Paper Moon Read online

  Nina got up. Smiling at Henry to lessen his discomfort she said, ‘Would you excuse me? I have to powder my nose.’

  In the ladies’ toilets, the sole concession to a powder room was the cracked mirror above the sink. Taking a lipstick from her bag she unscrewed it, then paused. There was no need to put on more – it was simply an automatic response to a mirror, but it helped, sometimes, to look harder than she actually was. She applied it quickly, pressing her lips together to even out the stain. Her reflection smiled back at her, glossy and seductive. Turning away, she went back into the dim, red light of the restaurant.

  ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

  Hugh sighed. ‘Dad, just stop. I’m tired, I could sleep for a month – I’m not interested in her.’

  ‘Then why come with us tonight? Henry can manage quite well on his own.’

  Hugh looked at Henry’s empty chair. ‘I hurt him, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to. I suppose I’m out of practice when it comes to dealing with men like him.’

  ‘Oh? I thought the navy was stuffed with queers. I would’ve thought you’d get plenty of practice.’ More harshly he added, ‘Anyway, Henry loves you like a father. Maybe if he had been your father you wouldn’t be so bloody …’ He seemed lost for words and Hugh looked at him.

  Levelly he said, ‘You haven’t asked me how Mum is.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Wanting a drink, Hugh turned towards the bar. The same bunches of dusty wax grapes and vine leaves hung from the walls, looking less exotic now than when he was a child and ice cream was on the menu. They sat on the same plush-covered banquettes he remembered itching against his short-trousered legs and the same posters of Pisa and Rome curled their corners from the walls as red candles cascaded wax down the sides of wine bottles. Only one thing had changed – the man who had been proprietor then, who had pinched his cheek and smiled his rapid, incomprehensible endearments, had been interned on the Isle of Man. He’d died there, so Henry told him. Hugh sighed, trying unsuccessfully to feel anything but exhausted.

  Failing to catch the waiter’s eye he turned to his father. ‘Do you want a Scotch?’

  ‘No, I’ve had enough.’

  As Henry came back Hugh said too heartily, ‘You’ll join me, Henry, won’t you?’

  ‘Will I? In what?’ Henry and Mick exchanged a wry look. Irritated, Hugh turned away.

  Nina Tate sat down beside him. She touched his arm briefly and at once turned her attention on his father. ‘Would you mind if your son and I go dancing?’

  Hugh laughed, astonished. ‘Shouldn’t you ask me first?’

  He felt her foot brush against his ankle; she had taken her shoe off and her silk-stockinged toes worked their way beneath his trouser leg. To Mick she said, ‘Thank you for this evening.’

  On the street outside the restaurant Hugh said, ‘I’m not a very good dancer.’

  The girl linked her arm through his. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll teach you how to jive.’

  On the Empire’s dance floor, Nina rested her head against Hugh Morgan’s shoulder. The lights had been dimmed for the last, slow dance, the spinning glitter ball casting its shards of light at the dancers’ feet. From the stage the singer crooned, ‘I’ll be seeing you, in all those old familiar places …’ Nina closed her eyes, remembering that this was one of Bobby’s favourite songs, that one September evening in 1940 she’d noticed him leave a dance as the band began on its opening bars. Outside a bright, full moon hung low in a troubled sky, and she’d watched him gaze at the racing clouds as the music played on without them. Years later he told her that fear would charge at him out of the blue, a huge monster of a feeling that left him feeling flattened and useless. That night he’d turned to her and smiled, his eyes dark with exhaustion. ‘Sad songs,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t be allowed.’

  In the Empire the singer drew breath for the last verse. Soon the lights would come up and she would be revealed, smudged and dishevelled in the merciless brightness designed to discourage lingering. She couldn’t allow Hugh Morgan to see her like that and so she stepped away from him, smiling fleetingly at his questioning face. Opening her bag she took out the cloakroom ticket and held it up in explanation. ‘Shall we avoid the queue?’

  ‘May I see you home?’

  As the hat-girl handed them their coats, Nina glanced at Hugh. Thinking about Bobby had made her feel as vulnerable as he was – as though she wasn’t wearing knickers and everyone could see through the flimsy fabric of her dress. She put her coat on quickly, bowing her head to fasten its buttons. When she looked up again he was watching her, a good-looking, wholesome man, certain of sex. In the dance hall, she’d noticed other women casting sly glances over the shoulders of less glamorous men, their eyes lingering on his face. Nina could tell what they were thinking from their smiles: too handsome. Such good looks were almost preposterous.

  She turned up her astrakhan collar. ‘It’s only a short walk,’ she said. ‘Not far.’

  * * *

  Hugh Morgan was tall as well as handsome, broad and muscular as a navvy, his skin tanned. She’d always imagined sailors as small and lithe. She supposed she’d seen too many films in which agile boys climbed the rigging of sailing ships, quick as monkeys. But the navy didn’t have sails any more, just the industrial metal of battleships. In the newsreels the ships were vast and slow and looked invincible. Lieutenant Hugh Morgan would be at home on such a deck.

  In her bed he slept on his back, a sheet gathered at his groin. On his left arm, close to his shoulder, a Chinese dragon roared fire, its eyes bulging malice, its tail twisting to a devil’s point. He’d smiled as she’d traced her finger over it. ‘I was drunk. I wanted an anchor.’

  ‘Too dull.’ She drew her hand away, sitting back on her heels.

  He’d reached up to cup her face in his palm. After a moment he asked, ‘Why did you come to Dad’s party?’

  ‘I wanted to meet him. Ever since I first read his poetry –’

  He laughed, shutting her up. Fumbling on the bedside table for his cigarettes, he’d glanced at her. ‘Have you read the new book?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I haven’t. Not a single line.’

  Still sleeping on his back he snored, a noise that broke into garbled speech. She sat up, taking care not to wake him, and shrugged on the silk robe with its pattern of Japanese gardens. In the corner of her bed-sit she set the kettle on the single gas ring and stood over it, ready to turn off the heat as soon as its whistle sounded. Above the sink her window looked out over the huddled rooftops of slums, the crooked line broken where bombs had dropped. She could see the dome of St Paul’s in the near distance, so unaffected by the surrounding destruction that there was talk of divine intervention. Such talk made her feel weary. She rubbed at a sticky spot on the glass; a few days ago she’d removed the strips of tape a previous tenant had criss-crossed over the pane, the process a chore rather than the ritualistic celebration of the war’s end she’d imagined it would be. In the end, there had seemed nothing to celebrate.

  For the whole of VE Day she had stayed in her room. Below her window crowds sang and cheered and she imagined strangers embracing on the street. Later a fight had broken out, American voices cursing like film gangsters, a lone police whistle sounding frantic, foolishly impotent. There was a noise like a gunshot, a car backfiring or a firework kept safe for the duration, exploding for the victors. All the same, in the morning she’d expected to see a body sprawled on the pavement, blood thick as tar in the gutter. She’d kept the blackout curtain closed tight, keeping the revelry at bay, and thought about Bobby enduring yet another operation on his hands. She hoped that the streets around the hospital were quiet, that someone would explain to him when he woke from the anaesthetic what all the fuss was about. After an operation he was confused and anxious and she’d wished desperately to be at his bedside, at the same time guiltily relieved that she wasn’t.

  The kettle whistled shrilly a
nd the stranger in her bed garbled a command from his sleep. Turning off the gas, she stayed very still, watching to make sure he slept on. At last, reassured, she made weak, black tea, sweetening it with the last of her sugar ration before taking Dawn Song from her bag. Curling up in the room’s only armchair she began to read.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NINA WAS SINGING PAPER Moon. Spot-lit on a stage, she appeared small and vulnerable as a child refugee, a cardboard suitcase at her feet, a luggage label pinned to her chest. The song’s jaunty words became fainter and her voice was thin as paper ashes floating up towards the theatre’s vaulted ceiling. Way back in the stalls, a Gestapo officer sitting either side of him, Bobby strained to hear the final note. He knew that when she stopped singing he would be shot and he couldn’t wait for the song to end and the sadistic, teasing suspense to be over. His tongue felt huge in his mouth, his lips ballooned to ten times their size. He couldn’t speak; the fire had destroyed his voice.

  A hand seized his shoulder, shaking him, and he opened his eyes. Standing beside his bed, his half-brother Mark smiled shyly. ‘Bobby? Are you all right? You were shouting …’ As though embarrassed by his nosiness he asked, ‘Who’s Nina?’

  Still scared from the dream Bobby said too harshly, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You left the door open … I heard you calling out. Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  The boy looked so dejected that Bobby forced himself to smile. ‘It’s all right. You startled me, that’s all.’

  ‘Sorry. I’ll go, if you want.’

  Bobby sat up. He’d fallen asleep fully clothed and he caught sight of himself in the wardrobe mirror. His hair stuck up messily and dark sweat stains spread beneath his arms. The jaunty words of Paper Moon rang in his head; he could still smell the leather of the Gestapo men’s coats. Sweat trickled down his back. Imagining he stank, he began to unbutton his shirt.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Mark glance away quickly. Remembering the boy’s shyness, Bobby paused. Mark had never been sent away to school, never shared a bedroom, let alone a dormitory. It was possible he’d never seen a naked body. He buttoned his shirt again.

  ‘Have you been to school today?’

  ‘Just this minute escaped.’ Mark blushed, obviously aware that he sounded too eager to be with him. At sixteen, blond and blue-eyed, he was taking after his father rather than their mother. Already Mark was taller than he was, thickset, strong; he smiled often, sweet, innocent smiles. There were times when Bobby felt so self-conscious around him his skin crawled.

  Bobby looked up from putting on his shoes. ‘Mum will be wondering where you’ve got to, won’t she?’

  ‘She knows I’m here.’

  ‘Does your father know?’ Bobby found himself anxiously counting seconds. He knew the longer Mark was silent the angrier his stepfather must have been over this visit. He counted a slow ten before he stood up, shrugging on his jacket to hide the worst of his sweat-stained shirt and shoving his cigarettes into its pocket. Mark shifted from one foot to the other; he seemed to radiate childish awkwardness. Briskly Bobby said, ‘Come on. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  Bobby had been four years old when his mother remarried. He remembered his grandfather crouching in front of him, holding his hands as he told him he couldn’t live with him any more. He was to be a good boy for his mother and her new husband, the man who called him a cry baby when he hid behind her skirt. He hadn’t been a cry baby until then but his stepfather liked labels and for a while at least this was his.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Mark said, ‘I’m sorry about your grandfather. He was a nice man.’

  Bobby took the tea caddie from the shelf above the stove. The tin had a relief of long-robed Chinese men who followed each other round and round its sides. His fingers searched out each figure, feeling the contours of their heads, their individual pigtails, remembering the once bright, exotic blues and reds and greens of their robes. The caddie was old, its colours almost worn away. He set it down gently.

  Hesitantly Mark said, ‘Mum wanted to go to the funeral, but they had a row about it.’

  ‘A row?’ He raised his eyebrows, holding his gaze until Mark looked away.

  ‘Well, you know – not a row, exactly.’

  ‘He raised his voice and she backed down.’

  Mark blushed again, although the colour had barely faded since the last time. ‘I would’ve gone with you, if it hadn’t been for school.’

  At the funeral that morning the church had been half-empty; Bobby had had the front pew to himself. Afterwards, when the coffin had been lowered into the family grave, he’d stood about, at a loss to know what to do next, until someone had taken his arm and wordlessly led him back to the house. A funeral lunch had been laid on, slivers of spam sandwiches and a cake that tasted of ashes and must have used too many of someone’s coupons. He hadn’t discovered which of his grandfather’s patients had taken the trouble because no one stayed long enough to be asked. He was relieved when they’d gone; their embarrassment around him was excruciating.

  Spooning tea into the pot Bobby said, ‘He’s left me this house. Should I sell it, do you think?’

  ‘Do you want to?’ Mark looked appalled and Bobby laughed.

  ‘Would it be so terrible?’

  ‘Yes! I couldn’t imagine not being able to come here. Besides – you’d miss the garden.’

  ‘It’s overgrown now. A jungle.’

  ‘I’ll help you with it! I could do all the hard work – you just tell me what to do.’

  ‘I can still garden, Mark.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’

  Bobby smiled. Sitting down opposite him, he ducked his head to look into his downcast face. ‘Just because I look like a petrified gargoyle …’

  Mark met his gaze. ‘Not to me. Anyway, after a while …’

  Unable to help himself, Bobby prompted, ‘After a while?’

  ‘You get used to it.’

  Bobby sat back. He took his cigarettes from his pocket, turning the packet over and over on the table slowly and deliberately, knowing he was drawing his half-brother’s attention to his hands. The fire that had melted his face into its lop-sided leer had made a claw of his left hand, although it retained just enough movement to make it serviceable. His right hand had got off lightly in comparison, although its scars were horror-film shocking. Perhaps he could make a living playing monsters, the same, raw-faced monster over and over until everyone was bored to death of it.

  Lighting a cigarette he said, ‘You wanted to know who Nina is. She’s a girl I know in London. I was dreaming about her when you woke me.’

  Mark grinned, attempting to tease him. ‘A girl? I bet she’s a peach, is she?’

  ‘A peach? Nina’s too skinny for peachiness. Nina’s …’ He frowned, wondering how he might describe her. At last he said, ‘Nina’s all angles and shadows.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mark looked blank. ‘Is she foreign?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Her name.’

  ‘Stage name. She’s really called Doris or Ethel or something.’ He stood up. ‘Shall we have toast with this tea? I’m starving.’

  When Mark had gone, Bobby cleared the dining room of the funeral’s cake-crumbed plates and washed the teacups that had piled up in the sink. He dried them, twisting a tea towel inside each one to rub away the stains, noticing that almost every plate and cup he had inherited was cracked or crazed or chipped. He looked around the kitchen, seeing for the first time the cobwebs in the corners trapping the dust that filmed every surface, the mould stealthily sowing its black spoors across the ceiling. Newspapers were piled by his grandfather’s chair, some of them months old, thin, wartime newspapers with brisk, morale-boosting headlines. The latest was the one he’d hidden behind on the train coming home, his grandfather’s unexpected death causing him to leave Nina sooner than he’d intended, and much sooner than he felt ready to. All the same, it crossed his mind that she seemed relieved to s
ee him go, that despite her assurances that he was welcome to sleep on her floor she hadn’t really expected him to take her at her word. The trouble was he had nowhere else to go. Nowhere, at least, that he felt safe.

  He sat down in the threadbare armchair that exhaled his grandfather’s scent of Wright’s soap and whisky. On the mantelpiece opposite stood a photograph of his father and beside it one of himself. They were both in uniform, his father in the khaki of an army officer, the dull colour lending itself more naturally to the sepia print. The air force blue of his own uniform appeared only as a flat grey, the wings on his chest hardly standing out at all. They looked like the same person, his grandfather said, same person, different war. He’d said the unfairness of it made him want to howl with rage.

  Bobby got up. His damaged fingers fumbled but at last he managed to take the photograph of himself from its frame. Without looking at it, he tore it in two. There were too many photographs of that face, they were everywhere, if you knew where to look. At least he could take control of this one. Squatting in front of the hearth, he crumpled the two pieces and threw them into the cold grate before setting about the careful business of lighting a fire.

  At the door of Jason’s flat, Nina hesitated. Taking her compact from her handbag she peered into its mirror and smiled experimentally. The look she was aiming for was one of restrained sympathy. She mustn’t look too upset, Davey had said. He’d smiled, sad and resigned. ‘I try to act as though he’ll be up and about tomorrow.’

  Nina sighed, snapping the compact shut. She glanced back towards the three flights of stairs she’d climbed. A baby screamed from one of the other flats. Its pram had blocked the hallway, one of the rusty wheel spokes almost snagging her stockings as she edged past it so that she’d cursed softly at the idea of such a calamity.

  The door to Jason’s flat swung open suddenly and Davey threw out his arms to her. ‘Nina! My darling girl!’ He kissed her cheeks, pausing to whisper in her ear, ‘He’s in a difficult mood. Never mind, least said and all that.’ Standing back he smiled, ‘Come in, come in. We’ve been on pins all day looking out for you.’