What amazed him most about the tree was that it had survived the Blitz, and also a V2 bomb blast that had taken out the Imperial Gasworks which had taken out the windows of the streets around, scattering coal for the taking. Amidst the wail of sirens, and great wall of flames, Cressy had placed his hand on the trunk, reassuring it that the worst was over. For there was little else of interest to bomb in the area. Even the church had gone.
It was after this last act of destruction that Cressy took it upon himself to nurture the tree. Its origins, he’d read, had been the forests of central Asia, and Cress thought that a mighty journey to have undertaken. Cress was deep like that. So he watered it, and talked to it whenever he passed. It didn’t matter that the fruit it bore was unpalatable, because cherries upset his stomach, always had; something to do with a mild irritation in his lower bowel. He was on firmer ground with apples.
Every April, as thick clusters of white and pink blossom hung heavy and low and became the talk of the street, Cressy walked methodically, zen-like, with a glass of stout from Col’s and sat under the blossoming tree, knowingly enacting the Japanese ritual of hanami – something he’d read about in the library. People passed by and laughed, but Cress closed his eyes and listened to the song of the breeze through the flower heads. He was oblivious to everything except that moment. Cherry blossom and a glass of stout. Hard to beat.
Old Cress had never been Young Cress. He’d been born Alfred Cresswell and soon became Egg on account of his premature balding pate. Egg ’n’ Cress came next after that culinary marriage, but it was the Cress that stuck. He could fix anything, find anything, and was everyone’s go-to man in need. Cress couldn’t read till he was thirty. Lot of shame in that empty space.
Peg hated winter.
She hated the smells of damp wool and coal smoke. She hated nights that began at three and days that barely raised their heads from the pillow. She hated the same old same old that winter brought. She hated the bomb sites and the lack and the mirrors that never lied. She hated magazines that showed American life with wide plains and fancy cars and a Hollywood sign that made you dream of something more. She hated the sun-bronzed women in big sunglasses outside big houses with white fences, and advertisements for cigarettes with scowling cowboys and red-mouthed beauties. She hated that Eddie Clayton had disappeared two years before. She hated the wind that whistled through her teeth, and she hated that summer was too far away and that Christmas stood between her and another year.
Coming down the stairs she snagged her stocking and sat down on the last step. Peggy never cried because she was dry, but it didn’t mean she didn’t feel. Sometimes she felt like dying but who wants to hear that?
Clack, clack, clack along the street. Peggy’s tune.
All right, Peg? said Old Cress, standing beneath his tree.
Peg nodded and walked on.
It’s never as bad—
It’s bloody bad today, Cress, so keep it to yourself.
Col stood in the doorway of the pub and smoked. God, the loneliness in his soul. It manifested as acid reflux and it was the winter that brought the long burn to his oesophagus, along with the dark misty days and a misty yearning for the woman who used to be his wife. Agnes Agnew, a step up for Col with her Huguenot genes and name. Who was he then and who was he now? That was as far as he got along the byways and stiles of his existential musing. He knew something had gone wrong, but for the life of him he didn’t know how to put it right.
Agnes was still out there, somewhere. On a rock, farming sheep or maybe goats. People would have felt more sorry for him had she died, and he would have liked to have had that – a bit more sorry. Thank God he had Ginny to keep him on the straight. Ah, Ginny. She had the look of Agnes about her these days. Cressy called her engrossing and she was engrossing, till she opened her mouth and a kid tumbled out. Ginny was always racing from his sight （the acid begins to roil as he thinks about her absences）。 There’d been some shenanigans during the Blitz, when he’d caught her snogging a sailor. Sailor didn’t understand when Col kept hitting him and saying, She’s only ten, you fuck. Sailor spent his shore leave in the hospital.
Col unwrapped a peppermint. A sharp slug of wind rumbled through his small intestine like an underground train.
This was the London Ulysses walked back into. Winter 1946, two months before the big snows came. A city grey and struggling, like an old fella outside the Mission, all grace and has-been.
Ulysses rode the bus east and jumped off at Kingsland Road, walked behind the flurry of traffic to the bomb site where his dad’s workshop had once been. Cressy had warned him of the blast, got a letter to him in North Africa and had written it like a telegram: Ulysses. STOP. Your dad’s workshop hit. STOP. Saved a globe and the copperplates. STOP. No one killed. STOP. Hope Africa’s interesting. STOP. Cress.