The Undertow Read Free

it. There’s something about her letters—the neat, closed handwriting, her carefulsentences—that’s just like her. He reads the words, and it’s like her voice is speaking them. It’s an uneasy feeling.
    I was able to speak to Mr. Travis, and he assured me that you can have your old job back, at Price’s, when the war is over, and we have you home with us again. It is great news, that we can have that to look forward to—your return, and our security as a family
.
    He closes his eyes, and the redness pulses and flares with colour. He tries to imagine her. Her pale curls, her grey dress, her buttoned collar, the alien swell of her body beneath her clothes. It is all so far away. In the damp and chill of Battersea the workers stream into Price’s in the dawn dark, stream out again at twilight. He tries to see himself amongst them, another dark figure in a dark coat in the dark winter evening, the way he used to be.
    The baby is due in May.
    “Drink, Billy-boy?”
    Sully. He leans in beside William, elbows on the rail. Sully is an old hand, leading stoker, and a bad penny. It’s hard to say no to him.
    William folds the letter briskly, slips it into his pocket. Notices Sully notice it. Sully grins, and it reminds William of something, but he can’t quite place it. It’s like his skin is somehow too tight for his bones.
    “Seriously. Drink.”
    “Postcard first,” William says.
    “Everywhere we go, you’re off looking for postcards.”
    “For the missus.”
    “She must be quite something.”
    William inclines his head. Once, when they were courting, he’d caught a glimpse of her coming down from the offices at Price’s; the swirl of her skirts, a flash of ankle, the neatness of her waist: before he’d even realised it was her, his chest had tightened with desire.
    “Drink first though. You can buy a postcard after. It’s young Paveley’s birthday.”
    “It’s always someone’s birthday.”
    Sully shrugs. “You’ve got to take your chances when you can.”
    Of course you do. Because who knows what’s going to happen next, or if you’ll ever get another chance at all? Sully nudges closer, conspiratorial. He smells of the boiler room. Coal dust. Sweat. Damp. A smell like old mattresses.
    “We’re off to Spiteri’s,” Sully says. “You’ll come to Spiteri’s. You’ll like it there.”
    William looks out across the harbour, where the little boats rock onthe little harbour waves. The blue painted eyes stare back at him. Above them stands the quiet temple. He’d rather go—just walk out through the streets. Climb up to the temple, its shadowed cloisters. See the city.
    “What d’they do that for?” William nods towards the fishing boats.
    “Eh?” Sully squints out along William’s sightline.
    “Those boats. Why do they paint those eyes on them?”
    “Oh,” Sully says. “That. It’s for good luck. Safe return. They think if they paint those eyes on their boats, they can outstare the evil eye.”
    Valletta wrong-foots him. He feels queasy, liverish. It’s like nowhere else he’s been, or rather it’s like everywhere: it seems caught between Africa, Arabia, and Europe. It’s like stepping into an imagined city, into someone else’s dream.
    There are five of them, climbing through the city streets. Sully, Paveley, Dwyer and Spooner. Him. The letter swings in his pocket as he walks, the corner of it pressing into his thigh with each step. It is cool and dim in the city: the buildings are high and the streets are narrow, cutting out the sun. The men pass by ornate carved stonework and under balconies and beneath a criss-cross of washing lines slung high above. They jump up onto doorsteps and skip along their length and leap off the other end; they run fingertips along the heavy wooden doors, over the cold metal stare of doorknockers. Everything is grand, but also somehow faintly shabby, like a girl in evening dress with bare and dirty feet. The men talk and laugh and shout, but the