in commemorating the glorious dead. The houses where Marcus lived, the farms and investments that paid for the servants who looked after them, the club subscriptions, the bills from the tailor, the wine merchant and the butcher — all these should have been Wilfred’s. A quirk of fate had given Marcus flat feet, and had allowed Wilfred to be killed. Marcus felt obscurely that he owed his brother something. The observance of Armistice Day was the tribute that Marcus paid to the glorious dead, and in particular to Wilfred.
After breakfast, which Lydia ate alone because her father was still asleep, she went out for a walk. It was a grey morning, but in places sunshine filtered through the mist. She went through the wicket gate into Rosington Place, where she found Mr Fimberry, dressed in black and wearing his poppy, loitering near the noticeboard by the entrance to the chapel. A steady trickle of churchgoers flowed up the cul-de-sac towards them.
‘Good morning, Mrs Langstone.’ Fimberry raised his hat. ‘Are you joining us today?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said politely.
Lydia walked down to the lodge. Mr Serridge was standing by the railings, smoking a pipe and idly watching a small crocodile of St Tumwulf’s girls, the school’s Roman Catholic contingent, filing up to the chapel. He nodded to Lydia but did not speak.
She drifted south and west across London. The closer she came to Whitehall, the more crowded the pavements became, with the current of people flowing more and more strongly towards the white stone Cenotaph. She arrived shortly before eleven.
She could not even see the Cenotaph, let alone the King and the politicians and the generals. A gun boomed on Horse Guards Parade. The sound bounced to and fro among the buildings like an India rubber ball. Then came the tolling of Big Ben. After that, the silence ruled, heavy and stifling. Lydia listened to what noises there still were — the rustle of leaves, a crying baby, several coughs, one defiant sneeze. She thought it probable that Marcus was somewhere in the crowd. Her stepfather, too.
The two-minute silence ended with a shocking crash of gunfire and the roll of drums. The crowd stirred and shifted like trees in strong winds. Trumpeters sounded the Last Post. Suddenly everyone was singing ‘Oh God, our help in ages past’.
Lydia turned and pushed her way through the singing figures and made her way to Trafalgar Square. All those hearts beating as one, she thought — Marcus loved this sort of thing. He liked it when crowds acted together like an enormous animal, united by a single purpose.
She noticed a couple about thirty yards away walking along the north side of the square in front of the National Gallery. The man was Mr Wentwood and he was accompanying a young woman with a slight, elegant figure. Mr Wentwood glanced back and caught Lydia’s eye. He ducked his head in a sort of bow and half raised his arm, as though trying to acknowledge her, but wanting to do so as discreetly as he could.
But the girl had noticed. She too looked back. She had a pretty face and fair hair beneath the black hat. Then people flowed between them and the meeting, if it could be called that, was over almost as soon as it had begun. But it gave Lydia a glimpse of Mr Wentwood’s private life, of a hinter-land that extended beyond Bleeding Heart Square and the Blue Dahlia cafe. The young woman had been very good-looking. A sister, Lydia wondered with an uncomfortable pang, or even a girlfriend?
‘Here,’ Rory said. ‘Have my handkerchief.’
Fenella took it without a word. Turning to face St Martinin-the-Fields, she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Rory turned away from her and lit a cigarette. Lydia Langstone was no longer in sight.
‘Sorry,’ Fenella said behind him. ‘I’m all right now.’
‘What was it? Thinking of your mother?’
She shook her head. ‘All this.’ She waved a gloved hand towards Whitehall, towards the ebbing crowds: men in uniform, men on crutches, men with medals, wives, mothers and daughters. ‘They say we’re mourning the unforgotten dead, but of course they’re forgotten. All we’re mourning is our own beastly misery. We don’t give a damn about the people who died.’
‘I say,’ Rory said. ‘Isn’t that a bit bleak?’
‘Anyway, it’s pointless,’ Fenella went on. ‘Anyone can see it’s all going to happen again, and this time it will probably be much worse.’
‘Another war?’
‘Of course. You heard what Mr Dawlish was saying at the meeting the other night. The Nazis are just waiting for the right moment. And it’s not just them, either.’
Rory ground out a cigarette beneath his heel. ‘You’re exaggerating. People will never stand for another war. They remember too well what happened in the last one. It’s only sixteen years ago.’
‘I wish you were right. Who was that woman?’
For a moment he was tempted to say, which woman? ‘Her name’s Mrs Langstone,’ he said. ‘I think I mentioned her the other day. Her father has a flat in the same house as mine, and she’s staying with him.’
‘So she must know Mr Serridge?’
‘Yes. But I’m not sure how well. She struck me as a bit of a dark horse, actually.’
‘Why?’
‘She doesn’t really belong in a place like Bleeding Heart Square. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and her father have come down in the world.’
Fenella laughed, with one of those sudden changes of mood that had always amazed him. ‘You sound like your grandfather sometimes.’
He grinned at her, relieved at the change of tone. ‘They probably lost their money in the slump or something. The new poor.’
But Fenella was no longer smiling. ‘I think I’ll go home now.’
‘I’ll take you.’
‘No. If you don’t mind, I’d rather go by myself.’ She looked up at him. ‘I just feel like my own company. It’s nothing personal, you know.’
‘I know,’ Rory said. ‘That’s rather the problem, isn’t it?’
Lydia Langstone hadn’t realized that being poor brought with it so many unpredictable humiliations. Being poor meant more than not being able to buy things. It changed the way that people looked at you. It changed how you looked at yourself.
After breakfast on Monday morning she went to the Blue Dahlia, where she ordered a cup of coffee and asked to speak to the manageress. The manageress turned out to be the fat woman behind the counter who took the orders.
‘I wondered whether you had any vacancies,’ Lydia said.
‘You what?’ demanded the woman.
‘A position.’ Lydia lowered her voice, aware that the other customers were probably listening avidly. ‘I’m looking for a job, you see.’
The woman shook her head. ‘We ain’t got anything going here, love.’ She leant on the counter, bringing her face closer to Lydia’s, and added in an unexpectedly gentle voice, ‘Anyway, our sort of job wouldn’t suit you, and you wouldn’t suit it.’
Lydia left the cafe with her ears burning. It wasn’t so much the rejection that embarrassed her. It was the way the woman had talked to her at the end, the way she had called her ‘love’. On her way home, she went into the library in Charleston Street. Upstairs in the reference room, the Situations Vacant columns from the daily newspapers were pinned up on boards. She couldn’t reach them because there was a crowd of unemployed, both men and women, heaving like a football scrum in front of her.
It was nearly lunchtime by the time she got back to Bleeding Heart Square. There were letters on the hall table — none for her or her father, but one of them was for Mr Wentwood. She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Mr Fimberry advancing down the hall, smiling broadly.
‘Mrs Langstone, I thought it must be you! You see — I recognize your footsteps already.’ He laid his hand on her arm. ‘I wondered whether this afternoon might be a good time for me to show you round the chapel in Rosington Place.’
‘No,’ Lydia said, pulling her arm away. ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t.’
‘You’re back home for lunch? I was just about to warm up some soup for myself, and-’
To Lydia’s relief, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Fimberry glanced past her.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Serridge,’ he said.
