Louisa Young - Devotion

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London

SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by The Borough Press 2016

Copyright © Louisa Young 2016

Cover design Claire Ward © HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Cover photographs © Dragan Todorovic/Trevillion Images (landscape); Alexa Garbarino/Trevillion Images (woman)

Louisa Young asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

‘Begin the Beguine’ words and music by Cole Porter © 1935 (renewed)

WB Music Corp. (ascap) all rights administered by Warner/Chappell North America Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

Some characters (or names) and incidents portrayed in it,

while based on real historical figures, are the work

of the author’s imagination.

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, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780007532902

Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007532896

Version: 2017-02-14

‘Young has conjured up another rich historical novel and I longed to know the fate of this tragic cast of friends. These characters demand devotion – they’ll get it, too’

The Times

‘Young expertly weaves politics, race and loyalty into the family’s narrative’

Observer

‘A stirring story of war and its consequences … tender and convincing. Well-drawn female characters complete an engaging saga’

Mail on Sunday

‘Elegantly written and compulsively readable, Devotion manages to be both thrilling and heartfelt – a real treasure of a book’

JAMI ATTENBERG

‘A sumptuous portrayal of love and war in fascist Rome’

Observer

‘Anybody who hasn’t read her WW1 and postwar trilogy … should get buying. An absolutely magnificent trilogy … three volumes is not enough. I NEED to know more … and sparking such a need is a triumph for a novelist’

BEL MOONEY

‘This moving and vivid historical novel … cleverly interleaves the personal and the political, portraying the conflicts of loyalty produced by troubled times with great subtlety … written with real knowledge and affection’

Tablet

Praise for The Heroes’ Welcome and My Dear I Wanted to Tell You :

‘Young possesses in abundance emotional conviction, pace and imaginative energy, and these qualities will draw readers with her through time and space, as she unfolds the story of the Lockes and Purefoys on their journey through the 20 thcentury’

HELEN DUNMORE, Guardian

‘Powerful, sometimes shocking, boldly conceived, it fixes on war’s lingering trauma to show how people adapt – or not – and is irradiated by anger and pity’

Sunday Times

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Devotion:

Dedication

Part One: 1928

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: 1932

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Three: 1933–4

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Four: 1938

Chapter Twelve

Part Five: 1938–9

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part Six: 1938–9

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Acknowledgements

Also by Louisa Young

About the Author

About the Publisher

To Derek Johns: Agent Emeritus, consigliere, and friend

An English school, July 1928

Tom Locke, twelve, tall for his age, goose-pimpled and shivering, practically naked in his knitted bathers, was hopping about under the trees at the end of the lake. They were about to be put through swimming, and Tom felt there was a genuine opportunity to disappear up one of the larches and avoid this frankly absurd dunking, the last of term. Yesterday the Beaks had carpeted him because he’d been swimming – well, yes, without permission – and after dark, but so what, he’d wanted to observe the nocturnal bird life and lake-life, he’d explained it perfectly clearly – or would have, if they’d given him a chance – and now they were forcing him in when it was cold and he didn’t feel like it. This morning the lake looked like a lake which might give a chap pneumonia.

Soft needles cushioned his feet; grey-black water gleamed in front of him. The other boys, squawking, slapped their hard faded towels at each other. A bit of dank sun slid through the branches above.

Tom had goggles and a phenomenal lung capacity for such a skinny boy. He would go under gracefully and glide through the greenest murk, slipping between spirals of slime, hardly disturbing whoever lurked down there. It was like flying through water. Surfacing, he would go eye to gelatinous eye with half-submerged toads, breathe a little, and sink again. Underwater was lovely to him. But today he didn’t feel like it. He flung two quick arms up, grabbed, pulled and slithered, and was up, on a scratchy branch, in the shadows of the shaggy heart of the larch, where cobwebs and grey ghosts of old growth hung in the remnants of winter.

It was bloody cold up there too. Must be some kind of meteorological front , he thought, and glanced around for birds’ nests, insects, lichens.

As it was the third time this term, in the third school of the past four years, that Tom had decided to do what he wanted instead of following instructions, and as the usual measures had had no effect, his father was called upon to appear. Tom knew perfectly well that his father would not appear. His father had only recently started appearing out of his study, where he had been lurking ever since he came home from the war ten years ago. Why would he suddenly appear in front of the Head? He never had been what one could reliably call reliable, why would he start now? Riley Purefoy would as usual take his place.

This delighted Tom. Discipline rolled off his back, but a visit from Riley was a jewel beyond measure.

Tom was standing outside the Head’s study when Riley appeared, and grinned like a loon at the sight of him. Riley grinned back, his constricted harlequin smile. Just then, two seniors lounged past, which distracted Tom for a moment. One of them, Slater, had on a previous occasion suggested that Tom’s mother was negligent, as she never appeared at sporting events. ‘Oh no,’ Tom had said, ‘I have no ma’ – with a flick of his big blue eyes – very like his mother’s, in fact – which had led Slater to think that perhaps Locke’s mater was a runaway. ‘Has she bolted then?’ Slater had asked, scenting prey. ‘You could put it that way,’ Tom had said, with the slightly amused-looking expression he used for covering what he point-blank refused to talk about. His mother – Julia. Julia. Joooolia – had been dead for ten years, died having Kitty, the kid sister – bad bargain probably . Of course he didn’t talk about her. A chap wouldn’t even talk about a living mater, let alone a dead one. And anyway Nadine was a perfectly good substitute.