The first song was called ‘The Tower of Rotherhithe’ and Alys had written it herself. Pete had helped with the music, but the words were all hers. It was the story of a woman who tried to sing a man back from war, carrying him up the Thames on words of love. My sweet boy our river, was the refrain – My sweet boy our river come closer come hither, come follow these words you hear on the wind, they’ll guide you they’ll heal you they’ll feed you forever, just come back and give me the print of your hand. The soldier never returned, and the tower fell to ruin in peacetime.
It’s got an Irish sensibility, whispered Pete. Ulysses knew the song was about Peg.
Peg had by then given up her job and had moved out to the eastern suburbs with Ted. They had a big house with a gothic touch and a fuck-off driveway close to the end of the Central Line. All middle class with secrets, but that was Ted all over. No one knew why she’d done it. Cress especially. Cress thought it an act of self-sabotage and despair. Cress wanted Ulysses to go back to London and bring her home. And where’s home, Cress? With us, he said. I’m not so sure she sees it that way, said Ulysses. It was their first argument and Alys said, See? she gets between everyone in the end. Sort of shut them up, that did. Not in a good way.
There were no pubs with pianos out near Peg, so she stopped singing and that barnacled lifeline slipped through her grip. Cocktail hour drew closer every day, and old Ted – Mr Insurance and Mr Risk Averse – he shook ’em high and made ’em dry. Olive, of course, because Peg preferred lemon. Don’t be such a bastard, she’d say, and they’d kiss, and she’d bite his lip and make it bleed the way he liked it. He checked the bills and knew when she’d telephoned Italy. We have to economise, he said. Economise? Since when? Since you stopped working. You didn’t want me to work. I never said that. Oh Peg, said Claude somewhere in time.
It was Ulysses who did the calling now. That’s why he’d got the telephone installed in the pensione. Whenever Peg said, Standing room only, that was the code for him to call her back another day. He hadn’t spoken to her in months and the letters she sent were a tepid account of her days. I made a cake! When did Peg ever make a bleedin’ cake? Pete was the last to swear, but even that got his proverbial goat.
Peg promised to visit Florence again after that first Christmas, but she never did. Of course, she talked about it, but Peg talked about a lot of things by then. Alys went back most years, though, and even that was a fucking stretch. She came home sullen and low and eventually revealed she didn’t like Ted. Why don’t you like Ted? said Ulysses. I just don’t, she said. You need to tell me more, he said. Has he done something to you? No, it’s not that, she said. It’s the things he says. What things? said Ulysses. He tells Peg I’m better than her.
Cress told Ulysses he needed to get creative and think outside the box, so he did. He arranged for Peg and Alys to have a two-week stint at Col’s every summer without Ted. He knew Ted wouldn’t push against Col because Col would kill him. Just give me the word, said Col.
That first summer, Col became the Col of old and lorded it around his women. Ginny and Alys were inseparable and swam in the canal when the mercury hit 80 and snarled at boys pointing hard-ons their way. But it was in Peg that change was most apparent. Ginny’s presence mollified her maternal rage, and the blunt set of her jaw relaxed. Pete played piano and Peg sang her guts out. Like old times, said Mrs Lovell over her roast dinner. Peg even mentioned Eddie at the beginning of a song, because that’s what happens when a woman feels safe. Col said, What Peg loves, Peg holds close, but Alys felt confused by that because she didn’t feel that close. Alys was due to go back in July but she’d lost the photo of Eddie and was frightened of what Peg might say. You had a photo of Eddie? said Ulysses. Since when? Since I was a kid, she said.
The sound of cheers from the audience brought Ulysses back to the present. Pete turned to him and said, She did good, Temps. She’ll never go hungry. I have, but she won’t. And he reached for Ulysses’ cigarette and took a sharp drag.
Alys scanned the crowd eagerly, taking in every face till her eyes latched on to blonde Romy Peller, fifteen years of fresh-faced beauty and as all-American as they come. She was the girl Alys had kissed an hour before in a darkened doorway that smelt of piss. Moonlight and mouths linked by silver strands of saliva. Alys wanted to say I love you there and then, but the night was young, and she had her whole life ahead of her.
They’d met two months before at the cinema. Sat next to one another barely moving, barely breathing. Romy had a Vespa and Alys rode on the back and she held Romy’s waist tight and she leant in close just to smell the shampoo scent of her hair. Romy’s dad had taken a sabbatical from his university to write a book about Henry James and all Romy had to do was learn Italian and kiss girls and she was good at both. Everyone thought they were just good friends, but Cress noticed everything that night and followed Alys’s bright gaze to a boy who stepped aside and revealed a girl.