Hannah & Emil by Belinda Castles Read Free Book Online

hands. ‘She shall be authoress! If I had these children’s education. You think I would sell tobacco to make my crust? My Hannah, you will make your papa proud.’ And the men stood close and raised their glasses in foreign toasts, exhaled thick pungent clouds of cigar smoke. I wanted to be instantly grown, completed, to prove Papa correct. Oh, I was in a tearing hurry to be the marvellous, accomplished person of my imaginings.
    We drew level with Father’s shop. I saw in a momentary gap in the crowd Mr Poppy, the barber whose shop backed onto ours, emerging from the side door, his huge belly covered by a white apron, chatting to a newly shorn customer who was rubbing the back of his neck. Benjamin was slowing, tugging at my hand. ‘Can we go home and get some food? I’m hungry.’
    â€˜No! We’ll never get out again and we’ll catch it from Mother without having even seen the show. If you go back in I’m not waiting for you.’
    â€˜But, Hannah . . .’
    We could not afford a scene here, so close to home. ‘Listen, I’ve got a shilling. We can buy a bag of cakes from Mintz’s and sneak in the back of the Oxford without paying.’
    â€˜Lor, Hannah. I do like cake.’
    â€˜It’s common to say lor .’
    â€˜Father says not to say things are common. It’s snobbish.’
    â€˜Don’t say lor and I shan’t have to.’
    I tugged Benjamin along into the dense tide, past the swirling of bodies around the entrance to the tube, like water down the plughole of the basin, and on towards Oxford Street. He put his foot out off the kerb into the path of a motorcar—I felt the straightening of his arm as he stepped out, and I pulled him back sharply. The car roared past a yard in front of us. Inside the adults sat sombrely, obscured by the reflections of the building and my own face in the glass. I saw that I was frowning, as they were, mirroring the mild scowl of adulthood.

Emil
    GALLIPOLI PENINSULA, MAY 1915
    It was hard to imagine his body back to the beginning now, from here in the dugout, though he had been that person, new and ready, a month before. In front of him, Thomas lay on his low bunk across the trench, shaking and pale, his attention inward. They lay close, side by side. If Emil put his hand out, he could reach him. He did not know whether he was sick or just frightened but, nevertheless, they had orders to go over tonight. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. He did not know why he did this, except perhaps that it was a version of himself he wanted to return to. It was still perhaps close enough.
    Between the flat metal of the Aegean and the dawn sky there had been no line. The ships were suspended for a few moments in a grey globe and then it was light enough to see that they sat on a flat surface, that smaller destroyers were in front of them, coming forward towards the cove. All night he and Thomas had lain on the ridge in the dark until a rocket lit the sky and the guns had started. The noise was greater than factories and mills. They had not slept, waiting, and the long fat launches dropping from the destroyers across the grey water were not quite real. But he watched the water and the men, shells cracking out over the boats, stirring up the water in little cyclones. Between shells he heard the knock-knock of the Turks’ rifles in the gullies below like bullets in a cigar box. The boats were close enough to see the matchstick oars and the little men jumping out of them into the water.
    He looked for individual men, began to fire his Mauser, and the things in the water began to fall, whether from his gun or others he could not be certain. There were so many that he fancied he saw the survivors wading through pink blooms of corpses, gathering and bumping in the waves. Something opened out in him, emptied him of the usual feelings: tiredness, pity. Over the next hour, his body loading and firing the gun as though it