I gazed through the smoky haze at the frosted windows through which one could see the blue of the sky and the bright beams of sunlight outside. Sadly, I thought, despite the comforting arrival of spring it was, as David had observed, a wicked world.
5
On leaving The Guardsman I decided to take a detour via Manchester Square on my way back to the office. I wanted to take a look at the HQ of the Britannia Club. Manchester Square is a pleasant location almost tucked out of sight behind the upper reaches of Oxford Street. It boasts fine buildings and a small leafy park. As I entered the square I felt as though I were stepping back in time. There were no visible signs here that there was a war on. Remarkably the buildings had been untouched by the blitz. Only half a mile away many shops and stores along Oxford Street had been battered and shattered and crippled by the bombing. One could not walk a hundred yards along that street without encountering boarded-up windows and damaged edifices; but here in serene Manchester Square all was magically pristine and smart. There were few people about, but those who strolled casually along the pavement seemed from another age also: smartly dressed, heads held high with confident expressions. I felt like Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon: I had found Shangri-La. Perhaps I should move my office here, I thought. It would be very pleasant to wake up in such surroundings, to pull back the blinds each morning and gaze out on the little park and pretend that Hitler was just a dream. Only one snag, I hadn’t even enough money to rent one of the nice green benches in the park, let alone an office in this gilded place. Indeed, money whispered at me from every elegant window, every neatly cultivated window-box and every shiny motorcar so carefully parked by the kerb, probably by a liveried chauffeur. For Shangri-La read Richville.
I had to circumnavigate the square twice before I found what I was looking for. Then, on the corner, I spotted the doorway of a tall, distinguished town house which bore a discreet brass plaque: The Britannia Club.
I stared at the entrance for some moments, then I mounted the short flight of stone steps and rang the bell. I heard it echoing inside the building, as in one of those haunted-house movies where the unsuspecting guests have just arrived, their car having broken down outside. No doubt Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff would answer the door carrying a six-branched candelabra decorated with cobwebs.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Eventually, when the door opened—without a creak, standing before me was a tall, graceful woman with bright blue eyes and a benign expression. I guessed that she must have been in her mid to late sixties, but she was wonderfully groomed, wearing an expensive blue dress, set off by a diamond brooch, while her carefully coiffured white hair framed her handsome features. At one time she would have been a real beauty, and even now there was something alluring about her face. Her composure and serenity were quite sexy.
She looked at me kindly. ‘Can I help you, young man?’
The voice was cultured, upper class, but not condescending. I felt as though I was about to be invited to the vicar’s tea-party.
I raised my hat. ‘I was wondering if I could find out about the Britannia Club.’
Her eyes registered suspicion but her smile remained intact. ‘You are interested in joining?’
‘I…I…er…think so. I wanted to find out more about the aims and objectives.’
‘Of course.’ She pulled back the door and bade me enter. I found myself in a large dimly lighted hallway which, like the lady, was smart and elegant. The floor was richly carpeted and the panelled walls were adorned at regular intervals with portraits. I didn’t recognise any of the mugs staring back at me in the gloom, except one, which I suspected was Oliver Cromwell but I could have been wrong. Certainly there were no pictures of Hitler and his cronies as might have been expected.
‘Are you an ex-service man?’ my elegant hostess asked. ‘Your eye?’
Instinctively, I touched my black patch. ‘Yes. I was invalided out.’ Well, it wasn’t a lie—not really.
‘You poor man,’ she purred in a practised way. ‘Tell me, how did you hear of the Britannia Club?’
‘It was something in the papers…a while ago.’
‘Well, if was in the papers it was no doubt inaccurate and derogatory. I am afraid we are pilloried and persecuted for our beliefs.’
‘Which are...?’
‘Our basic stance is Britain for the British and a condemnation of this foolish war. It is a noble stance, wouldn’t you agree?’ I nodded with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
She moved to the large hall table which was covered with various leaflets and pamphlets. Carefully, she chose several of these, scooping them up in her hands.
‘Take some of our literature, Mr...?’
‘Hawke, John Hawke.’ I never gave an alias unless it was absolutely necessary. It’s a practice that can cause a lot of trouble.
‘Well, Mr Hawke, as I say, take some of our literature with you and study it. If then you feel you’d like to become one of our number, you would be very welcome.’
Solemnly, I took the leaflets, folded them carefully, and slipped them inside my jacket pocket.
‘That’s very kind,’ I said. ‘I’m very keen to do something to stop the war.’
She scrutinised me carefully with her penetrating blue eyes and nodded slowly.
‘I think you’ll do very well with us, Mr Hawke.’ She retrieved a purple card from the table and offered it to me. It just bore the word ADMITTANCE in bold type. ‘Come along to a lunchtime meeting we’re holding tomorrow. Our deputy chairman, Guy Cooper, will be giving an address. I’m sure you will find that stimulating and it may well answer all your questions and any doubts. Half past twelve in our meeting-room here.’
‘Thank you. That sounds grand,’ I said, taking the card. ‘I really appreciate your help, Miss...?’
She chuckled. ‘It’s been long time ago since I was a miss, Mr Hawke. But thank you for your gentlemanly flattery. I am Lady McLean. My husband Howard is the president of the Britannia Club.’
It was good to get back out on the street again and breathe in the fresh air. I’m not fond of charades but in my line of work they are an occupational hazard. I had felt very uncomfortable pulling the wool over the eyes of the woman I now knew was Lady McLean. She seemed so kind, rational, elegant and normal! Certainly she was not at all the sort I had expected to encounter at the Britannia Club: a ranting, bigoted, violent anti-Semite. Instead, here was a woman who could have stepped out of the pages of Jane Austen or a Noel Coward play.
I grinned at myself, as I opened up the door of Hawke Towers. You are a naïve bastard at times, I told myself, and I found myself agreeing with the sentiment.
After creating a steaming cup of Camp coffee, I settled down with my homework. It made unsettling reading. One leaflet in particular stuck in my craw called The Pollution of Britain, it stated that British Fascism represented a return to the glorious ideals of the past. What glorious ideals were these I wondered? The serfdom of the Middle Ages maybe. Its main thrust however was an attack on the Jews:
We do not oppose the Jew on racial or religious grounds. We oppose them because they have become an organised interest within the state, pursuing a policy which threatens British lives and homes. Organised Jewry is as much a threat to the traditional way of life in this country as the forces of Adolf Hitler. Indeed, it can be seen by careful examination that in fact the organised power of the Jewry was responsible for dragging Britain into war with Germany.
We must band together as true British brothers and sisters to fight, to expunge this menace, the parasites of humanity—this enemy within.
There was more of the same.
I threw the filth down on the floor, my stomach churning violently. Coming into contact with such blind, perverted hatred made me feel sick. I thought about the stately and elegant Lady McLean who was peddling this nasty garbage. It was hard to equate her kind and civilised treatment of me with the viciousness and vehemence of the sentiments expressed in
the leaflets. Did she really believe these lies? Had she read this stuff? Foolish question again, Johnny. Of course she did and she had.
A phrase from the foul spiel returned to my mind: The enemy within. Never mind the Jews, I thought, the bastard members of the Britannia Club were the real enemies within. I felt unclean just handling this material.
I pulled out the bottle of Johnny Walker which was nestling in the bottom drawer of my desk and poured myself a decent slug. I wanted to wash the nasty taste from my mouth. Out of my mouth, out of my system, out of my mind. I just wanted to forget what I’d read. Oh, David boyo, you were so right: it is a wicked world.
*
By eight that evening I was in my regular night-time haunt, the Velvet Cage, a bar-cum-jazz club-cum-eatery in the heart of Soho. It was warm, dark and smoky and comfortingly claustrophobic. It was my second womb.
I was sitting at the bar nursing yet another whisky, enjoying the strains of the Tommy Parker sextet having fun with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I’m fairly sure that the late, great George would have approved of the extravagant rhythms and brave improvisations in the group’s version. Tommy on trumpet excelled himself, which I have to admit was not a difficult task. Not to everyone’s taste, I suppose, but I liked it.
However, it appeared that most of the other customers had better things to do than appreciate the jazz. They talked, their voices adding an irritating background soundtrack to the music. But the guys in the band were used to it: they were playing for themselves anyway and for those few odd characters out there in the dark, like me, who cared about the music. To be fair, some of the men in uniform shuffled around the floor with a girl they hardly knew in an approximation of dancing. Who knows, I thought, letting my mind wander along whatever tributaries it wanted, the blackout strangler could be one of those men and one of those girls could be his next victim.
‘Well, hello Johnny, who’s stolen your smile?’
My thoughts were interrupted by Blanche, one of the club hostesses. We knew each other well and were close companions in ‘The Lending An Ear Club’. We held mutual moan sessions on a regular basis. She climbed on the bar-stool and dug me in the ribs. ‘You can cheer yourself up by buying me a drink, Mr One Eye.’
‘And why should I do that?’
‘Because I’s thirsty,’ she replied, adopting her squeaky little-girl voice.
‘OK, you temptress. Tell you what, I’ll buy a drink for myself and then give it to you. I’m not paying Cazmartis’s extortionate prices for “the hostess’s drink.”’
‘You don’t have to go through that charade with me, Johnny. I’ll tell Ray to charge you regular.’
Ray, the barman, did that thing without batting an eyelid, but even at regular prices champagne doesn’t come cheap. What the hell, I bit the bullet and dipped into my wallet. The cash in there was gradually doing a disappearing act.
Blanche took a sip of the fizzy stuff and giggled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll buy you a drink back one day…when my ship comes in?’
‘Which ship is that? The Titanic?’
She giggled again. ‘So how’s the detective game?’
‘Slow at moment. Too slow for another glass of champers, I can assure you.’
She held her glass aloft. Already it was half-empty. ‘One will do me fine,’ she said. ‘And thanks, Johnny. You’re a sweetie. I really needed this’. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Things are slow for me, too. Nobody wants to be just nice anymore. At least not for the sake of being nice. They all want something in return. A little dance and some female company isn’t enough. They want more.’
‘Bed and breakfast, eh?’
‘You got it.’
‘Do you get any of these fellers who are unpleasantly insistent?’
‘Oh, I know how to handle myself, Mr One Eye.’ She gave me a knowing nod. Blanche was a tough little bird and, indeed, I believed that she well knew how to handle herself within the confines of the Velvet Cage, but I reckoned she wouldn’t be so confident if she found herself in a darkened doorway with someone’s hands around her throat.
‘Oh, oh,’ she said, ‘here comes Fat George. I’d better get working the floor. More drinks at hostess prices or I might be coming around your place looking for a job as your secretary or something’. She drained her glass and drifted away into the gloom.
Fat George, or Mr Cazmartis to the likes of you, was the obese Greek who owned the joint. If there is such a thing, and I believe there is, he was Soho royalty. Cazmartis wandered by, his cockatrice eye observing everything carefully. I was sure that he’d had part of his brain removed and a miniature adding machine placed there instead. I’d helped solve a little pilfering problem for him in the early days and so now I was a privileged member of the club. As such, he gave me an oily smile and a gracious nod of the head and passed on.
I got up to leave and noticed Blanche skittering around the floor with an eager little corporal whose head only came up to her ample bosom. He seemed to be in heaven. Blanche gave me a smile and a conspiratorial wink as I passed by.
Outside, the night was quiet. No bombing. No ack-ack and little traffic. And the air was filled with the rich scent of spring, seducing one into forgetting the hardships of winter. Suddenly I felt the best I’d done all day. I didn’t know why but I was sensible enough not to question it. These moments are rare. They may be illusory—so what! Accept them for what they are. I decided I would stroll home casually, having a couple of cigarettes along the way and taking a cuppa at a tea-bar if I found one open. I hummed snatches of Rhapsody in Blue as I sauntered along.
As it happened there was no tea-bar open so I treated myself to a third smoke instead. As I turned into Maple Street, not far from the Hawke residence, I heard what sounded like a muffled scream. It was a woman’s voice in distress, which pierced the comparative silence of the night.
I tensed with apprehension. The sun had slid behind the bloody clouds once more. I flung my cigarette into the gutter and hurried up the street in the direction of the strange cry. I heard it once more: a stifled exclamation of pain and surprise. It seemed to be coming from a shop doorway across the road from me. My heart started racing, I pulled out my pocket-torch and crossed the street as quietly as I could.
It had now gone very quiet, but I could still hear movement and heavy breathing and I was certain I could detect a presence in the doorway. I clicked on the torch and shone it into the darkness.
6
Despite feeling like death warmed up, as his mother used to say when she had one of her turns, he managed to make it into work. Dosed with an excess of aspirin, he reckoned that being active and having his mind occupied might help to ease the discomfort.
He arrived on time at the changing-room, which was empty except for one of his colleagues, a garrulous Irishman who was known as Paddy, although that wasn’t his name. Paddy looked up as he entered and gave him a cheery wave, then frowned.
‘Saints preserve us, here comes the walking dead. You look rough, old boy. Been on the booze again?’
‘You could say that,’ he replied evenly, affecting a grin.
‘You look as though you should be home in bed, my son.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ responded Paddy, lacing up his boots. ‘If I were you...’
‘You are not me. I said I’ll be all right.’
The vehemence of the response shut Paddy up in mid flow. ‘Suit yourself,’ he muttered to himself.
Oh, I will, he mused. I will most certainly suit myself. And with this thought, he suddenly began to feel better. He grinned to himself. Anger will carry me through. That is my strength. It fuels my revenge. I’ve still quite a bit of work to do and I must begin again…soon.
7
The beam of my torch illuminated the interior of the doorway and a woman screamed.
She was up against the door of the shop, her dress hitched up to her waist and knickers down around her knees. The man who was
pressing himself against her turned his head furiously into the full beam of the torch.
‘Ere, what’s your bleedin’ game?’ he cried, his eyes ablaze with anger.
‘It’s the police, ‘Arry,’ cried the girl, turning her head away. ‘I told you we should ‘ave waited till we got home.’
‘Is it hell the police. It’s some bleedin’ pervert!’
For a few seconds I stood rooted to the spot while the horrible realisation of what was happening sank into my brain. I had not come upon the blackout strangler attempting to provide the police with another victim; instead I had encountered a couple indulging in a bout of impulsive domestic coitus in which I had played the role of Mr Interruptus. Dried egg was on my face.
The man now was pulling up his trousers. He was a big strapping fellow and I could see his hands were huge.
There was nothing for it but to scarper. If I wanted to escape the pain and indignity of a busted nose, I had to leg it. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I said, lamely. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
And then I ran, leaving the amorous couple hurling abuse at me down the empty street.
Ten minutes later I was in my flat, sitting on the couch trying to steady my hand while I lit a Craven A, my brow bathed in sweat. What a nightmare. In a matter of minutes I had metamorphosed from Ace Detective into creepy Peeping Tom. I took a deep drag and allowed the tobacco to surge into my lungs. I laid back, closed my eyes and breathed deeply, urging my body to relax.
In the darkness under my eyelids I ran the film again of my unfortunate encounter in Maple Street and in doing so I began to see the amusing side of it. It had all the elements of a silent comedy. An adult silent comedy. I chuckled. The mixture of indignation, fury and unsatisfied passion that registered on that big mutt’s face caught in the wavering beam of my torch was, in retrospect, in the comfort and security of my own home, very funny. Well, at least that would teach them a lesson. In future, wait until you get home.
Comes the Dark Page 3