Louise Hare - This Lovely City

‘Full of life and love, This Lovely City is a tender, at times heart-breaking, depiction of a city at once familiar and unrecognisable. It made my heart soar’

STACEY HALLS, SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE FAMILIARS

‘I loved, loved, loved it, and desperately wanted things to work out for Lawrie and Evie’

CATHY RENTZENBRINK

‘Superb… compelling storytelling, beautifully drawn characters and atmosphere that’s deeply immersive’

HARRIET TYCE, AUTHOR OF BLOOD ORANGE

‘ This Lovely City is a beguiling, atmospheric and important novel, with wonderful, memorable characters and a vital message about love, loyalty and hope’

CAROLINE LEA, AUTHOR OF THE GLASS WOMAN

‘Expect to be obsessed … [a book] you need to know about’

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘A thought-provoking and imaginative debut that conjures up the experiences of the Windrush generation in post-war London. Heartbreaking but full of hope’

WOMAN & HOME

‘Louise Hare writes so effortlessly. It was a joy to read’

WOMAN’S WEEKLY

LOUISE HAREis a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City , which began life after a trip into the deep-level shelter below Clapham Common.

Louise Hare

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Louise Hare 2020

Louise Hare asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2020 ISBN: 9780008332587

Version 2020-02-18

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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008332570

For Mum and Dad, for everything.

‘Ever so welcome, wait for a call.’

WEST INDIAN PROVERB

‘It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.’

ENOCH POWELL

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dediation

March 1950

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

April 1950

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

December 1950

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

‘All fish does bite but shark does get di blame’

WEST INDIAN PROVERB

The basement club spat Lawrie out into the dirty maze of Soho, a freezing mist settling over him like a damp jacket. He shivered and tightened his grip on the clarinet case in his right hand. He’d best hurry on home before the fog thickened into a ‘pea-souper’, as they called it round here. The hour was later than he’d have liked; the club had been packed and the manager always paid extra if the band stuck around, keeping the crowd drinking.

‘Done for the night?’ The doorman leaned against the wall by the entrance, waiting for the last stragglers to leave.

Lawrie nodded. He’d been invited to stop for a drink with the band after the last set but he had somewhere to be. The night’s moonlighting had been a last-minute call out. He’d already arranged to take Evie out to the pictures but he needed the money and his name was just getting known around town: Mr Reliable. Able to fit in with any band at short notice. Call Lawrie Matthews, he’s your man; he’ll play anything for a shilling or two.

It might be after three in the morning, but the street was still open for trade. Across the road a couple of girls loitered, hardly dressed for the March weather, their legs bare and their jackets open. They sheltered in a shop doorway, huddled together as they smoked. One of them called over to him but he pretended he hadn’t heard. That sort of entertainment wasn’t for him. A few minutes of pleasure taken in a dark piss-scented alleyway could not outweigh the guilt. This he knew.

Even back home in Jamaica, he’d never felt confident in himself, not like his older brother Bennie, but this city forced him even further inside himself. It was a chronic condition, like asthma or arthritis; he could go a day or so feeling perfectly normal and then just a word or a glance was enough to remind him that he didn’t belong. He liked working the clubs because he could just play his clarinet and get lost in the music. His fellow musicians respected him; many of them even looked like him. He revelled in the applause that came when his name was shouted out and he stepped forward to give his small bow and a smile, just the right side of bashful. But as soon as he left the warmth of the club, things changed. People looked and decided what he was without knowing a single thing about him. Most of them were well-meaning. Somehow that was worse.

He walked swiftly down to Trafalgar Square, putting on a sprint as he saw his night bus approaching, leaping on the back just before it pulled away and clambering up the steps to the upper deck. He sat down, panting slightly through exertion and relief.

Settled, he looked out of the window at the desolate streets rolling by. The city appeared defeated beneath the weak glow of the late winter moon, which lazily cast its light down on the abandoned remnants of buildings that looked flimsy enough to blow over in the backdraught, if only the driver would put his foot down. Almost five years now since VE Day, almost two years since Lawrie had landed at Tilbury, and the city was still too poor to clean itself up. Austerity they called it, as if giving it a name made it more acceptable to those struggling to make ends meet.