the streets was behind them she felt elated to have Julian here on Oak Street for the first time. She could tell that he and Nat were going to like one another. Already Julian was trying to divert Nat’s anxiety from what was happening in the bedroom above by describing the earlier scenes around Aldgate and discussing how and when it might be safe to go and retrieve the bicycles and Julian’s scarf.
Outside in the street May heard the sound of a group of children arguing with one another. Julian and Nat were too deep in conversation to notice her opening the front door. She was just in time to see a dozen boys and girls huddled conspiratorially by the war memorial, holding paintbrushes and pots of paint. Their attention was centred on a girl with long, reddish, flyaway plaits who stood in the middle of the group giving instructions. May’s heart lurched. She was about to shout out at them but, catching sight of her, the children began to run. May ran after them, turning right at the war memorial, but once she was round the corner the entire group had vanished.
Reluctantly May walked home. As she approached the door of number 52, she could see at once that the two clearly delineated, painted letters were still wet. She put her hand up to touch them, as if to be sure they were not a work of her imagination. She pulled back her fingertips as if she had touched a burning coal. The threat to Jews that Julian had seen in Berlin had reached the streets of the East End.
Inside the house a long steady cry more like an announcement was coming from upstairs and she could hear Nat’s voice carrying the news across the backyard walls and along the terrace.
“It’s a boy. Sarah and I have a boy. A son!”
“Those letters could stand instead for ‘Peace for Joshua,’” May whispered to herself, before going inside to ask Julian for his help. She wanted the paint removed before it had time to dry and strengthen its vile message.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Julian had got himself into a muddle. He had been sitting on a bench in Hyde Park for a good half hour wondering how to make some order of his life. It was late on a Friday morning and he was grateful that there were so few people about. Nearby a small number of bowler-hatted men were reading newspapers and preparing to eat their lunch, their grease-proofed sandwiches lying unwrapped in little packages on their laps, as the pages of the Financial Times flapped in the wind. A few yards away on another bench a large woman in a fur coat sat with her back to him deep in conversation with a distinguished-looking man. Every now and then the woman would stop talking and reprimand the restless terrier at her feet with a fierce little jerk of the lead.
Julian turned away from the pair in an effort to concentrate on his own thoughts as he vacillated between deciding on one course of action and then another. His tendency towards consistent inconsistency both infuriated and exhausted him.
Julian had only seen Lottie once since her return from Berlin and Rupert not at all. Julian was sharing a flat near the law courts with a gregarious fellow graduate and had diffidently resumed something of his old social round of dances and dinners and weekend parties. After long bibulous evenings in the Mirabelle and the Café Royal when he had come home disgusted with himself for his continued association with the vacuous Bullingdon crowd. He had intended to be definitive about ending his relationship with Lottie but although he had intimated to May that it was over, the truth was he hadn’t actually got round to telling Lottie. At a recent Mayfair ball finding himself, as usual, bored by the same old people, the same old music and same old chat, he had even kissed her. He had been drunk, he told himself, by way of excuse, and discovered that any lingering feelings of physical desire had entirely evaporated. In fact, after giving way to Lottie’s strange vinegary-smelling skin and her scarlet-painted lips he felt as if he had swallowed a mouthful of stale beer. He was glad she had decided to go and stay with her grandmother for a few days in Cornwall. He could do with a bit of time to think.
He had not planned to fall in love with May. She was