in the pub. And he was going to say that he remembered his father as a loving man; someone who could hold his wife in his arms without shame and kiss her as if nobody else was in the room, someone who could find the time now and again to tuck his son into bed, with broad strong hands that smelt of soil and dust and cigarette smoke.
No one was much surprised when he died, and Albert was probably the least surprised of all. It had been coming on quickly for months and he seemed to have given up and started waiting for it. It feels like I’m breathing in tiny splinters of metal every time I open my mouth, he told David once. It feels like there’s a barrow-load of bricks weighing down on my chest. Dorothy found him when she got back from the shops one afternoon, his head tipped back over the arm of the sofa, a blanket wrapped around him like a shroud. She called out, and by the time David had run downstairs she was kneeling beside the sofa, holding Albert’s hand and stroking the side of his face. The shopping bags were on the floor, split open, tins and packets and loose wrapped meats spilt halfway across the room, and it was only when the doctor arrived that she pushed herself back to her feet again.
My father wasn’t one for talking much, he wanted to tell someone, and if he did it was never really about the past, about his family, or where he grew up, or what happened in the war. I know he was in the Navy and that’s about all, I don’t know where he went, or what he did when he got there, I don’t know what my mother went through at home when the bombing was going on, if she saw anyone killed or injured at all. I only know that they were apart for a long time, and they couldn’t even write, and that when they were together again there were things they didn’t feel the need to talk about; not even, I suppose, to each other. I think that’s how I got so interested in history, he would say, since there was so little of it at home. There weren’t even any photos on the wall until after my father had died.
I suppose I didn’t really know him all that well in the end, he thought he might say. Well, isn’t that the oldest story, someone might murmur in response, he thought, or, who among us ever did?
8 Two telegrams, November 1939 and April 1940
They’d spent the afternoon at the Imperial War Museum. He was still uncertain about finding his way around London on his own, so Julia had gone with him, and had been very patient while he took notes and made sketches, and had gone quiet at one or two of the exhibits, stepping away a few paces and turning her back so that he knew it wasn’t a good idea to ask her what was wrong. They’d found a Christmas tobacco tin from 1916, like the one she had at home from her father, but this one was empty and she’d laughed and whispered maybe it’s worth something now, and he’d been shocked by the idea of her selling such a thing until she’d nudged him and he’d realised she was joking. It hadn’t been until they were on the bus on the way home, the street lamps already spilling splashes of light on to the rain-polished streets, that he’d asked about her own experience of the war, and about her husband; and it was only after they’d run from the bus stop to the house, and wrapped their wet heads in warm towels from the airing cupboard, and sat down in the kitchen with a steaming pot of tea and thick slices of heavy cake, that she’d begun to tell him.
The war hadn’t started when I met him, she began, but everyone knew it wouldn’t be long in coming. She hadn’t got very far with her story before she realised he didn’t know what she meant by ballroom dancing, so she insisted that she teach him there and then. She put a record on, and had him push the table back, and talked him through the steps while a waltz crackled out of the small loudspeaker. He felt a tightening knot of embarrassment in his stomach as she took his hand and placed it on her waist, and laid her hand against his, but he knew there’d be no getting out of it until he’d got it right. So he listened, and he concentrated, and he started to relax a little, and the second time the record played he only stepped on her foot twice. Well! she said, clapping her hands as the record finished again, I think we’ll make a ballroom maestro out of you yet, young man. We’ll have the debs of London queuing up for you! He didn’t know what she meant by debs, but he didn’t get a chance to ask. Once more, she announced, as the needle jerked back to the start of the record. This is the way the story begins, she said, taking his hand.
A Friday evening in early June, 1939. A hotel ballroom just off The Strand, its high domed ceiling frescoed pale sky-blue with wisps of spindrift clouds, ringing with the fading echo of the orchestra’s closing bars. A renewed rumble of chatter and a tinkle of glasses. A brief light-fingered applause for the musicians. The dancers returning to their seats, singly or in pairs, smiling and no-thank-you-ing, reaching for drinks with lowered eyes and private blushes or whispering reports to a neighbour’s ear. A rustle of loose sheaf paper at the orchestra’s music stands. The unaccompanied glide and twirl of the white-jacketed waiters refreshing tall glasses with a stoop and a bow, proffering hors d’oeuvres on broad silver trays, wordless, indifferent, impeccably polite. Seated guests rising for the next dance, taking the hand of those closest to them, or catching the eye of another nearby, or crossing the room with a smart-heeled step, a discreet straightening of the jacket, a two-fingered smoothing of the hair; determined, after much raw-humoured ribbing, to finally take the bull, as it were, by the horns.
We’d been watching each other all evening, she told him as the first few bars of the music swelled up against the sound of the rain outside and David led them correctly away to the right, towards the tall potted yucca. That’s it! she said. You’re getting it now, back two three. I’d noticed him almost as soon as he came into the room, she said. The smart cut of his uniform, you know, and an awfully manly jaw, and very clear pale eyes. I caught him looking a few times, she said, smiling. Or he caught me looking, she added; turn two three. I suppose it depends which way you look at it. She laughed.
Major William Pearson stood in front of Julia’s table and introduced himself. Neither of them were surprised that he was there, after an evening spent watching each other’s movements – checking who the other may or may not be dancing with, hazarding a smile from across the room, murmuring excuse me as they came close to colliding by the doors to the terrace – and neither of them expected her to decline his invitation to dance. But still, she went through the formalities of reluctance, and her friends carefully looked away and pretended not even to have noticed that the gentleman they’d discussed all evening had finally crossed the floor to their table, and was as smoothly good-looking close up as he was from afar. He insisted, politely, and she stood, churning with excitement, and accepted his outstretched hand. Thank you, she said. I’d be glad to.
They strode to the middle of the room, offering each other their hands and waists just as the conductor was tapping his podium. William smiled, and their dance began. Neither of them said very much at first, beyond an exchange of polite enquiries, a compliment on the other’s dancing, a remark on the weather, concentrating instead on their crisp and flowing movement around the circular stage of the room. Moving away from her table, where her friends were speaking into their hands and offering gestures of encouragement as she looked over his shoulder towards them; turning across the floor to within earshot of her mother and father, her father looking rather glazed, her mother smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder and dropping her a wink in the middle of one of her actress friends’ long anecdotes; past a table of boys she recognised from the school opposite hers, boys she’d once gossiped about and spied upon but who from the vantage point of Major William Pearson’s arms now looked far more like boys than the men they were trying so hard to be with their fuzzy moustaches and their freshly signed papers; deftly sidestepping a waiter with a tray of drinks; twirling quickly away from a raucous gaggle of tail-coated medical students; changing direction, and pausing for
