The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  Penny kept watching him as he walked fast-slow, slow-fast. Soon, he had reached the wall of the house. He set down his Gladstone bag. Then, he placed one hand, palm-flat, upon the wall and then the other, he lifted his left leg, bracing his foot against the surface. He drew up his right leg after it. He was crawling up the wall towards her, top hat still erect on his head. His short cape, like wings, flapping about his shoulders but making no sound.

  She rubbed her eyes. People can’t climb walls like spiders but this man was doing just that. He was getting very close too, she could smell him, he smelled funny. A white worm with a black head was coming out of his ear, trailing a thread of yellow and red blood behind it. Her breath was slowing down, she could not look away from him, he was so close she could see his face, it was dark, rising, eclipsing the moon. His skin was leathery and swarthy at first, then Penny blinked and he was old, wrinkly, white-haired and broad-nosed. His mouth was a sad half-circle. She blinked again and he was young, fair-skinned and freckled with a thin, teased-out, carroty moustache. He smiled, showing dirty teeth and raw gums.

  “Who’re you?” Penny asked.

  Penny saw the blood on his teeth as he reached out to her. Something long, thin and bright flashed between his fingers.

  “Me? Why, I’m Jack.”

  Chapter Four

  Jerry remembered waking up thick-headed, tasting vinegary wine from the night before on his tongue, feeling like shit warmed up. The Parisian whore beside him snoring, he did not know her name. Morning light creeping in through thin, tattered curtains to illuminate her face; how rotten her teeth were. Her make-up had been coming away, revealing webs of wrinkles underneath, and thick lumps of powder plugged the pock marks all over her face. The pillow smudged with coal dust, which she must have rubbed it into her hair to cover the abundant greys and whites. He’d caught a whiff of her breath and it had been ripe with disease.

  She’d been sitting at a table in the bar, alone. Drinking wine that had gone off; all she could afford. No-one else in the bar had been going anywhere near her. Had that been it? Not her looks but her loneliness that had attracted him? Had he seen someone like himself sitting there at that table?

  Head hazy, he’d groped for her thigh underneath the sheet, feeling his way up it, soon brushing over the knotty undergrowth of her cunt and slipping his fingers into the warm cleft. The whore’s eyes had opened a slit, watching him fiddle and play. She’d started to make small sounds of pleasure – unconvincing ones – her voice too practiced and hollow. She’d been at the game for a long time. The touch of a man no longer excited her, her writhing under the sheets had been a tired act. Jerry had withdrawn his fingers after a moment longer, pulled on his civvies and dropped a fistful of dollars onto the bed sheets as he left. He wandered the streets for hours, losing himself amongst whores, their customers and the last of the bohos.

  He’d been found by a stretcher party after his Nieuport crashed, wandering out in the open. Once he was back behind the lines, they’d packed him off to a convalescent camp where they told him his nerves were shot.

  He would never fly again.

  The cold, hard truth stuck in Jerry’s throat. He’d been given leave and went to Paris to disappear into the underworld, hoping it would eat him alive. It didn’t – it just took the choicest pieces, the bits that it wanted, leaving the leftovers behind to rot on his bones. What was he going to do now?

  Jerry felt something in his pocket. He took it out ad examined it in the sunlight – his silver penny. He remembered he had a brother.

  “Go home,” he croaked to himself.

  *

  The train pulled in. The doors opened. Disgorging tired, lice-bitten soldiers. They spread across every inch of the platform, clogging it, leaving no space. The lonely notes of ambulance sirens could be heard echoing outside, men and women with stretchers were threading their way through the crush. The murmurs of the wounded underscored the hubbub of the crowd, the air became fetid as the stale odours that had taken hold in the crowded compartments of the train escaped. Men jostled and shoved one another, heading for the gateway that led into the main station where, if they were lucky, loved ones awaited their arrival.

  One man moved with drunken deliberation through the crowd. His face was gaunt, his shoulders shaking from sleeplessness. He kept going, he kept walking, he pawed sandy grains from his eyes. He was weak, he hadn’t eaten properly in weeks, he hadn’t touched good clean water either. Christ alone knew how many worms he must have swimming around in his guts, he was itching. So sore, for days now, since leaving the whorehouses in Paris.

  Those he passed gave Jerry a wide berth, he had not washed, he was unshaven, his clothes were disgusting, he felt sick, inside and out. He heard a dull buzzing in his ears, a droning din, steadily building. The station ceiling seemed to be exhaling and inhaling over his head, it came rushing down towards him then it went retreating fast away. Faces sunk in on themselves, flesh bruising over, the air he was breathing became too thick for his lungs. The ground rocked from side to side, tortured tangles of black were erupting across his vision, the earth fell away from under his feet. Airborne, he was falling again, his plane burning around him, plunging him down into Black Wood. Colourless clawing hands reaching out of the corpse-soured earth for him, reaching inside him, taking something, ripping it out, putting something else, soft, wet, squirming and alien, in its place.

  Jerry shrieked. He felt the world turning, spinning sickeningly on its slighted axis. His dying plane’s death-tone sang loud in his ears, the station platform smacked into the side of his head, the mercy of unconsciousness swept over him.

  He came to outside, laid out on a stretcher atop the steps of the station with invalids from the Front. Bandaged heads rolled from side to side, swaddled stumps stirring the air, weeping wounds made sucking sounds as men moved their bodies, desperate to get comfortable, to alleviate the pain. There were not enough ambulances to take them all so they had to suffer and wait.

  No, Jerry thought, I’m not going with them.

  “I’m not sick. I’m fine, I’m good.”

  He lurched to his feet.

  “Not going back into hospital, no.”

  He could hear the quick, light footsteps of a VAD.

  “Please lie down. The ambulance is on its way for you.”

  Jerry tried to turn, to smile and tell her he was okay. He lost his footing on the steps, falling and rolling, he went down. Stone smashing his knee, he banged his head, scrambling to his feet. He heard a whistle blasting in his ears.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  A couple of uniformed men were pushing through the crowd towards him.

  Redcaps. Military Police.

  “Shit.”

  There were always a few around the train stations and ports, keeping their eyes peeled for deserters, looking for trouble-makers, waiting, eager to have a crack at someone. A coarse hand grabbed his shoulder. “What’re you running for, mate, eh? You alright, now?”

  Jerry opened his mouth to speak, he could explain himself. The punch blasted the air from his lungs before he could. Gasping, Jerry reeled back on his feet, the Redcap was smiling at the pain he had just caused.

  This one’s a vicious bastard, Jerry thought, enjoys hurting people.

  He drove his own fist into the Redcap’s face, feeling the satisfying give of the man’s nose. The Redcap yelled, his colleague’s mouth opened in surprise, they were not used to their victims fighting back. They were used to them being spent, tired men, no fight left in them. The unhurt Redcap backed away, piping on his whistle. Jerry punched the wounded man in the side of the head, making him moan afresh, then a kick and the man fell.

  Jerry booted him once more in the stomach, for luck. Then he ran, leaving the clatter and heave of the station behind, vanishing into the backstreets. He stopped every so often, dragging air into aching lungs with queasy gasps. Feeling sick with the knowledge of what he’d done, he had broken the law, beaten up a Redcap. They w
ould be after his blood for this.

  As Jerry ran, the streets became scabbier. The people, dirtier, their faces, thinner, hungrier, greyer. Twisting and turning, Jerry passed into a funereal labyrinth of narrow alleyways, empty yards and cluttered courts. By nightfall, on blistered feet, he came staggering into its heart – the rat warren of Whitechapel.

  *

  Captain Thwaite looked Sergeant Cutter over from behind his desk. The young man was heavily bruised on one side of the face with nose padded and bandaged. He did not sympathise with the Sergeant, not one bit. The man he had been attempting to arrest was not on record as a deserter but Cutter had turned him into one, creating another headache for Thwaite to have to deal with.

  He never had liked Cutter; the young man had an unmentionable streak in him, not just for brute thuggery and dumb violence but an empty penchant for conflict that made Thwaite feel quite ill, strained almost, if he spent too long in the younger man’s company. By turns, the Sergeant could be abrupt and aloof, fierce and distant, his personality oscillating between jagged extremes. Not fit enough in the brain to mix with the rest of us, Thwaite thought. Still, he had better find out if Cutter had made good on the sorry mess made so far.

  “Did you get him, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir. The Yank gave us the slip. ‘Round about Whitechapel.”

  Thwaite licked his lips, “That won’t do. We are professionals. We have a duty to perform. We have a name for the man we’re after. Reinhart. Jerry Reinhart.”

  “You think he might be on their side? Being a Jerry and all that, sir?”

  Thwaite sighed. Cutter could be as stupid as he was vicious sometimes.

  “That’s just his name, man. Now, I want every effort made to bring him in. I’ve been informed that his mind was upset by his experiences in the field. He is to be arrested and tried for the assault committed. Do you understand me, Cutter? Arrested, not beaten until he’s raw as a steak.”

  “Yes, sir. Understood, sir.”

  “It’s good weather tonight, I’ve been told. It’s highly likely there’ll be a raid. He’ll shelter in the Whitechapel Underground station with the vagrants and whores, I should think. It’ll be crowded. He won’t be able to run in the crush. I suggest you take Private Russell with you, corner our man down there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  Cutter snapped a smart salute and turned on his heel, marching out.

  Thwaite felt his body relax the moment the door was closed.

  Chapter Five

  A bobby was giving a shoeing to one of the tramps, getting him to move on. The parade of shops displayed their wares in their grubby bay windows, meagre pickings as they were. Some of the shops were closed, burnt out. Their owners having fled the city, suspected by the mob of being Hun spies. There was nothing else they could do but run for their lives, save themselves and their families.

  Queues snaked down the street and around the corner, great threads of hungry humanity, stomachs sore from malnutrition. Tired faces hanging forward, feet in worn-out boots and shoes tramping and stamping on the pavement, trying to beat some heat back into their extremities.

  Liz Hope had been queuing since the early hours of the morning, it was now late in the afternoon. The first fleeting fingers of evening were beginning to darken the sky, she desperately wanted to lie down, to rest. She knew she couldn’t, there was no-one to keep a space for her in the queue. Others had children, grandparents, husbands and wives that could swap places with them, a luxury she no longer had.

  Madge McDonald waved at her, smiling, tightly clutching a bundle of bloodied brown paper to her chest as she approached.

  “What’ve you got there, Madge? Is that pork? I thought there was none to be had.”

  “Oh, it ain’t pork, Liz. This here’s cat.”

  “It isn’t!”

  “It is. It’s pretty stringy-looking but meat’s meat and there’s precious little of it around.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought Mike capable of such a thing.”

  Madge shrugged, “Times’re hard, Liz. This little lot’ll keep my young ‘uns quiet. It’ll cheer ‘em right up. We’ve had nothing but bread and scrape to eat in our house for weeks now. The time’ll come when we can live and let live but it ain’t here and now.”

  “I guess I’d better hope he’s still got some left when I get there then.”

  “I wouldn’t hold out too much hope on that. It’s the first cheap cuts of meat to be had on the counter in Lord knows how long. People’re going for it like crows ‘round a dead man.”

  “Don’t say that, Madge. Talk of death’ll bring a raid down on us.”

  Madge laughed, “I doubt the fuckin’ Hun needs words of encouragement from me. Anyway, I best get on, Liz. You look after yourself.”

  “You too, Madge. God bless.”

  Madge bustled off down the street with her prize. A whooping squall of children rushed by. Girls and boys playing kiss chase, by the looks of things. Liz’s boys would never get to do that. Neither would she, not with Harry gone to meet his maker. She had lost them all so early on, so many other people still had someone left. Having someone to care for and who cares for you keeps a very important part of who you are alive. Without that someone, it soon enough shrivels up and dies. She remembered seeing him off, her Harry. Walking up the hill with him, solemn partners, their hands bound in tight marriage to one another. It was a ten minute walk to the barracks where she had to leave him. The next day he was due to embark for Belgium. Had they talked before they parted? She could not remember.

  Afterwards, she scavenged cheap bits of fruit and mashed up the last of the good bread to make a Christmas pudding for him, she sent it out there in December. It never reached him. Word came home. He was dead, blown to kingdom come by a Hun mine. In her mind’s eye, she saw his pals eating that pudding in some benighted trench, laughing amongst themselves, cheersing their good fortune with tots of rum whilst starving rats gnawed on the eyes in her husband’s head.

  waste not want not

  His Country had needed him and his Country had taken him. She would never forgive them for that. The pension the government sent her was shit, a pittance. She scrimped and saved as best she could, feeding the boys on potato bread, dripping and margarine. The posh shops in London had first dibs on the good stuff, the poor were left to fend for themselves. There was never enough, she could never fill the bellies of the little ones. Robert screamed the loudest whilst Colm didn’t sleep, he lay awake each night, coughing and hacking.

  Dr Cargill came to see Rob and Colm, free of charge. He knew there was no saving them, that they were done for, so did Liz but she was their mother and could not admit that to herself.

  She couldn’t give up on her children.

  Dr Cargill prescribed them Virol, to be taken every day. The malt in it would keep them going, he said. He told her she should take them to the soup kitchens. London’s well-to-do ladies were handing out penny dinners every evening, but Liz didn’t have pennies to spare. The boys needed Virol and the dinners to survive. There was no way she could pay for both.

  One night, Liz awoke and lay there, listening. There was not a sound in the house, none to be heard. Colm and Rob’s coughing had stopped. That meant one thing. One thing had happened. She hugged them so tight and for so long that night, feeling them stiffen and go cold.

  Liz would never forget the ride on the rag-and-bone man’s pony-trap to the pauper’s graveyard, two tiny boxes rattling away in the back. Proper coffins were too dear. She begged them from the grocer and made the lids out of scrap-wood. The women of the street stood on their doorsteps, heads bowed, mute.

  What was there to say?

  Liz looked at herself in the window of the Baker’s. Her skin marked her out from the women around her. She was untainted by the jaundice that came from working in the factories. The papers called the munitionettes ‘the canaries’, an affectionate nick-name, one that suggested a jovial, working-class ch
irpiness that overcame hard times such as these with a smile and a bawdy sing-song. Looking at the women, Liz remembered what Harry once told her, how they used canaries in the mines. There was nothing chirpy about that.

  Like those little birds, these women were to be a sacrifice for ‘the greater good’, whatever that was, breathing in factory poison the same way canaries in the mines breathed in long-buried gases. Their Country needed them alright, same as it once needed Harry. It needed them dead.

  Being a kept woman was a good deal for her, all things considered. Of course, Dr Cargill’s favour came at a price. It was not a happy relationship they had but neither was it an entirely unhappy one, it had settled into a strange grey place between both states. Who knew where and to what it might lead, in the end?

  Constable Matthews came barrelling down the street on his bicycle, snapping her out of her reverie. Ringing his bell. Blowing hard on his whistle. Hanging over the sides of the bicycle were two boards with crude black lettering daubed on in blotchy streaks.

  TAKE COVER!

  The Germans were on their way.

  Screams filled the air, queues dispersed, people hurried away in scatters, shop doors clashed shut, windows in every building swung to. Liz fled, falling in with everyone else, washed along by a swelling tide of unwashed humanity, all of them heading for the safety of the Underground. In the window of the Baker’s shop, still hanging there, was the reflection of Liz Hope, grey-skinned and silver-eyed. Smiling, showing broken teeth, it reached out a hand with long, loathsome fingers. Those fingers pierced the dusty glass without breaking it, coming through to momentarily writhe in the wailing air of raid-scarred London. Then the fingers withdrew and the grey reflection faded into mist.

  Chapter Six

  The city was screaming. Screaming in pain, screaming for vengeance. The baby-killers were back, hanging overhead, vast man-made storm clouds, hailing death onto those below. Archie fire chattered from the anti-aircraft batteries to no avail, the zeppelins remained aloft. Children watched the bloated beasts roam along the air currents before they were dragged down into the Underground and the shelters by wild-eyed parents. The pale underbellies of the ponderous aircraft were made luminous by the flickering of the great fires they left in their wake. But eventually the fires died out and so did the screams, and London was left to rot and brood under a disquieting shadow of silence.