Chapter 15 Familial Questions
FIFTEEN
FAMILIAL QUESTIONS
TOM
Sleep wouldn't come, so I stopped pretending.
My narrow bed felt like lying on nails, mattress thin enough that I could feel every ridge of the frame underneath.
Cold seeped through the single blanket I'd been issued, through the walls, through the floorboards, until it felt like the December freeze had taken up permanent residence in my bones.
I sat up, gave up on sleep entirely, and lit the stub of candle on the small table beside my bed.
Candlelight turned the room amber and shadow. Made the walls feel closer. Made the silence louder somehow, emphasising the absence of artillery, of shouted orders, of Danny's snoring from the next cot over.
Just me and the quiet and thoughts that wouldn't stop circling.
Madam Fortuna's voice kept drifting back to me. That small dressing room with its wigs and makeup pots, the way she'd looked at me like she could see straight through to the parts I kept hidden.
You want to know what this is. What we are. What he is. What you might be.
I'd told her I was starting to understand. Starting to feel things I didn't have words for. But sitting here in the dark, I wasn't sure that was true. Understanding implied clarity, and there was nothing clear about the mess inside my chest.
Art's face kept surfacing in my mind. The way he'd looked in the starlight by the lake, head tilted back to trace constellations, voice softening as he taught me words in a language meant for people like him.
The patience in his teaching. The surprise when I'd caught on quickly.
The quiet laugh when I'd mangled the pronunciation but got the meaning right.
His hand finding mine in the dark. Cold fingers settling against mine like they belonged there.
I'd held hands with exactly one other person in my adult life, and she'd been a nurse changing my bandages who'd needed to steady my arm. This had been nothing like that. This had been deliberate. Chosen.
The candle flickered. I reached for the photograph on my bedside table, the only one I owned.
Creased and faded, carried through too many campaigns.
Mum in her Sunday dress, Dad with his docker's cap, Rose grinning like she'd just said something cheeky, Alfie squinting against the sun.
Me in the back, barely twenty, skinny and serious.
That boy in the photograph had never killed anyone. Had never wondered if wanting another man meant something was broken inside him.
Had never met Arthur Pembroke.
I stared at the photograph until my eyes burned. Then I made a decision.
I had three days of leave owing. Hadn't planned to use them, hadn't seen the point of going anywhere when everywhere felt the same. But suddenly I needed to go home. Needed to see my family. Needed to remember who I'd been before all of this, and figure out who I was becoming.
The request went through without fuss. Light duty personnel weren't hard to spare, and Finch barely glanced at the paperwork before signing off. By morning, I was on a train heading east, watching the countryside blur past the window and trying not to think too hard about what I was doing.
Or why.
The East End looked worse than I remembered.
I'd known about the bombing, of course. Everyone knew.
But knowing and seeing were different things.
Whole streets reduced to rubble and gap-toothed ruins, buildings standing with their insides exposed like dollhouses with the fronts ripped off.
Wallpaper and fireplaces and bits of furniture visible through shattered walls, intimate details made obscene by exposure.
Our street had survived, mostly. A few houses at the far end were gone, replaced by a crater that had been half-filled with debris and marked with warning signs. But number 47 still stood, narrow and soot-stained and exactly as I remembered it.
The door opened before I could knock.
“Tom!” Rose's shriek probably woke half the street.
She launched herself at me, arms wrapping around my neck, feet leaving the ground as I caught her and held on.
“You bloody idiot, you didn't say you were coming!
Mum's going to have a fit, we haven't got anything proper for tea, and look at the state of this place...”
“Rose.” I set her down, held her at arm's length to look at her properly. She'd lost weight since I'd last seen her. Cheekbones sharper, collarbones visible above the neckline of her worn dress. But her eyes were the same. Bright and fierce and full of trouble. “You look good.”
“I look like I've been working double shifts at the factory and living on potato soup, which I have, but thank you for lying.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me inside. “Mum! Mum, come quick, you'll never guess who's turned up!”
The house smelled the same. Coal smoke and cabbage and the particular mustiness of walls that had never quite dried out.
Smaller than I remembered, or maybe I'd just grown.
The parlour furniture was worn but clean, antimacassars on the chairs, photographs on the mantelpiece including one of me in uniform that made me look like a stranger.
Mum appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and stopped dead when she saw me.
“Tom.”
“Hello, Mum.”
She crossed the room in three steps and pulled me down into a hug that smelled like soap and onions and home. Her shoulders shook, and I realised she was crying, silent tears soaking into the collar of my coat.
“Sorry I didn't write ahead,” I said into her hair. “It was a bit last minute.”
“Don't you dare apologise.” She pulled back, hands on my face, studying me like she was checking for damage. “Let me look at you. You're too thin. Are they feeding you properly? Rose, put the kettle on. And see if Mrs Patterson can spare some of that cake she was bragging about.”
“Mum, you don't have to...”
“I absolutely do. My boy comes home, he gets proper tea, rationing be damned.” She was still crying, still smiling, still holding my face like she was afraid I'd disappear. “Alfie! Alfie, get down here!”
Footsteps on the stairs, and then my little brother appeared. Except he wasn't little anymore. Eighteen now, tall and gangly, with the beginnings of a moustache he was clearly proud of and I was clearly going to mock. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stared at me.
“Bloody hell,” he said.
“Language,” Mum said automatically.
“Bloody hell,” Alfie repeated, and then he was across the room and hugging me too, all elbows and enthusiasm and the fierce grip of someone who'd spent too long worrying.
We ended up in the kitchen, because that's where we always ended up. Around the table that had seen every family meal for as long as I could remember, drinking tea that was weaker than it should have been and eating slices of cake that Mrs Patterson had indeed been persuaded to spare.
Rose sat across from me, feet tucked under her chair, watching me with the particular intensity she'd had since childhood.
The one that said she was cataloguing everything and would demand explanations later.
Alfie was beside me, close enough that his shoulder kept bumping mine, like he needed the physical confirmation that I was really there.
Mum fussed. Refilled my cup before it was empty. Pushed more cake toward me. Asked questions about my posting that I couldn't really answer and accepted my vague responses with the understanding of someone who'd spent four years learning not to ask too much.
“It's good work,” I said, which was true. “Important. Can't say more than that.”
“As long as you're safe.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “That's all I pray for. All of you, safe.”
Dad wasn't there. Working a double shift at the docks, Mum explained, because two of the regular men had been called up and someone had to handle the cargo. He'd be gutted to have missed me, but I'd see him at supper if I was staying that long.
“Staying the night at least,” I said. “If there's room.”
“There's always room.” Mum's eyes went bright again. “Always.”
The afternoon passed in fragments of conversation and comfortable silences.
Rose told me about the munitions factory where she worked, the long hours, the other girls, the supervisor who was “an absolute tyrant but fair enough, I suppose.” Alfie talked about his job at the grocer's, the customers, the constant challenge of making rations stretch.
Neither of them complained. That wasn't how we'd been raised. You got on with things. You managed. You didn't burden others with your troubles when everyone had troubles of their own.
But I could see the strain underneath. The way Rose's hands shook slightly when she thought no one was watching. The shadows under Alfie's eyes that spoke of interrupted sleep. The general air of exhaustion that hung over the house like fog.
“The raids have been bad lately,” Rose said when Mum went to check on something in the oven.
Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her fingers had found a loose thread on her sleeve and were picking at it compulsively.
“Those bloody V-2s. No warning, just... boom. The Hendersons, three streets over. Direct hit last month. Nothing left.”
“I heard.”
“Did you hear about the Marsh boy? Billy Marsh, used to play football with Alfie?”
My stomach tightened. Billy Marsh. The name Madam Fortuna had spoken with such sadness. Arrested. Two years.
“What about him?”
“Arrested.” Rose's voice dropped, even though Mum was out of earshot.
“Not bombs. The other thing. You know.” She made a vague gesture that somehow conveyed everything.
“Police got him and some others at a club in Soho.
Mum won't talk about it, says it's shameful, but I remember Billy. He was always nice. Helped me carry groceries that time I twisted my ankle.”
“Two years,” Alfie said quietly. He'd gone pale, wouldn't meet my eyes. “That's what Jimmy Porter said. Two years in prison for... for being that way.”